Hokkaido diary: Tokyo Skytree and craft beer

As before, I'm trying the Paul Theroux approach to travel writing: no bloviating, no florid soliloquizing, no fluff. Just straight-up description. As Mary Chesnut wrote in her Civil War diary, "My subjective days are over."

I'm going to do something a little different this time around. Instead of just telling you blandly about my week-long trip to Hokkaido in the past tense, I'm going to include snippets from the journal I kept. Present tense is always more vibrant and visceral. 

So. Day 1.

Hokkaido diary
2/2 - 2/7

2/2:

• was almost late for my flight, but made it. Miss H saw me off. I sure do love that girl.
• nice sandwiches on board, though thin strips—Japanese style
• next time I'm taking the limited express to from Narita to Tokyo (¥1000, or $10) instead of the Skyliner to Ueno (¥2400, or $24)
• Looking at Chiba Prefecture for the first time in six months—still as gray in the sky, but browner in the grass. And not stinking hot and humid
• Checked into Capsule Value Inn Kanda. Met a very nice Finn named Manu (?)—talked about mandatory Swedish in Helsinki schools, idiosyncracies [sic] of the Japanese culture; his dad was a farmer, but he lusted for knowledge at a library 16 km away
• tried to go to Tokyo Skytree; cost ¥2000 to get in. I said "screw that noise, I've been up Tokyo Tower." Checked out the Minolta Planetarium, but cost ¥1000-¥1300 to get in. 
• went back to Kanda and ate maguroichibadon (sushi over rice) for ¥700
• found a craft micropub called Devil Craft nearby—tried microbrews with Mel, a foreign reporter for the Japan Times (and occasionally the Korea Herald)
• Sacked out in my capsule, reading Paul Theroux, hearing Finnish snores and Japanese farts

I'm getting to be an old pro at hopping back and forth between Japan. Getting to Incheon Airport was a breeze. I made it onto my flight with just five minutes to spare because I underestimated how much time it takes to get there and check in. The gate agent even scolded me, his face flat and impassive. But I made it, and that's the important thing. 

I did the same thing as I did last time: I cleared customs and immigration at Narita, exchanged my Korean won for Japanese yen, and then forked over ¥2400 of that precious wad ($23.42) to ride the blue Skyliner to Ueno Station in northeast Tokyo. Then it was a couple of stops down the Ginza subway line to Kanda Station, where, after a bit of poking through back alleys and some help from a good Samaritan (a shortish middle-aged Japanese fellow with his hair cropped close to his skull and a bellicose demeanor), I found my capsule hotel, the Capsule Value Inn:

I checked in and stashed my stuff in the lockers, retrieving only my camera. Then I went back downstairs. Passing the front counter, I bumped into Manu, a Finnish fellow with the look of a mean drill sergeant: buzz-cut hair, blade-like nose, his face all angles and hollows, hardly an ounce of fat on his body. His eyes were piercing gray-blue and his English was flawless. He'd never stayed in a capsule hotel before, and as he was leaving Tokyo the next day (like me) he thought he'd give one a shot. We chatted for half an hour on the hotel's front stoop before I headed off to see Tokyo Skytree. 

Part of my Tao of Travel (again, I'm ripping off terminology from Paul Theroux, but the man's traveled farther than most and he's got some good tips) is this: once I get to a city, at the soonest possible juncture, I find a high place and take a look down at the city from there. Get the lay of the land, so to speak. In August, on my way through western Japan, I did it with Tokyo Tower, Mt. Arashiyama in Kyoto, and Kumamoto Castle. I've done it several times in Seoul: Namsan Tower, the 63 Building, and Dobongsan. I've looked down on L.A. from the Mount Griffith Observatory, the Rim of the World Highway, and several others. I think it's nice to get a bit of an overview before you dive into something, you know? Like looking at a menu at a restaurant or reading the abstract of a scientific study.

But here's the thing: I'd already looked down at Tokyo in August. And I'd done it in the bright daytime, when the air was clear. A moist, slimy fog was stuck to Tokyo's back this night, and I doubted whether, even from the Skytree's Tembo observation deck a redoubtable 450 meters off the ground, I could have seen much of the city. Moreover, even though this was the tallest tower in the world and the tallest structure of any kind after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, I wasn't up for paying ¥2000 ($20) to get in. The lines were humongous, the night was chill and foggy, and I was content just to stumble around at the tower's base with my head craned back, looking at the clouds swirling around the tower's 634-meter spire.

Then I headed back to Kanda. I was in the mood to just sit and have a beer and reflect on the long, exciting journey ahead of me tomorrow. By some cosmic stroke of luck, there was a brewpub just around the corner from my capsule hotel. It was called Devil Craft, one of only two in Tokyo, run by a trio of American expatriates, crewed this night by two handsome and bantering Japanese fellows and filled with foreigners. I fell into conversation with one of them, an Englishman named Mel, who looked almost exactly like Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape and wrote for the Japan Times. I sipped the Miyama Blonde (by Shiga Kogen Beer), Rogue Brewery's Yellow Snow IPA, and Left Hand's Fade to Black, a rye ale. All were supremely delicious. Mel and I chatted away as we drank. He asked me about living in Korea, I asked him about working for a newspaper in Japan. The man had quite a long list of interesting things he believed: he'd interviewed Paul McCartney for 20 minutes and said he hated him; he disliked the Irish and thought the Potato Famine had been faked (just another example of Irish self-victimization); he felt the whole Dokdo/Takeshima possession dispute was bollocks; he avoided films and had no idea who Sir Ian McKellen was. He'd served as a parachutist in the RAF during the Iraq War and had broken both his legs, being sent to Australia to recover.  Japan was a stopover on the way back to Britain, but Mel had liked it so much he'd stayed. He'd married a local and gotten into newspapers, and would be interviewing Lionel Richie on that musician's Japan tour in a few weeks. Right now he was collecting man-on-the-street interviews about the upcoming Tokyo mayoral election and whether the Fukushima incident should factor into it. He wanted to interview me, but I demurred; I wasn't sure how much my job would be worth if Sejong University learned that one of its junior professors had shown up in the Japan Times yapping about Tokyo elections and nuclear meltdowns. No matter; Mel had plenty of bites. He'd already interviewed one of Devil Craft's waitresses and, shortly before I arrived, had become engaged with a foreign-born Japanese man and his Russian wife. Lots of fish in the sea. Mel and I parted as friends, though I did not share his views on the Irish.

Then, my head reeling, I wobbled back to the Capsule Value Inn and spent an hour reading the rest of the Tokyo Andagarundo chapter in Theroux's book. I set an alarm, turned out the light, and waited to see what fortunes the next day would bring me.

Get ready for Day 2: Tokyo to Sapporo. 

Hokkaido itinerary

I'm starting this post at 12:50 a.m. on what is technically a Saturday morning. My flight to Tokyo leaves early on Sunday afternoon. Before that, though, I need to fill you in on my itinerary. So here 'tis:

Sunday, February 2

•    depart Incheon Airport at 1:20 p.m.
• arrive Narita Airport at 3:30 p.m.
• take the Skyliner to Ueno Station, then ride down the Ginza Line to Kanda
• leave the station and head a few meters south to Capsule Value Kanda
• eat some dinner and read that Tokyo chapter in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Monday, February 3

•    at 7:00 a.m., head to Tokyo Station and activate my Japan Rail Pass
• hop the JR Tohoku Shinkansen for Shin-Aomori (3.5 hours)
• transfer to the JR Hakucho limited express to Hakodate (2 hours)
• transfer to the JR Hokuto limited express to Sapporo (3.5 hours) 
• don't forget to read all the relevant chapters of Ghost Train as you do this
•   walk a block west and six blocks north from Sapporo Station 
• find the Sapporo Clark Hotel (check in 3 PM, check out 10 AM)

Tuesday, February 4

•    wake up, get breakfast
• head to Sapporo Station and catch the express to Asahikawa
• take bus 41, 42 or 47 from the station to Asahikawa Zoo (40 minutes, 400 yen) 
• come back and get some Asahikawa ramen near the station
• catch the train back to Sapporo

Wednesday, February 5

•    wake up, get breakfast
• take in the Sapporo Snow Festival in Odori Park
• go up the Sapporo TV Tower and take some pics
• walk south a block to Sapporo Tram (Nishi 8 Chome Station)
• ride nine stops to Ropeway Iriguchi Station and then west to the Sanroku cable car station
• take the cable car up to Mt. Moiwa
• come back down and go back to Ropeway Iriguchi Station; ride 13 stops to Susukino
• get some eats and drinks; take in the Snow Festival some more
• walk back to Odori Park and get some shots of the Sapporo TV Tower at night
• hit the sack

Thursday, February 6

•    check out of the Sapporo Clark Hotel at five o'clock or so
• head to Sapporo Station and catch the 6:00 AM limited express
• do the whole trip again in reverse, except ask for Hakata at Shin-Aomori
• arrive in Hakata at 12:00 AM...

Friday, February 7

•    find something to do with yourself for a few hours...perhaps an izakaya
• catch Bus 11, 19 or 50 to Hakata Ferry Terminal
• check in at the Camellia Line desk at 11:00 AM
• ferry departs at 12:30 PM; arrives in Busan at 6:00 PM

And there you have it. I'll arrive in Busan, tired and hungry perhaps, but ready for Adam's going-away party. Then it'll be the KTX back up to Seoul on Sunday, February 9. Then it'll be barely two weeks until the staff meeting at Sejong University, and then the new semester begins in March.

Wow.

What a jolly life I've got. 

2013...as it relates to 2014

Dear Blogsphere: 

Miss H has flown home for her brief winter break. I just saw her off at the sparkly, well-lit Incheon Airport. I now have eight lonely days to devour pungent seafood, scratch myself, burp, shower every 72 hours and just generally act like a mangy orangutan an unwed male twentysomething.

This was originally supposed to be a post about what I did during my recent Facebook hiatus, but then I thought I'd go one better and tell you what-all I did during 2013. (It's becoming a tradition.)

So here, as noted in my little black spiral-bound notebook, is what I did during the two-month break from the Book o' Faces:
 

• read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• started reading The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (which are the reasons I didn't read more during the break)
• wrote, printed, administered and graded midterm exams
• wrote, printed, administered and graded final exams
• bet on the winning horse and scored ₩1,200 at Seoul Racecourse Park (about $1.10)
• watched the sunset from Gwangjin Bridge (pictured below)
• toured Seolleung and Jeongneung
• found and ordered Coleman waterproof matches (for my pipe) on Gmarket
• joined a gym
• rode a two-person bike with Miss H for the first time (at Ttukseom Resort)
• watched Red Dawn (2012), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Wrath of the Titans (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), Catching Fire (2013), The Edge (2010), and In the Fog (2012) 
• had the fraying cuffs of my two coats repaired (our tailor's a magician)
• assembled a bug-out bag (in case the NoKos invade)
• discovered a bitchin' new bar in Cheonho (Heaven's Key)
• tried to catch the O-Train and failed
• edited Novel #2
• got nearly 40,000 words into my NaNoWriMo project
• took my computer to Gangnam to be repaired
• failed at NaNoWriMo
• brewed my first partial mash beer with the boys (a British red ale)
• drank expensive cocktails on the 41st floor of the Sindorim Sheraton Hotel with Miss H
• explored Gapyeong and Namiseom
• tried a new shrimp-rice dish at the corner diner
• dumped the red ale down the toilet (suspected bacterial infection)
• bought a new backpack for Australia (₩58,000)
• went to the Seoul Lantern Festival
• took several glorious naps
• bought my own set of beer-making supplies
• had corned beef hash at Butterfingers in Gangnam
• went to Incheon for our customary Thanksgiving dinner at Fog City Diner and bought sourdough bread from the proprietor
• had my first halfway-decent conversation with a Korean cabbie
• brewed (and drank) a nice chocolate porter with the fellas
• finally mailed those souvenirs from China to my parents
• rode down to Busan on the KTX for a Christmas party; met up with everyone on Geoje Island; had tapas and wine, watched a football match at an Irish pub, and wound up at a noraebang
• watched the sunset from the top of the Lotte Department Store in Nampo-dong, Busan
• caught the night train to Seoul
• booked my Hokkaido junket
• reconnected with an old friend (my illustrator)
• came down with rhinitis
• went on the Itaewon Foodie Crawl (French, Spanish, Russian and Italian)
• picked new names for the fictitious cities, countries and continents in my sci-fi series
• brewed a nice ginger IPA with my beer-buddies
• did 18 hours of extra classes during finals week
• took Novel #3 to 81,000 words and Novel #4 to 38,000 words

And here, included as a...supplement? Addendum? Appendix? Well, whatever. Here's the rest of what I accomplished in 2013:

• read Hiroshima by John Hersey, Skybreaker and Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel, Distant Thunders and Rising Tides by Taylor Anderson, Dubliners by James Joyce, The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb (part of a book-exchange program with Miss H), and five or six other titles I don't recall...far short of my goal of 30
• tried and failed to keep a book diary (obviously)
• finished my contract at Avalon English in Bucheon
• moved to Seoul, the world's most populous city (proper)
• got a job at Sejong University (and successfully completed my first year there)
• got straight A's on all my teaching evaluations, too
• started the semester with tonsillitis, though
• attended a family reunion in Iowa in July
• swam in a man-made lake
• went to see Jesse James's childhood home
• finally got to eat (and drink!) at the Yardhouse in Victoria Gardens
• fired a Smith & Wesson Model 10 
• traveled through western Japan on the Shinkansen in August (Tokyo → Kyoto → Kumamoto)
• rode the JR Beetle from Hakata to Busan
• ate horse meat
• got into home brewing with my coworkers
• toured Beijing and the Great Wall of China for the Chuseok holiday
• ate fried scorpion (that was on the bucket list!) as well as roast duck and bullfrog soup
• picked up a pile of PC games on Steam
• wrote humor pieces for Rabble Rouse the World
• bought a Stanwell beechwood pipe and Captain Black tobacco
• purchased a bottle of 10-year-old Ardbeg single malt Scotch with spare change
• started Novel #4
• submitted a dozen or so short sci-fi stories to e-magazines like Space Squid, 3LBE and Daily Science Fiction (publication still eludes me, however)
• grew a beard (bucket list!)
• received an e-reader (a Nook) from my significant other as a gift; haven't touched it

And that's about all I can think of for now.

Here's the part where I'm supposed to tell you what I've got planned for next year. Alright, here you go: another two semesters at Sejong University, the Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido in February, a summer trip to Alaska and some other destination as-yet-unchosen, e-publishing Novel #2, shopping Novel #1 to publishers, finishing Novels #3, #4 and possibly #5, smoking the dickens out of my pipe, moving out of this hellhole villa, brewing the tastiest beers this side of the East China Sea, planning my wedding, and growing this beard down to my sternum.

Postman out.

thundersnow and other tales

from Wikimedia Commons

You deserve a full update, and you'll get it, but it's just past 7:30 a.m. and I'm still soaking wet from my shower and I have to be out the door by 8:00 or the subways become too crowded to deal with and I'll be late for class. So here you go, bullet time once again:

• We got the third snow of the year yesterday, a heavy, wet, sopping sort of snow that fell awkwardly out of the sky and went splat on the ground. The weird thing was that it rained first and then started snowing—accompanied by thunder. "Thundersnow" I thought to myself as I put on my old boots and traipsed out into that soggy mess to get my computer fixed. 
• Yes, that's the second thing: my computer. The hard drive went belly up last Sunday night. I was just clicking around, minding my own business, adding a few thousand more words to my 35,000-word NaNoWriMo project, when BAM—shutdown. Blue Screen of Death. Fatal error. Crash dump. Restart. Lockup. Force shutdown. No bootable disk. Sigh. I took it to the only Toshiba service center I could find on Google Maps, located in the Gangnam Finance Center building near Yeoksam Station. Once again I felt the unique and exquisitely painful sense of guilt I always get when I'm soliciting some service in Korea without being able to speak Korean. In pidgin (and heartbreakingly apologetic) English, the man behind the counter told me that my hard drive was bad, that he would salvage as much data as he could, replace my hard drive with a new one (albeit a Korean one with an English language pack) and put Humpty-Dumpty all back together again...for 121,000 won. I didn't mind. I was willing to pay any price, as a lot of my notes and pictures—and Novel #4—are completely unsaved and non-backed-up. I guess I got away cheap. I might have lost everything.
• HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Miss H and I are doing our usual thing: throwing a bunch of Thanksgiving-y ingredients into the Crock Pot and turning 'er on. We'll spend the evening nibbling on a delicious amalgam of Thanksgiving dinner, listening to music, sipping Russian champagne and plugging away at our newest jigsaw puzzle. 
• Good Lord, how did finals come so quickly? I was just coasting along, riding my way through a leisurely November with the students, doing various writing projects, quizzes, and fun activities. Now, suddenly, there's barely two weeks left until finals. Five class-days left, and one of them will be taken up by a standardized writing assessment and the other will need to be set aside for review. YIPE!!
• The day after Thanksgiving, the boys (Messrs. JA and BP) are coming over to brew up some more beer. This is the first time we've ever done it at my apartment. I have all the equipment freshly bought and laid by, and am rather excited now that this SNAFU with my computer has been resolved. I'm just going to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off on Friday afternoon after class, picking up my coat from the tailor's (frayed cuffs repaired), my laptop from Gangnam, and a few last-minute supplies from the E-Mart in Cheonho, across the river.
• On Saturday, Miss B, our army doctor friend stationed up in Dongducheon, is coming down for a visit. Oh, and that's also the day that Miss H and I are heading over to Incheon to have our other Thanksgiving dinner at the Fog City Diner. I hope we can fit Miss B in there somewhere. It's hard for her to get weekend passes. 
• And then the weekend after all this, Miss H and I are heading down south to Busan on the KTX (for the first time since spring) to see the gang and have an early Christmas party. Eek.
• And I still haven't resolved my V.D.Q., either. No reservations made yet and no concrete decisions in the offing. Argh!

How'd this happen? Everything was going so calmly for a while, and then BOOM. Chaos! Help! SOS! Mayday! Make it stop! I wanna get off!

your humble foreign correspondent?

Okay, here's the deal:

My contract with my current hagwon expires in mid-February. As a courtesy I've agreed to stay on until the end of that month and the conclusion of the current semester, just so I can finish up my classes and let my replacement start from a clean slate.

In the meantime, though, I need to find myself another job.

I figured I'd just get another teaching position down in Anyang where Miss H works. That plan went to crap a couple of weeks ago, when Miss H was informed that her school would be downsizing and (once again!) she'd have to be let go. This is the second time it's happened to the poor girl and she's rather downcast, but soldiering on courageously.

All the same, we didn't know what we would do. It was looking like we'd both be homeless and jobless at the end of February. But then one of my coworkers, a sweet young lady from Connecticut, drew my attention to something. It was a job posting on a popular ESL teacher's website and forum. The position was for a writer-editor with the NE Times and NE Times Kids, two periodicals edited by a single combined staff. I wasn't sure what kind of periodical it was (I later found out that it was a weekly kids' educational newspaper). But I applied regardless. Fifteen vacation days per year and a "competitive" salary—not to mention a chance at building my résumé—were too good to pass up.

The paper is based in the Mapo district of southwestern Seoul, just north of the Han River. This would be a heck of a commute from Anyang every morning, but I figured that was worth the price too.

Well, the Times called me back two weeks ago. They wanted me to come in and take their written test. I did it two Saturdays ago. Wish me luck, folks, I thought. This could be a whole new stage in Postie's life. I might soon be living like Hemingway, a print journalist in a foreign capital, rubbing elbows with great writers and luminaries.

The writing test went fine. I knocked it out of the park. The proctor (and my potential supervisor), a man I'll call J.S., told me that the test would probably take three hours. I did it in an hour and a half. I left the building feeling confident, shivered my way to the subway station and returned home.

A short while later, I was called in for an interview. My heart fairly quaked with excitement. I had passed the first round of the application process! I had gotten a callback! It was interview time! And for once, I felt that part went well, too. Normally I don't do very well in interviews. The close scrutiny of several high-ranking managers, asking me questions like Tell us about yourself and Why do you want to work here and What do you feel you could bring to the table and whatnot, turns me into a stammering mess. But this time (it happened this past Wednesday) everything went fine, I felt. I answered questions competently and without hesitation. J.S. and his two female co-interviewers looked quite impressed with my answers. The interview took precisely an hour. I had to wait 30 minutes for the big red intercity express bus, but it dropped me off on my doorstep in Bucheon, and I slept well that night.

Well, the roof fell in yesterday evening. I got an e-mail from J.S., explaining that it had been a heartbreaking decision and I had been second in line for consideration and I had all the talents they were looking for, but they couldn't offer me the position. In the end, they decided to go with someone who had more experience in English education.

I was rather crushed. I felt grateful for J.S.'s honesty and the courtesy with which I'd been treated, though. I understood their decision. But I couldn't help wonder what might have been: me working as a writer and editor in Seoul, Korea. That would have looked pretty good on a résumé. The loss was compounded by the salary I soon learned that I'd missed out on: 3.5 million Korean won per month. That's roughly $1500US more than I was making as an English teacher. Great googly-moogly. That would have made my future a whole lot rosier. Debts paid off, a nest egg accrued, money for traveling...

Ah well, it doesn't do to dwell on the past. I've moved on. Miss H has secured jobs for us at a kindergarten in south Incheon, so we're going in today (Saturday) at 10:50 a.m. for training and contract-signing. We still have to move at the end of February, but at least now we've go somewhere to go. I'm looking forward to taking on a new challenge (teaching at a kindy), exploring a new bailiwick, living closer to the ocean, scooting farther away from Seoul, and being on the same daily schedule as my girlfriend.

I am not, however, looking forward to moving. I'm looking around my apartment here in Bucheon and it seems we've a lot more stuff to shift than I originally thought. I've never moved from one apartment to another in Korea before. It promises to be an...interesting experience. Don't worry, I'll keep you informed.

Wish us luck, and stay tuned.

This will be our new subway stop. I'm looking forward to exploring it, hee hee.