My second trip to Korea took place just about a year after the first, under very different circumstances. My switching jobs from Look Japan to the law firm at which I worked next did not require a trip to Seoul for a visa, since I was merely changing jobs, not work statuses. But, as it happened, my law firm selected Seoul for the bi-annual company retreat in October 1992.
Company retreats in foreign countries were a product of the Bubble Economy of the 1980s, when the Yen suddenly tripled in value thanks to the Plaza Accords, where the United States forced Japan to revalue its currency to make Japanese goods more expensive in the U.S. and U.S. goods cheaper in Japan. (Fat lot of good that did! Twenty years later, we still run a huge trade deficit with Japan, and they still don't want to buy our cars. Don't blame them.) Suddenly, traveling abroad became less expensive than traveling domestically, and a lot of Japanese companies held their company retreats overseas.
This trip took place on a whole different level than my previous trip. We were on a packaged tour and stayed at the Hilton Hotel in the middle of Seoul. We were chauffeured, shuttled, and buffeted throughout the three-day, two-night stay. During this time, I got to know what it's like to be a Japanese tourist on a packaged tour in a foreign country, and it was a great change from my trip the previous year.
We were met at the airport by a bus with a Japanese-speaking tour guide. She was very pretty, but there was something slightly sleazy about her, as if she had just graduated to tour guide from bar hostess or perhaps even prostitute. It became clear very quickly that her primary objective was to try to get us to buy stuff from people she and/or her company knew.
After getting on the bus, our very first stop was at one of the beautiful imperial palaces I had visited the previous year. However, we were hustled in as a group for a mere half-hour visit, which not only missed the most beautiful part of the palace -- a viewing pavilion surrounded by a man-made lake -- but spent 15 of the 30 minutes arranging a group picture and taking pictures of some of our female employees in traditional Korean dresses (hanbok). We then stopped at a store in Itaewon, which for those of you who know Japan, is the Roppongi of Seoul, where the American servicemen hang out at gaijin bars. We then went to the hotel to check in before being shuttled off to dinner.
Dinner was another tourist trap. We were taken to a massive restaurant with hundreds of other guests, all of whom also seemed to be Japanese. We had a private hall where we had some of the blandest, worst Korean food I have ever eaten. Although many Japanese people now eat very spicy food and you can get great Korean food in Tokyo, in those days, many if not most Japanese could not tolerate spicy food and hated the taste and smell of garlic. In fact, ninniku kusai ("reeking of garlic") used to be an ethnic slur used by Japanese to describe Koreans. (Similar to the way that WASP Americans before WWII sometimes referred to Italian Americans derisively as "garlic eaters.") As we ate our tasteless Korean food, we watched a group of Korean women clad in hanbok and sporting expressions of utter boredom perform what I assume was a "traditional" Korean dance.
After the dinner, one of the male lawyers who was widely known in the firm as a sukebe (a lecher), prevailed upon Miss Dubious Tour Guide -- whom he was hitting on very hard -- to take us to a bar for drinks. Mr. Sukebe then invited some of the female paralegals I was friends with, who felt they could not say no because of Mr. Sukebe was a lawyer and they were only paralegals. The paralegals then begged me to go along with them so they would not be alone with the lawyer. Miss Dubious Tour Guide then took us to -- of course -- a karaoke bar run by friends of hers that seemed to cater exclusively to Japanese businessmen. I have no idea how much it cost because, per Japanese etiquette, Mr. Sukebe paid the tab, but I know the whiskey was watered even before Miss Dubious Tour Guide showed us the mizuwari (whiskey & water) making skills she had no doubt perfected at her previous job, because I drank glass after glass of mizuwari and did not even develop a small buzz. Most of the evening was spent watching Mr. Sukebe trying to convince Miss Dubious Tour Guide to accompany him back to the hotel. I don't know if he succeeded or not.
When the evening was finally, mercifully over, we got into a couple of taxis to the Hilton. I said "Hilton" to the driver. He did not understand. I said "Hiruton," with a Japanese accent, thinking this might be closer to the way they said it in Korea, but still, no recognition. I tried "Hilton" a few more times with various accents until finally, the driver said "Ah, Hilton!" and we sped off.
The next day was our "free" day -- free of Miss Dubious Tour Guide and her ripoff establishments. Since I was the only one of my friends who had been to Seoul before, I led a party to one of the markets and then to Insadong Street and one of the palaces. For lunch, we decided to try to find a restaurant off the beaten track and away from tourist areas, and wandered down some of the dirt back roads of Seoul until we found a place that looked good -- no English or Japanese writing anywhere, just pictures of food in the window, as you typically find in a Korean restaurant. The male Japanese lawyers looked nervous and wondered if the restaurant was "okay" (i.e., "safe"), but fortunately the intrepid female lawyers and paralegals pushed ahead.
Inside the restaurant, we were seated at a large table on the floor. One of our group called for a "menu" -- fortunately, that word is the same in English, Japanese, and Korean. Our waitress pointed at the wall behind us, which was entirely written in hangul script. We shook our heads and said, "No, menu." The waitress once again pointed at the wall. This happened two or three more times. In the meanwhile, another waitress had quietly come up behind (the restaurant was empty because it was about 2;30 in the afternoon), and I watched her face the light bulb went off in her head and an expression of understanding came over her face. A minute later, she came back with menus with pictures on them, from which we ordered. One intrepid paralegal began ordering food from the menu, and then changed her mind halfway, and started pointing to the pictures, saying, "not this one, that one." I am sure the waitress, who spoke neither Japanese nor English as far as I could tell, thought she was saying "this one and that one, too."
It did not matter. When we got the food, it was extraordinary -- the diametric opposite of the previous night's awful tourist fare -- with kimchi that was so delicious that you couldn't stop eating it even though every bite inexorably increased the heat in your mouth to the point of being unbearable. More touring in the afternoon, and I then led the way to a restaurant near Insadong Street where I had eaten on two nights the year before.
On our last day in Seoul, we did not have time for touring, as we had an early flight back to Tokyo. We ate breakfast in the hotel and then boarded our bus to the airport. Miss Dubious Tour Guide was there again. The pictures we had been made to take on the first day suddenly appeared and were offered to us for sale as souvenirs. Sure enough, just before the entrance to Kimpo Airport, our bus stopped once more so that we could go to a tourist shop and spend the rest of our Won. At this point, I realized that the terrible food, the watered whiskey, and the rest of the attempts to separate the Japanese tourists from their money were all part of a subtle Korean effort to extract some measure of revenge on the Japanese for their repeated invasions and decades of colonial rule in Korea.
In the shop, I bought my only souvenir of the trip -- a vacuum pack of radish kimchi (gaktooki), suitable for bringing through Japanese customs, which instructed in English and Japanese to open it and allow it to ferment for a couple of days before consuming. I did, and it was delicious.
Showing posts with label Korea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Korea. Show all posts
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Detour to Seoul, Korea
Changing positions from an internship at Canon to a full-time job at Look Japan required a change in my visa status from intern to work permit. Because only consulates could process visa changes (as opposed to renewals), I had to leave Japan for the nearest consulate. Since Japan is an island country, it doesn't leave too many options. Most gaijin, myself included, go to Seoul, Korea, which is about a two-hour flight from Tokyo.
Many foreign employees of Look Japan had been in this position before me, and the company already had an established routine for handling it. You traveled to Seoul on Sunday, checked in at the YMCA near the Japanese consulate, showed up at the consulate first thing on Monday morning, picked up your passport with new visa stamp on Tuesday, and flew back to Tokyo that afternoon.
Seoul in 1991, at the beginning of Korea's rapid economic development, was a very interesting place. The main streets were lined with glass office buildings that looked exactly like those in Tokyo, only newer. The streets leading off the main streets were paved, but when you walked into the small alleyways behind the glass office towers, you found many an unpaved dirt or gravel road. The back streets were where you found little Buddhist temples, the restaurants where the locals ate, and interesting little shops. I wandered for hours.
The YMCA was in the "old" city, near the old imperial palaces of the Yi Dynasty and the parks now surrounding them, the night markets, and Insadong Street, which is lined with shops selling Korean pottery. In one of them, I bought a three-piece tea cup containing a handle-less cup, a filter for the tea leaves, and a cover that doubled as a saucer. (I used this throughout my stay in Japan, and would have it now but for the fact that, when I returned to New York in 1994, it was not just cracked but thoroughly pulverized into about twenty distinct pieces.) Korea is well-known in Asia for its pottery, and the better-known Japanese pottery industry owes its success entirely to Korea. At the end of the 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord who unified Japan after 150 years of civil war, invaded Korea twice to punish Korea for refusing his demands to allow Japan to use Korea as a staging ground for an invasion of China. Korea, with Chinese assistance, repelled Hideyoshi both times, but Hideyoshi kidnapped hundreds of Korean potters, took them back to Japan, and installed them in various towns around Japan, many of which are still famous for their ceramics. Many of the great Japanese potters are descended from the Korean potters Hideyoshi brought back to Japan in the 1590s.
Insadong Street goes up a hill towards one of the imperial palaces and at the top of the street was what would become my favorite coffee shop of all time, called "Koffee." Following the advice of my Look Japan colleague Ann Safir, who had done this trip before me, I ignored the crazy post-modern facade with its neon sticks jutting out of the walls at crazy angles, and inside I found a zone of calm containing a shop containing a ceramics shop on one side and a coffee shop on the other that used ceramics by the same artists to serve the coffee. I made a point to go to Koffee every day I was there, and when I returned to Seoul the following year on a company trip.
I also toured as many of the imperial palaces and other historical sites as I could, such as the famous Nandaemon ("Great Southern Gate"), which once permitted access through the wall surrounding Seoul, but in 1991 was a great traffic circle and the symbol of Seoul. This great gate was burned down in the last year or two by an arsonist. Sadly, this put Nandaemon into a great tradition in Seoul, where half of the historical buildings have an inscription reading something like the following:
The Japanese and Korean cultures are probably more closely related to each other than they are to any other cultures, as Korea was the greatest single source of immigrants to Japan in Japan's pre-historical and early historical times, and most of the Chinese culture, like Buddhism and writing, that came to Japan was filtered through Korea. The Japanese imperial family is thought to be descended from Korean nobility that invaded Japan in the 3rd or 4th century, and in those early historical times, Japan maintained close contact with one of the Korean kingdoms and sometimes became involved in Korean domestic affairs -- facts that were later used by Japanese militarists to justify invasion and annexation of Korea in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Although Japanese and Korean culture have many similarities, many differences were apparent even in my three day trip. Strangers in Japan rarely made eye contact with me, but people walking down the street in Korea frequently looked me in the eye, and even smiled. While Japanese people rarely touch each other in public, Koreans walk down the street arm-in-arm with their friends, even of the same sex -- both men and women. Cultural differences were even apparent among children. Japanese children frequently hid behind their mother's legs when they saw me, but Korean kids were the opposite: while visiting one of the imperial palaces, I was spotted by a group of young elementary school kids on a class trip, probably around six years old, who all began waving at me and shouting "Harro! Harro!"
But not all the differences favored the Koreans. Japanese are generally extremely conscientious and it is very hard (though not impossible) to get cheated in Japan, particularly as a (white) foreigner. In Korea, though, foreigners were marks. For example, on my last day in Seoul, after getting my visa, I had some time to kill before my flight and went to one of the parks, where I met two young women studying to be tour guides who wanted to practice their English with me. When it came time to go to the airport, they helped me get a taxi and told the driver where I was going. In Seoul, at least in those days, cabbies stopped to pick up other customers if they were going the same way, so I shared my cab with several other passengers for part of the trip. When I got there, however, the cabbie wanted to charge me for the entire fare on the meter, even though the other passengers had paid him. Not knowing any Korean, I couldn't really argue with him. It really didn't matter anyway, though, since it seemed like a phenomenal amount of money in Won, but only translated into a couple of bucks, which I figured he needed more than me.
All in all, I loved Seoul. The old city, the ceramics, the imperial palaces, the parks, the people, and the FOOD!!! The food alone was worth the trip. I have heard that the city has changed greatly since then, but I really hope I get to go back someday.
Many foreign employees of Look Japan had been in this position before me, and the company already had an established routine for handling it. You traveled to Seoul on Sunday, checked in at the YMCA near the Japanese consulate, showed up at the consulate first thing on Monday morning, picked up your passport with new visa stamp on Tuesday, and flew back to Tokyo that afternoon.
Seoul in 1991, at the beginning of Korea's rapid economic development, was a very interesting place. The main streets were lined with glass office buildings that looked exactly like those in Tokyo, only newer. The streets leading off the main streets were paved, but when you walked into the small alleyways behind the glass office towers, you found many an unpaved dirt or gravel road. The back streets were where you found little Buddhist temples, the restaurants where the locals ate, and interesting little shops. I wandered for hours.
The YMCA was in the "old" city, near the old imperial palaces of the Yi Dynasty and the parks now surrounding them, the night markets, and Insadong Street, which is lined with shops selling Korean pottery. In one of them, I bought a three-piece tea cup containing a handle-less cup, a filter for the tea leaves, and a cover that doubled as a saucer. (I used this throughout my stay in Japan, and would have it now but for the fact that, when I returned to New York in 1994, it was not just cracked but thoroughly pulverized into about twenty distinct pieces.) Korea is well-known in Asia for its pottery, and the better-known Japanese pottery industry owes its success entirely to Korea. At the end of the 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord who unified Japan after 150 years of civil war, invaded Korea twice to punish Korea for refusing his demands to allow Japan to use Korea as a staging ground for an invasion of China. Korea, with Chinese assistance, repelled Hideyoshi both times, but Hideyoshi kidnapped hundreds of Korean potters, took them back to Japan, and installed them in various towns around Japan, many of which are still famous for their ceramics. Many of the great Japanese potters are descended from the Korean potters Hideyoshi brought back to Japan in the 1590s.
Insadong Street goes up a hill towards one of the imperial palaces and at the top of the street was what would become my favorite coffee shop of all time, called "Koffee." Following the advice of my Look Japan colleague Ann Safir, who had done this trip before me, I ignored the crazy post-modern facade with its neon sticks jutting out of the walls at crazy angles, and inside I found a zone of calm containing a shop containing a ceramics shop on one side and a coffee shop on the other that used ceramics by the same artists to serve the coffee. I made a point to go to Koffee every day I was there, and when I returned to Seoul the following year on a company trip.
I also toured as many of the imperial palaces and other historical sites as I could, such as the famous Nandaemon ("Great Southern Gate"), which once permitted access through the wall surrounding Seoul, but in 1991 was a great traffic circle and the symbol of Seoul. This great gate was burned down in the last year or two by an arsonist. Sadly, this put Nandaemon into a great tradition in Seoul, where half of the historical buildings have an inscription reading something like the following:
Built in 1490. Burned by the Japanese in 1592. Rebuilt in
1595. Burned by the Japanese in 1598. Rebuilt in 1604. Burned
by the Japanese in 1910. Rebuilt in 1945.
The Japanese and Korean cultures are probably more closely related to each other than they are to any other cultures, as Korea was the greatest single source of immigrants to Japan in Japan's pre-historical and early historical times, and most of the Chinese culture, like Buddhism and writing, that came to Japan was filtered through Korea. The Japanese imperial family is thought to be descended from Korean nobility that invaded Japan in the 3rd or 4th century, and in those early historical times, Japan maintained close contact with one of the Korean kingdoms and sometimes became involved in Korean domestic affairs -- facts that were later used by Japanese militarists to justify invasion and annexation of Korea in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Although Japanese and Korean culture have many similarities, many differences were apparent even in my three day trip. Strangers in Japan rarely made eye contact with me, but people walking down the street in Korea frequently looked me in the eye, and even smiled. While Japanese people rarely touch each other in public, Koreans walk down the street arm-in-arm with their friends, even of the same sex -- both men and women. Cultural differences were even apparent among children. Japanese children frequently hid behind their mother's legs when they saw me, but Korean kids were the opposite: while visiting one of the imperial palaces, I was spotted by a group of young elementary school kids on a class trip, probably around six years old, who all began waving at me and shouting "Harro! Harro!"
But not all the differences favored the Koreans. Japanese are generally extremely conscientious and it is very hard (though not impossible) to get cheated in Japan, particularly as a (white) foreigner. In Korea, though, foreigners were marks. For example, on my last day in Seoul, after getting my visa, I had some time to kill before my flight and went to one of the parks, where I met two young women studying to be tour guides who wanted to practice their English with me. When it came time to go to the airport, they helped me get a taxi and told the driver where I was going. In Seoul, at least in those days, cabbies stopped to pick up other customers if they were going the same way, so I shared my cab with several other passengers for part of the trip. When I got there, however, the cabbie wanted to charge me for the entire fare on the meter, even though the other passengers had paid him. Not knowing any Korean, I couldn't really argue with him. It really didn't matter anyway, though, since it seemed like a phenomenal amount of money in Won, but only translated into a couple of bucks, which I figured he needed more than me.
All in all, I loved Seoul. The old city, the ceramics, the imperial palaces, the parks, the people, and the FOOD!!! The food alone was worth the trip. I have heard that the city has changed greatly since then, but I really hope I get to go back someday.
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