Korea Year 2 Week 26: Kyoto and K-Pop
I don’t know why I love alliteration so much, but I just realized that I’ve been using it for a lot of my weekly e-mail titles lately. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Korea so long, and teaching extremely simplified English so long that my personal ability to produce language is deteriorating…sad. My chances of acing the GRE are growing ever more dim.
I left off as we were on a train headed for Kyoto, Japan. Kyoto is the former capital of Japan, which means that unlike Hiroshima, it was full of beautiful historic buildings and temples. Almost every street we wandered down had a random temple located on it, which made finding the ones we really wanted to see a bit more difficult, because we weren’t sure whether or not it was the famous one, or just another neighborhood temple until we found the English signage, which was few and far between. I’ll give Korea this, they are definitely a more English friendly country than Japan.
Within our first few hours in Kyoto we looked at about 4 different Temples, the Golden Temple, a Zen temple, a random neighborhood temple that we thought was the Zen temple until we realized that there were no other tourists there, and the Japanese people were actually there for worship and not sight-seeing. It wasn’t long before we realized the one thing that every tourist to Japan eventually realizes about it’s Temples…they are beautiful historic structures, but…they all look the same. Each may have a slightly different look to it. One might be caked in gold, another in silver, one may have over 5000 orange post things, while another only has about 50, but on a basic level, once you’ve seen three or four, you really don’t need to go out of your way to see anymore. Don’t get me wrong, they were beautiful, and if I didn’t live in Asia, I might have appreciated their beauty a lot more, but I see Asian architecture every day…so the awe that most western tourists feel when visiting Asia wore off quite a while ago, and all I could think when I saw all of the pagodas was, “that’s nice…another pagoda.”
We discovered very early on in our trip that the language barrier in Japan is not as easy to cross as it is in Korea. Luckily, due to my supreme nerdiness, I am the proud owner of an electronic translation dictionary. It is a Korean/English dictionary, but it came fully loaded with travel dictionaries for over 15 other languages. One of which is Japanese. This came in very handy. Whenever we wanted to communicate with the people. I would locate the phrase in Korean on my dictionary, and point at the Japanese underneath. It was very useful when we wanted our check, or wanted to know how much something cost. They could just read it, and we didn’t have to worry about mispronunciation or everything. Sometimes being a huge linguistic nerd is a good thing.
On Tuesday we decided that we should use up the remainder of our Yen by buying souvenirs. My friend was looking at all of these beautiful Japanese things, wall hangings, chopsticks, pottery. Whilst she was looking around, I was in search of my ideal souvenir. I wandered from place to place, but all I could think was how much cheaper I could get all of this Asian-type stuff in Korea. Then I saw it, and I knew it had to be mine. A ninja mask. That’s right a real Japanese ninja mask. I bought it, stowed it, and have future plans to use it as my Halloween costume.
Later in the day we went to yet another temple to wander about, this one’s unique selling point was the fact that it had been made without using nails, which was quite a feat as it had been built up the side of a very large hill. A hill so large in fact that a resident of Southern Missouri might even term it a mountain. Guess what…this temple looked remarkably similar to all the other temples, but don’t tell the Japanese I said that.
Once we had exited the temple we were on our way to find some food for lunch when I saw two good-looking boys sitting on the side of the path looking at a map. They were handsome Asians so I of course turned for a second look. This time I thought, they look kind of familiar. Then it hit me, it was the Mormon guy and his friend that we had met in the airport in Osaka. Weird. What are the odds, that out of the millions of people all over Japan we would run into these guys twice. We talked to them for a little bit, pointed out a temple that actually was quite a bit different from the others (Fushimi-Inari shrine if you’re interested), then once again went our separate ways. I wonder if I’ll ever randomly wander into them in Seoul.
On our way to find lunch we continued the great souvenir hunt, this will be my final anecdote from my trip to Japan, as I have waxed quite wordy, and have yet to explain my references to K-pop. In a shop along the path to the nail-less temple, in the far back corner I found a miniature Japanese men’s traditional shirt that came with a miniature katana blade. I saw it and knew that I must have this for my other traveling companion, Ken. So I purchased it, and later that night presented it to my plastic fellow traveler, then put it in my luggage and forgot about it until I reached the Osaka airport the next day. As I was going through security, they pulled me and my bag aside and asked me to open it. They asked me if I had any knives in my luggage and that’s when I remembered the fake mini-sword. Apparently the tiny Ken-sized blade was considered a security threat, and would have to be confiscated. However, I didn’t want to give up the whole sword, so I asked the security guard if we could some how break off the plastic pieces so I could glue them to the sheath when I got home, and it would still look like a real sword. After about ten minutes of being laughed at by all the security guards in the place, we got it apart. I gave him my blade, took the hilt, and went to board the plane.
What makes the above story even more amusing is that only a few weeks before they took my blade, they confiscated some Japanese throwing stars from Steve Jobs at the exact same airport as he was trying to get on his private jet. Basically the moral of this story is that I am just as cool as Steve Jobs, even if I don’t have billions of dollars backing me up.
It was good coming back to Korea, and once again being able to read the signs, and understand to a certain extent what was going on around me. Friday I worked. Saturday I made cinnamon rolls at a friend’s house, and watched The Office. Then around 5:30 I left to meet my two friends who are just as obsessed with K-Pop as I am, and we went to our first ever K-Pop concert. It was the first concert I’ve ever actually paid money to go to, and it was for my favorite Korean singer. His name is Tae Yang, if I had to compare him to anyone in the western world, I would call him the Korean Usher, but in my view Usher can’t even compare. The concert was amazing. We were on the second floor, but we still had a decent view of the stage. The best part about our seats, however, was their proximity to the center aisle. Seated about 10 rows in front of us was G-Dragon…Yes, G-Dragon. For those of you not well versed in the Korean music scene. G-Dragon’s fame is only second to Rain. He’s the front man for the band Big Bang, and branched out into his own solo career as well. He kept walking past our seats the entire concert. If you were all 14 year old Korean Girls, you have no idea how jealous you would be of me right now.
I thoroughly enjoyed my first K-Pop concert, and have a slight suspicion that there will be many to follow. Next we have to figure out a way to see Rain before he goes off to join the military next year. I shall keep you all abreast of future developments in that department.
