on the way down south to glory county. crossing the bridge at pyeongtaek port.
Category: Hiking & Travel
Caveat: Imperial Invigorate Moxibustion
Andrew, Hollye and I had an outing day in Seoul.
First we took the subway to Insadong, where we wandered the crowded streets and then had lunch at my favorite vegetarian restaurant.
After eating we were walking over to find a subway station, and we passed a restaurant with this sign in the window.
I thought it was quite funny: it says (or seems to say):
Japanese: OK
English: OK
Chinese: meh. But we love you.
Then we headed over to 동묘 [dongmyo] is the site of a major flea market neighborhood. It just goes on and on. I’ve experienced many Korean fleamarkets, but only in rural areas – never in Seoul and never on this huge scale.
We walked around a lot.
I saw a box with an incomprehensible name (the English part, I mean).
But it turns out this is an actual thing – moxibustion [the 뜸 of the Korean name] is a folk remedy where you burn mugwort against accupressure points on a patient’s skin. Perhaps I should have invested in it? Andrew is huge believer in mugwort, and my mom is a believer in accupuncture. This would combine both, and might therefore be doubly effective.
I decided to actively shop for one of my strange manias: I’m seeking a Korean manual typewriter. Not a made-in-Korea English (i.e. Latin) typewriter, but a manual typewriter made for typing Korean. This isn’t as impossible as many people who don’t know Korean might think – Korean is not like Chinese or Japanese, because the number of underlying symbols in the native Korean writing system (hangul) is quite small.
I love manual typewriters: I have several (Latin ones) in my storage unit in Minnesota. This one guy we visited had many, many typewriters – mostly Latin, but several hangul. He was honest, however: he told me none of them worked. So I didn’t buy one.
Walking back to the subway, we saw a bicycle that looked Army-style.
And a peaceful, desolate collection of greenery in an urban wasteland.
Finally, we took the subway out to Bucheon, where we met my friend Peter. Peter is only a few weeks left from ending his teaching contract, and he intends to do some on-foot travel in Korea and then return to the US.
We ate at a 짬뽕 [jjambbong] joint near his apartment and then Andrew, Hollye and I came back to Ilsan.
caveat: 삼송역에서 추상파의 악어들
our subway train broke so they threw us off at 삼송역 [samsong station]. andrew noticed this mural on the wall, which he immediately described as “multicolored abstract alligators hunting birds under the trees.” this caused me to need to take a picture of it.
[update 1: dang stupid phone attached the wrong photo to the email post. grr. pay no attention to the man behind the curtain rearranging things now. . . update 2: ok, fixed now.]
Caveat: 보문사
Yesterday Andrew, Hollye and I went to 보문사 [Bomun temple], which is on Seongmo Island which is off the coast of the larger Ganghwa Island which is basically straight west of Seoul at the mouth of Han River. We took a long, slow, local bus from Ilsan to Ganghwa County Seat, thence on a different bus (after some confusion as to where to catch it) to Oepo-ri on Ganghwa’s west side, then a short ferry ride across the channel to Seongmo, and finally, after lunch of clam noodle soup and spicy herring salad, a last bus around Seongmo Island to the location of the temple.
Here are some pictures from this trip.
Waiting to board the ferry at Oepo-ri.
Looking back at Oepo-ri from aboard the ferry.
Many hungry seagulls freeloading off the “do not feed the birds”-disregarding Koreans.
Looking back while walking up the steep driveway to the temple.
The temple gate.
Looking up at the temple area.
Andrew and Hollye walking behind me.
A large collection of statues regarding a stupa. I’m not really sure what this represents.
Looking up the mountain at our ultimate destination.
Looking down a big old tree.
The entrance to the grotto temple.
Temple details.
Small figurines hanging out on some mossy rocks.
Going farther up the mountainside, there was a cast bronze statue of a many-headed, many-tailed dragon.
Looking back down the mountainside.
At the top of the many, many stairs we found the famous buddha relief carved in the cliff-side looking out to sea.
Then we found a back-trail back down the mountainside. This sign says “danger.”
Looking out while waiting for the return ferry.
Another ferry parking beside ours.
Some views of boats upon our return to Oepo-ri.
Here is a collection of temple-wall paintings thrown in here at the end of this here blogpost.
caveat: downhill through a forest
after visiting a temple and a famous buddha on the island we walked back down the hill along a forested trail. more about the temple and the buddha later.
caveat: 석모도
riding the short ferry to 석모도 [seongmo island].
Caveat: Return to Suwon
I spent several months in Suwon in 2010, so it’s one of my Korean “homes” – I know the city pretty well and I like it a lot.
Today, I dragged Andrew and Hollye down to Suwon on the 2 hour subway trek, and met my friend Nate. We had lunch, walked around a lot, visited some temples and hiked to the top of Paldalsan, and hung out in an air conditioned cafe for a long time, too.
I’m pretty tired now, so I won’t write a lot. But here are a bunch of pictures.
Nate took the above photo and posted it on facebook. What he wrote under it was very complementary:
Six weeks ago, Jared had surgery for cancer. Yesterday, he started radiation treatment. Today, he hiked up a mountain on the hottest day in Korean history and made me look like a baby. This is the toughest dude on earth.
I think Nate is tougher than me. But I very much appreciate the complement.
Caveat: A Random Adventure And Random Usefulness
Earlier today, after breakfast, I was feeling energetic and restless, and I said to Andrew, I’m going to take a walk. He came along, of course.
We walked over to the new “Onemount” mall that’s been built on the west end of Lake Park, a few blocks from my apartment. There is a waterpark inside the mall. That’s pretty common in Korea – waterparks, I mean. But there is also a “snow park” in this mall – ice skating, manufactured snow, an indoor sledding slope. That’s not so common. I think some hot day I’m going to pay the entrance fee and try it out.
Then we walked into Lake Park. That’s a common enough walking route for me. The air was stormy and thundery and deep gray overcast. It was beautiful. And there was enough of a breeze that the heat wasn’t so stifling.
I knew there was a “toilet museum” inside Lake Park – I’d seen it before. But I’d never actually visited it, although it’s a kind of famous (or infamous) landmark in Ilsan. Today it was open as Andrew and I walked past, so we visited the Toilet Museum.
Then we saw some men running one of those sewer-exploring robots – just something in maintenance going on unrelated to being next to the Toilet Museum. We watched them for a while – they seemed disorganized.
We walked toward the southeast end of the lake. That area looking toward the highway bridge over the lake always reminds me a little bit of Minneapolis’ Uptown area.
Then we walked around the end of the lake and ended up going to HomePlus, where I bought some vitamins and exotic tea and a few other things.
Then spontaneously I said, “How about instead of going home for lunch we go to that Indian Restaurant that I like that’s near here?”
Andrew seemed to like this idea.
So we had Indian food for lunch: samosa, vegetable raita, malkhi dal, some mutton curry, lots of garlic naan bread. Very delicious.
It was pouring rain so hard when we left the restaurant that we stopped in a cafe and had coffee and talked for a long time.
When the rain had let up and we finished our coffee, we hurried home and I quickly got ready and went to work.
Work felt good today: I felt useful. I did a substitute teaching in one class, because of a scheduling mistake. Then I corrected some student essays and helped fixed the scheduling mistake.
I like feeling useful.
Caveat: 명동과 남산골한옥마을
Brother Andrew and I went to Myeongdong to meet my friend Seungbae Lee. We met in front of the old cathedral – mostly because it’s an easy-to-find landmark.
We went for lunch at a Japanese place, where I had 돈까스 [don-kka-seu = Japanese fried pork cutlet]. I didn’t used to like donkkaseu but after my time in the hospital when I discovered that it was easy to eat with my broken mouth, I fell in love with it for sentimental reasons. So I had it and it was good.
Here are my brother and my friend at that restaurant.
Then we went over to a place called 남산골한옥마을 which is a kind of tourist-oriented “Korean folk village” reconstruction thing right on the north end of Namsan Park on the southeast end of the Myeongdong neighborhood.
It was really too hot to behave very touristy, but we tried, and I took some pictures.
Finally we gave up since it was too hot, and we spent over an hour sitting around in an air-conditioned convenience store drinking cold drinks.
Then we came back home.
Caveat: Los Güeyes Gangnam Stylin
I took my brother to Gangnam today. Somos los hermanos Güeyes (Ways, because of our family name, get it?), y fuimos gangnam stylin.
We ate tacos at a pretty good taco joint, called Dos Tacos, that I like to visit. I ordered fish tacos. Milestone: I ate spicy food for lunch. First time in 4 months.
Amazingly, when I sat down, a poster from my hometown (more-or-less) was facing me.
We went to the bookstore which caused me to spend money. Then we walked between raindrops in an afternoon rainstorm.
We had some coffee at a very crowded cafe, and I showed Andrew the Korean Language hagwon where I studied Korean full-time back in 2010. Then he said, “I’d be open to going to a museum.”
Using my smartphone, I found the closest museum to where we were, and we went there. It was the “South Branch” (“남” = nam) of the Seoul Museum of Art. It was kind of small but the price was right (“free”) and it was not that amazing, but it had some interesting decorative art / interior design stuff. Pictures weren’t allowed inside.
Here is a chair sculpture I saw outside, though.
And I was looking through the columns of the lovely old pre-Japanese building (it was once the Belgian Embassy to Joseon Korea around 1900) at the sun.
At home for dinner I had kimchi with some rice among other things. I’m almost back to my pre-horrible-symptoms (i.e. at least 4 months ago) eating capacity and range. This is pleasing.
Caveat: Around Camp Edwards, To Palm Springs
About once a year, I make a trip out to Camp Edwards. It’s not far. I figured with Andrew here, it was as good a time as any to go look at it.
I was stationed at Camp Edwards, 296th Forward Support Battalion, Bravo Company, 2nd Infantry Division, in 1991. Camp Edwards no longer exists – the US Army closed it in the late 90’s. A few years back, when I went there, the buildings were still there but abandoned, but the last few times I’ve gone, it’s just a vacant lot with a fence around it.
From a block from my house, we got on the #600 bus and that dropped us right at the “front gate” of Camp Edwards, after a wending half-hour bus ride through Gyoha and Geumchon (neither of which really existed in 1991). This is the front gate, below. The bridge structure is the railroad track, now elevated. In 1991 it was at grade level.
We walked along the fence and I pointed out where the various features of Camp Edwards were located: the dining hall, the barracks, HQ, the warehouse, and the motor pool. Here is a picture of where the motor pool building was – I remember that spindly tall white-barked tree (birch?) that’s kind of in the right of center of the photo, as being in the motor pool’s “front yard.”
I spontaneously decided that I was feeling healthy enough to try to walk around Camp Edwards. I haven’t ever tried this. I’m sure we circumnavigated the camp at various times on PT exercises and activities back when I was stationed there, including things like our periodic off-post runs. But certainly I’d never tried it since.
So we set off northward down a country lane.
The country lane led to a farm.
And it led through some woods.
And we came to another farm.
And we saw a Korean farmer in his field.
Then we got a little bit lost in the woods. Although we ran out of road, we didn’t run out of abandoned chairs.
After tromping through the brush a bit, I decided I wasn’t up to cross-country hiking, so we went back along the road, and around a small hill and came to a gravesite (which abound in rural Korea).
We came to an area that I recognized, through 22 years of mental haze, as being the “back” of Camp Edwards. There was a small concrete wall with old machine-gun emplacements, and this gateway, where Andrew posed with his umbrella (it was raining at this point, though not hard).
We walked along the road, back south, now, having gotten at least halfway around Camp Edwards moving counterclockwise.
We came to giant “tank trap” of impressive engineering and dimensions.
I saluted Andrew from inside the tank trap.
Then we walked up the road and came to a new development called PalmSprings (팜스프링).
We passed a Korean mini-mall with the parking in front, American-style. This is sufficiently rare in my experience, in Korea, to be notable, so I took a picture. I believe this is all on land that was formerly part of Camp Edwards.
Then we walked to Geumchon station and took the train back to Ilsan. In Ilsan, I wanted to wait for a package that was being delivered at KarmaPlus – even though KarmaPlus was closed due to the summer break.
So we stopped and had a very, very decadant lunch at “Burger Sharp,” a restaurant right next door the KarmaPlus building, that’s very popular with the students.
I swear, in 5 years of living in Ilsan and working in this Hugok neighborhood, I have only eaten at this place once or twice. But I figured, what the hey? I’m living somewhat free-and-loose with respect to my normal strictures, lately.
Then, due to a communication error, we waited for more than an hour for a package that was already there waiting for me. Ah well. I need to improve my Korean so I understand when they tell me these things.
Then we came home.
Caveat: Entertaining Brother Andrew
My dear brother Andrew has been so, so good to me. He’s being an excellent nursemaid, provides almost entirely positive moral support, holds my hand when the doctors are mean to me, and makes sure my fridge is full (and then keeps emptying it too).
So keeping Andrew entertained is foremost among my own tasks. Today I feel accomplished in that realm.
Andrew likes to be outside, but not in the city. He’s a forest and country type person.
So, in the morning, I dragged him onto the subway to Yeonsinnae, and then we hiked uphill until we came to Bulgwang Temple and then the entrance to Bukhansan National Park, which sits right in the heart of the northern half of Seoul, a bit the way the Santa Monica Mountains embed themselves in the heart of L.A.
He was clearly pleased when we hiked up into the woods, among the rocks. I left him there, went back downhill, and came home. He came home several hours later.
Some pictures.
The temple.
Andrew admiring craftsmanship.
Me sitting on the temple stoop.
A view of some rocks, from the trail. Andrew likes rocks.
The view looking back toward Yeonsinnae.
Andrew on the trail.
Passing the temple again on the way back down. There was a monk inside, chanting, so I stopped for a while.
The temple bell tower – but it’s missing its bell.
Then, this afternoon, I showed him the strangest movie yet, from among my bizarre and eclectic collection. I’ve been showing him a lot of my favorites, but he seemed to rather enjoy this one, especially. I reviewed the movie, Love Exposure, here.
Here are two temple panel paintings, which I’ll post for archival purposes. The first is a bit unusual – it feels like a “placeholder” as opposed to a true painting.
Caveat: борщ
I want to prevent my brother from growing too bored while he visits. Plus, I have been craving Russian food from my favorite Russian-food restaurant for a long time – well before the diagnosis.
So we took the subway into Seoul and walked to the neighborhood I call Russiatown, near Dongdaemun. Andrew is even more of a Russophile than I am, so I thought he would enjoy this.
This is the restaurant.
It’s changed names several times over the years, but they always have the same borshcht recipe, which is delicious.
I also ordered a fried liver stroganoff that was quite good – I can’t believe that I, the incipient vegetarian, was craving liver, but I was. And so I ate it. The other purple stuff is svekolny – a beet and garlic slaw.
I got extra sour cream on the side. Sour cream is hard to find in Korea. I really enjoyed that food.
Afterward, we walked up to the 청계천 [cheong-gye-cheon]. Andrew wanted a “proof of tourism” picture.
Then we came home and relaxed. Currently he’s off riding his bike somewhere – did I mention he bought a bike? I didn’t see this as a bad idea – when he goes back to the States, I will inherit the bike – perhaps I will even ride it.
Caveat: 고봉산 영천사
Today, Andrew and I set out for a temple I visited a long time ago. I believe it is the “working mountain temple” closest to my home. It’s on the side of a mountain called Gobong-san (고봉산), which is north of the railroad tracks in the part of Ilsan I think of as “old Ilsan”. It is my opinion that this is the “one mountain,” of the various mountains around, that is the best candidate for the origin of the name of the city of Ilsan, which means “one mountain.”
We visited the temple on this mountain called 영천사 [yeong-cheon-sa]. It’s a small, unpretentious working temple. I met a monk there and had an actual conversation with him – I lived in Ilsan, I had been in the cancer center, my brother was visiting. He wished me good health. Then he ran down and told one of the men hanging out near a storage shed, “OMG there’s a foreigner speaking Korean up there!” I didn’t catch the exact words in Korean, but that was the drift of it.
I felt flattered.
I bowed.
Here are some pictures.
Andrew on the trail up the mountain.
The temple garden.
Behind the temple outbuilding (monks’ quarters).
Standing on the stoop of the temple looking toward Tanhyeon towers.
The main temple building and administrative building to the right.
A smaller shrine behind the main temple. These are always my favorite places to go to do sitting or prostrations, rather than the main temples. They are dedicated to various saints (bodhisattvas) and I have no idea which one this one was dedicated to – I don’t really see that it matters.
The interior of that small shrine.
Andrew took a picture of me doing a few prostrations there.
I took a picture of Andrew sitting quietly there.
Looking down on the larger temple from the stoop at the shrine.
A trail leading up into the forest behind the shrine.
A buddha in a stone niche near the shrine.
A very large number of kimchi pots behind the administration building.
A closed door detail on the shrine.
I like how in random spots you can find little figurines enacting scenes.
Some other figurines.
Here is a picture of a woman getting a drink of water at the public fountain (every temple has one) and a laughing buddha. Slightly out of focus…
Here is another smaller temple we passed while walking down the mountain.
A jang-seung [장승 = traditional shamanistic totem] I saw amid some flowers on the main road at the base of the mountain at the end of the trip.
Here are a ton of “temple-panel paintings” that I snapped. I love these things and am trying to build up a collection of images of them.
Caveat: After Exhilaration… Exhaustion
After the exhilaration of the first two days of post-hospital wears off, I begin to feel the tiredness lurking beneath. After pushing too hard, maybe, today, I feel downright exhausted. The kind of “you’re sick and recovering exhausted” that could be a bad flu but in this case is rather more and less than that at the same time.
Stepping out from my apartment, while waiting for Andrew to run back up to get something he’d forgotten, I saw a cicada (right). It was making that mesmerizing loud “weee-wan-wan-waaaan” sound of Asian cicadas.
I stopped by work (KarmaPlus) this morning and straightened accounts with Curt some, and dropped in for 5 minutes with my HSTEPS class, to prove I was alive. I was pleased to be with my students, some of whom I’ve known more than 2 years now.
Then we went to the hospital for an outpatient wound-redressing and short consult. Total charge, after insurance: 200 won (18 cents?). Golly, let me see what I have in my pocket for that.
I learned that I had mis-learned the 10th floor resident doctor’s name, whom I’ve been calling Dr Suh in this here blog – it’s in fact Dr Seok. I learned it when I tried to give him a thank-you card. Oops. I will correct it in the record, but leave this mea culpa here. He is a very kind young man. And I feel like an “old man” that I have to say “kind young man” that way, rather than just “kind man.”
Then, ambitiously, Andrew and I took the bus to Bucheon to see my friend Peter. I thought, how tiring can that be, taking at bus to Bucheon? Once there, very hungry, we splurged on pizza. Which was great – it turned out to be one of the easiest things to eat given my current mouth complications, much as I suspected. The combination of long morning plus bus ride plus heavy lunch, however, left me exhausted. We lounged around Peter’s apartment for a few hours and ended up just coming home.
Now I’m going to take a nap.
Peter’s apartment building allows access to the roof, so despite the smogginess of the day, I took some pictures (below). The building has a rooftop garden.
Looking north (toward Ilsan, way out of view here).
Looking west.
Looking south(-ish … maybe more like southeast).
Looking east.
Looking at Andrew and Peter.
Looking at a charming rooftop tree.
Caveat: Wending Around Kburbia
Today I set off to run errands. I’m trying to be “organized” about this long sojourn in the hospital that is fast approaching.
I took a long walk first, heading east from my apartment building along Jungangno (which just means “Central Avenue” but which I still always call “Broadway” in my mind for some reason). I went wending around “Kburbia” – the non-rectilinear streets on the west side of Jeongbalsan Park and north of Jungangno are eerie in the extent to which they echo yet reinterpret the curved streets and cul-de-sacs of suburban North America. I took some random photos.
There was a temple.
Then I went into the park and up the hill. I saw a magpie.
I saw a swampy place.
Turning the other way, there were redwood trees (a few of these are Chinese “dawn redwoods”).
At the top of the hill I took a picture of a view I probably have taken before – this is looking northwest, toward my place-of-work and the new towers of Tanhyeon on the right, beyond the old Ilsan station. Also, a fine portrait of the piece of dust on my lens, center.
I saw some weird bird sculptures.
Then I walked down the hill and went to the store.
What I’m listening to right now.
Ben Kweller – Holy Water from Guest List on Vimeo.
Caveat: Юлія Тимошенко
While walking around Seoul yesterday, we ran into a group of young men from a high school named Hanil (it’s a common enough sounding name that I suspect there are many Hanil high schools, but the only one I found in a naver search is down in Chungcheongbuk Province near Sejong City).
The young men had a front man who spoke excellent English, and he explained that they were conducting some kind of human-rights campaign for “Yulia.” I guessed they meant Yulia Tymoshenko (Юлія Тимошенко), the former Ukrainian Prime Minister currently in jail (and hunger striking on and off). The boys were impressed and surprised that I knew about this. My current events obsession was finally bearing fruit.
I can’t say I necessarily feel the deepest sympathy for Tymoshenko, from what I have been able to understand. She’s pretty far to the right: a fervent nationalist and furthermore an incomprehensibly wealthy “oligarch” as only the former USSR can produce. But she definitely possesses a certain charisma – she was one of the leaders of the famous “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004 – and I would concur with groups like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International that her current prison term seems more politically motivated than genuinely based on the alleged corruption charges against her. Of course she’s corrupt – she’s wealthy and Ukrainian – how could she not be? But, if so, why is only she in prison, whereas the other several thousand corrupt Ukrainian politicians are not?
So anyway, I like to see young Koreans being politically engaged, especially by something so exotic and external to their narrower cultural sphere. Mary and I were happy to pose with them for a photo, and I handed them my camera and they took one of us with mine, too. Thus we were commemorating Mary’s and my 30th Arcata High School class of ’83 reunion posed on the Gwanghwamun plaza in downtown Seoul.
Unrelatedly, my quote for this morning:
“The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.” – Søren Kierkegaard
Caveat: 청계천
I was at 청계천 [cheonggyecheon] in downtown Seoul today, with my friend Mary before she returned to Daegu. There were many paper sculptures set up in the stream, left over from the Buddhamas parades last week. Here are some pictures – they convey scenes and stories from Buddha’s birth and life.
Caveat: 19.74 km
I used Google maps to diagram my long walk on Friday, which I did with my once-upon-a-time fellow Arcata High School student, Mary, who was visiting Seoul for the first time – because both of us like to walk.
How weird is it, by the way, that there are two AHS class of 1983 people living in South Korea at the same time, exactly 30 years after our graduation? That’s weird.
But anyway, such as it is, we took a long walk.
I took the subway (line 3) into Gangnam and met her there. Then we went to my favorite Kyobo Mungo (giant bookstore thingy). Then we walked back north to the river and across the river on the old Dongho bridge (동호대교 [dongho-daegyo]). There our luck got interesting. Nestled at the base of where the subway crosses the bridge and then tunnels into the mountain to become subway again, near Oksu station, there is a Buddhist temple called 미타사 [mita-sa]. Because it was Buddha’s birthday, the temple was very busy – imagine a Buddhist version of a church Christmas street fair and festivities. Children were darting about, and old women were ushering and monks were clacking their monk clackers. An old woman showed us a lantern and subsequently invited us in. Now in all my six years in Korea I’ve only been invited in once before to an on-going Buddhist service, and certainly not into something so festive and interesting. Mary took a lot of pictures while I tried to speak along with the chants (=prayers, with the words projected onto a big screen). It was interesting an entertaining. A talented woman sang pop songs and Buddhist “pop” music – sort of a parallel to Christian pop music that goes on in worship services, I suspect.
Here, I found another rendition of one of the songs we heard. (What I’m listening to right now).
“빙빙빙” [bing-bing-bing].
Imagine exactly what you see in the video, above, but with a giant gold Buddha as a backdrop. Here’s a picture I took right after that song ended and the singer was departing the stage. The projector screen still says the song’s title.
It was a lot of fun to be inside the temple. They wanted us to stay and eat but we pleaded busyness and so they dispensed some rice-cake sweets to us and sent us on our way.
Then we walked to Itaewon.
We had lunch at a Spanish restaurant called “Spain Club.” It was pretty good – we had some tapas.
Itaewon is, among many other things, Seoul’s (and Korea’s) only predominantly Muslim neighborhood – and it being Friday (Muslim sabbath) combined with it being a holiday (Buddha’s Birthday) meant that everyone was out in force. The mosque was packed with prayer-goers at a giant outdoor picnic. Here’s a picture of the entrance and the inside of the courtyard area.
From Itaewon, we walked along the east side of the Yongsan U.S. Army base and on up the south side of 남산 [nam-san], where the iconic Seoul Tower is located. I’ve taken many pictures at Namsan before so I didn’t take any this time.
At the top of Namsan we looked in various different directions and then we went down the north side of the mountain into downtown. We walked through Myeongdong. It was so crowded that it was like being at a rock concert but instead of music it was Chinese and Japanese tourists absorbed in a consumerist frenzy (Myeongdong is a popular fashion shopping area). Finally we made it to Cheonggyecheon, the restored stream that flows eastward through downtown Seoul.
Then we walked to 인사동 [insa-dong] where I bought some 보이차 [bo-i-cha = puer tea] I had been wanting – I have it in tea bags but I wanted the kind that I could make in a pot. Then we went over to the 조계사 [jogye-sa] temple which, despite its understatedness, I consider to be the St Peter’s Basilica of Korean Buddhism – it’s the administrative heart of the Jogye Order which is the predominant zen (chan / mahayana) style branch of Korean Buddhism.
Then we went to find my favorite vegetarian restaurant and on a wrong turning we met some cats on a rooftop. They watched us.
Finally we ate dinner at the restaurant. I had sesame noodle soup.
It was a pretty good Buddha’s Birthday hike. Now my feet are tired.
Caveat: Paper Lanterns
I went to Seoul today and walked a lot. I met a friend who hadn’t ever been to Seoul and showed Seoul the way I would show it – by walking across it. We walked from Gangnam in the south, across the river, through Itaewon up to the top of Namsan, then down into downtown and around downtown.
I’ll post more about it later.
Meanwhile, it was Buddha’s Birthday, today, so I took some pictures here and there.
Caveat: Walking Around Ganghwa Island
Ganghwa Island is a very historical place. It's a large island approximately straight west from Seoul and also straight west from Ilsan, but there's not really any direct route there from Ilsan. I took a zig-zaggy bus over there with my friend Peter, and we walked a 22 km route down the island from the bus terminal in the main town at the northern end all the way to a very historic temple complex called Jeondeungsa. It had a lot of tourists. We saw a lot of rice being harvested. We stopped at a hole-in-the-wall called "Mexican Pizza Chicken" and had some chicken (they didn't have pizza, oddly) that didn't seem very Mexican. But it wasn't bad. Random strangers handed us fruit and nuts. Some of this, we ate. It was a good day, but now I'm very tired. Here are many pictures, starting with a googlemap of the route, in context west of Goyang (Ilsan – where I live) and Bucheon (where Peter lives).
So, without a detailed travelogue – perhaps just a random comment here or there – here are some pictures, in chronological order.
A farm house with a mushroom-shaped roof.
A cute dog in front of a very western style house.
A rice-harvesting machine, cutting rice.
A country lane.
Fall colors.
A sign to a tomb of Leegyubo.
A farm house with a strange but interesting design.
Exploring Lee Gyu-bo's tomb site.
Caveat: I find dumptrucks exciting. Because… of the blog name, y'know?
Mexican Chicken!
Caveat: Camp Edwards and 법륜사
I went on a really long, multi-modal journey today. I walked to Daehwa station and met my friend Peter who works in Bucheon. We walked (yes, walked) together to Geumchon (about 15 km), to make a visit with the old demons at Camp Edwards – the US Army base in Paju where I was stationed in 1990-1991. Camp Edwards no longer exists, having been abandoned by the US Army in the late 1990s, I think. In the last year or so, the old, decrepit buildings have been torn down – the place is now just a vacant lot and in a few more years it will likely be a housing development.
After that, we caught a number 92 bus to a town called Jeokseong (적성면), which is near the northern tip of Paju (Paju being the northwesternmost city/county in South Korea, up against the DMZ at Panmunjeom. From Jeokseong we walked up a winding mountain highway to a monument to British soldiers fallen in the Korean war, where we had a picnic lunch, and then we walked a few kilometers more to 법륜사 (Beopryun temple), on the flank of Gamak mountain. We had been intending to hike up the mountain, but my legs were feeling sore already from the walk to Geumchon, and so I wimped out. We hung out at the temple for a while and then walked back down to the highway and caught a number 25 bus to Yangju, where we got on the number 1 subway line.
We went south into Seoul and in the Russian neighborhood near Dongdaemun we went to a Russian restaurant for dinner – I had borsht (which was good) and a chicken thing called “a la Moscow” that was not-so-good. But it was interesting, anyway. Then parted ways with my friend Peter, and I took the subway home. I was tired.
Here are some pictures.
Peter saw a cloud, near the Unjeong Sindosi (New City), on the way to Geumchon. He said, uncharacteristically, “That looks like an American cloud.” I laughed, as I wasn’t sure what a specifically American cloud might look like.
A few kilometers farther on, beyond the Sindosi, we found a very run-down, rural looking area, and this very un-Korean-looking truck on a junky-looking farm. It had a rather Appalachian feel.
A mere hundred yards from the Camp Edwards front gate, I saw this contrast of an old-style Korean house with a modern school building behind it.
At the front gate for Camp Edwards (now unlabeled and unguarded – the military-related nature of the location has been erased by history, which keeps on happening), I mimed standing at the non-existent guard shack showing my ID to exit the base. I lived here for a year in 1991, and I have many vivid memories. But the barracks buildings and shops are torn down now.
At the north end of Camp Edwards, I took this picture of the pastoral scene.
After a 45 minute bus ride, this is the quaint town of Jeokseong.
And the town has one of those unfulfilling Korean rivers in it.
A few kilometers south of town, there is the “Gloster [Gloucester] Valley Battle Monument.” The battle was in 1951, during the Korean war. Many British soldiers died against the Chinese. There were many Koreans here having a Chuseok Sunday picnic. I don’t know why – it was a pretty good location for a picnic, I guess.
After our own picnic lunch, we continued walking down the highway (well, up the highway, climbing higher into the mountains but southward. We saw chicken and some geese at a vacant lot. I don’t know what they were doing there – no one was around, there was no house or farm. Peter commented that it was the world’s worst petting zoo.
We finally arrived at the temple, after a hard slog up a very steep road.
One of my favorite aspects of the typical Korean temple is the panel paintings on the outside walls of the buildings. I took some pictures of these.
I looked in the temple door. No one was there. The place was mostly deserted, except for a few hikers passing through. The monks had better things to be off doing on a Chuseok Sunday – Chuseok is not, per se, a Buddhist-related holiday – it’s connected, rather, with Confucian ancestor-rites and what you might call Korean native religion. I suspect Chuseok weekend is a slow one for the monks, and many of them go visit relatives or suchlike.
The view down the valley from the temple was pretty spectacular.
We walked down to the main road, partly along a little stream.
After the bus ride to Yangju, the train ride into Seoul at sunset induced me to take a few blurry pictures from the train.
Borsht!
Caveat: Smogolandia
Dateline: Los Angeles
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I arrived in L.A. and it was hot and smoggy and trafficky. I had many reminders as to why I don't want to live here, anymore, despite some sentimental attachment to many places and people here.
I met my step-mom Wendy (well, ex-step-mom – it's complicated, right?) for dinner. We went to her favorite place near her Culver City property, called La Dijonaise (I think that's spelled wrong). I had crêpes florentine (spinach and cheese) and we talked for a long time. I get along very well with Wendy – she may be my "easiest-to-get-along-with" relative – I never feel I have to compromise my true character or personality or interests with her.
Caveat: Blythely Driving
Dateline: Blythe, California
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I said goodbye to my sister, her husband and my two nephews this morning. Here's a really bad picture we decided to try to take with me and the boys on the couch.
I look rather shocked, but I guess that's just how it came out. The boys are photogenic enough – Dylan is screaming for the camera, and Jameson looks happy.
Then I set out to drive back across the desert. Here's the desert, at a rest area.
And here is a rather poor effort at a self-portrait with the same desert backdrop. It was about 115 F.
I stopped in Blythe, at the Arizona-California border, for lunch.
Caveat: $77.77
Dateline: Upland, California & I-10 to Phoenix
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I took off to drive to Phoenix, today. I stopped for gas as the tank was nearing empty. It's a big truck. It cost me $77.77 to fill it. That seems like a lot – compared to $30 tanks in Minnesota with the rental car. But then I reflected that the same tank would cost, hmm, maybe ₩170,000 to fill in Korea, which is about $150, or a bit less.
Still, it's a lot. But I'm going to visit my sister.
Here's a view of San Jacinto Mountain (I think that's it) near Palm Springs at a rest area off the 10.
Lastly, not in chronological order, a view from my dad's front porch, last night, at twilight.
Caveat: A Churchy Library
Dateline: Whitewater, Wisconsin.
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After building the lego tower, we went to a state park archeological site called Aztalan, near here. I'll write something more extensive about that, later – it was pretty interesting.
Then we drove to a town called Lake Mills for dinner. It's a cute town. We went to a kind of hippyish place where I had a humus wrap that wasn't bad – it was a bit like something you'd find in Arcata. We went walking in a cute town square park area, and I saw an attractive older public library. Five year-old Henry was at my side, and as I went to take a picture of it, he said that he thought it was a nice-looking church.
"It's not a church," I explained. "It's a library."
Henry doesn't like being wrong. But he was very good-natured. "Oh my gosh!" he exclaimed. "That sure is a churchy library!"
Caveat: 3300
Everytime I leave Korea from Ilsan, I think, "I should make a video of this airport trip." Not sure why I believe that would be interesting.
So this time, last Saturday, I made the video.
It's not really that interesting. But, there it is, such as it is. I call it 3300 because that's the route number of the bus from Ilsan to the airport.
Caveat: Nietzsche and the obligatory driveway photo
Dateline: Eagan, Minnesota (about 9 am, Sunday, July 29)
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I was reading Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals before I left Ilsan yesterday: killing some time with one of the great time-killers of all time. In the Third Essay, Section 6, I found the following quote, which I felt compelled to write down immediately in my notebook.
Kant, like all philosophers, instead of envisaging the aesthetic problem from the point of view of the artist (the creator), considered art and the beautiful purely from that of the "spectator," and unconsciously introduced the "spectator" into the concept "beautiful." It would not have been so bad if this "spectator" had at least been sufficiently familiar to the philosophers of beauty – namely, as a great personal fact and experience, as an abundance of vivid authentic experiences, desires, surprises, and delights in the realm of the beautiful! But I fear that the reverse has always been the case; and so they have offered us, from the beginning, definitions in which, as in Kant's famous definition of the beautiful, a lack of any refined first-hand experience reposes in the shape of a fat worm of error. "That is beautiful," said Kant, "which gives us pleasure without interest." Without interest! Compare with this definition one framed by a genuine "spectator" and artist – Stendhal, who once called the beautiful une promesse de bonheur. At any rate he rejected and repudiated the one point about the aesthetic condition which Kant had stressed: le désintéressement. Who is right, Kant or Stendhal?
I've never been much of a fan of Stendhal – I never have successfully read one of his novels. But I found the above insight very interesting. I have always felt that aesthetics is central to my understanding of the world, and Neitzsche's point about seeing art and beauty from the point of view of a creator and not just a consumer seems very important. I'll think about it some more and report back later, maybe.
Meanwhile, it was a drizzly rain at dawn in Dakota County, here.
I took a rather unaesthetic picture of my rental car, a Ford with Missouri plates, in my friend's driveway, and I thought, why am I always taking [broken link! FIXME] pictures of [broken link! FIXME] cars in my friend's driveway? I think it has to do with this view from my friend's front porch as being a sort of "first real confirmation that, OMG, I'm in suburban North America again" – a snapshot of the culture-shock moment.
Caveat: 인천공항
Dateline: Incheon International Aiport
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Free wifi has become increasingly rare as the technology has matured. It is definitely true that Korea is the land of nearly complete wifi coverage – it’s available on subways, buses, in parks and everywhere. But… the issue is that more and more, you have to be signed up for one of the big telecom’s data plans to avail yourself of it. I’m not. Because I still don’t have a smart phone – I have a dumb phone – dumbest phone imaginable. It doesn’t even have a dictionary.
OK. But here at the airport, I find a lingering bastion of free wifi. So. Hello from the airport.
My journey begins. I’m always amazed at the ease with which one can navigate Korean security and immigration. I know it will be much less pleasant on the LA end. See you soon.
Caveat: The Hill and The Mall
Yesterday I went with Curt to go on a small hike up a mountain (well, really just a hill). His daughter came along, who's just entering 4th grade. The mountain we chose is called 심학산 [simhaksan]. It has a view of North Korea, like many mountains around here – it was hazy and not very distinct but I'm always very aware of it – I guess it's just my geographical interest kicking in.
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After the mountain we went to a brand new giant mall and had dinner and bought his little one-year-old a Pororo-branded toy. It was fun. Here are some pictures. I didn't get a picture of the boy with the toy. I should have.
This is near the top of the mountain.
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Curt and I.
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A view southeast, toward Ilsan. Somewhere near the center of that vast cluster of buildings is my apartment and workplace.
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Here I am looking dazed with the community known as Geumchon hidden directly behind me. Geumchon is important because it's where I lived in 1991 when I was in Korea, as a soldier in the US Army.
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And here's the striking view looking North – I've added some useful labels to this picture – you can click the picture to enlarge it.
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Anywhere in Northern Gyeonggi Province, if you go hiking on the hills and mountains, you will run across military structures – fox-holes, fortified hill-tops, bunkers and concrete tank traps and hidden installations. Here's a covered "tank-parking-space" amid the trees on the side of the mountain.
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Curt's daughter (and my sometime student at Karma, too), looking focused and tired on her way down the mountain. She was angry because Curt had promised a snack at the top of the mountain and he'd forgotten, and she failed to complain about it. We had a snack when we got back down to the bottom.
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Here's a turtle-based monument seen along the trail.
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At the mall.
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Lurking in the dusky haze beyond the freeway interchange, there lies the Han River Estuary and the point of North Korea. I wonder what the Northerners think, watching this massive monument to blatant brand-name consumerism through their high-powered binoculars.
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Caveat: The Story About The Time I Got Shot At While I Was Riding A Horse
I often tell slightly edited but mostly truthful stories from my life to my students, as a kind of reward at the end of a good class. I've had an interesting life, and so some of the stories are pretty remarkable, I suppose. One of the ones the students seem to most enjoy is The Story About The Time I Got Shot At While I Was Riding A Horse.
I really did get shot at – but the bullet missed. Here is a slightly less-edited version of the story.
After I quit my job in Mexico City in January of 1987, I went to visit a friend of mine named Jon who was living at that time in Morelia, in Michoacan state, about 8 hours by bus west of Mexico City. Jon was actually quite a bit older than me, but he sort of treated me as a younger brother. So we hung out for a while in Morelia, when he made an outrageous proposal. Well, actually, he made many outrageous proposals, but this is one I assented to, and this was it: we should buy some horses and travel around the mountains of Michoacan by horseback for a few months.
We did that. We bought horses and some low-tech camping gear, and we played cowboys in the mountains. We met many Mexicans, and even native Americans (in that part of Michoacan, they were P'urep'echa indians, known sometimes as Tarasco). We visited villages which were not connected to civilization by automobile. We found scorpions in our shoes and drank raw eggs mixed with coca-cola, which seemed to be a sort of local delicacy.
We met a tribe of American and Mexican hippies living on a farm in a town called Ihuatzio, and while my friend Jon flirted with resuming a previously defeated drug habit, I read back issues of Co-Evolution quarterly and Mexican comic books about Condorito and a battered copy of El Poema de Mio Cid, which conveniently had the 12th century Spanish and modern Spanish translations on facing pages.
After some time in Ihuatzio, we went around the Lago Patzcuaro to a town which was called, if I recall correctly, Santa Fulana de Tal, or something in that vein. Now, I should first explain, that my friend Jon had acquired a puppy. It was a husky, dirty white in coloration, which Jon, in his infinite naivite, dubbed "Negrita." Negrita, unfortunately, although funny in a punny sort of way for a white dog, is a very bad idea for a name for your dog, becaues "negrita" is a way to call the attention of a woman of low-repute, in that part of Mexico: "Ey, negrita, negrita!" means something like "Hey, bitch," or "Hey, baby." That kind of thing.
So in this village named Santa Fulana de Tal, Negrita the dog ran off, and Jon, in his infinite naivite, began yelling at the top of his voice, "Negrita, negrita!"
Let's just say, this was a bad idea.
Several of the women on the street appeared alarmed. It was a conservative village, where people came through on horseback frequently enough, but where gringos on horseback yelling "negrita" after their dogs where perhaps less well-known. One of the women who were inadvertently being offended by Jon's yelling (and maybe I was yelling the name too, honestly, though I should have known better – my Spanish was better than Jon's) had a husband or father who overheard this yelling, and this man decided to take offense.
Unfortunately, he was drunk.
Unfortunately, he had a gun, and so he decided to begin shooting at us.
Fortunately, he was drunk, so his aim was really terrible. He hit my shoe. He hit Jon's foot, with a graze. He was shooting low. For all I know, he hit a horse, though we found no wound on them later. Jon's horse ditched him, leaving Jon sprawled on the cobblestone. My horse ran like the dickens, but I held on tightly. Several kilometers later, my horse stopped.
When Jon finally caught up to me, later, he blamed me for abandoning him. I said it was the horse's fault, and I was just along for the ride. I blamed him for so stupidly naming the dog. Jon said I was saying the dog's name too, and if I knew the dog's name was offensive, why didn't I say anything. I said I had said something, but that Jon was too drug-addled to pay attention at that time. Etc.
Our friendship effectively ended, that day. I ceded ownership of the horse to Jon, forfeiting my investment. I took a bus back to Mexico City. My passport was stolen later that week. It was a bad week. By the end of the month, I was back in Minneapolis. But it was a grand conclusion to my year-and-a-half in Mexico.
What I'm listening to right now.
Mexican Institute of Sound, "Mi negra a bailal."
Caveat: Trips Up North
[broken link! FIXME] This is reminiscence (which is to say, I don't mean a trip up to North Korea, a half-hour drive from here).
Lately, for some reason, I keep thinking of camping trips to northern Minnesota. It was an old, old tradition among my certain circle of friends, and camping trips to northern Minnesota and Upper Michigan were also a significant aspect of Michelle's and my relationship.
In a related vein, I ran across a very old and somewhat embarrassing picture of me, possibly from the late 1980's or early 90's, standing in a campfire somewhere close to Hibbing, I would guess. It's pretty funny.
Why do I post these things? Let's just call it the spirit of full disclosure…
So, sometimes when we drove to Hibbing or Duluth or the UP, we'd stop and camp at Banning State Park, which is just off I35, pert' near Sandstone, along the kettle river.
What I'm listening to right now (nice segue, huh?).
Pert Near Sandstone, "Save Me." Minnesota bluegrass. An interesting genre.
Caveat: I took the #200 bus to North Korea
Well… within 2 miles of it. And I was on a hill, so I could see North Korea easily.
Lots of people know that my Korean "hometown" of Ilsan is quite close to North Korea – the northwest suburbs of Seoul have burgeoned over the decades to the point that they basically touch the DMZ in some places. So the North Korean border is about 15 km from my apartment in a line pointing northwest, and it's reachable on the local bus system.
My friend Peter came to visit because today is a holiday (more on that in a later post, maybe). We took the #200 bus that stops a few blocks from my apartment building toward Gyoha, and after about 40 minutes we got off at 통일공원 (Unification Park), a neighborhood on a point of land that is the spot where the Imjin River joins the Han River and the opposite bank is in North Korea.
There's a museum and "observatory" there (통일전망대), where you can look through coin operated binoculars and watch the socialists going about their difficult lives in their cozy concrete burghs.
I find these "flexion points" of our global civilization fascinating. It's an uncrossable border, demarcated by barbed wire fences and fox holes and guard towers and, probably, land mines and hidden weapons caches, too. This is not the sort of border one crosses for an afternoon. But it's eerie how close it is – a local bus ride from my home is an utterly alien world, two miles distant across a river.
We walked around a lot, because finding the entrance to the observatory/museum area turned out to be a bit challenging. We walked on some trails in the woods, and there were foxholes and concrete and brick barricades snaking through the hillsides as if randomly. I speculated that, for all I knew, I'd dug one of those foxholes myself, 20 years ago, while on some field-exercise or another as part of my infantry support company of mechanics, as part of the US Army stationed in Paju County along the DMZ. I didn't have a clear recollection of all the various places where we encamped and trained and made foxholes and pretended to battle insiduous communists. I wasn't marking them on a map – I suspected that would have made my commanding officer suspicious.
Here are some pictures.
Here's the #200 bus, that was very crowded because of the holiday. A woman had vomited in the aisle behind us, and we missed our stop and got off at the next one and walked back, which is partly why we got turned around as far as finding the proper entrance to the place.
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We saw golden fields of rice.
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We walked down a country lane in search of the observatory.
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We saw a wealthy-person's brand new house constructed in a traditional style.
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We saw a statue of a man pontificating.
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We saw treeless hills of North Korea.
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We looked down the Han River westward towards its mouth. Right bank (north) is North Korea, and the Left Bank (south) is South Korea. Because of how the river snakes, jogging north, then south, then north again, you are seeing layers of South and North. The most distant mountains are Ganghwa Island, which is South Korean, but the mid-ground jut of land from the right (the interestingly denuded hills) is North Korea.
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We looked back down the Han River southeast, toward Seoul and Ilsan. I live within the scope of this picture, somewhere (Ilsan is the very urban skyline area to the right in the panorama, disappearing behind the little hill).
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We posed with North Korea in the background.
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We saw a mock-up of a North Korean class room in the museum (note pictures of Kim Il-seong and Kim Jong-il in upper right above blackboard).
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We saw a man sleeping in the grass beside the road.
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We received important advice from a trash receptacle.
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