Category: Travelogue

Joe’s thoughts after 24 hours in Seoul

I just got back last night from a brief quasi-business trip to Seoul. The most memorable part was getting off the plane, turning on my phone and seeing an e-mail from Adam which read, in full:

Subject: Abe resigning!
Body: YES screw that guy

That’s way better coverage than any Japanese news site, in my opinion.

Anyway, after wandering around Seoul for a day or so like a typical bemused tourist (this was my first time in Korea), here are some conclusions I have reached:

Six things that are better in Korea

  1. Street food. Festivals in Japan are good for this sort of thing, I guess, but don’t come anywhere close to Jongno at night.
  2. Toothbrushes. Japanese toothbrushes have a tiny head that might belong on an electric toothbrush but makes manual toothbrushing twice as laborious. Korea has nice, big, industrial-strength toothbrushes that don’t mess around.
  3. Mobile phone reception. My phone never lost a bar on the subway ride from the airport to downtown. Words cannot express the frustration I have when I’m riding the Tokyo metro, see an interesting item in my Gmail inbox, hear the train doors closing, frantically click to try to load the message before the train goes off into the tunnel, and end up staring at the screen for the next two minutes wondering why the train is suddenly going so damn slow.
  4. StarCraft and Counterstrike on television. Korean cable is awesome even if I can’t understand most of it.
  5. Chopsticks. Those stainless-steel Korean restaurant chopsticks are practically lethal weapons, and I get the feeling that with enough Korean chopstick training I could kill a man with my bare hands. I imagine this is part of the point, actually.
  6. Women. If we’re to use a hotness scale here, Korea has both a higher mean and a narrower standard deviation. Or, in layman’s terms, there are more hotties and the hotness is more consistent. Not to disparage Japanese women, of course—beauty is more than skin-deep, but, well, the skin is where it shows first.

Six things that are better in Japan

  1. Cleanliness. Granted, this is better in Japan than anywhere else in the world (except maybe Singapore), and Seoul is certainly not as bad as Shanghai, but Seoul still has the grubbiness of a major American or European city about it, and the air quality could use some work.
  2. Convenience stores. Korean convenience stores come close in many respects, but they’re missing something. Was it bentos? Maybe softcore porn?
  3. Manners. This is another area where Korea seems to be in a zone smack between Japan and China. In Japan, nobody bothers anybody most of the time. In China, everybody bothers everybody all the time. In Korea, shopkeepers are often pushy and homeless people occasionally rattle their coin mug in your face, but for someone used to the Japanese way of doing things, that seems like a lot. (Which just goes to show how Japan can spoil someone.)
  4. Walking. Seoul is walkable here and there, but much more spread out than Tokyo, and in the north-central area, being unable to cross the street seems more like the norm than the exception.
  5. Money. The new won notes look just like euros. The yen at least looks unique. Even if the phoenix on the back of the 10,000 yen note looks rather nightmarish, you at least have the comfort of Fukuzawa Yukichi staring down your trading partner as if thinking “I am not amused.”
  6. Trains. If you compare a map of the Seoul subway system to a map of the Tokyo subway system, the two look like equals, but that ignores the fact that (a) Tokyo’s subway lines cover a much smaller geographic area, so the stations are far more densely crammed in together, and (b) Tokyo also has scores of train lines that aren’t subways, while Seoul doesn’t have much more than the lines on the subway map. I really wanted more excuses to ride the subway around, but it always ended up being much easier to walk or hail a cab.

Anyway, those are my completely uneducated opinions at first immersion. A public “thank you” to Brendon Carr of Korea Law Blog for showing me where to get good curry, and to United Airlines for making intra-Asia mileage award tickets so darn cheap. I’ll be back one of these days…

Letter from Penang (edited)

(Edited to delete full copy-paste)

A friend who recently visited Penang noted that at the Penang Musuem, a room that described the contributions of different peoples to the island, the Japanese section read: “[…] Besides traders, women were prominent in this emerging society. Most of them were prostitutes.”

(Note: This report is unconfirmed and I myself failed to notice it during my own quick trip through the same museum)

Some United States. Stop one: New Jersey

As Joe mentioned the other day, I am back in New Jersey for the time being. I’ve just noticed how many weeks it has actually been since I’ve updated anything here, between a couple of weeks of travel, a couple of weeks of being extremely ill, a couple of weeks of playing tourguide to my mom and her boyfriend in Japan, and a couple of weeks of reading and getting graduate school related application stuff together-and topping it all off with trans-hemispheric relocation, a birthday, and various other odds and ends I have completely neglected this space here. So, while I have a few things that I want to write about, and a large number of photographs I want to post from my last several weeks in Japan (for this year anyway), in honor of my return to good old New Jersey, below are some choice quotes from a book of travel writing by the late humorist Irvin S. Cobb entitled Some United States (1926) purchased just this afternoon from the $1 shelves outside the famous Strand bookstore in The City. As the title of this post implies, today I bring you excerpts from the chapter on the great state of New Jersey.

CHAPTER XII

NEW JERSEY

Just Behind Those Billboards

After you cross by train through the tube under the North River, which is so-called because it is really the Hudson River and edges Manhattan Island on the west and bears no relation whatsoever to the northern boundaries of anything at all, and, this safely done, emerge from the tunnel mouth on the farther shore, you will see a large number of billboards. Well, New Jersey is just behind those billboards.

[…]

In billboards, New Jersey, regardless of comparative areas, leads all the states of the Union. I’m not sure but what she leads all the habitable globe. Next to the commuters, billboards constitute her most conspicuous product. The commuters come and go. In the morning they hurry away to New York of Philadelphia to earn their livings and in the evening they return to bed down for the night. Thus daily they come alternately under the head, first, of exports, and then of imports.

An orthodox New Jersey commuter is easily to be recognized in New York. He wears and imaginary string tied around a mental thumb to make him remember not to forget to call up the employment agency and notify the new cook who is going out to his place to spend two or three days with the family, possibly even staying the full week out, to meet him at the station for the 5:03; and she may recognize him by the worried lines in his face and the fact that he will be carrying parts for the lawnmower.

[…]

Whenever I have occasion to traverse the State of New Jersey by rail, I take advantage of the opportunity to reflect upon our outstanding institution of billboards as it presents itself to the purview of the traveler. Regarding billboards and billboarders , I have gone to the trouble of compiling some very interesting figures.

For instance, if all the billboards which desecrate the scenic areas of America were piled one on top of another, allowing twelve inches of horizontal thickness for each billboard, the total number would form a column one hundred and fourteen miles high; and to soak these properly for burning would require ninety thousand barrels of grade-A kerosene; and then when some philanthropist had applied the match, the flames of the bonfire would cast a glow visible as far away as Bermuda, and in every community in this country where people have learned to value the beauties of unblemished nature, there would be public dancing in the streets and a holiday for the school children would be declared.

Again, let us consider for a moment an even more agreeable summarization: If all the billboard art directors who go to and from in the land choosing decorative vista with a view to marring them with their billboards, where laid out side by side with lilies in their hands, it would make a very enjoyable spectacle for the rest of us provided only we were sure that one of them was in a trance.

While I speed athware New Jersey I frequently play a favorite game of mine. I call it Billboards. [Ed: his billboard obsession becomes troubling in its fetishization. Enough on that topic.]

For, when all is said and done and disregarding what figure New Jersey may have cut in the earlier days of this Republic and, before that, in the Colonial time, the question next arises: What now is she? And the answer is that she is become the smudgy and begrimed passageway that separates two great metropolii. [Ed: I know for a fact that Joe would disagree about the characterization of Philadelphia as a great metropolis.] Lying between them and holding them apart, she takes their overflow and they suck out her substances as they long ago sopped up her personality. The semicolon of the Eastern seaboard–that’s modern New Jersey. Never mind what she is commercially. Historically, she’s a cow that went dry about the time the boys got back from the Spanish War. An she has been dry every since. And from present indications will continue to be dry.

[…]

All of which, I claim, helps to explain why New Jersey is one of the joke states. It is not well for a state to be, by national estimation, a standing joke. Kansas once was one and it took her long years to live it down. [Ed: Kansas has worked hard in recent years to reclaim that title.] Arkansas was one and has not yet entirely recovered. Connecticut was one and because of traditional memories lingering in the popular mind of wooden nutmegs and shoe-peg oats, will never entirely get over it. [Ed: I have 0% idea what those references mean. I suppose that means Connecticut HAS gotten over it.] Missouri, for a spell, had a close call with being one, but lacking all else, the state which foaled a Mark Twain would have a title to immortal grandeur on that sole account.

New Jersey still is one and a hopeless patient. For half a century references to Jersey justice, Jersey skeeters and Jersey lightning made her the football of the jesters. [Ed: And all the more embarrassing for us, having invented football here.] As a matter of fact, and giving them due credit, her mosquitoes must sharpen their bills yet finer ere they may hope to compete with the Long Island variety. And in these piping Prohibition days her homemade applejack, potent though it may be, stands comparison with the bootleggers’ best. It may give you the blind staggers, but the blindness is a temporary affliction.

[…]

With time the symptoms have changed, but the case remains incurable. For to-day New Jersey is still a joke state. Outsiders think of her as the State where they suffer from billboarditis and ride on the Erie and harbor the corporations and broadcast the bedtime tales. They forget her material contributions to the national prosperity. And who can blame them?

[…]

But just look at the blame thing now! Coal tipples and garbage dumps and freight tracks and smelters and refineries invade the marshes, and the birds are mostly fled away, and for wild life the mosquitoes are left. The elm-shaded towns where once upon a time future statesmen were born and patriots grew up and writers ripened their art, have become clamorous, cindered, smoky factory places crowded with transcendently ugly workshops, the dirty, homely streets swarming with alien workers quacking a jargon of tongues fit to eclipse Babel’s Tower itself.

It is hard to believe that here, long ago, poets dreamed their dreams and painters plied deft brushes and masters in statecraft dealt masterfully with the politics of their time; that once upon a time great publicists and great orators dwelt in these spots. It is impossible to believe that any such ever again will abide here.

[…]

In all of manufacturing  New Jersey the most agreeable sight, I think, is the sign on the road to Pompton which says you are now leaving Paterson. When I get that far I stop and give thanks.

Off to Penang Again

I’ll be in Penang once again (this time with Mrs. Adamu), so expect more sweet photos. I’ll be doing more of the touristy stuff and less random wandering this time around. Before I go, I’ll show you one highlight of the trip:


PA240134.JPG

That’s right, they stuck a whole Kit Kat right in the middle of the ice cream cone. Genius!

I got this at the 7-11, which is a lot like the Thai 7-11 except with less sausage-related stuff, more spicy nut kind of stuff, and more Muslim stuff.

The top part tastes like cake frosting, which was kind of a surprise. It wasn’t even really ice cream on top, just frosting with a little bite of Kit Kat. The rest of it was pretty standard, except on the bottom which was full of crushed Kit Kat crumbs instead of the usual bit of solid milk chocolate. All in all, not bad, though my personal favorite is the Cookies and Cream cone available in Bangkok 7-11s.

Here’s the ad copy from Nestle Malaysia:
DRUMSTICKKITKAT.jpg

DRUMSTICK with KIT KAT

Discover a real “KIT KAT bar” and “KIT KAT ice cream flavour” in your favourite DRUMSTICK.

Available NOW!

Expect more of this kind of thing when I get back.

Shanghai and Tokyo: I wanted some comparisons, but could only come up with contrasts

I came back last night from a weekend office trip to Shanghai, my first visit to China. Curzon, who has far more China experience than I do, gave me some words of warning before I left for Narita Airport: “Just remember, you’re visiting the nicest part of China, and it’s still the world’s biggest shithole.”

Shithole? Yes. Nice? Certainly. It’s a huge cow pie with flowers growing out of it. I always figured that China and Japan would have a lot in common, but it’s almost impossible to see: I returned from Shanghai with the impression that I had just been to Mirror Universe Japan, where the only commonalities are superficial, and deep down everything is exactly the opposite.

Come to mention it, they don’t even look that much alike.

Buildings in the haze
A representative image: smog and gazillions of tall buildings.

Continue reading Shanghai and Tokyo: I wanted some comparisons, but could only come up with contrasts

Your seatmate is NOT your psychologist

This NYT article struck a chord with me:

WHAT is it about flying in an airplane that seems to remind some passengers of a church confessional?

I remember flying overnight from New York to London next to a dour-looking middle-aged man who kept his peace until his second Scotch. Which is when he revealed that he was a civil engineer. A very, very unhappy civil engineer.

“My profession gets no respect,” he griped. “We design all your bridges and roads, but when do you hear anything about a civil engineer?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“That’s right,” he continued, “only when a bridge collapses! And why should I be blamed when the contractor probably chose the lowest bidder?”

…

Another seatmate, a young Navy enlisted man, spent the first several hours of a transcontinental flight studying a book whose pages contained all kinds of triangles, arrows and symbols. He closed the book as our plane began descending to land and spoke to me for the first time.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he confided in a low voice, “but I am actually flying the plane.”

It all had something to do with an arcane kind of witchcraft, the key to which was in the book he held closely, he said. I hoped his job in the Navy involved a desk, not weapons.

I don’t fly nearly as much as the author, but I must be a magnet for this kind of behavior. I’ve had a 13 year old girl brag to me about making out with restaurant valets, a Japanese emigrant to America tell me about her 50 year long marriage to an Army officer, a half-Japanese chemist talk of suing to protect his farmland near Narita Airport, and several others who for some reason thought I was just the right person to tell about their problems. It would be one thing if I actually made friends with someone on a flight, but in these cases I always end up feeling used like the proverbial hole in the ground. Sometimes it is marginally interesting to hear some random person’s whole life story, but it almost never cancels out what I lose in reading or sleep time. People should really just keep their mouths shut unless they actually know how to have a conversation.

Aso in the mist

So tonight I was at a huge party at the Imperial Hotel welcoming one of the international bigwigs of PricewaterhouseCoopers to town. It was a major affair. They booked an enormous banquet room, and provided foreign guests with earphones so they could listen to simultaneous translations of Japanese speeches from the major partners in the tax and advisory wings of PwC. Then the bigwig came up to speak, and he had a Japanese interpreter copying each sentence of his English speech. A slightly more stilted performance.

Finally came the guest of honor: the Foreign Minister himself. He wandered out onto the podium, looking slightly drunk, and proceeded with his speech… in English. Now, Aso doesn’t exactly speak perfect English to begin with, and being red-faced didn’t help too much either. He stumbled around a talk about international business for a couple of minutes, then turned to the interpreter (who was still hanging around from the last speech) and shouted “All right, now translate it!”

One of my companions looked down at his simultrans earpiece and said “I wonder if he’ll get the message if I put this on?”