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Week 22 (July 24th to July 30th) |
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Monday July 25th, In honor of our second last day of teaching before vacation, we had a staff dinner tonight, which ended up being kind of disastrous for me. We went for samgyetang, which is a small chicken stuffed with rice and ginseng in broth. I had samgyetang the first day that I came to Korea and it came with peanuts all over it, so I was kind of nervous, but when I got to the restaurant, they had ordered one especially for me without peanuts. Unfortunately, most Koreans don't understand the severity of peanut allergies. I ate a
few bites, and then found peanuts floating around in my soup. I stopped eating, but it was already too late. While I didn't actually consume any peanuts, the small bit of food that I had eaten had come into contact, and I started to have an allergic reaction in
the restaurant. I was really embarrassed about telling the wait staff, but Mrs. Gu (our school's cook) was freaking out at them, and made them bring me another dish, which I couldn't eat anyway, cause I was too sick. My face started to swell up, and my lips got huge, and all the Koreans were fussing over me. All I wanted to do was get out of there, but I was too embarrassed to just leave. Finally, Jason explained to them that I had to go home, and took me home in a cab. It took almost 24 hours for my face to stop swelling, and I stayed pretty queasy for most of the next day. The whole experience was so humiliating that I almost never want to eat in a restaurant again! I can try my hardest to be careful, but if you can't trust the people in the kitchen, then I don't know where I can eat.
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Wednesday July 27th, It's Japan Day! I left my apartment at 8am this morning to catch a train to Busan. I was really nervous for some reason. I'm a really nervous traveller, as I'm beginning to realize. Airports and train stations scare because I always think that I'll get lost or end up on the wrong train, or miss my flight, or lose my baggage or something. Fortunately, the train ride and the plane ride from Busan to Tokyo were very smooth. My next big hurdle was getting from the airport to the hostel to meet Stephanie (my old
Starbucks co-worker). I had to take a Japan Rail train to Tokyo Station, then the subway to Ueno Station, then change subways for Asakusa. When I saw how packed the subway was, I freaked out. I can't believe that they can fit so many people in one space,
and people just kept on pushing their way on. I was terrified! Then I couldn't find the right subway line to change onto, until this nice Japanese boy offered to help me, and took my suitcase and led me right to the subway. Finally, I got to the hostel and met Steph. It was so good to see someone from home!! We walked around our neighbourhood for awhile, looking for dinner and coffee, and amazingly, we accidently stumbled into one of the most famous temples in Tokyo. It's beautiful at night, very quiet and peaceful. My first impressions of Japan: it looks very Western. There were times today when I felt like I was in Toronto and not Asia. It seems incredibly clean and
organized, which is incredible considering how many people there are jammed into Tokyo. Plus, people don't stare at me as much here (or rather, they hide it better than Koreans do!). I'm so excited to be here! I do seem to have caught a little cold, so I'm pretty sniffly and tired, but I'm going to fight through it--we've got a lot of things to see over the next week!
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Thursday July 28th, Early this morning we left for Kyoto. I had had a hard time lugging my suitcase up and down the millions of stairs in the Tokyo subway the night before, so we decided to take a taxi to Tokyo Station. We will never take a taxi again-- they start at about $6 CAD! The whole ride set us back $20. Anyway, the Japan Rail system is incredibly easy and convenient, and we were in Kyoto by 1:30 pm, checked into our hostel by 2pm and finished lunch by 3pm. We got one temple in today, a beautiful one called Kyomizu-Dera Temple. It's kind of up in the hills, so it had an incredible view of Kyoto. There was also a really beautiful pagoda, and some really cool statues. It was pretty crowded with tourists and it was very very hot, but it was definitly worth it. On the way to the temple, there's a street lined with vendors selling souvenirs like fans, wooden umbrellas, kimonos, etc. Most of them are overpriced and geared towards tourists, but I did buy a really pretty fan for my mom. What stunned me was the contrast between the temple and the street leading to it and the city part of Kyoto-- it's like two completely different worlds. After the temple, we headed to the Gion District, which is the main geisha district in Kyoto. Again the contrast between modern shopping buildings and Western chains with the old traditional streets lined with teahouses and paper lanterns is incredible. Japan is full of contradictions! Steph and I managed to get tickets to see an traditional performance of the goto harp (a long instrument played by two people on the floor), a geisha dance, and a puppet play. The dress of the geishas is really interesting. They almost seem like live dolls, like they're not real even though they're
standing right in front of you. We did see some geishas on the street, and we really wanted to stop them and take pictures, but they all looked like they were in a hurry. We were pretty wiped out after a long day of walking around in the heat, so we headed back to the hostel pretty early to meet our roommates and crash early for the night. I was expecting living in a hostel dorm to be really fun, and I figured we'd meet a lot of people to go out with or sight-see with. I was wrong apparently-- none of the girls were overly friendly,
and they were all in bed by 11pm.
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Friday July 29th, We got up early today to hit two temples and a castle.The thing with most of these sites is that they are only open from 9-5, so we had to be very strategic with our planning. First stop: Toji Temple. This temple was built in the 8th century. I was absolutely in love with it. It's made up of dusty old wood that is just so charming, and it's incredible to think that these structures have withstood earthquakes and bombs and everything else that time threw its way. The intricacies of the architecture are amazing. One of the most incredible things about the temple was that no one was there! It was incredibly quiet and peaceful, despite the fact that there are stunning bronze Buddha and protector statues that are stored in the Main Hall. These statues are a national treasure, and tourists are forbidden from taking pictures. Next stop: Nijo Castle. This castle has floors that are built to squeak like nightingales whenever someone walks, in order to scare off intruders. I can't believe that the floors still work all these years later! Also, Nijo stores some of the best artwork from the Kano brothers. Most of it is done on paper, so it's quite amazing that they too have stood the
test of time. Our final stop for the day: the Golden Pavilion. While the pavilion itself was really stunning (it's covered in gold), we weren't allowed to actually go into any of the buildings, so I was kind of disappointed with this temple. By this point, we were both exhausted and incredibly hot and sweaty, so we went back to the hostel to crash for a little bit before heading over to Gion District
for more geisha hunting, and to look for some night life. We wandered down a lot of alleys and what not, and did see some more geisha, and we finally settled into a really cool bar with a lot of modern art on the walls, and a great (and affordable) cocktail list. However, Steph and I were both exhausted, so we bailed pretty early and hung out at the hostel for a bit before going to bed. What I noticed today is that Japanese people are incredibly friendly, but without being in your face. My very first impression was that they were kind of
cold, but I was so wrong about that! They are warm and kind, but they also know when to give you space. Plus, Japan is so tourist-friendly! Kyoto has special bus maps for tourists that show you what bus to take to see all the sights, and there's a lot of English
signage as well. Kyoto has been gorgeous!
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Saturday July 30th, Back to Tokyo today. We got an early train to book it back to Tokyo just in time to see one or two sights
today, and experience some Tokyo nightlife! We made it into Tokyo by 1:30, and checked into our hotel. This time, our accomodations wasn't actually a hostel, it was a ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese inn. We had a cozy room that was covered with tatami mats, with mattresses to roll out for sleeping and a low table for eating. This inn is quite lovely, clean and comfortable; plus it's nice to have our own bathroom for once! For the afternoon we headed back over to Senso-ji Temple (the one we saw at nighttime on my first night). It was insane. There were people everywhere. I can't even describe the numbers that I saw, because words can't effectively sum up what we saw. Leading up to the temple, there's a covered street filled with vendors, and it took us almost an hour just to walk
through the street (at night, it took about 2 minutes). Normally I would have felt really claustrophobic, but somehow the huge throngs of people felt appropriate and like that's how it's supposed to be. I think the insane crowd was more of the experience in this case than the temple. I think that there was some kind of religious festival going on today, because not only was the temple packed beyond
belief, the streets of Asakusa were filled with more people than I've ever seen in my entire life. We were quite literally stuck in a human traffic jam. It was unlike anything that either of us have ever experienced. For the evening, we headed over to Shibuya, which is
one of the party districts in Tokyo. Another surreal city experience: we got lost in the subway station and ended up a couple floors above ground level, overlooking the main intersection. The streets here have diagonal crosswalks, so when the "walk" light
flashes, the street gets so full of people, you can't actually see the road. I have never seen anything like it before! We wandered around the streets for a long time, just checking out clubs and trying to find a music club in particular, but we didn't want to jut
walk in, because cover charges are usually about $40, so when you pick a club, you have to make sure that's where you really want to be! There's no club-hopping here . . .Once again, I was struck by the contrasts in Japan when we stumbled across this beautiful little shrine sandwiched between 2 bars. You just don't see stuff like that in North America! We finally settled down at a bar/cafe that had no cover charge, but had a jazz quartet playing. The singer was pretty awful, but the rest of the band was really solid, especially the pianist. I really wanted to talk to them about where to see good jazz in Tokyo, but I was too nervous because I was worried that they
wouldn't speak English. Fortunately, they took care of that for me. I got up to go to the bathroom, and the singer and pianist stopped me on the way (There are definite advantages to being the only white person in the room--standing out like a sore thumb isn't always a bad thing!) They wanted me to come to their gig tomorrow night, and maybe even sing with them a little, so I got their email addresses and phone numbers and what not, and maybe I'll sing tomorrow!
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