caveat: back bonking

although my korean remains lousy, in other ways i am fully become ajeossi.

koreans use various wooden and plastic doohickeys
to massage their own backs when they cant get someone else to help, generally with a high degree of percussion.

grace brought me the wooden morningstar thing (photo on my windowsill, below) last night, and this morning i dutifully stood beside my bed and bonked my back, like a real ajeossi. it worked ok.

koreans are firm believers in curative powers of back bonking – they would organize gangs of orderlies in the icu and go around bonking all the patients every few hours. i dont doubt that human touch can be curative, and well placed massage too, but im slightly sceptical of percussion on the back as curative per se.