Christmas in Korea

Even though Korea is the only Eastern Asian country to have Christmas as a national holiday, they still only give you one day off.  Since Christmas was on Sunday, we didn't get any time off.  Christmas in Korea is also considered differently.  Instead of a time to be with family and friends, it is a couple holiday where you take out your significant other to a coffee shop and concert.  I think Santa Clause is slowly becoming more popular, but nothing close to the US.  Another big tradition for Koreans (and Japanese) is the Christmas Cake.  The bakeries sell these cakes with Christmas decorations to eat Christmas day.  Instead of turkey or ham, they usually have chicken (in fried form) for Christmas.

At least many public places decorate for Christmas!  We saw our share of Christmas lights and Christmas trees. (Strangely, there is usually a big banner on a Christmas tree that says "Merry Christmas") I even saw a few lighted reindeer.  And it did snow Christmas Eve, so it was still a mostly White Christmas!  We bought a tiny tree that fit our tiny apartment, and it actually turned out kind of pretty.

Sorry its sideways, but here is our Christmas Tree!

Our first Christmas together was memorable even if it did not turn out to be a very happy one.  Riley had a stomach virus Christmas eve, which was not pleasant.  He was still a little sick Christmas, but we were able to talk to Mom, Dad, Laura, and Grandma, as well as Diane and Ruth, on Skype.  I was able to make it to church and take a shoebox of gifts for the orphanage.  We spent a lot of Christmas with Riley sick in bed and Margaret trying to find Christmas specials on the computer.  Oh well, there is always next year...

Cumberlands in Japan Part 2

Well, we are back in Korea now.  The day we came back we went by train, plane, bus, and taxi.  Here is a summary of what we did in Japan.

We went to Tokyo and saw the Imperial Palace!  Its really pretty, though you can't get very close due to a moat, high stone walls, and guarded gates.  There were cormorants swimming in the moat!  Riley and I aren't really used to cities, so we found this Communications Museum on the map and decided to check it out.  It was really really neat!  I recommend going if you are ever in Tokyo.  The museum had information about the post office and ancient messenger service, plus telephone and radio exhibits.  There were 3D videos, interactive exhibits, video games (in Japanese, so we couldn't get that far), and really detailed information.  You collected stamps and got a prize when you left.  It also had the most massive stamp collection from all over the world! 

We went to a couple of other museums in Japan, local folk museum, and they were also very interesting and well done.  We had to go to the conference most of the week, and it included a tour of a nuclear reactor at the end!  First we had to go across Japan by bullet train (up to 300 km/hr!).  Then we went up a rock coastline.  At the security checkpoint we had to wear hairnets and hardhats.  Then we went through two security gates where we had to stand in a tiny room and wait for your visitor badge to register with the system before the machine would let you out.  We went to a room where we exchanged our hardhats with gloves, socks, a caps, new hard hats, shoes, a lab coat, and a dosimeter.  then we got to go into the containment dome for the sodium cooled research reactor!  What this means is that we got to see lots of giant equipment.  It was really neat, though since its sodium-cooled, we didn't get to see the blue glow.  Then we had to de-contaminate.  We gave back our gloves, socks, shoes, coat, cap, and helmet.  The we washed our hands and got to go into this machine that scanned us for contamination.  It reminded me of the old James Bond movie where they had to de-contaminate to go into the bad guy's lair.  No one was contaminated, but the process was kind of fun. 

On our extra day in Japan, we stayed in a small town in the middle of the country.  We wanted to see what normal Japan looked like.  I chose a place where there was a famous garden to explore.  I didn't expect it to be much more than a nice landscaping, but instead we were in for a great surprise!  It was absolutely beautiful!  This park was created 60 years ago, the water which ran through the ponds came from melted snow off of Mt. Fuji.  There was a small zoo with a gibbon, wallabys, a very fat prairie dog, capybaras, and an extremely cute red panda.  A nice gardener told us about some of the rare plants in the garden, but the greatest part was the trees!  They were huge!  Not compared to the virgin forest I grew up in, but in South Korea, there are no big trees.  All the big ones were cut down during the occupation.  There were informative English signs on some of the species to talk about where the Japanese common name came from.  The weather was perfect and everywhere we looked was a scenic picture with the maples and moss.  If you happen to be in Mishima, go to the garden and a hole in the wall Indian restaurant called Jeet.

In our travels we discovered some interesting things about Japan:
They put ginger in everything!
Fashion is strange here (I saw a lot of leopard print)
Everything is EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!
Trains can take you anywhere, if you can afford it.
Japanese people eat more noodles than Koreans
Sushi chefs don't like having their picture taken

Kim Jong Il is dead.  Let's hope that now, the future of both Koreas will become brighter.

Cumberlands in Japan: Part 1

Riley and I are currently in Japan for the week for a nuclear conference.  We were busy and did not really research Japan much before leaving.  We figured we had already gotten used to one East Asian country, how different could the one next to it be?

Japan is NOT like Korea.  The people are different, the food is different, the landscape is different, the numbers are different.  Actually, Japan is much more the stereotypical Asian country that we heard about in America.  We've been exploring the city the conference is in, Chiba, and there are places where we will go "Oh, this is why we keep seeing canals, trains and cats in anime." 

The first night we were here, we went to the waterfront at sunset.  There was a flock of ducks in front of us, we could see the bay across from us, to the right was the silhouette of Mt. Fuji, and to the left was a 4 deck boat all lit up.  It was amazing!  I felt like I was in an anime. 


The food here is amazing too!  We had a noodle soup that was sooo good and Riley got dumplings with what we think was real Wasabi sauce!  We also had fish with fresh ginger and rice with seaweed.  the strangest thing is, there was no kimchi!  (We found some in the grocery store though.)  They also don't always use spoons here, we had to drink our soup (unlike Korea where there is always a spoon with your chopsticks and where you NEVER drink your soup). 

We've been taking the train a lot to get to interesting places, and the most amazing thing is the open space.  There are not only no mountains in this area of Japan, there are also very few high rises.  People live in 2 story houses (we think there are multiple families per house, but we can't really tell).  In Korea things feel crowded because there isn't much flat land, but Japan is much more spread out.  Things here are also older.  In Japan so far, the land feels more like America, but the culture seems more Asian.

Street Food

You know how you are also warned about eating street food in another country.  I have heard lots of horror stories about eating something from a street vendor, and paying for it for weeks afterwards.  Luckily, South Korea is not like that!  You can eat all the delicious street food you want with the only side effect is gaining lots of weight.  Most of the food you can buy on the street in South Korea is either deep fried, boiled, or cooked right in front of you anyways.

It is good that you can eat the street food here, because sometime when you pass by a stand the smell is sooooo good.  I especially love these little doughnut-hole sized balls filled with something that tastes like chestnuts.  You get 18 for $2.  Some of the street food only comes out for the winter times.  These are usually freshly cooked, sweet, and very bad for you.  There is a pancake type food that is simply dough wrapped around sugar that is cooked until all the sugar melts in the middle.  The epitome of the bad for you, delicious winter street food are these fish things.  They aren't really make of fish, they are just shaped like a fish.  They have special fish-shaped waffle irons  to cook them in, and they are almost fried rather than cooked.  The middle is filled with the sweet red bean paste, or you can get the ones filled with some sort of custard.  You can either get 3 for $1 or 7 for $2. 
Some of these street food stands are always in one place, but others move a lot.  When we walk down our street we sometimes pass people selling oranges, cookies, and the sweet dough-balls, but at other times there is nothing. 

Around the corner from our home there is a permanent street food stand.  Someone drove their truck to that spot and never left.  I think the wheels are even flat.  We have yet to buy anything, though, because this one sells the dish dok-bok-i.  This dish consists of vegetables, fish cake, and something like rice pasta cooked up in a red, spicy sauce.  It is really tasty, but you know something is spicy when your Korean friends have to run for water after eating it.  Some are spicier than others, I'm just afraid to try a random stand in case my mouth and stomach would not be able to handle it.  She also sells boiled fish cakes, a type of sausage dish, and various hard to identify fried items.  Though someday we will be adventurous, we usually just go up the block and get 3 red bean fishes for $1.

Road Show Notes

Growing up, my Dad and I were ham radio operators.  We were friends (and still are) with a bunch of ham radio operators in western NC.  We all used to go to the Waffle House and eat.  I always had waffles, and everyone else had other yummy things there.  In Korea, the waffles are a bit better, so I want to recommend to all of my ham radio buddies (any anyone else) that the next time they go to Waffle House, they need to have their waffles the Korean Way (Or maybe the American-Korean way or the Korean-American way).  Get ready...  The way Korean eat waffles is with ice cream on top.  I know it sounds strange, and I was kind of weirded out at first, but its really yummy.  So ask the waitress for a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the waffle.  It's worth all of the strange looks you will get from your American friends.  I promise.   Think about it: waffles are covered with sugar (syrup) and fat (butter) anyway.  That's basically what ice cream is.  They're both dessert foods, so there is no reason why it shouldn't work.