Little Thing Part II

Japan likes vending machines. As I have already noted before they’re everywhere in Japan and very useful during the hot sticky summer months when you could easily be sweating at 0.000025m³·s⁻¹ (i.e. a lot) and the cold winter when you have a long wait for a train and want a hot drink. It may seem that your average vending machine does not and cannot be much improved, they are after all pretty simple and efficient to use; insert money, press button, drink. If you think that then you are wrong. Japan, well known for its technology products has decided that actually the humble vending machine is not modern or snazzy enough for the 21st century and has therefore built new ones with massive touchscreens on them.

Finally, vending machines are released from the shackles of mere buttons and can reach their full potential. Pictures of the products are displayed on the screen and all you have to do is swipe you train card (plastic cash which you could use on the older machines too) or mobile phone, across the scanner and touch the screen, none of this messing around with buttons, oh no. Since there is now a screen available to display images the designers obviously had to come up with a cute mascot that could be shown on the screen when no one is buying anything. Yes, of course the machines can detect when you approach to buy something (there is a little camera above the screen). They will even recommend you a drink based its guess of your age and gender. It recommended me milk tea the other day so I guess it can also racially profile and knew that I was British!

Over Christmas I went looking for some presents and ended up in a store called Loft or at least the store next to it that just joined onto the side but didn’t have a name I could read. They had a great Christmas display in there of a complete model gingerbread village, with a working electric miniature railway.

The sign in the first picture says “Please don’t touch. Please don’t eat” just to remind you not to start munching away at the display. Of course I had to buy one of the kits for baking your own gingerbread house, but because I don’t like cooking, I’ve left that up to my mum, I’m sure she’ll figure out the Japanese instructions.

Keeping with the food theme, here is some tasty frog I ate in a random Japanese drinking bar or izakaya. Not quite believing if it was actually frog and not just something else which happened to be the same word for frog me and my friend had to ask the waiter if it was the frog that goes pyon pyon pyon (the Japanese onomatopoeia for jump, I guess the English would be boing boing boing). It was, and it was also very tasty being a mixture between a fish and a meat flavour. The meat was also very soft rather than chewy as I’d thought. I recommend it if you have the chance and can now add it to my list of weird things eaten.

Oh. Also, a pig in a wig that was walking along the pavement. I don’t know either.

Little Things Part I

Today’s blog is just a collection of little things from Japan. First up is what happens to you if you go to the park in the evening for some exercise wearing shorts rather than trousers.

As far as I could work out this was done by that most evil of creature the Ceratopogonidae or biting midge, which took rather a fancy to my sweet leg meat. After showing my leg to and ignoring the advice of the assistants in the chemist who told me to go to the hospital, I bought some rub on spray which stopped the itching enough for me to wear my work trousers during the week, despite the very sweaty hot Japanese summer.

Next was Halloween (yes I know that was 4 months ago but it gives me something to write about) and some traditional English fish and chips for dinner in a traditional English pub. You can tell it’s traditional because Japanese people they know that in England fish and chips is sold wrapped in newspaper and so any traditional pub must do the same. Only Japan, as it usually does when trying to emulate something foreign, doesn’t get it quite right. Whereas in England newspaper wrapped fish and chips was so you could take it away and eat it on the street or at home, they give you the fish and chips on a plate. But to make it authentic they first cover the plate with newspaper. Which you then take to your table. And eat with chopsticks. Which themselves have had a special fish and chip newspaper wrapper made up instead of just the usual paper.

Still I can’t really complain. Since the idea of take-away food hasn’t quite caught on in the same way here it was actually really tasty fish and chips.

Japan likes cute and does it better than anyone else in the world. Even their street drains are cut even if it also looks extremely sad and in need of water to drain.

There will be more cute things in part 2.

Korea Day 4

My final day in Korea began too early but without a hangover which was a big plus, although I think I was still a bit drunk. The vodka of the night before had been joined by tequila and they worked hand in hand to stave off hangover.

Which was rather fortunate as I went with my friend HyeJung to see Nanta, a Korean cooking musical comedy show about 3 chefs and newly installed manager’s son preparing e a banquet in time for the royal wedding. A simple premise but a great show, it’s main theme is traditional Korean music, which is mainly rhythmic, but improvised on kitchen utensils and so on. It also has some fart jokes, pantomime audience participation and magic tricks. If it shows anywhere near you I highly recommend it.

In Starbucks after Nanta.

After that I wandered around Myeongdong with my former housemate YuJin who had fortunately moved back to Korea for a month just in time to show me around. Cheap clothes, a nice fountain being cleaned and some tasty food and then to see some fountains from the side of a big bridge.

After that it was time to get back to the hostel, pack my back and work out how to get to the airport for an 8am flight the next day, which was thankfully accomplished with the aid of the 3am night-bus. And then finally back to Japan.

 

Incheon airport at 7am.

Korea Day 3

Today I spent the day with Hyejung and Beth who very kindly showed me around Seoul. First was a trip to the national museum to see lots of old pottery and a very nice pagoda.

Next we wandered around the shopping areas and visited a Buddhist temple which had a lot of paper lanterns on the ceiling.

Then we went to an awesome restaurant called “Meat-ing” which is an all you can eat Korean style barbeque meat buffet, where I ate much to much meat.

And finally in the evening we went out to a bar/club where I drank much to much vodka, which wasn’t as forgiving as the meat.

Korea day 2 (DMZ Trip)

Today I got to hang out with my North Korean buddies! They are a charming lot, that’s for sure.

So a quick history in case you can’t quite remember what the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) is. The story goes like this: at the start of the 20th century Japan decides it wants and empire like all its Western buddies and so start attacking everywhere decides it doesn’t like Chinese influence in Korea, supports some revolting peasants, gets some troops in there to put down revolting peasants when the wrong ones start revolting, fights the Russians a bit, assassinates the Korean Princess, forces Korean annexation from China, fights the Russians again and ends up as the main power in Korea. They keep control from 1910 until 1945 when the Japanese are slightly blown up and forced to surrender at the end of WWII. A few months earlier the Soviets had declared war on Japan in agreement with the Allies and marched down Korea to roughly where the current division is (as agreed), anything further south would be under American control. Two governments are effectively installed, the northern one supported by the Soviets and Chinese the southern one by the Americans and allies. There is rather a lot of fighting (5 million dead a lot) and uprisings up and down the country mostly as a proxy war but the eventual dividing line is essentially decided upon by the Americans and Chinese and Soviets as an acceptable place to have a buffer zone between the communist countries and the capitalist ones. And so they build a big fence that runs right across the country 250km long and effectively separates the capitalist states from the Soviet and Communist block. Except that communism has mostly fallen and North Korea didn’t get the memo. The two Koreas are still technically at war with only a temporary ceasefire having been agreed so either side could “legally” attack at any time.

Anyway, that’s where I went today.

 

Freedom Bridge looking into North Korea was used to exchange POWs.

 

There are lots of mines everywhere. These happen to be by the 3rd Tunnel. The 3rd Tunnel was the 3rd of 4 tunnels discovered being dug by North Korea into the south, all in the direction of Seoul. When the South Koreans discovered and dug down to the tunnel and questioned what was going on North Korea first denied having dug it, despite the entrance being on the North Korean side and water draining out to the North, and the holes for dynamite pointing towards the South. Then when asked again they said they were mining for coal and had got lost, despite the rock being solid granite with no possibility of coal being present. To bolster their claim they painted the walls of the tunnel black and said it was coal.

 

There be North Korea. And there be the flag. You can see that all the mountains in North Korea are basically bare with no woodland around. This is because the North Koreans have cut the trees down firstly use use as fuel and secondly to prevent spies from the South hiding in the hills. The flag there is the 3rd tallest in the world. The two Koreas kept competing with each other to build a taller flag on each side of the border until the South gave up leaving the 160m tall flag of North Korea the clear winner.

The JSA (Joint Security Area) is the only part of the DMZ where troops from either side directly face each other. The South Korean soldiers stand half hidden by the buildings so that they offer a smaller target to the North and so that they can give secret signals to the South. Also a North Korean soldier checking us out with his binoculars while we take photographs of him.

Inside one of the blue huts, used for meetings between diplomats. The microphones down the middle of the table mark the dividing line between North and South Korea (South to the left North to the right). Me hanging with a South Korean soldier in the North Korean side of the hut. Since both sides use the huts for tours, use of the huts runs on a first come first server basis with the South Koreans not allowed in while the North Koreans are inside and vice versa.

I wonder if he plays much Playstation over there.

Korea Day 1 (actually day 2 because I slept on day one after getting to the hostel and being really tired).

During the school summer holiday I thought I’d take a holiday and visit Seoul in Korea for a few days.

Day 1 was to see the main tourist sites around Seoul such as the palaces, which are nice and big and impressive. They also have some people in traditional costume wandering around looking very cool.

Inside is a rather impressive mechanical bow thing which can fire 100 odd bolts all at once by using gunpowder. Further along is a big statue of King Sejong who created the Hangul alphabet that is still used today. It’s really easy to learn being entirely phonetic and only having 24 characters. He made it so that even the common people would be able to read and write easily instead of having to rely on Chinese characters or hanja. So that was pretty good of him.

Then in the evening I went to the big tower in the centre of Seoul which has a great view all around and also the best view of any toilet I’ve ever used.

Ode to my Rock

It occurred to me the other day that I haven’t written any creative English for quite a while and in fact don’t write that much at all now that there are no school essays and exams. To rectify this and brush up on my fading literary skills providing you with an informative blog I have decided to pen (or keyboard) several short poems each focusing on a different aspect of literary form and item of interest from Japan.

The first aspect I want to focus on is that of illiteration. Listening to some recent pop songs on the radio I realised that the best selling songwriters of today have in fact developed a whole new literary form which they are then applying to their songs to sell millions of records. If these masters of modern day poetry are successfully using this style and making money from it then there must be some inherent quality to this form. Fine examples of illiteration include Master Bieber’s Baby, which achieved a position of number 3 in the UK singles sales chart in March 2010; Miss Gaga’s Telephone, which reached number 1 in the UK singles chart also in March 2010; Miss Rihanna’s Umbrella, number 1 in June 2007 on the UK singles chart; and finally Miss Minaj’s Stupid Hoe (Stupid Stupid in the clean version) reaching number 63 in the UK singles chart in February 2012.*

A traditional poet might decide to use many different words with similar sounds to enhance and intensify a particular phrase or feeling but this is often time consuming and there may not even be a suitable word with the same sound in some cases. The genius of Master Bieber et al. lies in the subtle subversion of this style and instead of using different words just repeat the same phrase, word and indeed sound multiple times, especially during the chorus, thus guaranteeing that each word begins with the same letter, to really show they are illiterative. This also has the added benefit of saving them time and therefore money as they don’t have to think of lots of different words for their songs.

So what of Japan? Another trend found amongst our poets du jour of singing about mundane objects (see Miss Gaga’s Telephone  and Miss Rihanna’s Umbrella). This ability to sing about the mundane isn’t limited to American artists though, the Japanese are just as capable and stars such as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu sing about false eyelashes (worth a watch)with great use of illiteration which you can see in the lyrics underneath.  Popular girl group Perfume is also able to sing about doughnuts (lyrics here). In honour of these two trends I shall therefore dedicate my first practice poem to illiteration and banality.

Here is my poem: Rock

Oh rocking rock you rock my world, I’m in my rocking chair,

Oh rocking world you rock my rock, I’m rocking in my chair,

You rocked so hard like the hard rock you are, I rocked out of my rocking chair,

Now I’m rocking with my rock on the rocky floor with my rocking rocking chair,

Rock rock rock rock rock rock r-rock rock rock r-r-rock. Rock.

Now you may complain that my effort doesn’t contain much progression of theme or emotion, conclusion, clever rhymes or comprehensible metre. But I think that in fact emulates the greats of the moment quite accurately and so I shall let it stand as is. Criticisms, haranguings or slights against my personal character for showing these artists the proper respect they deserve are welcome in the comments below.

*Viewing any of these videos is completely at the reader's discretion. No responsibility will be accepted by the management for offense to sensibilities, common decency or musical taste and in the case of Stupid Hoe, epilepsy or a gnawing off one’s own elbows.