Hand-to-paw combat and German Beer in the rain

 Hello!

So a lot has happened since my trip to Japan in January. I wasn't happy at my school and was getting constant negative feedback from my boss. She actually gave me an official warning of poor performance because students complained that my classes were boring…. So I quit in March and found a new school to work at starting in April! I've been working at my new school for just over a month now and it's been great!! The kids are lovely and my co-workers are very nice. It's a  more established academy and has more advanced students and more middle school classes, which I love to teach. Younger kids are cute and can be fun… but I really love it when they get to the age where you can tease them and if you leave them alone in the room for more than 30 seconds, you don’t find them hiding under desks or running wild around the room!!

I have one middle school student who tries to secretly study vocabulary under his desk while I teach… I have to CONFISCATE HIS VOCABULARY BOOK EVERY CLASS because we won't stop studying… rebel…

The new school is located in a more centralised area of Busan, so I can go places before work and I run into other foreigners!! I also live closer to my Korean friend SeongJune, so we meet for coffee or food before or after work. This has made me feel way less isolated and alone over here :) Things are looking up!

Last week was Buddha's birthday and Children's day, so I had a few days off work! SeongJune and I took a trip up to Mount Jiri for a few days. On the way up, we stopped in at Ssanggyesa temple 쌍계사 and the Choi Champandaek 최참판댁 property. 

Ssanggyesa temple was colorfully decorated for Buddha's birthday and there were a fair amount of people there for the celebration! You could pay to hang a lantern with your name on it, either for a day or for a year. I'm assuming it's supposed to give you good luck. 

The temple was originally constructed in the Silla Era, but was burnt down during the Japanese invasion in the 1500s and was later rebuilt. The temple area is made up of many separate buildings. After entering through the main gate, there are many different staircases that lead to different temple buildings. Most of the buildings look pretty much the same, with similar designs painted on the outside and the interior. I don't know if each building has a unique purpose, or if you just get to choose where you want to pray that day… The temples don't usually come with instructions (at least not in English).

The Choi Champandaek property used to be owned by one of the wealthier Korean families (the Choi family, in case that wasn't obvious from the name). The property, like the temple, was also made up of many out-laying buildings, each with its own purpose. It's all located on a mountain side and has a beautiful view of the surrounding area. On one section of the property, they had live chickens and a cow.  Apparently Koreans are a little skittish around farm animals. A few people were carefully holding up long pieces of grass for the cow to eat, but were being careful not to let it get too close to their hands. To SeongJune's surprise, I casually started petting the cow's face and talking to it as if it were a dog… He later told me that that was a very Canadian thing for me to do.

We then drove up to Uisin 의신 and stayed in a MinBak 민박 which is a small, one-room accommodation. We had one room with a heated floor to sleep on. The Minbak provides sleeping mats, pillows and blankets to lay out on the floor. We also had a kitchenette with a gas stove top, sink, rice cooker (of course) and mini-fridge.

The first night we had them set up a Korean BBQ grill for us and we cooked pork and vegetables for our dinner :) We soon noticed that our dinner was attracting the resident cats… so we tried to make friends with them by throwing small pieces of meat to them. They were quite wary of us and wouldn't get close enough to touch. We had to re-throw a few pieces of meat that were apparently too close to the door for them to risk grabbing.

The next day, we drove to the entrance to a hiking trail on Mount Jiri 지리산.  We hiked 5 km up and 5 km down the side of the mountain (It took us about 5 hours. At the turn-around point at the top, there was a meeting area where multiple trails merged together. The meeting area had a building with a resting room, washrooms and a picnic area where you could sit and rest. As we sat eating our sandwiches ( my friend had never made sandwiches before and photographed the process), I watched as many different groups of hikers pulled out their camp stoves and their instant ramyeon packages. I thought this was a strange choice, since they were all day hikers… Who brings a stove on a day hike?!  There are so many more convenient foods to bring for lunch that don't involve boiling water!!!! Most of the people hiking had large packs with them (the kind you would take if you were planning on backpacking for a month)… What was in them aside from their instant noodles and their stove, I can only guess. My friend says that it is normal for Koreans to always carry large hiking bags with them when they hike… maybe half of it is full of kimchi… in case they get lost in the woods and need something to survive on. Hahahahahahaha.

The only wildlife we saw on our hike were chipmunks… We were warned of a bear and they had bear signs posted along the trail… but no such luck. SeongJune was concerned about a bear and asked me if I knew how to "fight off the bear"… so maybe it was a good thing we didn't run into the bear, because apparently my friends thought we should engage it in hand-to-paw combat to save our lives.

That night, we chose to watch Revenant, which seemed fitting for the end of our day of hiking. 

The next day we drove down to Namhae Island 남해, which is a popular vacation destination. We decided to spend our day in the German village there. Unfortunately, it rained all day, which put a bit of a damper on our afternoon. Despite the rain, the village was crowded and it took about an hour to find a parking spot. It was about 2pm by the time we got out of the car and we were ready to eat!! I was looking forward to a good sausage and mashed potatoes… but we were misinformed about the restaurant options and ended up at a Korean buffet for lunch instead. We then walked up and down the street for a bit in the rain before taking semi-refuge in a pub. The café/pub was so full of people that we ended up sitting outside under a parasol.  Haha… I got a nice German beer, which I promptly spilt all over the table. Sadness… We then called it quits and drove back to Busan. 

All-in-all a great long weekend :)

New Years in Tokyo :)

Hello :)

I've been in Busan now for 4 months and I've settled into my new school... mostly. My co-workers are very nice and friendly, which is great. My boss... is a boss and we don't always see eye-to-eye, but oh well :)  This academy is much smaller than where I was working in Daegu and it only opened a month before I started working there. My boss is still trying to figure it all out and, unfortunately, it makes working with her difficult at times. Haha.

Anyways, on to the travelling news!!

I had the first week of January off so I started the new year off in Japan!  A university friend is currently teaching near(ish) Sapporo and also had the time off, so he met me in Tokyo and travelled with me to Kyoto and Ossaka. It was absolutely amazing to travel with someone who is competent with the language and who knows where to go and how to get there!

We spent the first weekend in Tokyo... well, kinda. Due to lack of planning, we couldn't find a place to stay IN Tokyo that wasn't going to break the bank, so we ended up in a hotel in Chiba, a suburb of Tokyo, connected by the JR train. I'm not a big city person, so this suited me quite well and our strange location actually resulted in some pretty cool adventures!

Thanks to the creepy stalker-ish side of facebook, a guy Corey had met a few years earlier through a language exchange program, was notified that we were in the neighbourhood and he graciously opened his house to us for a New Years Eve celebration! Before heading to his house, Corey took me to a shrine in Tokyo where we sampled some Japanese street food and observed the beginning of the New Year's rush. There was a line of people leading up to the main shrine even though it was early evening and already dark out. New Years is a big deal in Japan and everyone spends New Year's day with their families, going to a shrine to give the first offering of the season and to get their New Year's fortune told! I guess the New Year's Eve crowd was squeezing in one last offering before the year ended.

After the shrine visit, we headed to Corey's friend's house. We were greeted warmly and were soon joined by another family and a guy from the States. They're an artsy group and spirits were high :) Half of it was in Japanese, so I can't say what exactly we talked about, but apparently I'm very good at nodding and smiling and pretending I understand. Haha. It's a survival skill when you live in a foreign country with a foreign language.  The other option is just looking lost and confused all of the time and that's simply no fun.

We stayed the night at their house and spent most of the next day with them as well. They dressed me up in a fancy kimono and took us to a local shrine.  The shrine was set back in the woods and had old stairs leading up to it. At the bottom of the stairs, there were food trucks set up with delicious food and warm drinks. We spent most of the afternoon there and were invited back to their house for dinner. We had Odang, a staple Japanese food, and rice cake soup, traditionally eaten to celebrate the new year. We left our gracious hosts and went back to our hotel to catch up on our sleep.

The next day we met some other friends in Odaiba, an area of Tokyo with a large shopping Mall and a miniature statue of liberty. We stumbled across a car dealership where you could test drive cars... so we took spin in a fancy green Prius.

That evening, we took the JR train to Kyoto. We stayed at a hostel in Gojo, which is one subway stop away from Kyoto station. There was a lot to see in Kyoto. It's an older city with well-preserved historical sites.  Most of Japan is very modern and cutting edge, but Kyoto prides itself in its traditions and historical significance. To keep the traditional feeling alive in the city, women dressed in kimonos are given discounts at restaurants... Seems like a good reason to get dressed up :)

We spent five nights in Kyoto and I think we only scratched the surface of what the city had to offer. We visited Kiomisudera Temple, Fushiminari Shrines, Kinkakuji (Gold Pavilion), Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion), Heian Shrine, and the Imperial Palace.  All were quite beautiful and I'm sure they're even more breathtaking in the spring when the trees are green and the flowers are blooming. Even with a winter backdrop, these places were beautiful.

We also went to Arayashiama, which is a natural area just outside of the city. Normally, there's a tourist train that takes you through the area but it wasn't running when we visited. Arayashiama has a large bamboo forest, which we walked though and a small shrine with a zen garden.

While we were near Heian shrine, we decided to walk around the surrounding area and found bonsai convention. You had to buy tickets to get in, so we just peeked in the door and were about to leave when a lady approached us and handed us 2 tickets... so we went to a bonsai convention! I learned that the smaller the bonsai, the more expensive it is. It was an interesting and unexpected experience but quite enjoyable... and random. Haha. Living abroad certainly teaches you to 'just go with it'. 

We also did an evening tour through Gion, a Geisha district at the heart of Kyoto, not far from where we were staying. It was interesting to learn about the Geisha culture. Though not as popular is it was in the years talked about in  'A Memoirs of a Geisha' (which i read while in Japan), there are still Tea Houses where Geisha perform and entertain their guests (by invite only). Apparently it's rare to see a Geisha in the area, since they value their own privacy and the privacy of their guests. 

We spent our last 2 days in Osaka. We spent an afternoon at Universal Studios Japan, where we went on some cool rides and visit Hogwarts :) The second day, we went to Osaka castle and met a group of Corey's friends in the evening.


All-in-all a great trip :) For anyone looking to travel in Japan, a word of caution... It's expensive! Food, transportation, hostels. Killer on the bank account. I spent just under 1.5 thousand CAD during my 8 days there. In most other parts of Asia, a third of that would be more than enough for a week of traveling. Oh well. Money well spent :)