Soccer Hooliganism

Finally, our long awaited chance to improve our beating skills and make ethnic and racial slurs, all in the name of good fun.

It came this past Sunday as part of the East Asian Football Championships, or some other equally glamorously named event. We headed up to the World Cup Stadium for the clash of the Communist titans, as China beat the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in a pretty good game, that North Korea really should have crushed the Chinese, but somehow just couldn't connect. I guess that's the trend these days, the Chinese are on the up and up, today's Zeitgeist, and nobody's quite got them figured out... there's no stopping them. Oh the horror.

After that the local interest really kicked in as our own ROK heroes were matched up against the horrific Japanese. The fans were impressively decked out uniformly in red and making solemn declarations about the sanctity of East Sea rocks. Not that great a game, and Japan managed to score in the 84th minute.



In the end China seems to have "won" the tournament, and received copious medals and fireworks. Interestingly, the South Korean audience still has strong affinity for the North Korean team, and cheers them on vigorously. Other than that, this is a long weekend, and we may head down to Busan for the occasion to sample their excellent Indian cuisine, and marvel at the Sea of People that is Haeundae Beach in August. Apparently they jack up the prices around the board, and lines everywhere are even longer than usual, so it should make for a rollicking good time. We can marvel at the phenomenon of Koreans bathing fully attired. (Though in a quirk of fate, yet to be worked out, even polite Koreans have deemed it acceptable to swim in bathing suits at indoor pools and amusement parks, and completely naked in jinja-bongs (although I do realise that jinja-bongs are segregated).)

Japanese Shopping

Undoubtedly our favourite shops in Japan.

Kyoto and further

For a mid summer trip we picked Osaka/Kyoto.

Japan continues to astound me, as it did on my Visa run. Corie was also blown away. She's thinking about joining up! Anyway, Osaka was nice, in the way that Fukuoka was, but Kyoto brought things to a whole new level. Some parts of Kyoto are just a huge park pracitically with temples and shrines of all sorts just thrown in here and there.

One day we took a break from Kyoto and decided to take a train trip to the coast for some beach action and scenery at Takeno, which was described in our trusty little guidebook. Unfortunately the book didn't quite make it clear how crazily long the train trip from Kyoto was. We had no real idea which train to take, as it wasn't clear where on Earth Takeno station was. So to begin with we guessed, and then were forced out, fortunately in the right place. We gave in to asking, and though he didn't speak English a pleasant conductor made it pretty clear which train to get on next, but he seemed a bit agitated about it, and couldn't explain why. Fortunately we worked out that this involved yet another transfer at a specific point further down the line.



Around this point was when I really came to appreciate my halting and inadequate ability to read Korean as the massive advantage that it really is. Japanese is now just as impenetrable as Korean was when I first arrived, and I'd really forgotten how discombobulating it is to have absolutely no idea where to go. Anyway, we enlisted further help, and managed to get off at the second transfer, waiting for the final leg in a rickety little single track train. Unfortunately this was local, which only went every hour or so. So, by the time we actually got out to the coast we'd waited pretty much 4 hours. Needless to say we were quite famished. Again it was a bit of an ordeal to find an appropriate place to eat, but I've never appreciated Japanese food more.


The beach was nice, but really the best part was just the trip out to the Japanese country side which is beautiful. The trees are tall and not unlike some in BC. The farms are quiet and nice.

We also ran into a bunch of drunken Japanese businessmen and women on the train home, puking all over the place! The binge drinking seems real!





We wound up being in Osaka at the same time as Ian and Chelsea, completely at random. So we hooked up with them on our last night, and went out for some good Thai food and drinks with them. They'd spent most of their time in Osaka, and they were equally impressed with all things Japanese. I know that people who actually wind up living in Japan seem to lose this veneration, but it seems to come to almost all korean ESL teachers. Mostly because japan is so many things that korea is not, which is its strength, and its weakness. The people are quiet and generally leave you alone more than in Korea. Everything reeks of order and money, unlike Korea which reeks of speed and hard work.