revamping the vlog

As you (should) already know, I'm a blogger. What some of you may not know is that I attempted, for a embarrassingly short while, to keep a vlog as well. I've linked to it a couple of times, but I try to avoid saying too much about it, because it's incomplete and poorly-kept, with overlong and badly-edited videos. It's as underdone as chicken tenders at Chili's. 

Well. 

I'd like to change that. 

I need a decent microphone and some updated video-editing skills. But once I master those, I'm going to revamp that blog of mine. 

How?

Well, since I already cover everything related to travel, cocktails, flying, and writing on this here blog, I'm going to take a different route with my YouTube channel. Oh, of course I'll put up interesting travel videos (should be plenty of those coming from Southeast Asia). Once I move back to the USA, I'll also set up a camera in the kitchen and start making video cocktail reviews instead of just text. (Perhaps once I reach Cocktail Review No. 85 or 90 or 100, whenever that may be.) And when I get back stateside I'll resume my flying career, too: specifically my quest for a single-engine commercial pilot ticket with instrument, floatplane, taildragger, and high-performance ratings. I'm sure that'll make for some interesting video fodder too. I may even need to get a GoPro...

But all that's in the future. For now, while I'm here in Korea, I can definitely do better with the vlog. 

I've been watching a lot of vlogs on YouTube lately (specifically the QiRanger, KWOW, and HowTheWorldWorks), and I love 'em to death. Here are some things that they all do well:

• they supplement their speech with text, music, and hi-def images, artfully edited into the video as a whole
• they talk about pertinent, up-to-date, and interesting subjects
• their bedside manner is engaging and fun, and their speech is practiced, fluent, and clear

I can do all that stuff, easy. Might be a little rough once I first start out, but I'll get into the swing of it. 

So what kind of topics will I talk about, then?

Something that people keep telling me I'm great at discussing in an interesting, meaningful way: history and wordplay. 

Once per week, I'm thinking, I'll do an installment called 5-Minute History, where I'll talk about some obscure and little-known topic that nonetheless had far-reaching consequences on our civilization and society. As the title suggests, these videos will be about five minutes in length. 

On certain days of the week, I'll have shorter and supplementary columns: Slang Saturdays (wherein I discuss the origin of an idiom or colloquialism) and Word Wednesdays (wherein I discuss the etymology, cultural significance, and historical context of English words). In short, I am going to create a whole new world for me and others to play around in online. And maybe learn something along the way. 

Sound boring? It won't be, trust me. 

I'm not sure when all of this will get started. My first order of business is to create a neat channel trailer for this vlog and inform everyone of its revitalization. I need to get familiar with video editing and figure out how to insert music, voice-overs, images, video clips, and so on. But you guys here on the Sententious Vaunter will be the first to know when the new-and-improved Vaunter-vlog starts up. And who knows? This might be a nice segue into the world of radio, something I do on the side that could get me hired one day. 

Stay tuned, vlogsphere. Ex Post Facto is going to get a whole lot sexier. 

Nope, even sexier than that. 

the death of Neo-Confucianism in Korea...?

All eyes are once again on Asia this week, President Obama having wrapped up his four-nation Asia tour (leaving hearty Filipino protests in his wake) and the Sewol disaster fresh in everyone's minds. However, yet another disaster—or near disaster—in South Korea has stolen the public eye. 

You might have heard about the subway train accident we had this Friday. QiRanger does a very thorough video update about it here, where you can get all the facts.

I'm not here to debate particulars, cast blame or express relief that everyone aboard those two trains survived. I'm not here to tell you that I travel on Line 2 all the time and could have easily been involved in the accident. (I have, actually, been aboard a Line 5 train that braked so hard and so unexpectedly that all six dozen people in the car with me went sprawling like dominoes, and I wound up flat on my back with a rucksack full of booze under me and my livid fiancée on my stomach.) 

I just want to say two things. 

First, subway accidents in Korea never happen. They are the exception, not the rule. Korean railways are tightly and safely run. The Seoul metro is one of the cleanest, safest, most efficient and easiest-to-use metropolitan light rail systems in the world, despite being one of the busiest. Its safety record was, to my knowledge, flawless up to this point. There was a nasty incident in December 2013 when an inexperienced train operator filling in during a strike ordered the subway doors closed too early, and an 84-year-old woman was dragged a short distance and killed. Oh, and the Daegu subway fire ten years before that, I suppose. But those were freak occurrences brought on by circumstance: a vengeful cab driver and an unschooled scab, as it were. This recent subway accident took place during regular hours, and wasn't caused by a mass murderer or a strike. It just happened. I would have said it was impossible.

Second...you may be witnessing the death of Neo-Confucianism in Korea. 

An Hyang (1243-1306), widely
considered to be the founder of
Neo-Confucianism in Korea.

As I discussed in my previous post about the Sewol sinking (which I linked to above), Korea's guiding star has been the Neo-Confucian model ever since the early days of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Some of Confucianism's central tenets are filial piety, respect and reverence, loyalty, and shame. It is unthinkable to disobey or show disrespect to one's elders. There is a very strict social hierarchy wherein each individual is classified according to age, experience, seniority, and other factors. Someone who's above you on that scale deserves the highest respect; anyone below you is yours to command. 

And in fact, this system, which served Korea well throughout its long and often brutal history, was just what caused the deaths of so many children during the Sewol debacle. The children and other passengers were told to stay put in the cabins and corridors, and bowing to the captain's lofty position and experience, they obeyed. Unfortunately, the captain proved to be an incompetent and untrustworthy coward, and many children met their fates as a result. This event, as I noted in my blog post about the sinking, has shaken Korea to its roots, particularly the younger generations. Many in Korea seem to have begun to doubt the worth and universal applicability of Neo-Confucian values. 

Nowhere is this growing doubt more apparent than in the subway train passengers' reaction to the drivers' instructions in the moments following the collision at Sangwangsimni Station. They were told to stay put, and hardly any of them listened this time. Quite a number of passengers pried open the train doors and leaped down onto the tracks and into the tunnel.

Now there's something I never would have believed possible. Korean folks disobeying instructions from a competent authority? Prying open doors and leaping onto train tracks? Anarchy!  

Does it mean that the Neo-Confucian underpinnings of this country's culture and society are beginning to erode? Only time will tell, but I think the signs are there. Goodness knows what will happen if I'm right. A complete paradigm shift might be in the offing. You may rest assured that I'll keep an eye on things over here, and let you know if I see anything noteworthy. 

But now you must excuse me. I have a four-day weekend to get back to. Children's Day is Monday and Buddha's Birthday is Tuesday. Two unrelated lunar holidays in a row. That never happens here, either. The unexpected double-whammy has convinced all the foreigners on the peninsula to throw a grand Cinco de Mayo bash. Colored lanterns are strung up all across the city, Seoul's high society are turning out in droves in their best tailored suits and tulle skirts, and the Americans and Canadians are getting blitzed in the bars and staggering around Itaewon wearing sombreros in broad daylight. Me, I'm taking introspective walks by the Yangjae Stream and meeting friends from out-of-town for a bite of Thai-Japanese fusion and a sip of beer. Oh, the expat life. 

Postie out...

Park, Lee, and Kim...oh my!

Have you ever wondered why such a staggeringly large slice of the Korean population is named Park, Lee, or Kim? 

So have I. In fact, it used to be the most burning question I had about this peninsula, right behind what "Seoul" means. 

But not anymore. I found the answer. 

First, let me introduce you to a building:

                                                                                                               from Wikimedia Commons

It's called Gyeongbokgung ("Palace Greatly Blessed By Heaven") and it stands in central Seoul, near the intersection of Lines 3 and 5. Up the hill behind it is a famous Buddhist temple and the Blue House, the official residence of the Korean president. Gyeongbokgung was the largest and grandest of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. Originally constructed in 1395, right after Joseon's foundation, and then later burned and abandoned for three centuries, it was reconstructed in 1867. 

Now here's where things start to get controversial. 

The official word is that Gyeongbokgung was burned to the ground by Imperial Japan shortly after their annexation of Korea in the early 20th century. But various reports and accounts I've heard tell a different story. Let me back up and do some more explaining.

Korea's surnames, like Scotland's, were all clan-based in antiquity. The Kims were a clan unto themselves back in the day, and a very powerful one. So were the Parks (or Bak, as I prefer to romanize it). The Lees, too. But there were hundreds of others: Choi, Bae, Woo, Lim, Jang, Jeong, Bang, Go, Min, Hong, Seo, Gang, Yoo, Heo, Yoon, Gwak, Gwon, Yang, Hwang, Myeong, Dong, Ryu, Noh, Na, and Pyo come readily to mind.

Here's the thing, though. Korea used to have a caste system. The Kims, Lees and Parks got so powerful that they became the rulers of some of the peninsula's mightiest kingdoms: Baekje, Silla, Goguryeo, and Joseon. Everybody else got the shaft. The Gangs and Yoos and Yangs remained commoners. Granted, any commoner could sit for the gwageo (civil service examination) and become a yangban (civil servant), entitled to an estate and aristocratic privileges...but hey, noble names were still noble names, and common ones common.

When the Japanese annexed Korea in 1910, one of the first things they did was abolish the caste system. Suddenly a Kim was no better than a Choi, and Park no worthier than a Jang. But the names themselves still retained some time-honored clout. It was a mark of prestige to be a Kim or a Park, even if the Japanese had barged in and said it didn't count for beans anymore. 

So, according to what I've heard, Gyeongbokgung wasn't burned down by the Japanese. It was burned down by the Koreans. See, Gyeongbokgung was where the Hall of Records was. Everybody's birth certificates and genealogies were in there. With those reduced to ashes, a lowly Pyo or Hong could waltz right into the nearest Japanese registrar's office and say "Hello there. I'm Mr. Kim." Or "Howdy doody, ilbon saram! I'm Mr. Lee!" 

I don't know if that's true or not, but I have to admit it's a compelling theory. Korea suffers from a deplorable excess of Kims, Lees and Parks because their granddads all wanted to put on airs and had no qualms about committing arson to do it. This is why I secretly rejoice whenever I see an extremely rare surname (such as Gwak, Yang or Pyo) because I know that that person's ancestors had enough pride in their roots not to torch the royal palace and then fake their names during the next census.

And now you know the rest of the story.

P.S. Can you think of anybody else who might be using the name "Kim" to give themselves some street cred...?

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 19: schedule a physical exam

I've been so wrapped up in this challenge that I've neglected to tell you about the other noteworthy happenings in my life. There've been a few. I still have to explain my Hokkaido itinerary. My beard's thickening up nicely. I may have a new line on finding the location of the army base where my grandpa was stationed during the Korean War. Most importantly, I've decided to take the bull by the horns and find a literary agent for Novel #1. I'm a third of the way into the final edit/proofread; when I finish I'll start sending query letters. "Exciting" simply does not describe it.

But I'll explain all that later. Let's get back to the subject of manliness.

I can't remember the last time I had a complete physical checkup. I think it was after I got back from Korea in 2009. That was almost five years ago, and according to The Art of Manliness, it's time for me to go back and get another one.

But there's a problem.

It's not that I don't trust Korean doctors. Far from it. They've helped me out a lot. They saved my life in September. I had tonsillitis and a 104-degree fever, and the capable folks at Asan Medical Center in Songpa-gu put me to rights.

But there are minute differences in the medical practices between East and West. Korean doctors believe some things that American practitioners don't, and vice-versa. There's also the language barrier to consider. Most Korean physicians are at least halfway fluent in English, but some of them have accents as thick as cold butter. I want to understand the diagnosis when it's given to me. Completely.

So I think, in spite of the interminable wait and the added cost (thanks, Obamacare), that I'll wait until I get home to the States to have a physical.

I'm still meeting the parameters of the challenge, never fear. Today's goal is to schedule a physical exam. That's precisely what I'm doing. I'm just scheduling it for March 2015. It's going down on my invisible calendar. [scribble] There. All done.

What I will do as soon as possible is schedule appointments with a dentist and an optometrist. I haven't had my teeth looked at or professionally cleaned in ages. And it's been a year since I got this latest pair of glasses, so I suspect it's time to get my subscription updated. I'm going to be staring at screens a lot this winter: editing manuscripts, typing up novels and short stories, reading other peoples' work (sorry, Olivia, I'm going to finish that dang story of yours if it kills me) and blogging about Japan. So I'd better make sure my spectacles are up to the challenge.

Pull up a stump for Day 20...  

Seolleung and Jeongneung

Another thing this Facebook hiatus has allowed me to do is get out and get some fresh air—and see more of Seoul. Here are some pictures I took of some tombs and tumuli (burial mounds) in Gangnam. These are just three of the many Joseon-era monarchs scattered around Gyeonggi Province, but they're some of the most scenic...and they're right in the middle of the city. Convenient. Seolleung is comprised of two tombs, that of the ninth Joseon king, Seongjong, and that of his concubine-turned-queen, Jeonghyeon. Jeongneung is the tomb of King Jungjong, Seongjong's eventual successor. (Seongjong's in Seolleung and Jungjong's in Jeongneung. Geddit? Good.)

That lower part on the left is the "king's walkway," where the priests and whatnot may tread. The one on the right is the "spirit walkway." Ain't nobody living can set foot on that. I guess it's a sort of runway for the king's ghost when he comes and goes.

A list of all the offerings left at the king's temple. Erm, maybe temple isn't the right word. There's a three-part process. See, the Koreans believe that these tombs are quite literally the boundaries between the spirit world and the real one. So there's the place of purification, where they prepare themselves for the ceremonial rites; these temple thingies (two pictures above), where tributes are laid; and the actual tomb itself, which is the mound below. Three steps to Heaven.

The view from the (burial) mound, or tumulus.

The queen's mound. (No dirty jokes, please.)

I'm not sure whether Seongjong's or Jeonghyeon's view is better.

I really can't think of a prettier place to be planted...

The offering-house and tumuli of King Jungjong (deposed not long after his ascension).

An engaged (recently married?) Korean couple were taking engagement (marriage?) photos under a lovely tree with auburn leaves. Power to 'em. I even got the dorky tourist taking pictures of them.

Inside the house of the tomb-keeper. It's labeled such on the map, but the placard outside said that it was the "ritual house" where purification rites were conducted prior to memorial ceremonies.

And for your viewing pleasure: a 500-year-old gingko tree. You're welcome.

preconceptions about China

No word yet on that nightly journal I'm supposed to be keeping. Be that as it may, I have some thoughts to share with you.

I'm researching China, particularly the eats, and I'm getting really jazzed about this little four-day jaunt. But some unsettling questions remain in my mind.

I have mixed feelings about China.

The government, not its citizens, mind you. So far I've found that people are people, no matter where you go. But China, and her communist leaders, have done some things that I find difficult to swallow. The country's history is more checkered than the flag at the NASCAR finish line. I'm trying real hard to be objective here, but I am and always was a subjective bugger, and that usually filters through to my perceptions about other places. Some of these issues that I have with China and its history are seeping in around the loose edges of my consciousness, and I have to get them off my chest before they're diluted by experience.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of China, of course, is the color red. Communism. Mao Zedong. The Great Leap Forward. Josef Stalin, Kim Il-sung, Pol Pot, and other prominent communist dictators who've influenced or been influenced by China and its politics.

I have a problem with communism. What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. I get that. China has a different moral code, a different work ethic, a different societal paradigm and a much different history than America or any other Western state. But still: the idea of communism itself seems, to me, fundamentally flawed and diseased. In my mind, human beings were not meant to exist in classless, moneyless, stateless societies. I'm no social Darwinist; there's times when I've despaired of the ossification of class in Western society and its total dependence on currency. But there's no denying that capitalism and competition encourage hard work and innovation. That, to me, seems preferable to the alternative: a society focused on production (at the expense of intellectualism)—a breeding ground for conformity, mediocrity, and stagnation, in which the group is superior to the individual.

Whether or not that's what's happened in China is debatable, because of the second problem I have with the place:

They're not even doing communism right.

I remember penning a passionate article about this in my high school's literary magazine back in 2002 or thereabouts. One of the basic tenets of communist theory is that the people have control, and that's that. Society is stateless: there is little to no concentration of power, no overarching authority. This is what makes North Korea's proper name so laughable: the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is four lies in one. It's anything but democratic, inasmuch as the power is held by one family and one family only, with the mere pretense of choice on the part of the people. The citizens do not own the means of production, nor do they have any say in the government—the Great/Dear/Outstanding Leader does. The definition of the word "republic" is a state in which political affairs are public matters and not the private concern of the rulers; as I pointed out before, the people have about as much say in (or knowledge of) political affairs in North Korea as do chipmunks or cucumbers. And finally, "of Korea" implies that the DPRK considers itself the rightful government of the entire peninsula, which is about as horrifying as it is hilarious.

Not my photo. This is China, not North Korea.

Though China's human rights record is far from spotless (I'll get to that in a minute), they at least seem to have empowered their citizens to a greater degree than the Hermit Kingdom. Even so, power is centralized and concentrated in Beijing, which means that the "stateless" part of communism is being openly flouted. Moreover, even a superficial glance at China's economy and society reveals that it is neither moneyless nor classless. At best this makes the Chinese government hypocritical; at worst, it makes them dishonest. I have no use for dishonest people—let alone a dishonest political system.

Setting that aside, let's talk about the biggest bee in my bonnet about China: human rights.

Here's a little preamble from Amnesty International's website:

Amnesty International has documented widespread human rights violations in China. An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances. Harassment, surveillance, house arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has grown. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues. While the recent reinstatement of Supreme People's Court review of death penalty cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the leading executioner in the world.

Possibly I was biased by being born in a country where freedom of speech and freedom of the press actually mean something, are protected by a constitution (the supreme and inviolable law of the land), and are sacrosanct in the hearts and minds of the people. Thus it shocks me when I hear that the Internet is heavily censored in China, with social media sites like Facebook being routinely shut down or blocked. The Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is indefatigable at censoring news reports and filtering what information the people receive. The Chinese government is enormous, inefficient, bureaucratic, and callous. Petitioners cannot easily seek redress of grievances, and are often lost in the shuffle or crushed by the big wheels. The class system is not only extant but downright marginalizing, equal to anything seen in South Africa. In 2005, Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, stated that an apartheid-like segregation system was in effect in China. City-dwellers, he said, enjoy a wealth of social and economic perks while peasants, or "rural workers," are treated like second-class citizens. They require a portfolio of hard-to-obtain passes to work in provinces other than the ones in which they reside. Movement is restricted. Freedom of association is nonexistent, freedom of religion is a joke, and people are regularly stripped of their rights if they do something, anything, that causes the CPC to label them "subversive." And then of course there's the one-child policy. To me, a government that fines its citizens for having more than one kid is just plain tyrannical.

In addition to these documented transgressions, dark rumors abound of torture, brutality and degradation in China's arbitrary detention centers. Evidence has surfaced that Mao and his followers abused the science of psychiatry to their own political ends, declaring thousands of people mentally ill, thereby discrediting them. (Statistics hint that this practice continues to this day, especially in the persecution of practitioners of Falun Gong, which the CPC has branded undesirable.)

Besides all that, we have the official Chinese policy of refusing to acknowledge North Korean runaways as political refugees. Instead, China calls them "economic migrants," captures them and deports them back to North Korea, where, as we all know, they face separation, torture, "reeducation," forced labor and execution.

And speaking of North Korea, let's not forget that China has abetted the existence of that oppressive regime with food and electricity for nigh-on 60 years now. I have a bit of a problem with that as well. For all I know, Chinese soldiers might have killed some of my grandfather's best buddies back during the Korean War, too. So I'm a little ticked off at the country on my granddad's behalf, silly as that sounds.

And do I even need to mention Tibet?

Not my photo.

I don't like any of this. No way, no how.

What really sticks in my craw is that China does (or allegedly does) all of this stuff even after signing UN-sanctioned agreements saying that it won't do it. China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but never ratified it. So they just do whatever they please. Hell's donkeys.

In a nutshell, my preconceived notion of China is this: it's a country, a big country, with a huge population and a long and storied history, which in the 20th century had some tremendous political and societal upheavals, during which a rather unscrupulous man came to power, espousing communism and imposing his vision upon the country and its people with varying degrees of success. What we have now is a country used to be doing told what to do, which is really too big to regulate, whose citizens are finally starting to get fed up thanks to the unstoppable influx of Western technology (and with it, ideology), and whose ruling party has all but abandoned the proper pursuit of dogmatic communism in favor of a corrupt regime based on absolute power, suppression of dissent, a single-party state, and strict regulation of economics, society and human life, thereby blighting a nation and its sovereign dignity.

The Temple of Heaven, one of the things on my Beijing to-do list. From Wikimedia Commons.

So, yeah. I'll visit their country. I'll peruse their monuments. I'll stand in their square. I'll tour their palaces. I'll eat their nibbles. I'll breathe their air and sleep in their beds and watch them go about their lives. But that doesn't mean I have to like the way they run their business.

We'll see how much this trip changes my mind.

Kumamoto Castle

Embark with me now upon an incredible journey to medieval Japan, when men were real men, women were real women, beheadings were real beheadings and topknots were real topknots. Back in those days, you were either a rice farmer, a gangster, a fisherman, a merchant, a gambler, a mendicant, a geisha, an innkeeper, a courtesan, a hunter, a musician, a lord, a lady, a soldier or a samurai (and quite a lot of other things, too). It was a time of war, strife, lawlessness, new orders, new beginnings. Japan had just been unified under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the Warring States Period had just come to a close. Now the eyes of unified Japan looked westward to new horizons...and conquests.

When Hideyoshi invaded Korea in 1592 (and Miyamoto Musashi was just ten years old), one of the daimyo's three senior commanders was a fellow named Katō Kiyomasa. By all accounts an über-manly and warlike fellow who forbade his men to recite poetry and hunted tigers with a spear for kicks, Kiyomasa was a brilliant general who helped capture Busan, Seoul and other major Korean cities. He was also a rather gifted architect who built many impregnable Japanese-style castles in the conquered lands, such as the one at Ulsan that withstood an assault by a vastly superior Sino-Korean force.

Kiyomasa brought his martial sensibilities and architectural prowess to bear again when he became the lord of Higo—present-day Kumamoto Prefecture. The hilltop fortress there was already over a hundred years old, but Kiyomasa expanded and upgraded it into a redoubtable keep with wells, towers, and no less than 49 turrets. Overkill is underrated, they say.

The castle survived Kiyomasa and a great many lords and owners that came after. The main, iconic part of the keep burned down in 1877 during the Satsuma Rebellion, but it was lovingly restored (albeit with concrete) in 1960. Kumamoto Castle is now listed as one of the 100 Fine Castles of Japan and is generally thought to be one of the top three in the nation (along with Himeji Castle in Hyōgo Prefecture and and Matsumoto Castle in Nagano Prefecture).

Got all that? Good, 'cause there'll be a quiz later. For now, just enjoy the pics I took as I wandered around in a stupefied haze:

A statue near the moat of Kiyomasa (wearing his special butter-cutting hat).

Past the ticket booth and the main gate. Anybody who got past the main gate would have had to fight their way up this sloping Z-shaped passageway while under fire from above. Oh, Kiyomasa, you sly dog, you!

The main keep, which radio-carbon dating tells us was constructed sometime in 1960.

 

The Uto Turret, one of the largest and best-preserved of the castle's 49 fighting turrets.

Inside Uto Turret.

The Hall of Darkness. No, that isn't poetic license. That's its actual name. It was dark all the time, so the castle defenders gave it that nickname. It was intended, I believe, to further confound any invaders. Kiyomasa's men could just plug up the tiny windows at the top of the walls and leave the attackers in total darkness, and then do what they liked with them.

Center foreground: a total dweeb who photo-bombed this lovely shot of the castle.

I was quite relieved to find that my ninja-versus-samurai LEGO sets were architecturally correct.

This was the best (and most unexpected) part: after climbing all the way to the top of the castle, this was the view that greeted me. That's Mount Kinpo there in the background, on the other side of which is Reigandō, or Spirit Rock Cave, where Miyamoto Musashi spent his final days. But you'll hear about my trip there later.

What I wouldn't have given for a Remington 1858 New Army or a Colt Dragoon right about then. I could have shot out every one of those big floodlights on the ground.

It was a sight both gratifying and sobering: the sun was setting over Kumamoto and its towers and spires, and likewise on my time in Japan. I'd have one more day of sightseeing and then I'd have to get myself to Hakata and the hydrofoil ferry back to Korea. But as I stood there, in the tower, my face kissed by the warm breeze and the glory of a thousand sunsets past flowing through my embroiled mind, I felt...I felt...

...ah, screw it. You know how I felt. You'd have felt the same way.

This rather bored-looking actor was "guarding" the exit to the Hall of Darkness. He didn't mind having his picture taken. Probably the most exciting that happened to him all day.

And just like that, my time at the castle was over. I could insert some trite hogwash here about how I wish I could have seen 'er back in the day, when Kiyomasa was keeping court in the castle's highest room and his vassals pledged their blood-loyalty to him below in the courtyard and dissidents hefted 1800-kilogram rocks and tried to assassinate him and were thrown down wells as punishment, but hey...that's been said before, by better men. So I'll just leave you with this: if I had a castle, Kumamoto is probably what it would look like.

Tomorrow: I try something that Kumamoto is famous for: horse sashimi. Tune in if you want to see your humble Vaunter EATING BASASHI (RAW HORSE MEAT). Not for the faint of heart...