Caveat: The Mall Builders

Fukuoka feels like a big city, after southern Kyushu, but it's still pretty compact.  It's not like Seoul or Tokyo, and I walked around a major portion of the "downtown" yesterday, mostly the Tenjin and Hakata areas. 

I ended up in a big, futuristic mall called Canal City.  I'll add a picture later.  Funny how malls everywhere are the same.  I always remember when I ended up in a mall in Temuco, Chile, and I was wandering around, thinking, "Wow, this is a mall in Temuco, Chile, but it feels just like any other mall."

I once had a brainstorm about the nature of our global civilization – what characteristics of our cities and cultures would be most salient to an anthropologist in the far future, or from a different planet?  And I decided that those hypothetical anthropologists would realize one of the unifying elements was the existence of malls. 

That means their name for us would be:  "The Mall Builders."  Which is a name that sounds suitably ominous and monumental for a global civilization reduced to dust by the ravages of time.

[Canal City Mall, Fukuoka]

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Caveat: 50 first dates… with a Vulcan

I used to love Star Trek.  I thought the best of the many spinoffs was The Next Generation – far better than the original, both in terms of acting and production values, as well as in writing.  And after TNG it went downhill, too.  Needless to say, when the series Enterprise came out, a few years ago, I was unimpressed, and I never watched more than a few episodes.

But it turns out, among the many unexpected things I found stashed on my hard drive recently, I found all of seasons 2 and 3 of Enterprise.  In a fit of escapist boredom, last night, I watched a few.  Compared to the first season, which is what I had seen before, the writing was improved.  And the main actors had developed some rapport and cohesion, too, so that the whole seemed less of a violation of the canon. 

I saw one episode in particular, last night, that I rather liked.  It was entitled "Twilight," and, like most episodes of Star Trek that I like best, it involved themes of weird time travel conundrums, alternate histories, and memory.  In fact, the plot was basically a rip-off of the movie 50 First Dates, which starred Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.  It`s one of my favorite cheesy romantic comedies, because the themes, involving the nature of memory and the narratives that make up our lives, along with the ending,  are pretty deep, in my opinion.   Anyway, take that same plot, and put the captain the Barrymore character`s role, and put T`pol (the Vulcan first officer) in the Sandler role, and you get the plot of the episode.  It was … philosophically hilarious.  So I liked it.  It will rank up there with some of my favorite Star Trek episodes. 

OK.  Back to reality.  It`s raining.  I think I`ve decided to return to Fukuoka, today.  I`ll resume my WAITING, there.

Caveat: Under some volcano

Here are some pictures from yesterday's long walk, in no particular order.

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This is a long road, and the observation center that I was headed for.

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This is some flowers along the road.

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This is my shadow – a self-portrait.

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 This is a blossoming tree in an industrial lot.

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This is a Mitsubishi van that had some plants growing inside of it.

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This is some re-bar that I saw, looking very sculpturesque.

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These are some boats at low tide.

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This is a cat in an alleyway in Kagoshima.

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Caveat: Walking / Cars and Convenience Stores

Yesterday, I took the ferry back over to the volcano island (Sakurajima) and ended up taking a rather spontaneous extremely long walk.  It was about 17 km.  I went up to a place that`s like an observatory, about halfway up the side of the volcano, and back down.  It wasn`t really a "trail hike," since it was mostly alongside the highway going up there and a different highway coming back down.  And some of the landscape, being a recently erupting volcano, was a bit desolate, although not devoid of nature, for all that.  I took some pictures, which I`ll try to add later.

I really like long walks like that.  I should do them more often.  Not really hiking… just walking.  I always feel like some pilgrim, or an ancient tribal person making some kind of initiation journey.  I watch the small changes in landscape, and observe how our civilization organizes itself around cars and convenience stores.  Yes, even Japan`s version of our civilization is organized around cars and convenience stores.  At least in largely rural areas. 

Caveat: 금도끼와 은도끼

금도끼와 은도끼

옛날 어느 마을에 가난한 나무꾼이 살고 있었습니다.  그는 어머니를 모시고 살았는데, 부지런해서 늘 아침 일찍 산으로 가서 나무를 했습니다.
어느 날 산 속에서 연못 옆에 있는 큰 나무를 발견하고 도끼로 세게 찍기 시작했습니다.  그런데 손에 힘이 없어져서 도끼를 연못에 빠뜨렸습니다.  하나밖에 없는 도끼를 빠뜨린 나무꾼은 연못을 보면서 한숨을 쉬었습니다.  그 때 갑자기 연못의 물이 움직이면서 하얀 연기와 함께 산신령님이 나타나셨습니다.  산신령님은 금으로 만든 도끼를 내밀면서 말했습니다.
“이 금도끼가 당신이 빠뜨린 것입니까?”
“아닙니다.”
“그럼 이 은도끼가 당신의 도끼입니까?”
“그것도 제 것이 아닙니다.”
“그럼 이것입니까?”라고 하면서 그가 빠뜨린 쇠도끼를 내밀었습니다.
“네, 바로 그것이 제 도끼입니다.”
산신령님은 “당신은 정직하기 때문에 이 도끼들을 모두 당신에게 줄 테니까 가져가십시오.”라고 말하고 도끼 세 개를 준 후에 다시 연못 속으로 사라졌습니다.
그래서 그 나무꾼은 부자가 되었고 그 후에 결혼을 해서 행복하게 살았습니다.
No… I didn’t write this story.  It’s an old Korean fairy tale.  I like the story.
The version here is copied from my Korean Language textbook, at the end of the book.  It’s provided as a kind of culmination of all the material covered.  Note especially all the various constructions using the many possible meanings of “~(으)로.”
But the translation of the story, provided in the appendix, is truly terrible – it manages to be bad English, while at the same time failing to be a close, phrase-for-phrase translation of the Korean, which is what would be useful in a language textbook.  So you can’t really use the translation to figure out confusing grammar points, on the one hand, but it’s not a very clear version of the story, on the other.
So, being the strange person that I am, I decided to attempt my own translation, which follows.  I’m trying to stay very close to the Korean, trying to ensure that each Korean phrase and grammatical element has a match to its closest English equivalent, that I can figure out – but at the same time I’m trying to make sure it’s at least passable English, meaning no glaring grammatical or idiomatic errors.
If there are mistakes in the Korean above, blame my poor Korean typing skills, not my Korean textbook – it’s probably just a typo, since I copied the text of the story from my textbook manually.

The gold axe and the silver axe

In olden days a poor woodcutter was living in some village.  That man lived with his mother, and since he was industrious, every morning he went to the mountain and cut wood.
One day, being at the mountain near a pond, he found a big tree and be began to cut it with his axe.  But then his hand became weak and he dropped the axe in the pond.  The woodcutter, having but the one axe, looked in the pond and sighed.  At that moment suddenly the pond’s waters stirred and, along with some white smoke, a mountain spirit appeared.  The mountain spirit held out a gold axe, and spoke.
“Did you drop this gold axe?”
“No, sir.”
“Then is this silver axe your axe?”
“That isn’t mine either.”
“Then is this yours?” he said, and held out the dropped iron axe.
“Yes, that’s definitely my axe.”
The mountain spirit said, “Because you are honest I will give you all these axes, so take them,” and with that he gave the three axes and disappeared again into the pond.
And so the woodcutter became rich, and after that he got married and lived happily.
 

Caveat: Being Still

I feel guilty not traveling around, not being a tourist.

But I have been telling myself, since I only have a few days left before my alleged visa appears and I become suddenly overwhelmingly employed in my new job in Korea, I should just relax. So today, I decided to just simply stop moving, and exist. I’ve found a ryokan that is relatively comfortable and convenient, and if not the cheapest it’s at least reasonable (well, by Japanese standards). And I like Kagoshima OK… it’s something different than Fukuoka.

I read for a while. I studied my Korean, and also put in about an hour trying re-memorize my forgotten kana. I experimented with copying the “Korean-written-in-kana” from my Korean-Japanese phrasebook. That was entertaining, and served two purposes. I drank coffee in a coffee joint in the Tenmonkan (Kagoshima`s downtown area). I ate cup ramen for dinner.

Here’s a picture of my the little alleyway where my ryokan is. And another picture I took during a long walk today (about 6 km?).

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One final note, quoted verbatim from a sign I saw just now:

Keep out of new flu. Please, wipe your hands on an alcoholic towel.

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