Tokyo Drift

Sorry we haven't posted recently. Not much happened in September because we were trying to save our money for our holiday to Tokyo. Good thing we did too. Toyko was way more expensive than Seoul. Anyways, here are the pictures from our trip...

This is at the Osaka Airport. They are little cubicle rooms you rent by the hour. Included in the price was also showers, Internet, and a huge collection of comic books. It was fine for our 11-hour layover but I definitely wouldn't want to stay in one for an extended period of time.

This is Shibuya Crossing. It's like the Time Square of Tokyo.

And this is the crossing at night.

This is the Asakusa District where our hostel was located. It's supposed to be closer to "old Tokyo." The building with the gold thing is the Asahi Beer building and the unfinished tower in the back will be the Tokyo Sky Tree. It's Tokyo's new communications tower.

Sushi-Go-Round. They had these conveyor belt sushi places all over. They were nice, with each plate being color coded and the waitress just adds up your bill according to the plates. The sushi was pretty good too. But we didn't know how to ask for specific items so we just had to have whatever the chef prepared.

This is in the Akihabara District which is like the video gamers' heaven. Derek loved this area of course! These people are actually waiting in line for the release of a new game.

These are the best pictures I got of the mountain. When we arrived at the bus station in front of Fuji we had an amazing cloudless view. But we wanted to see it from the lake. So we walked (pretty far) and by the time we got a view of the lake and Mt. Fuji there was one cloud in front of it, that grew into a big cloud and wouldn't let me get a good picture. Eventually we gave up waiting and walked back to the station to catch our bus. When of course, the clouds cleared and again, we had a perfect view of the mountain. I was bummed I didn't get a good picture, but when we were leaving Japan we flew right over Mt. Fuji and were able to look down into the volcano which was cool and made up for the fact that I didn't get a good picture.

This is a statue in front of the Sumo Hall which is where we spent most of Thursday. We were lucky enough to be in Tokyo during the tournament season which I only think happens twice a year.

The sumo tournament lasts all day with the junior sumos wrestling in the morning and the pros wrestling in the afternoon. It rained all day so it was a nice way to still get to see the culture but avoid the nasty weather (which we later learned was a category 1 Typhoon).

This was at the Sony Building and you could view and test their new products that just came out or are about to. This camera recognizes smiles and you don't have to press the shutter to take a picture, as soon as one person smiles it takes it. We also so the new 3-D televisions and camera, and some really cool stuff for your home that we would never be able to afford.

This is the view from the Mori Tower, which I think is the tallest building in the city (at least until that Sky Tree Tower is built). I just walked around the observatory and took pictures to get a 360 degree view of the city. This is just a couple of them.

They love their vending machines in Tokyo. I don't think I would like to buy books out of a vending machine, Derek and I love going to book stores and spending hours browsing the books. What's the fun of standing in front of a machine and pressing B1? We also saw beer vending machines, which is weird too, because how do you regulate underage drinking?

This is the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. It was beautiful and had a wonderful market around it. And as you can see, it was a beautiful day which was nice since it rained for two days straight.

This is the Tsukiji Fish Market. We tried to get up at 4:30 to catch the auction but when we walked out the Typhoon we talked about was in full force. So we slept a couple more hours and made our way to the market after lunch. There wasn't as much seafood by that point, but we had the freshest sushi we'll probably ever have, and we got to sleep in more, so it was worth it.

These pictures are from the Imperial Palace East Gardens. It was beautiful and had a nice entrance that was so different from the city that surrounded it. As you can see in the pictures it's right in the middle of the city. And it's so strange to walk from the quiet palace gardens back into the buildings and noise of the city.

Tokyo Tower, Tokyo's blatant plagarism of the Eiffel Tower. All the brochures and everything at the tower tried to promote how much better Tokyo Tower is compared to the Eiffel Tower. Strange though, I never heard of the Tokyo Tower before we came here...

Sunset from the top for the tower. In the second picture we should be able to see Mt. Fuji, but again clouds were in the way.

Tokyo at night. Again, I took 360 degree pictures around the observatory but these were the two best. The tower was nice, and we had some chocolate cake and watched the sunset over the city. It was a nice way to spend our last night in Tokyo.

We got up early the next morning to catch the first subway to the airport. Luckily we had an early flight so we arrived back at our place in Korea by one in the afternoon. Again it was hard going back to school after a nice holiday and seeing another city. But Derek and I both agreed that, although we liked visiting Tokyo we would not like to live there. It wasn't too much more expensive than a big city back home, but at about $2 dollars a pop to ride the subway it was too rich for our blood. But we had a great trip and a nice Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) holiday. Now it's back to school and the dreaded demo lesson tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Blackout Korea

As we've said before, drinking is a big part of the Korean culture. You're expected to drink with your school and it's considered inappropriate to refuse a drink. But one thing they don't find inappropriate is public intoxication. We can't even count the number of times we've seen grown men in business suits passed out drunk in gutters, subways, and even in front of church. So someone created a blog of pictures of these grown people completely passed out in public places.

One Saturday afternoon we were in Itaewon (the foreigner's district) and saw a guy passed out in a stairwell with all his belongings beside him. I quickly took a picture so I could submit it to the blog. Well, months later it finally made it up! So here's my picture from the blog...



And here is a link to the blog. Our picture is posted from the the June pictures.
www.blackoutkorea.com

This One Time At English Camp…

School’s out for summer! Well not exactly, unlike back home summer break doesn’t mean a break from school. Korean students are expected to attend English camps and continue studying throughout summer.

The week after vacation, I had the privilege of working a weeklong middle school camp. At first I was not excited about working twelve-hour days with middle schoolers, especially since I don’t usually even teach middle school. But, I got stuck with it so I might as well make the most of it, right?

Turns out it was great! The kids, well teenagers really (15 year olds), were the best of the best from around the island, hand-picked to attend this camp. I was a homeroom teacher (go Class 4!) and a club activity teacher (go Thriller Dance Club!). I was also in charge of five lessons, two book missions, making t-shirts with my homeroom class, mini-Olympics, game show, and writing activities every night. Exhausting isn’t it?!

Each day was basically like this give or take a few changes here and there:
7:00 – 8:00 – Morning Exercise
8:00 – 9:00 – Breakfast
9:00 – 12:00 – Lessons
12:00 – 1:00 – Lunch
1:00 – 3:00 – Class Activity
3:00 – 5:00 – Club Activity (go Thriller Dance Club!)
5:00 – 6:00 – Book Mission
6:00 – 7:00 – Dinner
7:00 – 8:30 – Writing Activities
8:30 – 9:00 – Snack
9:00 – Head to dorms to get ready for bed

The first lesson didn’t go so well. Not that I wasn’t prepared, but it was the first day and I was meeting my homeroom class and to say they were shy is an understatement. My first meeting with my Thriller Dance Club went well, although they weren’t as excited about the dance as I thought they would be. But by the end of the first session they were laughing and having fun and as the day went on all the kids started opening up more and more.

Overall the whole camp experience was wonderful for the students and the teachers. It was such a great opportunity to get to interact with the kids outside of the classroom and to work with kids who actually understood us and who could have fun, joke and enjoy what we prepared. The best part was the scavenger hunts, club activities and all the things they had outside the lessons that gave the students a chance work with us and have fun, but while speaking English.

By the end of the camp, both the teachers and students were sad to see it come to an end. On the final day, after closing ceremonies students were actually in tears about the camp being over. I am sure it had more to do with saying goodbye to their new friends, but we would like to think it had something to do with us too.

Here are some pictures from the camp…

All the kids before the Mini-Olympics

The Thriller Dance Club

Class 4 - AKA "The Fantastic Four"

The Thriller Dance Club was so much fun. It felt like dance team practice all over again. I taught them the choreography and they picked the formation. I hope if I am able to find an art teaching job back home, I can also coach a dance team as well. It was so much fun and made me remember how much I love it. Anyways, here is a video of my kids dancing at the closing ceremony. They did an amazing job, especially with only 8 hours of practice!



Today, I got an email from Rebecca (the girl in front and center on the Thriller Video) thanking me for the camp, telling me she had a great time, that I was her favorite teacher and she loved the Thriller dance. It was really sweet and made me happy that I was able to be apart of the camp.

Hong Kong Phooey

After eight days of relaxing and roughin' it in the Philippines we were all looking forward to our trip to Hong Kong. We were anxious to see another major city and compare it to Seoul, which we have all finally grown complacent with, and we were definitely looking forward to electricity and hot water.

We arrived in Hong Kong at 5:30 in the afternoon and the first thing I did was buy a new camera (mine finally died while we were in the Philippines). Then we unsuccessfully tried to get money out of the ATM before giving up and deciding to head to the hotel to throw our stuff down first. Before we left Korea I found the best/cheapest/most popular places backpackers usual stay and how to get there from the airport. We easily found the bus and headed toward the city. This is the first picture we saw of the buildings of Hong Kong and honestly at first I was little disappointed because it looked so much like Seoul. Little did I know we weren't even close to downtown and the spectacular skyline that was awaiting us.

This is where we stayed, well entrance to where we stayed. This mansion is really just a big building with guest houses all individually owned by different people on each floor. We all stayed in a room smaller than my side of the dorm room with a fridge and a sketchy looking bathroom in the corner. I was less than thrilled but there was air conditioning, a tv, and the lady said they had hot water so we said okay (again, there was no hot water). We tried looking at another place the next day, but it was way more expensive than this place, and we were already a step up from where we stayed in the Philippines so we decided to stick it out and rough it for four more days.

This was our first view of the city from the Star Ferry. When we arrived at the "mansion" we hadn't seen the big skyline yet. So when we got a taxi to take us to the ferry terminal and saw this, it literally took my breath away. The big tall building with the white lights on top is the IFC building, or what we called "the Batman." It's where they filmed the Hong Kong scenes in The Dark Knight.

On the ferry crossing from Kowloon Island to Hong Kong Island. The ferry was cheaper than the buses and the subway with a much better view!

This is the style of the public transit buses for Hong Kong. Since Hong Kong was a British territory for so long they had the double-decker buses and drive on the left side of the road. It was such a strange feeling, I seriously felt like we were going to have a head-on collision a couple of times.

This is the Lan Kwai Fong district. We went because it apparently has some of the best bars and night life in Hong Kong, but turns out it was also the foreigners' district.

The Stanley Street Market could give you souvenir overload but the places seemed more authentic than the stores and stands in the city. We walked the streets for several hours despite the heat. Everything was just so cheap, and we had to stop ourselves from buying everything. We did get a couple of good souvenirs to send home though!

This is on the other side of the Stanley Street Market. The waterfront was lined with cute little shops, bars and restaurants. We stopped and had a beer after battling the heat all afternoon and enjoyed the waterfront. It was such a different vibe from the city of Hong Kong and you almost forgot you were in Asia for a second. Don't know if that is a good or bad thing, but it's just how it seemed.

Next we went to Victoria's Peak. We wanted to make sure to go before dark so we could see the skyline in both the day and night. Too bad it was a cloudy day, but it's still an amazing view. While we waited for it to turn dark, we went inside the shopping center at the peak to eat dinner (there is a mall/shopping center everywhere in Hong Kong). While we were eating, a huge thunderstorm rolled in and we had a front row seat. The storm got so bad we couldn't even see out the windows. I prayed it would stop so I could get some pictures of the skyline at night, after all that was the main reason to come to The Peak.

Luckily it finally stopped raining and we went to the top viewing deck of the shopping center to take some pictures. However it did not stop lightning and thundering. But it was worth it for this view...

...And this was the view with lightning striking behind me and illuminating the whole city.

Loved this picture of us in front of the city. I mean, look at that view, if it wasn't lightning I would have stayed up there all night.

WAR EAGLE, HEY! This was at a bar in the Lan Kwai Fong district. I was so excited I started singing Weagle, Weagle, really loud. Can't believe football season starts next week, everyone better keep us posted!

The view of Hong Kong Island from Kowloon Island. The skyline is so big, I still didn't get everything in.

Looking towards Hong Kong Island on the Avenue of the Stars.

Derek and the Bruce Lee monument on the Avenue of the Stars. They also had celebrity hand prints and names on the river walk kinda like the Walk Of Fame in Hollywood.

This is Hong Kong Park. And, although it was a pain to get to (no thanks to the Lonely Planet) it was a really cool park with ponds, waterfalls, fountains, conservatory, aviary, museum and several restaurants. It was definitely worth the hassle.

At the top of some big tall tower thing they had in the park. It was exactly 105 steps up a giant spiral staircase (it had a sign telling us that, although I had to count to make sure it was correct).

The IFC Building (aka The Batman) at night. We had drinks at happy hour and enjoyed the sunset from the rooftop restaurant they had there.

On Lantau Island in the cable car heading up to see the Po Lin Monastery and the Tian Tan Buddha.

At the entrance to the shopping village before you get to the monastery and Buddha (seriously malls everywhere).

View of the monastery and the Buddha. The monastery is fairly new, founded in 1906. Luckily the monastery and Buddha were a nice distance from the entrance and the shopping village.

The Tian Tan Buddha, the largest seated, bronze Buddha in the world.

Very nice! ...High five!!

This was at the Temple Street Night Market. It was very similar to the Stanley Street Market but much bigger. These people loved to haggle too. Derek talked a woman down $150 Hong Kong Dollars for this really cool mask. We ended up paying about $20 US dollars for it in the end. This is at a restaurant we ate at both nights we came to the market. They had great food and as you can see in the picture, PBR! This was my favorite place we ate while in Hong Kong and it was a great way to spend our last night in the city.

We had to get up really early the next day to catch our 9:00 flight back to Seoul. We weren't looking forward to going back to Seoul after the amazing trip in Hong Kong. It was just so easy in Hong Kong, everyone spoke English, they had all kinds of international foods and beers, great shopping and we knew we would be back to struggling to communicate with everyone and rice & kimchi. We arrived in Seoul safely and luckily all our luggage arrived. By this point Derek and I were exhausted so we bit the bullet and paid for a cab back to the island so we could get home as quick as possible. We immediately crashed for the night. Unfortunately that was all the time we got to recuperate because we both started week long summer camps the next day. But more about that in the next post.