I'm so slow...

When life is busy it's hard to find time to blog, but I'm doing my best to update things. More is on its way, just check the bottom of the list for the newest updates:

Korea trip
Golden Week in Seoul
Seoul, here we are!
Meeting the Kims
5 whole years...
At Butterfinger's
Smooth
Seoul Museum of Art?
Deoksugung Palace
Jumping
Changing guards
Cops and pink ribbons
Spicy lunch
Prada Transformer
The smell of garlic
Norebang a.k.a. Korean karaoke
Cheap public transportation
Nail polish and media poles in Gangnam (NEW)

Life in Japan
R.I.P. Opa
Fruity Mother's Day
Two years in Japan!
Masks

Masks

When I flew to the Netherlands last week, I left behind a country of anxious people. A couple of days earlier Japan experienced its very own H1N1 (previously known as swine flu) outbreak, it started with just a few infected high school students in the weekend to almost 300 confirmed cases in the Osaka-Kobe region the day I left. In Osaka, people were already panicking when the government closed more than 4,800 schools and universities, and urged everybody to wear face masks and gargle in an effort to protect themselves from the new flu. Creating an even greater panic among the Japanese and a shortage of face masks.

Not wanting to panic, I did some research online about the flu and learned that H1N1 flu is not nearly as deadly as the regular seasonal flu. And that wearing a face mask won’t protect you from the H1N1 flu at all:

What about using a mask? What does the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend? 

If you are not sick you do not have to wear a mask.

If you are caring for a sick person, you can wear a mask when you are in close contact with the ill person and dispose of it immediately after contact, and cleanse your hands thoroughly afterwards.

If you are sick and must travel or be around others, cover your mouth and nose.

Using a mask correctly in all situations is essential. Incorrect use actually increases the chance of spreading infection.

I hate wearing a mask, it’s the most uncomfortable thing you can do, especially when it’s as hot as it is in Japan. So I was very happy to find out they are in fact useless against the H1N1 flu, and that you only need to wear one when you are sick yourself. But try explaining that to a Japanese person, they don’t want to hear it. They get this false sense of security from wearing a mask and don’t even know that incorrect use could actually increase the risk of transmission, rather than reduce it. But even today, when schools are open again and even the government has loosened its flu-regulations, I found this news clip on Japan Probe of people standing in line for several hours from as early as 7AM, hoping to buy some face masks at Takarazuka city hall. They only had 500 boxes and they probably weren’t cheap and totally useless to begin with:

The day before I flew home, headquarters ordered all the staff in our school to wear face masks... Well, I don’t mind donning one to take a funny picture with the other foreigners in the school, but like I said I hate face masks, they take away my ability to breather properly, so soon I found a better place to wear it than on my face:

Sometimes I just can’t understand the Japanese mindset. For some reason they’re more comfortable following orders and simply doing what everyone else does without asking any questions, instead of thinking for themselves. Even if that means living in a state of panic and fear, and spending fortunes to turn face mask manufacturers into millionaires. I would like to urge all Japanese to stop spending your time and money on obtaining useless face masks, and to spend just a few minutes on the internet to find out how dangerous this flu really is (or isn’t), and what you can actually do to protect yourself from it. 

Two years in Japan!

Although I’m not technically in Japan today, I still celebrate the second anniversary of my arrival in Japan today, in my head and on this blog!

Last year, on the first anniversary, I was on my way back to the Netherlands for a short in-between-jobs visit and this year I’m already in the Netherlands to attend my grandfather’s funeral. But I’ll be back in the Land of the Rising Sun very soon to start on my third year there!

R.I.P. Opa

Early this morning my 72-year-old grandfather passed away in a hospital in Belgium. He was recently diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and lost his fight against the disease today. He leaves behind a wife, three children, eight grandchildren and many memories.

His death was quite sudden and unexpected. I can’t stay in Japan to mourn this loss alone, so I’ll be flying home soon to be with my family, to say goodbye to my grandfather and to attend his funeral.

Fruity Mother's Day

Today is the day we all pay tribute to our loving mothers, some do it with actions, some do it with gifts, and some Japanese do it with overpriced fruity gifts. Fruit is always rather expensive here, like almost $2 per apple or $6 for a small amount of strawberries, but at least it’s always of great quality (same goes for vegetables by the way). I’ve seriously never found any sour or dry fruit here, and I guess that’s why we have to pay such a high price.

But this Mother’s Day fruit must taste like gold or something: two peaches for $26, a watermelon for $31, 15 strawberries for $31, a bunch of grapes for $47, 9 loquats for $63, a mango for $105, 40 cherries for $105 and a musk melon for $126. I think my mom won’t hold it against me if I don’t buy her this fruit. I don’t need exorbitant fruit to let her know I love and appreciate her: Happy Mother’s Day, Moem!

Nailpolish and media poles in Gangnam

Seoul feels very different from Japanese cities. Seoul is a huge city with multiple lane streets and it’s very westernized with uncountable Western stores and restaurants, and a truly unbelievable variety and number of coffee shops (Yasu is very jealous of Seoulites). We started today with some browsing in one of those immense shopping streets in Gangnam, because Yasu wanted to buy some souvenirs for his family. Apparently, Korean face masks are very wanted in Japan, so Jungwon took us to the Face Shop to find some. But we found more there: hundreds of nail polish bottles. And Jungwon couldn’t resist trying out all the colors on all our nails.

After all our nails were polished and after purchasing our favorite colors of nail polish and several face masks we headed back to the street. Where we discovered something very interesting: the new Gangnam Media Poles, which have been there since March. A long line of 12-meter-high digital black signposts, 21 in total and they’re quite impressive to look at.

You can use the poles’ huge touch screens to check today’s newspaper, to use a mapping service to find your way around Seoul, to access Seoul’s bus and subway maps, to create a 3D dancing avatar, to locate restaurants and shops, to play multiplayer games, and to send digital postcards with handwritten messages and your picture to any email address. And then I could use the free wifi the poles provide to check if the postcards made it to my email with my iPhone.

Cheap public transportation

After norebang we had to find another way back to our hotel, because our ride took off just before all the singing action. It was already after midnight and if we’d been in Japan this would have been an expensive joke. In Japan, trains, subways and buses stop running around and before midnight, and the only way home is inside an expensive taxi. But here in Seoul public transportation keeps running until 5AM (but less frequent than during the day), and starts up again at 6AM. Yet, Jungwon still summoned a taxi for us to ride ‘home’ in... Why? Because using a taxi is jaw-droppingly cheap here!

Using the bus costs near to nothing already, it’s kind of a flat-rate system, a dollar to get on the bus and get off wherever you want, no matter how long the trip. We’ve been using the bus all day because we’ve been traveling from one end of the city to the other. But we weren’t going far tonight and in such a case a taxi is easier and cheaper than three already-cheap-bus-fares. I’m no longer surprised Jungwon likes using a taxi on a very frequent basis, who wouldn’t at these prices? I’m pretty sure we’ll end up in a few more Korean taxicabs this vacation.

Norebang a.k.a. Korean karaoke

We had a lot of fun during dinner and decided to extend the evening with an hour of karaoke, or norebang as they call it in Korea. Yoel Hoe drove us in his Samsung car (didn’t even know those existed) to some Norebang place across town, after which he suddenly had to leave to help out some friend. So Yoel Hoe left the three of us in a creepy, princessy Norebang Palace to sing for an hour without him. The whole place had a horrible kitsch atmosphere, with white walls and golden mirrors, glass doors (so everyone could observe our norebang-action) dozens of awfully pink-and-rosy pillows and microphones covered in some flowery pink cloth.

Our room was huge, with 4 TV screens, 3 tables, and enough space to sit for at least 15 people. It was so big we could even do some ballroom dancing and jumping around in it. Norebang isn’t as popular in Korea as karaoke is in Japan, so Jungwon wasn’t really an experienced singer. Even with a microphone she was barely audible so at one point we just gave her two mics to sing in, which improved the matter a little.

Besides singing and dancing there were other things to enjoy in this Norebang palace. Like as much ice-cream as we could eat, kind of like drinking as much as you can at a Japanese karaoke chain, but different. Not sure whether buckets of ice-cream are quite as useful as beverages when singing, still we got some ice-cream because it was free. But we never tasted it because we forgot all about our ice-cream once we started singing, and were only reminded of it when we knocked over a container of melted sticky goo while dancing around the room. Besides the free ice-cream and rosy pillows the room came with a box full of instruments like maracas and tambourines. Which are a lot of fun to shake about when you or your friends are singing.

I like norebang, but I prefer karaoke, it’s a bit more private and you get free drinks, but one nice thing about norebang is that the computer kept giving us free singing time extensions, not sure why. But we ended up singing for almost two hours even though we paid for just one.

The smell of garlic

For dinner we met one of Jungwon’s old coworkers from Samsung, Yoel Hoe. Jungwon has changed jobs already but Yoel He still works there and he often travels to Japan for business so he was fluent in Japanese. Which was fun for Yasu but useless to me, but luckily he also spoke English. We were supposed to go eat some topogi, sticky rice-cake cylinders with red spicy sauce, Jungwon’s favorite Korean food, but we ended up having dinner at an Italian restaurant. When we were walking past the restaurant the smell of garlic was so irresistible, we forgot all about topogi and opted for pizza and pasta instead.

It wasn’t the best choice we made today, I mean the food wasn’t bad but we’re in Korea for only a few days and we ought to experience as much Korean cuisine as we can. And let’s face it the Koreans are just as good as the Japanese at cooking Italian food, which is what we should have expected. The smell of garlic is a sweet seductress and I wish we wouldn’t have succumbed to it so easily, especially since the waiters couldn’t even figure out what dish smelled so garlicky, so we never got to eat what smelled so good outside. Still we had a lot of fun and that’s what’s really important.

Prada Transformer

Yesterday Jungwon told us we would be visiting the Prada Transformer today. Of course, we had no clue what that was and she told us it was a new building that changes by itself, and will be different in a couple of months. This vague explanation didn’t really enlighten us, actually it confused us more as we were now expecting to see a building that is constantly but slowly moving, somehow... Like a real-life but sluggish transformer, which the name kind of seems to suggest. So we were slightly disappointed to find a rather ugly tent-like building which didn’t move at all.

Inside was an exhibition of Prada skirts, and some of them actually did move, or at least the mechanisms they were draped upon. They had dozens of skirts and card-board cut-outs of skirts in that weird building and all we could do there is look at them or take pictures of them, which is what I did to entertain myself, as I’m not really into skirts.

Yasu isn’t really into skirts or fashion either, and he doesn’t work a camera so he spent his time doing a little work-out with the stone benches outside the Transformer. He’s so strong!

So why is this building named Transformer? Because in a month or so the walls are moved to a different position (by people, not by itself) and the skirts are taken out and a big TV screen is taken in to create a temporary cinema. Which is probably more entertaining than a collection of skirts, but by then we won’t be in Seoul anymore.