Sensoji Temple (浅草寺)

Friday night a snowstorm hit Tokyo that nearly shut down a number of train lines the the greater Tokyo area.  I was actually in Saitama late that night, trying to the make it to my hotel in downtown Tokyo.  I was in genuine fear of not making it home, as many trains were delayed by an hour or more due to heavy snow and it was late at night.  After all, if they made an announcement that they were stopping the trains for the night, I likely wouldn't understand it.  Thankfully, the train did come and it did take me to the downtown Tokyo station (after stopping mid-way outside of a station for quite a while).  I now have a newfound understanding and appreciation for the anime scenes depicting nearly abandoned train stations in snowy weather.

Waiting at the train station.

Walking the streets of Tokyo back to my hotel.

The next morning was cold and wet, so I stayed inside.  But, by late morning the sun had come out and it had warmed significantly, so I decided to visit Sensoji Template, which had been recommended by my friend, Ayumi.  The trip to the Sensoji Temple was totally worth it.  I'd already visited one temple, so I thought this trip might be redundant.  But, this temple had a lot more to see, and was surrounded by a vibrant, old-fashioned market (where I tried dango for the first time!).  The melting snow even accentuated the pictures in a nice way.

Asimo, The Robot

Asimo is old news. I imagine almost everyone has seen a clip or two of him (ahem...it). However, seeing it in person is another matter altogether. The lifelike movements are impressive, and a bit erie. I'd swear that if I didn't know any better there it was a kid running around in a robot suit.

Asimo Robot

Winter Camp Videos

For my winter camp out students had to present a an invention to the class in English, which would then be evaluated by the other students based on creativity and practicality of the invention.  Part of their assignment was to create a commercial for their invention.  I've uploaded most of the videos on a separate blog dedicated to that purpose (I withheld two videos, because I didn't feel comfortable posting videos with student's faces).  A few are a little hard to understand from the spoken dialogue, but overall they're quite entertaining.

http://taeangirlshs.blogspot.com

The Walkway Of Relationship Doom

There's a lot of superstitions related to couples in Korea.  Indeed, Korea seems to be a somewhat superstitious culture (though like in the US, most people don't seem to take and seriously), and one could easily write a whole book about all the idiosyncrasies Korean culture has about couples in general.  I learned a new superstition this week, though, that I wanted to share.

I was walking with a group of college students along the덕수궁 (Deoksugung) Palace Wall.  I was on a Seoul-Mate Tour, which is basically a student organization that gives free cultural tours to foreigners in Seoul.  As we were walking, they told me that there is a belief that if a couple walks down this road that it means they will break up.  Apparently, there is a family court at the end of the pathway where married couples have to go to get a divorce.  So, it's thought that if an unmarried couple walks down that path, it means that they will break up at some point in the near future.  In fact, they said there's a story that sometimes people take their girlfriends or boyfriends down this road to tell them they want to break up (in lieu of telling them verbally).  I said "that horrible!"  They just laughed and said that it doesn't actually happen (that we know of, at least).

Photo by Gwonie S. Nam

은재 and I's trip to 창덕궁

The week after our trip to 태안's Shrimp Festival, I was in Seoul for orientation.  I got off early on Friday, so 은재 and I decided to meet up.  She suggested seeing 창덕궁 palace.  I'd already seen one of the palaces in Seoul.  I hadn't realized at the time that there were four different ones.  Still, I thought it might be boring, but 은재 talked me into it, and I'm glad she did.  Unlike the previous palace I'd seen, in this one we were allowed into "the secret garden," which is the king's garden that traditionally could only be entered with the King's permission.  It was quite beautiful.

Afterwards, 은재 and I went to a historical area of Seoul and looked around, and the got coffee and honey bread at one if the local cafés.  All around a very worthwhile experience.

북한산 Hiking Trip

I went to 북한산 (Bukhansan Mountain), a mountain range on the North West side of Seoul, last Saturday with a meetup group.  I met some nice people, including an US Army Engineer, a Korean Civil Engineer who works in Seoul, a couple expats working for Samsung, and a few Korean teachers.  Check out the pictures.

Near this area there were some statues hidden in the rocks representing North Korean soldiers who had been hiding in these mountains in order to assassinate South Korea's then president 박충희 (Park Chung-hee) in 1968.  The assassins were discovered by a lone police officer who fought off the group of soldiers long enough to thwart their mission.  The police officer died in the unsuing combat, but the North Korean soldiers were captured.

Me at the summit where we ate lunch (well, I didn't bring one, but others shared there gimpap and jerky with me, so I was more than satiated).

On the way down, we cam across this Budhist Temple.

The 태안 Shrimp Festival

I figured out how to upload photos from my phone more easily (using the Google+ auto backup feature), so I'm going back through them and posting them for all to see!

On October 19th, 2013, a friend, 은재 (un-chay), I'd met from Seoul came down to 태안 (tay-an) to attend the 태안 shrimp festival with me and some of my other friends.  After she and her friend arrived in 태안, we ate a great multi-course meal at a Chinese restaurant, which Jackson, who speaks Manderin fluently, ordered for us.

We then proceeded to show 은재 and her friend, Stephanie, around 태안 before meeting up with the rest of our friends to head to the shrimp festival.  In the process, we came across a historical school building.  These can be found in many places in South Korea.  They were built hundreds of years ago by the government to expand education in South Korea, or so Jackson explained to me.  I don't remember too much about it beyond that.

After that, we met up with our other friends at the bus terminal (actually we were going to be late for the bus so we ran half way across 태안 with only a few minutes to spare) and headed to 안면도 (an-mi-on-doh), which is about 45 minutes away, for the shrimp festival.  Once we arrived, we first headed to the beach, where I took lots of great pictures.

After that, 은재 helped us good deal on freshly caught shrimp at one of the restaurants nearby.  These restaurants were all over the place.

So with that, we hurried back to 태안 so that 은재 and her friend could make it back to their bus on time.  After seeing them off, we went to one of the local cafés for 빙수 (bing-sue), which is shaved ice with different various kinds of sweet topings on top (the Oreo 빙수 is my favorite).  Two of the local teachers in our group are absolutely crazy about 빙수.  The café has writing all over the walls from various patrons (I guess the owners are okay with this).  As you can see in the third pic, Jackson decided to move into virgin territory.