Extra Barbering Services

So I want to catch up on some holiday tripping so this will be short and packed I think. I'd quite like to write something self-reflective like Mr Buckly but I will spare you the pain. I think the desire has been brought on by the massive anount of my friends who are packing up and leaving Japan in the next few weeks, I think if you stayed here a long time you'd get used to it but now it mainly feels a bit strange.

Enough. So it was my Mums birthday in may and my brothers organised a trip to paris for her - great idea. I flew over too - as you can imagine Paris is really nice in the spring I saw lots of things I havent seen since I was 12. And most importantly ate a lot of really good food! And saw my family, made a trip to London and caught up with some good people. There was more to it than that really ut now I'm tiered so it will have to do.

I came back to relax but it was not possible. Ed Burke has been in Tokyo at a UN University Junket and came down to Kyoto for a weekend of entertainment and Rugby. Ireland were playing Japan so we headed to Osaka for the fun, of course Ireland won, by a lot but it was still fun. Alison McIntyre also came down after a 2am phonecall from the (slightly drunk) pair of us. Lots of fun that was repeated the next weekend when Eds uni friends turned up in Kyoto and made me miss my first day at work - nice people but very bad for my organs.

So thats a high speed catch up I might give you more info latter or I might not. But I did want to tell you aboutr a recent haircut. I went to a cheap place so it was pretty busy. I sat down to wait and picked up at random one of the free magazines on the coffee table. It was a bit of a shock to be confronted with a full frontal naked woman on the first page. It seems in Japan porn and hair cuts go together. I was of course really emabarrased and threw down the mag, not every one was so coy latter I saw a grandfatherly figure happily flicking through the pages, I'm such a prude hey!

Well be happy folks,
Roger

A Blog about spicy Cabbage and other Delicacies

Sorry some people have been pestering me to produce something for their reading pleasure, I'm sure its really not a biggy for most of you (here I address an audience far larger than I can reasonably expect to have here) in fact many people must surely be totally unaware of the existence of this site.

Still I have you now so let me tell you about Korea. I went there rather a long time ago but I can remember a few things about it. Korea　receives top marks from my self as a destination for holidays or vacations or wotevah. Its a lot like Japan in that people look the same although more casually dressed and generally speaking a little heavier than people over here. They also don't seem to like Japan very much. Not really a very surprising thing if you consider hundreds of years of wars topped of by a rather brutal occupation lasting from 1910 (I think). The continuing refusal of Japan to deal with its imperial history (rather like another Island nation on the other side of the world perhaps) and the fact that the two countries are busy arguing over Dokdo (or Takeshima if you come from Japan), some tiny islands with no water but still both countries want them, isn't helping either. Some big differences though are that Korea seems a much more lively place there are stalls on the streets and a bit of chaos occasionally its quite refreshing after the ultra organisation of Japan.

Enough of the geo political socio economic background now a travel story. There we were walking back towards our hotel in Seoul when we heard loaud music coming from what looked like a large warehouse - oh maybe its a free party we thunk - so off we went. On coming round the corner we got a bit of a shock, instead of dreadlocked youths we saw about 200 Korean matrons in their traditional dress bopping to cheesy K-Pop　tunes. We watched for a while and then the crowd moved off picking up paper lanterns as they went. We thought it'd be a good idea to follow them and see where they went. Lots of ladies smiled at us and eventually we were drawn into the throng and handed our own lanterns. It was similar to watching ducks waddling across a lawn towards a pond lots of smiling and one or two really bossy ones pushing the others around - of course ducks don't carry lanterns. Eventually we wound up in the central square in front of a large stage and eventually were treated to a free concert, it was grand at first lots of traditional singing and instruments then some kind of ceremony. Then it went down hill a little with a succession of K-Pop numbers, that Dana assured me were off key. The centre piece of the show was a huge revolving blow up white elephant, those of you well versed in Buddhist lore will recognise this as a sign we were celebrating the birth of the Buddha foretold to his mum in a dream involving the same elephant.

One of the best things about Korea is the food - there is lots and its cheap... If you don't like cabbage especially spicy cabbage, called Kimchi in Korea, you are in trouble it the national dish and gets served with everything even breakfast. Its pretty good stuff and comes in a fair range of different varieties. The Korean BBQ is hugely popular as well you get fresh meat and grill it at your own table then eat it wrapped up in a lettuce leaf with various dips and condiments. Ummmm yum. Having been in Japan for a while though it was inevitable that raw fish would be required at some stage. In Pusan the second city of Korea we went to a massive fish market where you could buy just about everything, crabs, metre long eels and turtles amongst other stranger looking things. We stopped for lunch at a Sashimi restaurant we ordered fairly randomly by pointing at a reasonable price on the menu. When the food arrived we were impressed a table full of little dishes ... yum good value, then another massive plate with tuna, octopus, squid and so on well well what a lot of food but they weren't finished no along came an even bigger plate with a large and whole sea bream carefully chopped up for easy eating. Totally stuffed by the end of the meal but ohh so good.

Generally we managed to keep a fairly comfortable level of accommodation one place stands out a little. We were in some po-dunk middle of nowhere town trying to get into a national park (we managed it just and it was very nice thanks) but in this town as hard as we looked we couldn't find an hotel. Eventually we asked a guy in the photo shop who spoke a tiny bit of English the poor guy was a bit flustered and beckoned us to follow him. We did. He put us in his car and drove us to a hotel. It wasn't until we turned on the massive TV in the room to be greeted by cheap Korean porn that we realised the water beds and the shaddy atmosphere indicated that this was indeed a love hotel. How disappointing that my first visit to a love hotel is with a hairy rather scrawny Nova Scotian - tough draw.

Korea is probably most famous for being split in half. So of course some disaster tourism was called for. It does feel strange that Korea makes so many tourist dollars from the partition of the country but there you go. It is pretty interesting to see the most heavily militarised border in the world. You are forbidden to take photos of anything very interesting so no great photos I'm afraid. Still we saw the two tallest flag poles in the world - if you can't pick up the falic symbolism in that well. We also went down in to the third tunnel of aggression. According to our guide the North has something like 200 tunnels running under the Demilitarised Zone. This one was pretty interesting it was fairly spacy but you wouldn't want to be running through it with full military equipment.

So there you go Korea digested to a small blog here in cyber world - visit it its fun. Hope everyone is well and cheerful,
Roger

A Link

Sorry folks long time no blog there is a wonderful blog in the making (half written now to be finalised tommorrow - probably) in the mean while have a look at this its rather amusing but not really representative.....
http://www.findloveinjapan.com/about.htm