birthday blog

Last saturday was my birthday and it was lovely!

It went something like this:

Gareth indulged my every whim with a new set of paints, flowers and cupcakes. He used two recipes from the wonderful website Ming Makes Cupcakes - #33 and #27. We strongly advise baking and eating these.

The lovely crafternoon ladies came round for crafting and champagne.

Then for dinner we filled a local Italian restaurant owned by a swing dancer and her artist husband "Brian".

And no Japanese party would be complete without some karaoke. Here is Gareth being a charming man.

Thanks for all the sweet presents and birthday wishes sent from the lovely folk in NZ.

It made me feel not so far from home!

Big Smile

I have been dabbling with toy cameras lately.

Let me introduce Peko Chan!

Pink!

We call this dog Rock Dog.

He often sits next to a rock which resembles himself in size, shape and colouring remarkably.

murals!

Korea, part 3: Seouled out

Back to the capital city for a few days, and we had a couple of major things we wanted to accomplish. The first was to head to the DMZ, the demilitarised zone that exists between the north and south Korean borders. We did an official tour, as this is pretty much the only way you can see it. Below is a very touristy picture of us.


Anyway, the DMZ was pretty fascinating but kind of surreal, as we were shepherded through the itinerary of sights on the tour. These included the Peace Park, which featured amusement park rides and tourist shops (possibly built so that the North can see how great a time the South is having on the other side? Just a thought...); the last stop on the South Korean rail line, complete with transcript of inspirational/self-congratulatory speech by George W Bush; a kind of interesting/rather one-sided documentary with abrasive American reality TV-style voiceover; a viewing platform so you can see into North Korea (that's the picture at the top of the post); and a trip into one of the tunnels dug by the North in the general direction of Seoul.

The tunnel was the best bit, as you could get a really tangible feel for the tension between the two sides. The tunnel was discovered in 1978, and North Korea initially denied having anything to do with it, but blast marks in the walls and the fact that water drains northwards kind of proved they were guilty; then they claimed the tunnel was a coal mine, and in fact parts of the walls had been painted black to make this (somehow) seem more plausible. It would be funny if it weren't scary.

Walking through the tunnel (up to a point, not into North Korea, obviously) was really kind of creepy, thinking about how there are undoubtedly more, undiscovered, tunnels that could have North Korean soldiers filing out of them into the South at any point. In light of recent incidents, this is even creepier.

There was no photography allowed in the tunnel.

(Mirabel wants to add that, looking across to North Korea, you could see a noticable change in the scenery; the hills have been stripped bare of trees.)

After the tour was essentially done we headed back to Seoul on the bus, but there was still one more stop to go. Going by the tenuous link that amethysts have apparently been found in some tunnels, we were taken to a supremely bizarre amethyst tourist shop, run by a, frankly, scary robotic shop lady with a crazy-looking plastered-on smile. Her bizarro sales pitch basically consisted of "man buy for his darling, woman buy for her darling" (ie. EVERYONE should buy one). Mirabel got told off for laughing. It was so weird, and despite the "special, just for you" 10% discount offered, we departed early and laughed our way back to the hostel.

The next night we went in search of swing dancing venues, as we had learnt beforehand that Seoul is a pretty swinging city. We eventauly found Happy, a nice kind of hall that was packed with amazing dancers. They were happy to have us, it seemed, and we danced with a few of the locals (although we really felt afterwards that we need to practice more -- these guys were very good).


But since Sendai's swing dancing scene has turned out to be actually really extremely small, it was nice to find a place like this (and apparently Seoul has around a dozen more like it).

The next day we were up with the lark to get on a bus, a plane, a train, a bullet train and a subway back to Sendai. Next time we'll consider flying direct from Sendai...

sendai mediatheque trinkets

bird no. 17

by Yabe Tomoko

White Strawberry

by Mika Ninagawa

Then on the way home we saw these lovely swan creatures...

Korea, part 2: Busan, Busan

A hazy view on the coast of Busan. On our first day in the South-Eastern city we went on another hike, this time around a pretty little coastal track.


We hula hooped in this sweet little outdoor gym place. It was full of old people in tracksuits using those weird swinging leg walky machines. Also hula hoops though.


And around the rocky beach area we stacked rocks and looked at real dinosaur footprints. But gosh, we didn't actually take a picture of the prints, as they just looked like kind of circular dimples in the rock. Not all that impressive really. Sorry.


We saw this really great musical collaboration between the above Korean singer, Itta, and a couple of guys, one Japanese and one Chinese. The Chinese guy was doing throat-singing and beatboxing, while Itta wailed and made noises and the other guy programmed beats and things. It was something that we hadn't really seen anything like in a long while.

Later we went out with some of those guys we met way back in Seoul (they told us about the gig). We eventually went to a nice little bar, but on the way we were led into one of those awful "foreigner bars", full of boneheads singing Journey and Bon Jovi, totally bro-ing out and wearing backwards baseball caps and high-fiving each other.


It was terrible.

The next day we checked out Beomeosa, a rather picturesque Buddhist temple in a beautiful foresty, mountainous area. It was really lovely, and all decked out for the big man's 2500-ish-th birthday (can't find his actual age on google).


These Buddhist statues have very intense, staring eyes. I like them though.

Later that day we checked out the beachfront at night. There was a big outdoor art show on, including these amazing BOLD LETTERS projected onto the sand.


Then we saw some guys taking mid-jump shots and we decided to copy them.


The guys we copied saw us doing this so we did a big group shot. We couldn't get everyone jumping at the same time though.


Rad. Next we went back to Seoul for more capital city action and excellent punning.

Korea, part 1: getting on board the Seoul train

As we've said before, public holidays in Japan are plentiful indeed, and during the first week of May, we get a super sweet Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday triple deal, thanks to Constitution Memorial Day, Greenery Day and Children’s Day. Add another one, Showa Day, the week before, and it’s an obvious chance to take a holiday without killing all your paid leave. So it was off to South Korea for us, tagging along with our Brit-friends Jill and Hannah.

For a start, we changed some cash at the airport, from yen to won. A whole 1000 won is only worth about 100 yen, so here’s a picture of me holding 1,000,000 units of currency. A millionaire at 27 – top of the world, ma!


The trip from Sendai to Seoul consisted of an overnight bus from Sendai to Tokyo, then a wait of about four hours at Narita airport, then a two-and-a-half-hour flight into Seoul, so we were a bit ragged by the time we made our destination. We had booked a backpackers in Hongdae, a kind of trendy university area, and spend the first night taking it pretty easy, wandering around various bars, clubs and pubs. We also ate the first of many delicious barbecue dinners.

The next day we were off to check out a cute market in the area.


We gave some sunscreen to some English teachers from Busan there, and they told us about an all-day music gig with 51 bands playing on a (de?)construction site, something about protesting the plans to knock over a building, gentrification and all that. We made a mental note to check it out in the evening.

Later we headed to Changgyeong Palace.


The multi-colours in the buildings, flags and costumes here were quite different to the more subdued Japanese style we were used to. We got there just in time to see a changing of the guards, and got to snap loads of pictures of said guards’ snazzy beards as they stared straight ahead, doing their best to ignore us and all the other tourists doing the same.


The palace grounds were quite lovely, and we actually intended to visit some of the other palace areas nearby, but then we got distracted and we ran out of time. I guess this is indicative of just how much there is to do in Seoul. It was a pretty happening place.

The distraction in question was our stomachs rumbling, so we diverted our attention to finding jeonbokjuk, a type of Korean porridge. Jill and Hannah tried the pumpkin, I had the vegetable and Mirabel had the azuki bean. M’s was too sweet, mine was too bland, but the pumpkin was pretty delicious. There’s a tip if you ever find yourself in Korea and sweating over a porridge menu.


That evening we headed to the 51 bands thing, and we were amused to see Korean metal, psychedelic nerd-rock, and a guy wailing exceptionally badly on a bongo, amongst other things. Each band played about four songs all up, so it was a good way to get a little taste of the music scene.


The next day we readied ourselves for a big old trek up Dobongsan mountain.


It may have been a mistake to go on a weekend, actually, as the track was packed with hikers from top to bottom. Everyone but us was sporting high-tech tramping gear – jackets, walking poles, backpacks – while we trundled up in our sneakers, jeans and t-shirts and/or dresses. We think lots of people we passed were talking about our shoes in particular. The track wasn’t very difficult though, although it did get a bit steep at the top.


In the end we weren’t allowed to go the last 20 or so metres to the summit, as a beady-eyed ranger spotted our inappropriate footwear. But why place so much importance on getting right to the top anyway? What makes the peak so much more desirable a destination than just below it? We still saw this amazing, slightly hazy view.


In fact, hazy was a common theme to most views we saw in Korea. Stay tuned for more, as we head south to Busan in our next update.

Flying fish

On the fifth of May it is children's day, and if people have a boy in their household, they hang fish flyers outside their houses (girls get their own day in March, so don't worry about gender equality issues). We're in Korea right now (!) so we're missing the day itself, but here's a lovely picture that Mirabel took before we left.