Tsuru tsuru - Drifting

10/13/2011

After a long weekend in Korea, I find myself sitting at work this rainy, gloomy Thursday tired and sore but in slightly better spirits than when I left. Despite how excited I was to go, I can’t honestly say the trip was amazing. There were certainly wonderful parts of it – climbing to the top of a mountain, eating delicious food, being in the company of friends – but I am not left with the satisfied, refreshed feeling I was hoping for.

All of us in Amaterasu's cave

Let me reflect on my experiences since my last entry. On October 1st, I spent the day running and relaxing, knowing it would be the first and last day I could do so for a while. The next day, Sunday, I went with B and some Japanese friends and we went on a road trip to Takachiho town in Miyazaki prefecture. It is a historically famous place because it is said this is the area where much of Japanese folklore and myth took place.

Supposedly, the sun goddess and one of her brothers had an argument over some sheep and pillaging he had done and she hid away in a cave for shame. When she hid, she took the sun with her and the other gods tried desperately to lure her out of the cave. In the end they were successful and the cave where she hid is now a revered shrine in Takachiho town. It is actually quite a big cave and I found it difficult to imagine that a rock had slid into place over the entrance, but the history was there none the less and the area was incredibly beautiful.

The famous Takachiho gorge

The visit was made better by the fact that my memory of the history behind the place did not fail me. The drive itself took about 3 hours and among the things we talked about, I told the creation myth story to B. I had studied the Japanese creation myth in one of my literature classes in college and was fascinated by it so I decided to do my final presentation on the subject. I recalled the story itself as I explained it to B and came to find when I had finished that I could remember almost all of it. My Japanese friends also informed me that even they had been unaware of or had forgotten many of the details of the myth so it had served as a refresher to them too. Once at the shrine we wanted to see a reserved area so we asked a priest to give us a short tour. He told the story behind the shrine to us and I was blown away because for once I was right! Maybe it is bad to be so pleased with yourself but for those of you who know me, I always carry a bit too much confidence that my answer is incorrect, because it usually is, so it was nice to have it work the other way.

Once we finished the shrine and the cave we drove about 10 miles to the other side of Takachiho where there is a famous gorge. This area of Miyamoto prefecture has a very unique topography. Most of the people and roads are located up in the mountains because there is little, if any, flat land to be found in the region. Thus, at the bottom of the mountains, though in most places you are unable to see it, there is a big river that runs through the region. The gorge is a slightly more slow moving part of this labyrinth of rivers and it is where many beautiful waterfalls combine into a swirling pool of light blue water and eroded rocks. Pretty difficult to describe in words but I took plenty of pictures so flip through the attached slideshow. There are also boats that you can ride up the river but because of the recent typhoons and heavy rains, the river was running to hard and fast for them to be in operation. Bummer. We did, however, travel up the back way through a short mountain route to reach the shrine adjacent to the gorge. It was before lunch so everyone got a little cranky but it was nice at the top and the trees were so enormous that the four of us together could not wrap our arms around them. They are also ancient.

The gang (minus photographer)

On the trip back to Oita we stopped off at the beach to dip our feet in the water and enjoy more fresh air. I say stopped off but it was about 2 hours out of the way. No regrets though because I was in good company and the view was albeit a little cloudy but spectacular nonetheless and I got to splash around in the water as far as my capris would allow. We travelled back to Kitsuki a little wet and tired but well relaxed and in good spirits.

Although it was a great way to start the week, it did not allow me much sleep and the week was long and busy for me. Friday the 7^th I flew to Seoul shortly after a full week of work and between the train, flight and bus to meet my friend in the southern part of Korea, it took me until 4 in the morning on Saturday to get settled. I actually missed the last bus from the airport but luckily another group of JETs from Oita (coincidence?) were at the airport with a family member who was willing to drive me to the bus terminal. Once in Gwangju (the southern one), my friend and I planned to go mountain climbing on Saturday so we slept for a few hours and headed out around 11 to take the hour long bus to the mountain. The limited sleep and long bus ride were so worth it though because the mountain was amazing. It was 809m tall, making it perhaps the tallest mountain I have trekked (just confirmed that the only other mountain I have climbed was Itsukushima and it is only 535m) and the route included a very scenic hike through the rocky peaks of neighboring mountains on the way down. Overall the hike took about 4 hours (which my friend said is her fastest time up it so far) over the 7km route and I loved every minute of it. It was not always easy going as some places required going hand and foot up rocky inclines while other times there were ropes and metal footholds carved into the rocks which you had to use, but overall the hike was not terrible. And to reward us for the trip, the bottom of the mountain boasted a spectacular Buddhist temple done up in the Korean style.

The mountain I climbed in Korea

Japanese temples tend to be red, brown and white and I had grown accustomed to the aesthetic beauty of those temples – so much so that I seem to find Kinkakuji (the golden temple) a bit boisterous. Korea, however, embraces the colors in a slightly more subdued Indian style. They use lots of blues and greens and the walls of the temples are covered in images of happy Buddha and lesser gods. The contrast between those and Japanese temples is pretty stark (see below) but they both have their own beauty.


That evening my friend decided to take me out for her second favorite Korean pastime, behind climbing. The jimjilbang (Korean bathhouse). We took the elevator up to the 4^th floor in a hotel style building and once we exited, paid the entrance fee and were given a set of towels and orange clothes starkly resembling prison ensembles. One we passed through a set of doors I felt a little more comfortable because everyone was getting undressed around a few rows of lockers in much the same way the Japanese do. My friend asked me if I wanted the full experience and when I said yes, she made me set aside about $17 worth of won while we grabbed shampoo, soap, bath towels and face wash for the bath room. Like the Japanese onsen, this was a really big room filled with a large selection of pools in varying colors, sizes and temperatures. The water was not the sulfur water I was used to, and the people talked a lot more loudly and took more time as well, but overall it was not very different than my previous experiences.

Cool bridge on the mountain

We made it!

The difference came when my friend brought me to a series of tables where an older woman in underwear was scrubbing a customer’s back. We placed our money on the table with our locker keys so she would be able to call us and went about relaxing our sore muscles in the various baths. When it was time for the scrub, I have to admit I was a little nervous. My friend warned me that they remove several layers of the upper epidermis and that watching that much skin slide off could be a little mentally disturbing. I braced my mind and lay down to be scrubbed. Overall, the process was pretty satisfying and like C said, I felt as smooth as a baby afterwards.
The pile of skin that had accumulated was actually a little satisfying because I once heard on a discovery channel documentary that there are little microscopic bugs who eat skin flakes and now they would have a feast off my body instead of on it.Hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed my skin once it was gone!

Me on top of the mountain!

After the bath we tried to meet up with C’s friends but most of them were in a food coma from the Canadian thanksgiving dinner they had partaken of, so we went off just the two of us to college bar land. Being pretty exhausted, we set up at a bar she said was pretty popular and snacked on some munchies while sipping at our drinks. We ordered an appetizer of chicken and when it arrived it was so huge we laughed rather than ate it. I could not believe the waiter thought the two of us could really eat all that and allowed us to order it! At least food is cheap in Korea, though not as cheap as alcohol. I’ll tell you, overall I drank and ate too much in this country but it hardly cost me any money. Our drinks that night consisted of two big pitchers of pineapple juice mixed with shoju (Korean whiskey and practically the only liquor mixed into drinks) and cost us less than the chicken.

The next day we decided to partake of a local folk village, the remaining of which are celebrated heritage sites in Korea, and had quite the adventure there. Well, the adventure consisted of the effort it took to get there and get away. My friend had never been there and the people who recommended it to her took a car there. Thinking we could just use the bus system, we took a bus to the nearest major city and tried to find our way from there. Yeah… we ended up splurging on a taxi and then there was an awful traffic jam. We got so frustrated with the sitting that we actually asked directions to the village and got out and walked once we got to a place where the taxi could turn around. Luckily it was a little under a mile and we arrived at the folk village just in time to be greeted with a surprise. There was a food festival going on that day, as well as a parade that we had had no idea about. While that did mean some amazing food and beverages, it also meant lots of crowds. Poor C, who had been so keen on seeing the village, got her enthusiasm crushed by the lack of authentic feel and the hordes of children and couple sets (couples who wear matching outfits).

The temple at the bottom of the mountain

After a big bottle of makkali (spelling? – Korean rice liquor), we were feeling more relaxed though and while trying to find the exit and our bus stop, we stumbled upon some kids with homemade bows and arrows. I had to have one as a souvenir so when we found a little shop/stand on the side of the path, I asked how much it was and for the bargain of 5,000won (5 dollars), I bought one. C bought one too, not wanting to miss out on my fun. While we waited for the bus we decided to try them out. We failed pretty miserably – so much so that a cute, older, drunken Korean man, with his wife in tow, came over to help teach us how to shoot them. We had been holding the arrows wrong (since there were no places to nook the cheap wooden arrows) and once he taught us the proper grip, with a combination of gesturing and hitting my hand until I got it right, we could shoot the arrows half-decently.


Well after about 20mins of playing with our new weapons the bus shows up… and won’t let us on. Turns out we were standing at the wrong bus stop. We asked him where to go and he pointed across the street. So, we walked across the street… and kept walking until we stumbled upon a brick overhang that resembled a bus stop. As there was no one around, we played some word games while we waited and we got a little less anxious as people started to gather around us. One woman even gave us fresh figs (I had actually never seen a fig before and this was definitely my first time eating one fresh)… but when the bus came, we realized we had been waiting at the wrong place. It was a retirement home bus to take all the elderly back from their outing. The driver told us to walk back to the village because although we had seen buses going in, there had been no buses leaving because we were in the wrong place.

Folk village!

Seoul station... 'nough said

The sun had mostly set by the time we got back to where we started and we found a line of people waited in an unlabelled location directly across from the bus stop where we had first lined up. When we asked everyone, we were embarrassed to find this was the bus stop and after a seemingly very long wait, the bus showed up. It was a short trip back to the terminal and we found an English speaker sitting behind us so C chatted her up while I nursed my bruised pride about getting lost and various other embarrassing things I had done getting onto the bus (dropping my bow on someone’s foot, losing my arrows under some seats, etc). From the bus terminal we started on the even longer trip back to Gwangju (this line was even longer and we had to take the third bus that came in because that is how long it took to get us through the line) on which C slept most of the way and I lost myself in thought to the sound of my neighbors ipod as he snuggled up on my shoulder in sleep.

The outside of the imperial palace... closed of course

Once we had returned we were too tired to go out and simply slept the day away. I had to get up the next morning to head out to Seoul anyway, and C had to work. There is not too much I want to say about Seoul, and since this entry is already so long that is probably a good thing. I learned that Seoul is the second densest city in the entire world. There are over 25 million people shoved into this sprawling metropolis with many more who commute in and out of the city daily. It made for a lot of confusion and discomfort on my part as I found myself instantly choked by the city air and crazy taxis. I spent a lot of time in Seoul lost, in transit and/or uncomfortable. The Korean food was finally hitting my intestines, causing me a lot of discomfort and the Korean language still eluded me. I stayed in a hotel way outside of the city with my friend’s mom (long story) and on the first night (Monday night) I went out to dinner with my friends from Oita who were staying just outside of Seoul. They also helped me buy glasses, which was awesome because I had made it my purpose while in the city to get a pair since I knew Korea made them cheap. $80 glasses later (my vision is really bad so although the frames were cheap, the lenses still cost a lot and I need them thinned), we had a nice dinner of famous Korean grilled meat (calbi) and I got back to the hotel a little before midnight, much to the hotel clerks relief. He had made me promise I would come back early so he would not have to worry about me being all alone in the big city. Nice guy.

Seoul tower

Tuesday was all about sightseeing but my friend’s mom kind of took her time, plus we had to commute for over an hour, so we ended up not getting very much time at the national history museum. Then I found the royal palace where I had really wanted to go was closed so I took some pictures from the outside then decided I wanted to go shopping. I met R in the afternoon with his mom in tow and he helped me find some souvenirs, a hiking backpack and a good dinner restaurant. We also went up the Seoul tower. It was by far the best part of my trip. Unlike the Eiffel tower and the Tokyo tower, there was not so much foot traffic up there and I was able to take my time with pictures.

Flew back early the next morning, so early I almost missed my taxi, and got back to Oita safely and early enough to still make it to badminton. Well, that’s all for now. Love.

Korea, from the plane

You can see more pictures at: Nichole's Album