Japan Adventures Part II

By far the coolest part of our Japan trip (and definitely near the top of all our Asian experiences so far!) was spending the night in a Ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn).  It was so quaint and with such an "off the beaten path" location we almost missed it from the outside!

When we arrived we were greeted with a great deal of bowing while they whisked our bags away to our room, took our shoes at the door and gave us slippers to wear throughout the house.  They didn't speak much English but managed to give us a very welcoming tour of the house (which included communal bath rooms and shared sink/mirror areas in the hallway rather than facilities in each room) before showing us to our very large but sparsly furnished suite complete with ratton floor mats, wooden screens and walls, and hot tea and fresh fruit to welcome us!

 Next they brought us some yukatas (traditional Japanese robes, like a Kimono but in more light, summer weight cotton material) to change into while we waited for our room service of a multiple course traditional Japanese meal!  These robes were incredibly comfortable. . even Hubs thought so!  Turns out he might be half Samurai. :)

Our meal was amazingly yummy. . and confusing!  The lady who brought it to us kept referring to this bilingual menu to show us what course she was bringing in,  It wasn't as helpful as she thought it was. . I mean yeah. . .I could have picked up that it was "hot food". . and "fried food".  But the thought was nice! :)

Here is a few pictures of various courses to show some of the "amazing yumminess"!

And here is a picture to show some of the "confusion"...


"Are you telling me I'm supposed to cook this over this open flame on this giant leaf thing?  For how long?  Am I supposed to eat the leaf thing or just the stuff inside?  Oh that's right. .we don't speak the same language. .. ..hmmm. . ."

After our meal they had reserved one of the communal bath house rooms for us! We got 30 luxurious minutes in the hot steam room and sauna all to ourselves.  When we returned to our room they had put out our futon type floor beds complete with origami paper cranes on the pillows and a resupply of hot tea.  Awesome!


As you can see the overhead clearance wasn't always exactly "Hubs- sized". . .but we made it work. :)

Overall, this was one of the most out of our comfort zone. . but FUN experiences of all of our travels.  If you ever have a chance to stay in a Ryokan, do it! :)

Japan Adventures Part I

Our latest adventure was a trip to Japan!  Unfortunately it was such a quick trip we didn't get a chance to  explore Mount Fuji.  However we did enjoy this lovely view of it from the comfort of a high speed bullet train!

We found Japan to be much harder to navigate than other parts of Asia that we have visited.  There were considerably less signs than in Korea and of the signs around, few of them have English translations.  However the Japanese people were incredibly helpful and there was always someone around to help point us in the right direction.  Plus, lucky for me, Hubs is a fabulous navigator!  And super cute too. :)

 

This was also my first experience with left side of the road traffic patterns.  A bit disturbing.

"Hey wait. . who is driving this taxi?!!?"

We spent a day exploring Kyoto, the historical capital of Japan.  It is an absolutely charming place with a stretch of cobblestone streets lined with lots of shops and tea houses as well as a number of beautiful temples and shrines.

Not sure if these were real Geishas (traditional Japanese female entertainers trained in cultural dancing, art, etc) or "tourists ones" (we saw a few shops were tourists could pay to be dressed up as a Geisha for a fewhours).  Either way it was pretty cool to see their make up and costumes up close!

No Parking Adventures

This is a small back road leading from the train station to our apartment.  We walk it quite often.  It pretty much always look just like this.

We have come to the conclusion that maybe that sign has a different meaning than what we are interpreting?  Or if we learned to read Hangul (the Korean alphabet) maybe the word "Suggested" is in there somewhere?

Korean Race Adventures

Hubs and I have been casually training for a half marathon.  Really I've been training and he has just been keeping me company on the runs.  So basically I was trying to train him up for the race without him catching on.  I may have not been sneaky enough though because just a few days before the race he got an unexpected Army tasking to be gone for a few weeks.  I'm still a little suspicious that he volunteered for this to avoid the race but haven't been able to prove it yet!


I was a little bummed to run without my running buddy/cheering section but hated to see the training go to waste.  Plus I had been excited about this particular race for months because of it's unique SWAG.  And by SWAG (Stuff We All Get) I am referring to the free goody bags that are almost always passed out as part of a race expo.  I do like distance running.  But I also REALLY like SWAG, the more random the better!  Sometimes I'm not sure which is my motivation to keep signing up for races.  For example, once I ran a race sponsored by 3M and got us enough sticky notes and organizing tabs to last for years.  Seriously, that was 3 years ago and I go through sticky notes at an alarming rate yet we still have a decent stash left.  When we run out I'll probably be tempted to buy a plane ticket back to TX just to run in that race again and stock up. .


Anyway, all this build up may have you curious what the SWAG for the Pyeongteak Port Marathon of 2011 was?!  In case you can't tell from the below fuzzy cellphone picture, we are now the proud owners of a free 2kg bag of Super Owning (a rather prominent brand in our area of Korea) rice!

How awesomely Asian  is that?!  I also got a great bag of post race snacks that included a ramen bowl and a choco-pie, ( kind of like a moonpie but without much taste. . Koreans are pretty stingy with their sugar).  Oh and of course the standard T-shirt (nicer than most!) and finisher medal.  But did I mention the bag of rice?! :)


The race was a pretty nice, flat course and it was a great cool morning for a run!  Here is the race layout.  I was hoping to check out the "snake place" but never found it. . . .just some stupid bananas and stuff where they were supposed to be.  Go figure. :)

Usually the first thought I have when I am done with a long run is "Must. consume. massive. amounts. of. calories.  time. now."  A nice greasy Korean green onion pancake was the perfect thing to take the edge off!

 That is until I could get home and cook my bag of rice. .

Engrish Adventures

In Asia we get to experience the phenomena of "Engrish" quite often.  While most people in educated Asian countries know at least some English vocabulary, they usually have limited training in it's spelling, grammar, and sentence structure (most Asian sentence structures have a reversed arrangement of the subject/verb when compared to English).  In addition problems also result from poor translating skills because substituting a similar but slightly incorrect or inappropriate word can often drastically change the meaning of a sentence.  All this however doesn't seem to stop Asians from regularly using their (non proofread) English skills on everything from menu and signs to printed words on clothing.


As you can imagine, this provides an endless opportunity for chuckles as we go about our daily lives here.  Below is a picture of one of the funniest Engrish examples I have seen to date.  I hesitated to share it because it uses an expletive which I have edited in the picture.  I hope no one is offended. . .after all, I am pretty certain  its just the result of the writer making a poor world translation selection and was not intended to be a curse word.


My two favorite parts of this sign are 1) the accompanying pictorial example (how long did they follow the dog around to get this shot?) and 2) the use of the word "prohibition".  Every time I read it all I can think of are little Asian mafia men in suits sneaking around with their smuggled brown paper bags of dog doo.

All in a Day's Work Adventures

The majority of our posts tend to be about trips that we take (we are kind of travel junkies).  But, unfortunately, the majority of our time is not spent traveling.  Here is a little glimpse into our "daily work lives".


Hubs is usually hard at work running his company (ah, so handsome!)

When he isn't coordinating things, answering his cell phone at all hours of the day and night, or making decisions, he also does a lot of this.  He really is flying one of the helicopters in this pic!  cool huh?!

As for me I am keeping busy with several little ventures.  I do some Personal Training as time allows and still play Army with the Reserves every few weekends.  The one that takes up the most time however is the previously mentioned job teaching English as a second language.  That basically means I do a lot of charades and attempt to communicate through drawing pictures (it is hard explaining things to kiddos when you don't speak the same language!).  I have also become an expert high-fiver and rock/scissors/paper player.  Here is a picture of me with some of the adorable germ infested monsters (my affectionate term for the Kindergartners).  I'm pretty sure the kid on the left is doing some sort of tiger pose?. . .it's an adventure every day. . .

All in all we keep pretty busy. . .so much that I can barely believe that 1 year has already flown by since we moved here to Korea!  It has been a great year and I can't wait to see what is in store for the next one!!  I'm hoping for a little less "daily work life" and A LOT more trips to tell you about!! :)

Visitor and DMZ Adventures!

My beautiful mother recently came over for a little visit.  She was our first official visitor and we loved getting to show her where we live and some of the things we love about South Korea!


She was a very good sport and was up for trying pretty much any kind of Korean food we threw at her!  As a result, she was getting pretty good with a set of chopsticks by the time she headed back home! :)

We spent one day of her visit on a trip to the DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone), which is basically a buffer zone of the hostile border between North and South Korea.  We got to tour several museums about the history of the conflict, one of the several tunnels coming from the North (assumed for a potential military invasion) that South Korea has discovered in the past few years, and see the completed train station/track towards the North in hopes that the two sides will someday reconcile.


This picture is in the JSA (Joint Security Area) where negotiations between the two countries are held.  Some buildings in the area are controlled by South Korea and some are controlled by North Korea.  This blue building is under South Korean control and the soldier next to it (they maintain a posture of half behind the building) is a South  Korean solider.  The gray building is controlled by North Korea.  If you look carefully you can see a North Korean soldier in front of the door to the left!  Basically they just stare each other down all day I think. . .

Here is Mom inside the blue building next to a South Korean soldier.  Technically she is standing on the side of the building that is considered North Korean territory, yikes!

Part of the original amnesty agreement between the two sides is that they could both build "peace" villages on each of their respective sides of the DMZ.  South Korea's is a small farming village made up primarily of people who are descendant of areas most affected by the countries civil war.  The residents are treated with special respect by the South Korean government.  

The buildings over Hubs left shoulder are part of the North Korean village.  

Below there is another picture zoomed in a little bit.  Looks like a pretty impressive town for impoverished North Korean right?  Well it would be. . if it was real!!  Basically this is a movie set town.  No one actually lives here, with the exception of a few caretakers.   Based off carefully observation over the years, South Korea and the US has discovered that that most of the buildings don't even have floors, rooms, or glass in the windows.  The lights are turned on at certain times and sometimes the caretakers are seen sweeping the streets  to project the appearance that it is occupied. There are also loud speakers throughout the town that broadcast loud propaganda messages encouraging the members of the South Korean peace village to defect to the North.  Oh, and that giant tower is a giant flagpole.  The North built it after South Korea put up a similar flagpole in their peace village.  The North Koreans made sure to build theirs 200 feet taller though so at the time they had the tallest flagpole in the world.  So silly. :)  I don't know about you but I'd probably have saved the money and put it towards other things. . like maybe food for their starving people. . .?

Unfortunatly monsoon season started about halfway through Mom's trip so some of the other fun adventures we had planned for her didn't happen. :(  (Guess she'll have to come back!).   However thanks to the Korean's great take on indoor markets, the weather didn't keep us from shopping!  I took her to one of my favorite districts in Seoul.  It is simply impossible for a picture to capture the incredible amount of STUFF for sale.  The below picture is one small hallway on the "shoe floor" of one of the market buildings.  

Each floor specializes in certain merchandise (a floor for mens clothes, floor for purses and jewelry, floor for casual woman's clothes, a floor for dressy woman's clothes, a floor for shoes, etc).  The floors have upwards of 15 hallways like this and each building has between 8-10 floors.  And there are LOTS of buildings.  When combined with the fact that the vendors speak minimal English, everything is bought through bargining, and there are no dressing rooms (if you want to try something on you do it behind a curtain or something in the open underneath a big cloth skirt) its basically the most fun/exhausting shopping experience ever!  Thanks for being a great shopping/adventure buddy Mom! 

United States Adventures!!

Wow, where did June go?!   I have no idea.  But I just looked at the calender and apparently it is gone!  As is the first half of July?!


Anyway we have been a little out of the loop recovering from a trip to the best place we have traveled yet:  the United States of America!!!  We got to eat American food (yay for the Melting Pot!!), shop in American stores (yay for dressing rooms!), and practice normal driving (yay for everyone stopping at red lights!).  Most importantly however we got to see lots of family and be in attendance for two very important family weddings.


Wedding number one highlights included:


1) a stunning bride and very smiley groom (Hub's little bro)

2) a crazy cute baby niece that we loved meeting for the first time!

3)  Good looking parents of the groom!

4)  Great time with siblings that we don't get to see nearly enough!


Here are my fabulous sister in laws and brother in law at the wedding reception.

This is Hubs and my other brother in law (also fabulous) making a yummy breakfast for us all the morning after the wedding!

Wedding number two highlights were very similar:


1)  another stunning bride and smiley groom (my older bro).  This pic is from the rehearsal not the actual wedding but I thought it was so sweet!

2) three more crazy cute little nieces and one nephew (the three munchkins on the right and the one being held) that we loved getting reacquainted with!

3) Good looking parents of the groom!

4)  Great time with siblings that we don't see nearly often enough!  


These are my two wonderful sister in laws and some random wedding crasher in the back.  (Okay, its actually my other brother but I don't always claim him for obvious reasons.)

Jeju Island Adventures

Hubs and I recently snuck away for a little weekend getaway to Jeju Isalnd or "Korea's Hawaii" as it is sometimes called on this part of the globe.  It is a beautiful (although super touristy) little volcanic formed island and was just what we needed for a few days of rest and relaxation.

This is a picture of the castle  hotel that we stayed in and part of it's very impressive outdoor garden/waterfall/pool area.

This was the view from our room.  I don't know what to tell you about the Dutch windmills.  We didn't get it either.  Korea is kind of random sometimes.

Even thought it was a tad too chilly for swimming the beach was still lots of fun!

Here is Hubs impersonating a Dol harebang, a traditional Jeju statue of the god of protection and fertility (they were everywhere!).  You have no idea how hard it is to get a non silly picture of him. :)

Among other things (hiking, checking out a "lava tube" cave from when the island was an active volcano, going to a museum, and eating ridiculous amounts of awesome food) we got to visit a traditional Jeju village.  It was pretty cool!  

There is a great deal of pride in preserving their way of life and a good number of people still live in this village and practice traditional farming and fishing methods. For example, this is a traditional grinder we found in the village.  It is designed to be operated by being pulled by several horses but Hubs was pretty sure he was up to the task.

One last thing that I almost forgot!  Our tour guide also unexpectedly took us to a "maze" (I told you this place was touristy!) in the shape of the island.  Neither of us had ever been in one of these before and it was so fun!  Luckily I happen to be married to a land navigation genius so we made it through in record time with no wrong turns! :)

Here is my personal GPS (Hubs) at the halfway point (up on a bridge so you can overlook the maze), studying the map to make sure we are on the right track!

We were so thankful for the chance to take a mini vacation.  Hope you enjoyed hearing about it as much as we enjoyed taking it! :)

Korean Barbecue Adventures

One of our favorite things to do on a Friday night is wander out of our apartment into the little city we live in and find a new Korean (or sometimes Chinese, or Indian, Thai, etc. . .basically we aren't picky we just like food!) restaurant to try.  So far Korean style barbecue is one of our favorites.  It is much different than American barbecue but still oh so good.

Below is a picture of a pretty standard traditional Korean barbecue meal.  The big silver circle in the middle is a grill pit in the table with hot charcoals underneath.  Strips of raw meat (in this case pork) are placed on it.  We are then responsible to cook and cut it up (with scissors!).  The other dishes scattered around the table are various side dishes and sauces that all come as part of the meal.  They vary from restaurant to restaurant and season to season but are almost always delicious.  We can always count on some type of kimchi (vegetables fermented with spicy red pepper paste) being served and some type of tofu or seaweed soup.  Both are pictured below, the kimichi is the red stuff in the white dish on the upper right hand side and the black pot in the bottom left hand corner has some spicy tofu soup.

I'm pretty sure that working as a dish washer here has a lot of job security, don't you think? :)  Although with all the dishes on the table it's ironic that there are no actual plates belong to each individual person, everyone just eats straight from the serving dishes.  And if you are not that great with your chopsticks (like myself) you sometimes end up accidentally dropping your selection in another dish while it is en route to your mouth. :)

*A common way to eat the cooked meat is to wrap it up ,along with some rice and sauce, in a lettuce leaf and then pop the whole thing on your mouth.  Soooooooo good!  Hubs is demonstrating the proper roll up technique below. :)

Its would be way more fun to show you the food in person rather than in pictures though, so come visit and the Korean barbecue is on us! :)

* Editors Note:  I can't believe that I overlooked this perfect opportunity to pass on the nickname that Americans (and other English speaking foreigners here) refer to this type of meal as:  beef and leaf!  Ha, doesn't that make you giggle!?

Military Ball Adventures

Due to Hub's job (and my former job), we occasionally  have get to attend military balls .  Ha, just kidding they aren't that bad as far as "mandatory fun" goes!  Some are even down right fun.  A few weeks ago we got to attend the Association of Army Aviation Ball here in Korea.  It was the biggest and probably the nicest one we have ever been to.  It was held at the Grand Hyatt in Seoul, so the gorgeous venue definitely helped out!

I always get so nervous at these things that I am going to accidentally drink the water or use the silverware belonging to the person sitting next to me.  Believe me, there is so much stuff on the table it gets confusing!!

The food was delicious!  Here is a picture of my salad (chilled salmon).  I would have taken pictures of all the courses but I was too busy stuffing my face. :)

This is a picture of us all dolled up for the occasion.  The lights behind us are actually tiered, lighted fountains that were just outside the ballroom on a patio. . . so pretty! 

Also, here is a full length one of my dress for those of you who might be interested in such things.

And finally, here is a picture of Hubs (isn't he the most handsome thing you have ever seen?!?!)  with his two Lieutenants/ Platoon Leaders (on either side of him) and his 1st Sergeant.  (In non army language, that means the people that work directly for him and help him run his company.)

Overall we had a great time and are looking forward to doing it again next year!