how a Californian (like me) sees the world

WARNING: What follows is exceedingly general and perhaps a bit non-PC. I don't care, and neither should you. Au contraire, you should laud me for admitting my ignorance rather than disguising it. Consider this a list of what I don't know about the world (and hope to learn someday).

DISCLAIMER: You'll notice that I said a Californian like me. You can no more judge all Californians to be the same than you can judge all Dubliners or all Tokyoites to be the same. We're a mixed lot. But even among them, I am an outlier. I was born in Northern California, for one thing. I've lived in the capital, the Midwest, the American South, and the Great Plains, so I know a bit more about the rest of America than the average Californian does. My political views don't exactly match up with a lot of other Californians', either. I'm a white middle-class twenty-something, and proud of it.

Ready? Then let's begin:

THE REST OF AMERICA:

• OREGON: Best known for portraying that forested planet in The Return of the Jedi. And being mispronounced by Midwesterners and foreigners alike.
• WASHINGTON STATE: Coffee. Rain. Pine trees. Killer whales. Reggie Watts. Legal marijuana. Sententious living.
• IDAHO: Potatoes.
• MONTANA: Looks really good on a postcard.
• NEVADA: Vegas, baby. And machine guns. The rest of it's desert. And Reno.
• UTAH: Mormons! Who doesn't like Mormons? And saltwater?
• ARIZONA: Simply marvelous gun laws. Cacti which are the envy of the civilized world. Gila monsters. Fatuous Nicolas Cage movies. Mountains that look like Indians.
• NEW MEXICO: Are the rocks supposed to be red like that?
• COLORADO: Best place to raise abducted children.
• WYOMING: Fewer people than a single suburb of Los Angeles. Seriously, the antelopes outnumber the humans. Scary thought.
• NORTH DAKOTA: I felt like a celebrity there.
• SOUTH DAKOTA: Big stone heads. The Black Hills (yeah, baby). Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
• NEBRASKA: What the guy who thought of the phrase "middle of nowhere" was thinking of.
• KANSAS: You're not there anymore, Toto.
• OKLAHOMA: Bombs. Musicals. The Dust Bowl. Tornadoes.
• TEXAS: If it weren't for them, Mexico would have invaded long ago.
• MINNESOTA: So, like, let's go to the lake, eh?
• IOWA: The Minnesotans are right. The best thing coming out of Iowa is I-29.
• MISSOURI: My dad went to college there. Considers himself more Missourian than Ohioan. They've got an arch. That's the limit of my knowledge.
• ARKANSAS: Most direct route between Tennessee and Oklahoma.
• LOUISIANA: Bayous, swamps, Cajun food, levies, Mardi Gras, and hurricanes. Especially hurricanes.
• WISCONSIN: Cheese.
• ILLINOIS: Abraham Lincoln.
• INDIANA: No friggin' idea. Maybe basketball?
• KENTUCKY: Is the grass really blue, or is that just a figure of speech?
• TENNESSEE: Too many mullets for my taste.
• MISSISSIPPI: Hard to spell.
• ALABAMA: Probably has the most likeable/least unpleasant Southern accent, depending on where you stand on Southern accents.
• GEORGIA: Good peaches.
• FLORIDA: Can't think of it without thinking of the auto-tuning rapper. Thanks a bunch. Before Flo Rida was a thing, I associated Florida with Scarface, my grandmother's house with the orange trees in the backyard, the one billion percent humidity, and the white-sand beaches.
• MICHIGAN: They make cars there, don't they? And awesome music?
• OHIO: Hot in summer, rainy in spring, miserable in winter, the most beautiful place on the planet in autumn.
• WEST VIRGINIA: Coal. The Civil War. Trout fishing. Caves. Chuck Yeager.
• VIRGINIA: This may sound weird, but I can't help but think of Virginia in terms of the famous people who were born there: Ella Fitzgerald, George C. Scott, Sam Houston, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (yes, that Lewis & Clark), Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Tom Wolfe, Booker T. Washington, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and, like, twenty U.S. presidents. 
• NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA: What's the difference? 
• WASHINGTON, D.C.: Crazy homeless people in the streets, crazy people in the government.
• MARYLAND: You need to put on some weight, you're too skinny.
• DELAWARE: Sounds like a seldom-used word you'd find in a dictionary.
• NEW JERSEY: Just as all myths have some basis in fact, the moniker "Armpit of America" must on some level be well-deserved. 
• CONNECTICUT: Pretty. And filthy rich.
• PENNSYLVANIA: The birthplace of liberty and independence. Looks nice in autumn, too.
• NEW YORK: California's biggest competitor in terms of culture and coolness. They've got some pretty country, too; and heck, they even have their own version of the San Andreas Fault. We'll get you yet, you buggers.
• RHODE ISLAND: Too small for my Californian mind to encapsulate.
• MASSACHUSETTS: Baseball. Football. Clam chowder. Cod. Moby-Dick. Cheers (the TV show).
• NEW HAMPSHIRE: The last stop before Maine.
• VERMONT: The second-to-last stop before Maine.
• MAINE: The last stop before New Brunswick. Also, Stephen King is from there; I do know that much. A lot of his books are set around those parts.
• ALASKA: I know as much as everyone else does. Grizzly bears, gold, the Inuit, glaciers, the tallest mountain in North America, savage cold, bush pilots, hunting, cruises, trains, oil, fishing, formerly Russian, real men and real women. Oh, and I'd give my right arm and two or three toes to live there.
• HAWAII: Palm trees. White-sand beaches. Turquoise water. Tropical fish. Sunshine. Ukeleles, luaus and leis. Volcanoes. Surfing. Pearl Harbor. The U.S.S. Arizona. Paradise on Earth. California's biggest competitor in terms of fun in the sun and water sports. Not bad if we can take on New York and Hawaii and still compete, eh?

THE REST OF THE WORLD:

• MEXICO: Lovely beaches, great food, incredible culture, marvelous natural beauty, and good booze...but a corrupt government and a few too many all-powerful drug cartels. Oh wait, that's California.
• CANADA: A dichotomy. On the one hand: nigh-socialism, a Governor General, and a certain amount of cultural snobbery (though that might just be the folks from Toronto). On the other hand: maple syrup, the Yukon, Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Alberta, the Canadian Rockies, ice hockey, Shania Twain, William Shatner, Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Stana Katic, Nathan Fillion (whom I hear is from Edmonton), Rick Moranis, Leslie Nielsen, Donald Sutherland, Alexander Graham Bell, Elijah McCoy (the real McCoy), James Howlett (better known as Wolverine), Anne Shirley (a.k.a. Anne of Green Gables), Chris Hadfield (the astronaut), Rush, Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, dinosaurs, Black Velvet whisky, the Devil's Brigade, lentils, Swedish Fish, and some of the friendliest, politest people on the face of the Earth.
• BRAZIL: Great barbecue, oddly-named mountains, and the best jungles and parties (and jungle parties) anywhere.
• BOLIVIA: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid got zonked down there, didn't they?
• URUGUAY: It's all about the tango.
• KENYA: I know Tanzania, Mozambique, and some of the other countries have amazing biodiversity, natural beauty and safaris, but whenever I think "East Africa," my mind just leaps to Kenya. Craters, rhinoceroses, the Serengeti, poaching problems, and now some election brouhaha. And a spectacular John Wayne movie.
• SOUTH AFRICA: Let's move past the bit with the apartheid and get into Sharlto Copley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Basil Rathbone, Manfred Mann, Candice Swanepoel, and that sweet movie Zulu with Michael Caine. Just please don't mention Dave Mathews. We don't mention Dave Mathews on this blog.  
• LESOTHO: See RHODE ISLAND above.
• EGYPT: Revolutions. Pyramids. Rivers. Desert. Camels. Political turmoil. And they have their own version of The Daily Show.
• MOROCCO: I only know where it is 'cause I watch Bogart films. 
• CROATIA: It gave the world Serious Sam, so it can't be all bad, can it?
• RUSSIA: I was born five years before the Berlin Wall fell, but I'd venture to guess that my generation's the first one that doesn't think "Commie bastards" whenever we hear the word "Russia." That doesn't mean I trust Putin or the KGB, but I sure would like to visit the country, ride their trains, drink their vodka, walk over their bridges, and so forth. Oh, and see St. Petersburg in the wintertime.
• FRANCE: The other place an aspiring artist or writer might go besides California.
• ICELAND: All of the wintry fun of Canada or Alaska with none of the urban sprawl.  
• ENGLAND: Sorry, did I say Canada was guilty of cultural snobbery?! Though that could just be Londoners. Seriously, some of my best friends are from England. I wouldn't mind retiring to Newcastle someday, having fish and chips down by the quayside, a pint in the Turk's Head, then a walk 'round the priory and a pipe-smoke on the point. Geordies rock.
• SCOTLAND: It gave us Scotch whisky, haggis, Robert Burns, Ian Anderson, and some of the world's finest and hardiest soldiers. I think a good many wars would have been lost without a few good Scotsmen.
• IRELAND: The setting of another rather good John Wayne movie. If you don't think about the Troubles, you can get lost in the whiskey, the beer, the corned beef and cabbage, the stew, the River Liffey, James Joyce and the wild Irish countryside. Gotta love Chloë Agnew and Liam Neeson, too.
• GERMANY: Efficiency. And cake. And philosophy. And awe-inspiring classical music.
• SPAIN: Sunshine. And beautiful horses. Architecture to die for. Paella. Soccer. Bulls, and a lot of sports that shouldn't be combined with bulls. And tomato-chucking. 
• SWITZERLAND: Americans voted it the best place to go if you're trying to escape from a German prison camp. I've heard they make pretty good watches and toys, too. 
• INDIA: Outsourcing. Overpopulation. Sacred cows. Fascinating religions. Fantastic architecture. Pollution. Garbage in the streets. People pooping in public. The Ganges River, which I wouldn't dunk my worst enemy in.
• VIETNAM: The site of a rather nasty and unconventional war. Now home to gorgeous waterfalls, delectable cuisine, a generation of suspiciously blond-haired Vietnamese, and tons of unexploded ordnance.
• CHINA: Big. Really big. Filled with people. Controlled by a Communist government. Mao's noggin is everywhere. Still, even though fat guys go topless in public and toddlers poop in the streets, the trains run on time and the countryside is undeniably gorgeous.
• JAPAN: My knowledge beforehand was mostly limited to World War II, anime and manga. Now I see the country through the Korean lens, and that colors my perception a bit. It's definitely one of Asia's bright stars, a broad, clean, polite and user-friendly country. But its foreign-relations record is a black mark in its ledger.
• SOUTH KOREA: Before I came to live here, I knew the name of the capital and that the country got snow in winter. That's it. Now I know that, despite the bali bali culture that grinds students and salarymen into the ground, Korea has elevated itself from a smoking crater to one of the most prosperous, bright, advanced and innovative nations on the planet. The people, though bound by millennia of tradition and rigid societal and behavioral mores, are some of the most friendly and unconditionally kind folks I've ever encountered.
• NORTH KOREA: If you're ever in need of a good laugh, just look up some of their propaganda.
• AUSTRALIA: Deserts, mountains, jungles, forests, beaches, great music, good actors, some fantastic sports (and sports players), architectural wonders, storied history, a charming accent and some of the weirdest animals to be found.
• NEW ZEALAND: Like some weird mix of England, Iceland, and Hawaii. But it did give us Peter Jackson, Lucy Lawless, Karl Urban and Bruce Spence, and some lovely glaciers.
• ANTARCTICA:  Snow. Ice. More snow. More ice. Mountains. Volcanoes. Rocks. More snow. More ice. Frigid seas. Storms. Penguins. Blubber. Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and every other adventure or horror writer who ever needed a remote, bleak, barren, ice-blasted place to set a secret base or an eldritch abomination.

eating basashi (raw horse meat)

I hear you yammering out there.

"Why?"

"Why do it?"

"Why eat raw horse?"

I didn't know whether putting the phrase "raw horse meat" in the title of this post was a good idea or not. It might make you interested enough to read more, or it might turn you completely off and make you quit following this blog in disgust. Guess I'll take the chance. 

As for your question ("Why?"), all I can say is, Because it was there.

In Kumamoto, that is. Where I was  between August 6th and 8th. And you know me: if there's a weird food around, I'm going to try it. I've had pig intestines, alligator nuggets, ostrich burgers, live octopus, canned snails, squid jerky, lamb spleen, buffalo steak, beetle larvae, dried scorpion and cricket lollipops. I'm not about to quit now. When I heard that Kumamoto was famous for basashi, or horse sushi, I knew I just had to try it.

It was something of a family betrayal. My parents and (maternal) grandparents are all horse people. My grandfather, between fighting in the Korean War, raising four children and being a traveling veterinary supply salesman, had a humongous and gorgeous ranch in Grass Valley, about 30 minutes north of Sacramento in Placer County—the same county I was born in, actually. He raised Shetland ponies and later Clydesdale horses.

Please tell me you know what a Clydesdale is. You've seen them before. They're the Budweiser horses—and in fact, some of the ones Grandpa raised wound up being part of that famous Budweiser hitch in years past.

Clydesdales in New Zealand. From Wikimedia Commons.

My parents raised mustangs on their two-acre property in the Mojave Desert. Mustangs, just so you know, are feral horses descended from the Iberian breeds that escaped from the Spanish explorers hundreds of years ago. There are herds of 'em roaming around the wilds of Oklahoma, Nevada and Utah, hardy and wild. My folks would adopt them from the Bureau of Land Management's facility up in Ridgecrest and then truck them back to our spread in California: breaking them, training them and riding them around the desert.

Free-roaming mustangs in Arizona. From Wikimedia Commons.

So, naturally, when I told the folks back home that I was going to eat horse meat, their reaction was mixed. Mum has generally been quite supportive of me in my adventures (half-baked or no), but I understood why this would give her pause. I felt worse about the effect this knowledge would have on Gramp 'n' Gran, but I steeled myself. I knew I wouldn't rest until I'd sampled this stuff. I wasn't going to be disinherited, for Pete's sake. And you're only young once.

So, after getting back from Kumamoto Castle, I went to a big, well-lit shōtengai (shopping arcade) just west of the Shirakawa River, south of Ginza Street. I poked around, asking locals where the nearest basashi place was. After a few minutes, I found what seemed like a likely spot. I should have taken a picture of the façade before I went in, but I didn't. Trying to get one after I left only made the lens fog up. So you'll just have to imagine a tiny storefront with a customer service window, the plate-glass in the door, the red lanterns (the standard, well, standard for an after-work hangout that serves beer and snacks, known as an izakaya) and gaudy signs with curvy Japanese letters.

The interior was essentially the size of a walk-in closet. It might even have been smaller (I've been in some crazy walk-in closets). There was a long wooden counter where about seven or eight customers could rest comfortably, and a line of huge sake bottles arranged along the top. A tough, lean, competent-looking fellow lurked behind them, bustling about. After a brief look at the menu, during which it became apparent that I'd be forking over 1,500 yen for this, I ordered and settled in to wait. To give me something to do while he sliced up my horse meat, the owner gave me this to munch on:

I sipped beer, nibbled on bean-pods and watched TV, trying to look and feel like a competent, street-savvy world traveler. I lamented the fact that I couldn't see what the owner was doing; my view of his hands and his work was obscured by the counter and the plenitude of signage in front of me. I'd have loved to see my basashi take shape under the knife.

After a few more minutes, this cornucopia of buttery goodness appeared before me:

C'est pas vrai! Succulent slices of horse meat (two different cuts, no less), plus various condiments! What a feast!

I could have ordered another beer, but I thought I'd keep my palate—and my head—clear. And so I dug in. It was just as I had read: horse meat, particularly raw horse meat, is a great deal sweeter than other meats. It was firm as well, easy to chew and swallow. I don't think even a single piece became lodged between my teeth. It was downright delectable when dipped in soy sauce. I must say, I could have munched on the stuff for hours.

I even took a video. All it shows is my frizzy hair, blurry shots of the meat, and the TV blaring in the background. And me eating. I think you can imagine that without outside assistance.

Though satisfied in the most epistemological sense, I was still a bit peckish. So after I paid the bill and left the basashi shop, I sought out this restaurant back in the main arcade, a few hundred feet away:

Curry is something I know the Japanese are obsessed with (as they are with other things Indian in origin, such as Buddhism), and I wanted to see how well they did it. This place had about a thousand different varieties, some uniquely Japanese in flavor. I sat down, ordered up a plate of thin-sliced beef curry, and dug in. In a word: satisfying.

Then I returned to the hotel and slept like the dead. I usually do when I'm stuffed to the gills.

Tomorrow: the last day in Kumamoto. There's only two things on my to-do list: MUSASHIZUKA PARK and REIGANDŌ. We'll talk about the park (and more about my hero, Miyamoto Musashi) then.

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...

the Sumida River cruise

I just wanted you schmucks to know that, in true Postman style, I completed every single goddamn item on my Day-One-of-Tokyo to-do list...and then some. Let's start from the beginning.

I arrived in Tokyo in the late afternoon of July 30. I was delayed about 15 minutes getting off that big Boeing 777, 'cause there was some other plane at the gate having maintenance issues. Or talking to its mother and having an existential crisis and not wanting to fly again until it knew who it really was, an MD80 or a CRJ-700. One of the two. So. I got through immigration and customs without any trouble (but for the fact that the immigration guy stole my customs form and I had to fill out a second one). Then it was out into the steamy Tokyo air.

...yeah, right. Not really. It was down into the bowels of the steamy Narita train station. Narita, as it happens, is about as far from central Tokyo (48 miles) as Incheon Airport is from Seoul (43 miles). As such, you need to take a special train to get to and from there, and you have three or four choices. I thought 30 American dollars for the red-colored JR Narita Express was a bit much. So I took the blue Skyliner to Ueno (northeast Tokyo) for just over two thousand yen, or $20. I lugged everything down to the platform, loaded up, and enjoyed a cushy, air-conditioned, 39-minute ride through Chiba Prefecture and into town. But then I had to switch to the Tokyo Metro at Ueno, and ride seven or so stops to Kyobashi Station. This was the worst part of the trip. I was still in the pants and coat I had worn upon leaving Los Angeles, and everything was stuck fast to me by the time I lugged my 50-pound suitcase up the tiny station stairwell to street level. Man, it was hot and muggy. I began to have serious concerns about the remainder of the trip. I don't do humidity. Thankfully my capsule hotel was right around the corner.

Wait, what? You never heard of a capsule hotel?

Didn't think so. Here's what it looks like:

I'll explain the bottle of whisky later. Be patient.

Capsule hotels come in many shapes and sizes. Some of them are like mortuaries, with people climbing in headfirst and sleeping with their feet toward the hallway in tiny caskets arranged like honeycomb. Not me. My hotel, the First Inn Kyobashi (¥3000 per night), was sort of like enclosed bunk beds. It was very convenient. There were lockers for guests' luggage, a shared Japanese-style bathroom on the first floor, shower stalls and sinks in the basement, restrooms on every floor, and just to prevent anything weird from happening at nights, the floors were segregated by sex. The evens were female floors and the odds were male. In each capsule was a lamp, a radio, a coin-op television, an alarm clock, blankets, a pillow, and a pair of pajamas. Towels and washcloths were also provided for free. After I turned out the lights, I spent a very peaceful six hours clutching the handle of my unsecured suitcase and wondering if I was going to have to shank a sneak-thief in the middle of the night.

The only downside to a capsule hotel, to my mind, is that you can hear everything your fellow sleepers are doing. I heard people rolling over. Thankfully there were no snorers around (except for me). I must have driven my capsule-mates crazy at 6:30 a.m. when I woke up, banged open my locker, unzipped and repacked my suitcases, stumbled downstairs for a shower, and dragged everything out of there. (Sorry guys.)

I stowed my excess baggage in the coin lockers at Kyobashi Station and used the free Wi-Fi. Japanese stations are convenient, but more run-down and dingy than Seoul's. After I'd checked in with everybody important, I set off for my first goal: the Sumida River cruise. I rode the Ginza (orange) line all the way up to Asakusa, on the northeastern edge of the city center. A short walk around the corner brought me to the waterbus station.

What's a waterbus?

If you took a double-decker bus and flattened it out so it looked more like a flounder than a vehicle and gave it a hull and screws and a rudder, then you'd wind up with something that wasn't completely like a waterbus, but which people who saw these monstrosities gadding up and down the river would find disturbingly familiar. There's a reason behind these halibut-shaped contraptions, too: the twelve bridges on the lower Sumida River are close to the water. Like, really close. Some of 'em are as low as 15 feet. Nothing a canoe or a rowboat couldn't handle, but a waterbus? I felt like ducking as we went under.

Here's some of the pics I took while out on the cruise:

 

I apologize for the poor image composition, but I'm a budding photographer, not a greenhouse full of chrysanthemums (the national flower of Japan). Most of these images (and most of the ones I took in Japan, actually) were just me fooling around with different angles, settings, and lens adjustments. I haven't even opened the manual for my new Canon Rebel T3i yet...

Now, you'll notice that in the last two pictures, a whole lot of greenery starts to come into the picture. That's the HAMARIKYU ONSHI-TEIEN, the former Imperial falconry ground, now a public park and garden abutting Tokyo Bay, where the waterbus dumped me off. But that's a story for another day. As in, tomorrow.

Stay tuned... 

alive and well and living in...

It's quite extraordinary how quickly the human mind adapts to new situations. Miss H hasn't even been here two weeks and already she's gotten the hang of shopping in Korea (necessities: an old lady's wheeled shopping cart and a strong elbow for shoving one's way through crowds).

Oh yes...Miss H is here. She had a hell of a ride across the ocean. Our little black cat, Charlie, was quite a trooper during the whole affair. Thanks to some directions I had a coworker translate, Miss H found herself a cab from Incheon Airport to my apartment building (for 70,000 won!) and installed herself there forthwith. The two of us have spent our time getting reacquainted, purchasing needful things for this bachelor pad, and exploring greater Seoul.

(The name of my apartment building, by the way, is Estima Officetel. I shall refer to it simply as "Estima" from here on out. I'm getting sick of typing "my apartment building.")

Speaking for myself, it's taken a remarkably short time for me to fit back into the expatriate lifestyle. I go to work in the afternoons and evenings; get home and cook something non-Korean for dinner; read a book, pen a blog post or add something to the novel; go to sleep at some obscenely late hour; wake up late and do errands; nod to my fellow round-eyes in the street, as though we're members of some secret society; and observe the oddities and idiosyncrasies of this foreign nation with bemused eyes.

What oddities and idiosyncrasies, you ask?

I'll tell you.

Korea is the only country I've been in where you have to ask the street vendor not to put sugar on your corn dog...

...where wailing ambulances stop for red lights and city buses routinely blow them...

...where you'll find old folks in the city park at midnight using the free exercise equipment...

...where scooter-riders can't seem to decide whether they're pedestrians or vehicles...

...where things like turkey, limes, and clothes-drying machines are needless fripperies...

...where trucks mounted with loudspeakers drive slowly through urban neighborhoods blasting ads for various products at annoying decibel levels...

...where political candidates hire people off the street to dress up in flamboyant colors and dance the boogie outside subway stations to drum up support for their campaigns...

...and oodles more.

I'd really like to be able to show you this stuff instead of tell you, but I gotta get a better camera. My small, cherry-red Canon PowerShot A480 just doesn't have the aperture or the F-stops to capture the essence of Korea.

Ah, how do I explain it? How do I delineate the charm, the wonderment, the magic of being back? Being abroad once more? Being in a new town, a new(ish) country once again? How can I describe what even pictures cannot capture, like the party we expatriates (and a few lucky Koreans) had on the roof of Estima for Cinco de Mayo?

The infinite majesty of King Sejong's statue at Gwanghwamun (the largest gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace...yes, that's me in the picture)?

The breathtaking beauty of the Cheonggyecheon, the murmuring stream that runs through central Seoul, glowing at night with colored lights?

Dining at Gwangjang Market, a smorgasbord of the most delectable Korean street food?

The endless glittering labyrinth of the COEX Mall in Jamsil, the largest underground mall in Asia?

Watching shifty Korean guys play cards on a makeshift table on the streets of Itaewon (when they saw me, they hid their faces)?

The mind-blowing view from the observation deck of N'Seoul Tower?

The enormity, variety and diversity of the Nakwon Music Mall in Insadong?

I suppose the whole experience is encapsulated in the walks I take every evening. Some nights are so cool and moist, and the stars so obscured, and the distant silhouettes of apartment buildings so dim, and the streetlights so bright, it's almost as though I'm walking along the bottom of the ocean. The depth, the scope, the full import of the fact that I'm here, in East Asia once more, living and working in a foreign country, breathing foreign air and eating foreign food, existing day-to-day in a place that's incontestably alien and yet somehow not so—it all hits me then.

Someday I'll post a picture. A good picture.