…is for geeks

I headed back into the forest to get back to the city. On the subway again, I headed towards the anime museum, the Ghibli Museum, in Mitaka, just outside of Tokyo. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got there, but I was expectiing good things. After all, anime is a big part of Japanese culture, and I had to purchase tickets to the museum beforehand—something I don’t think I’ve ever had to do before. Was this place really so popular that people needed to arrive at an appointed time? With all the annoying transfers and stops, it took an hour to getthere from Meiji Jingu. Even though I had given myself a lot of extra time to get there, I arrived at the museum right on time.

The museum itself was like a big stucco mansion. It had multicoloured pastel paint on the outside, and vines and overgrown plants crawling all over the walls; it had the appearance of a child’s imaginary house. Inside, the rooms were no different. They were haphazardly organized with a messy collection of watercolour paintings and piles of objects, from books to toys to old-fashioned machinery. It felt less like a museum and more like an old house, where the loner owner had recently died and now people came to visit the crazy old man’s place and see what he had been up to all those years. Most things were interactive; we weren’t kept a safe distance from the paintings or books. I flipped through some of the old books of anime ideas, wishing I could read Japanese so I could understand the notes that accompanied the pictures.

The museum also had a short anime film. Having never watched anime before (with the exception of Sailor Moon—does that even count?), I was quite excited to see the show.

A little girl in a pink dress and pig-tails takes a walk. It’s windy outside. She opens a caramel candy, but before she can take a bite, the wind picks up. It blows the candy into the air and disappears. A wind tunnel chases her into her house. The wind tunnel turns into a 6-legged cat. She gives the cat another caramel and she eats one, too. They laugh together. A bigger cat comes, this one with eight or ten legs, and both cats leave.

At night, the little girl is sleeping when the cat comes to her window. The cat’s back opens up and she crawls inside. The cat is like a flying car: its eyes light up like headlights and the little girl sits inside like the driver. They go for a ride.

They’re passed by bigger and longer flying cat cars, some the size of trains, until they get to a forest. The other cats have purple-grey, egg-like alien animals inside. In the forest, the cats bodies disappear as they drop the aliens to the ground. The little girl seems to be confused as she watches all these creatures walk by her, until she sees a big, bear-like animal carrying an umbrella walk by. She runs up to it and gives it a big hug.

A huge, multi-storey flying cat car appears. It is so big it can carry all the alien creatures together, and they’re all loaded up inside. The little girl gives it a caramel candy. It eats it, then licks the little girl’s entire body with its giant tongue. She just laughs. She licks its nose and then they both laugh together.

The 6-legged cat returns and the little girl gets inside. It takes her home, with her laughing all the way.

I sat still at the end, with one big question in my head: What the heck was that about?

Sufficiently weirded out, I decided to get back on the subway and head for another Tokyo neighbourhood: Akihabara, the geek neighbourhood of this geeky country. Japan as a whole is like Akihabara: everything “geek” is cool here. A short walk around the area revealed a large number of video game shops and even more manga (Japanese comics) stores.

I walked around a few of these manga stores, even heading down into the 18+ sections. I was curious: could there really be cartoon for adults’ eyes only? Yes, and it’s called hentai, and it’s creepy. I felt awkward being in the porno rooms with the businessmen, flipping though comic books with not-so-innocent Sailor Moons. The worst part though, was coming across the live-action porn, with a large number of children. When I saw pre-tween little girls dressed in bikinis and posing seductively to the camera. I knew it was time for me to get out of there; I wasn’t so curious anymore.

Besides video games and manga, Akihabara is also known for its “maid cafes.” After my awkward encounter with hentai and little girls in bikinis, I was a little weary of entering a maid cafe, where the servers are dressed in maid costumes. Was it a “boys only” kind of thing? Would it be a little more sexually charged than I can handle right now? I finally decided that I was, again, too curious to pass it up and, worst-case senario, would just bolt out of there it got weird.

I passed by a few cafes before taking a deep breath and heading back to the first one I saw, where cute, costumed girls were standing out front to attract customers. I quickly sat down and order a Coke and slice of chocolate cake.

The cafe was decorated like a dollhouse—cute, not sexy at all. The place was simple, with long, unadorned tables and chairs. The focus, it seemed, was on the girls. The girls, as advertised, were all dressed as French maids, though each had her own style. Most outfits were the traditional black and white, though some were pink or blue. They each had crowns in their hair and high white socks. Looking around, there were only men around me. I wondered if it was unusual for a single girl like me to be there.

After watching the action around me as I ate, I was left with a lot of questions—mostly, “Why?”  I wondered why the girls knelt down to talk with the boys they served. I wondered why they did this “heart dance” (for lack of a better name) after they served the food, where they made a heart with their fingers and  “danced” it around the plate of food. And I wondered why they didn’t do the dance with me. I wondered why, when they had some downtime, the girls knelt down and scrubbed the floor with a cloth. I wondered why there was a white girl working there. I wondered why someone would pay 1500 yen for a 3-minute video of themselves talking with one of the French maid waitresses. I wondered how these maid cafes came about in the first place.

One of the waitresses spoke English and, when I was feeling brave again, asked her a lot of my questions. “This started out as a geek thing,” she said when I asked her if they ever had girls come in alone, “but now it’s like a sightseeing thing. Don’t feel weird. I girl came in by herself just before you.” Whether she was lying or not, I felt better. About the mysterious heart dance, she said, “It’s to put magic in the food. It’s like we’re putting our love in your food.” So geeky.

tokyo…

The subway map I grabbed in the station came complete with its own “Tokyo Sightseeing Routes”—handy info for my guide book-less holiday. I read some of the highlights and starred my favourites: Shibuya, Tokyo Tower, Akihabara, Sensoji Temple (check), and Tsukiji Fish Market. Combined with some attractions listed in my hostel’s own guidebook (Ghibli Anime Museum, Edo-Tokyo Museum, Shinjuku, Imperial Palace, Takeshita Street, and Shibuya Crossing), I realized I was in for a busy two days.

The map may have been handy, but the subway itself was a mess. The map was a colourful swirl of subway lines—thirteen in total—plus trains, a monorail, and apparently even a streetcar. Unfortunately for map users, the lines are separated into two companies with two separate travel passes, and the railways and monorail are separate as well, so you have to pay attention to your route. Not only that, but I soon discovered that the unusually high number of transfer stations weren’t as beneficial as I originally thought. Too many lines parallel each other, meeting at station after station—the Fukutoshin and Yurakucho Lines have nine stations together in a row! Unnecessary. And too many stations have three, four, or even five lines intersecting together, making for long walks to transfer.

I slowly made my way to Shibuya Station, where I read there was a fashion building, ichi maru kyuu, that was the “epicenter of Tokyo fashion.” But when I got there, I was quickly disappointed. The area reminded me of Gangnam in Seoul: business-like and boring. I decided to go for a walk. The most exciting thing I found was another subway station.

One stop later I was at Meiji-Jingumae, the subway station nearest the Meiji Jingu Shrine. The shrine was built after Emperor Meiji and his consort, Empress Shoken, who passed away in 1914 and 1916 respectively. Emperor Meiji, having promoted the combination of foreign influence and Japanese culture, is said to have laid the foundation for modern Japan and well respected by the Japanese people, even today. Empress Shoken is called the “model of the modern Japanese woman” for not only supporting the Emperor but also dedicating herself to the promotion of national welfare and women’s education. Dedicated in their honour in 1920, the shrine sits in a forest with over 100 000 planted trees; a cozy natural retreat in the middle of the city.

Despite the holiday weekend crowds, my stroll through forest was a peaceful one. I passed under the grand shrine gate, Ōtorii, which I read is the biggest wooden Myōjin-style “torii” in Japan. The shrine itself, a little further into the forest, was another beautiful wooden structure. It was, like Sensoji, unlike another I’ve seen in Korea. There was very little colour at all; instead, the structure was mostly a dark wood with a few white and gold accents, all topped with a pale green roof. It look quite beautiful all nestled cozily in the trees.

My pamphlet outlined the ways to pay respect at the shrine, by properly drinking from the fountain and offering coins. I first walked to Temizuya, the fountain, to get a drink. No one was around—the perfect time to teach myself how to use the font. Step one was to use the dipper to rinse your hands: first your left, then your right. After that, I took another scoop of water and poured it into my left palm. I took a drink—or as the pamphlet put it, rinsed my mouth. It didn’t mention anything against it in the pamphlet, so I scooped again and took a second drink. Ready for the third and final step, I rinsed my left hand with another scoop of water. And then, without refering to the pamphlet, I did it all again.

I moved over to the main shrine building to pay my respects. I threw some coins into the offertory box and enjoyed the satisfying clangs that accompanied it. According to my pamhlet, I should have bowed twice, clapped my hands, and bowed once again, but I was overcome with shyness and couldn’t. Instead, I stood still and paid my respects with silence.

To my left, I saw a huge collection of prayer cards. The collection was displayed in a circle; there were maybe five or six sides, each a couple metres tall with several rows of these overlapping wooden cards, and each of these sides came together to form a circle. The prayers (some funny, some serious) were written in many different languages and came from visitors all over the world. I knew I wanted to write one, but had trouble figuring out how to get an empty card. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that I needed to by a card from the gift shop.

I wrote my prayer on one of the tables surrounding the display. As I finished writing, a man started beating this big drum at the shrine, and big, commanding booms echoed all around me. It was a powerful moment; I felt tears well up in my throat and had to fight them down, back inside.

the land of the rising sun

I arrived in the land of the rising sun after the sun had set, so I had to wait until morning before I could take a look at the city sights. My first stop was Sensoji, a famous temple that happened to be a short walk from my hostel. Right away I could see that Japanese temples are much different from those in Korea. The main gate was mostly a red colour, unlike the colourful mix of reds, yellows, greens, blues, yellows and pinks in Korea. Through the gate, the main temple seemed to have been replaced with an arena; it was covered in big, white sheets, making it look like a new hockey rink instead of an ancient place of worship.

I went inside anyways, just to make sure that there was, in fact, a temple underneath it all. Inside was a slow-moving crowd of people, some were peering into a kind of prayer room behind a sheet of glass. I wondered if always looked like that, or if the Buddha statue and prayer area was being protected from construction. After bowing towards the Buddha, visitors tossed coins into a grate placed in front of the screen. I had never seen a grate system quite like this one before. Was it there to prevent theft, or just because the sound of clinging coins falling through the grate and into the waiting treasure box below was just so exciting and fun?

To the left was a stack of thin wooden drawers. I watched as a few people opened a drawer, took out a sheet of paper, and walked away reading it. Overhearing a family say something about a “fortune,” I realized that the papers must, in fact, be fortunes.

Not being interested in fortune-telling, I decided to give it a try anyways. I watched some more visitors. Put a coin in the slot and shake the silver cylindrical container. And then, okay, so a stick comes out of the container after you shake it. Open a drawer and take a paper. Money, shake, stick, fortune. Got it. But wait—what drawer? I decided I’d better ask someone.

I approached a family who I overheard speaking English.

“Excuse me, can you help me? How do I—”

“Put one hundred yen in here,” the woman said, “shake, and a stick will come out. Choose a drawer.”

“Any drawer?”

“No, the one that matches the stick.”

I went to pay my hundred yen, but the woman stopped me. “No, pray first,” she said. “Pray first.”

So I prayed. “Dear God,” I said. “I am very curious to get a fortune. I don’t really like praying with my hands together or anything because this is a Buddhist place and it would feel wrong. I just want you to know that I’m curious about this. Please let me get a fortune.”

Then I shook and got my stick. I saw there wasn’t a number, but a Japanese character. Matching the characters on the stick and drawer was easier than I thought and soon I found my drawer. As I opened it, the woman came over again to inspect my work.

“Nineteen,” she said. Oh, so they are numbers, I thought. I showed her the drawer and she said it was right, then turned and left me alone with my fortune.

No. 19 GOOD FORTUNE IN FUTURE–

Good start, I thought.

So many troubles and problems invade your family business, everything does not go so smoothly. A tiger demonstrates his spirit too much, then you should be more modest defending its dashing, then you will be safe.

Do believe in gods earnestly, do your best, then everything will be fine in the end.

Getting wealth and happiness, you may remain with them.

*Your hopes and desire turn our to be real by half. *Take long time to recover from sickness, but life will be safe. *Most of your lost articles will not be found. *Take long time to show around the man you wait for. *Building and moving your home will be good by half. *There is no problem of travelling. *Marriage will be good by half. *There is no worry about employment.

There were some concerns—my marriage, home, and hopes and desires will be real and good “by half”? What does that mean?—but I decided to focus on the positive predictions. Steady employment is always good. Remaining in wealth and happiness sounds excellent. And problem-less travelling is a plus for a wanderer like myself. I was especially pleased to see my travel/life motto was even represented with a solid “everything will be fine in the end.”

With my fortune safe in my pocket, I left the scaffolding-clad temple and hopped on the subway to explore more of the city.

hangeul day

9 October 2008

Today is Hangeul Day, a holiday that celebrates the Korean alphabet. Hangeul (“Korean script”) is special because, unlike every other alphabet in the world, it was created—”created” as in someone sat down and carefully thought about each and every sound in the language, then designed a symbol to represent all those sounds, and then, when it was ready, unveiled the new writing system to the population. Isn’t that amazing? And the person who did all this is a man known today as King Sejong the Great.

King Sejong the Great was the fourth king of the Joseon Period, reigning from 1418 until his death in 1450. He was a King who genuinely cared about his citizens, creating loan systems for farmers who had a bad season and grants for students’ education. He sponsored the development of many scientific tools, like the rain gauge, water clock, sundial, and some astronomical maps. Because his reign was so plentiful in its achievements, it’s now known as the Golden Age of Korea.

While he’s known for many achievements, his greatest was definitely the design and creation of Hangeul. Before Hangeul, Korea used Chinese characters to represent the sounds of the Korean language. This was called Hanja. The same symbol was used in Chinese, Japanese (where it was called Kanji), and Korea to represent the same word, but all three languages would have different pronunciations. It was very awkward, however, because Chinese grammar is very different from Korean and the symbols didn’t always represent the Korean sounds and structure accurately. The script was also very complex and therefore difficult to learn. Only the educated were literate. King Sejong, recognizing the need for equality, decided to create a new writing system so that all his citizens could read and write. It’s not sure of King Sejong created the script himself or simply organized and managed scholars to do the work for him, but King Sejong, nonetheless, usually gets the credit for this linguistic invention.

King Sejong unveiled the writing system in 1446, supposedly on 9 October, in a book called, Hunminjeongeum, meaning “The Proper Sounds for the Instruction of the People,” which at the time was also the name of the language. It had 28 symbols to represent the sounds of the Korean language, though now the alphabet stands with 24 symbols: 14 consonants and 10 vowels. The elite, threatened by the thought of educated commoners, fought against the script at first, though King Sejong prevailed and the script was adopted for official use.

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scripts are quite different from each other. The Chinese script is logographic, meaning each character represents a morpheme (a word or affix).  The Japanese script is syllabic, so each character represents a syllable sound. The Korean script, according to linguist Geoffrey Sampson, is featural. This means that each character represents the featural elements that make up phonemes—which sounds complicated, but just means that each character represents the shape of the mouth when making each sound. This is the only alphabet in the world to do so. Try this: make an “n” sound—the tip of your tongue hits the roof of your mouth at the front, just behind your teeth. This is represented in the Hangeul symbol for the “n” sound: ㄴ(King Sejong pictured the speaker facing left). The “m” sound in Hangeul is represented as ㅁ, which is related to the Chinese character for “mouth” and loosely represents the shape of the mouth. But the greatness of Hangeul doesn’t stop there. Each character is combined into syllable units to ease pronunciation, thus combining two different alphabet systems into one.

I taught myself how to read Hangeul by riding the subway: each stop is announced on the speakers and written above the doors, so I would listen and read and repeat the names quietly to myself, trying the match the sounds with the symbols. It was a slow process; it was months before I could read with confidence. But, with the more efficient education process of reading a textbook, learning to read Hangeul can take just one day. Now I read all the Hangeul I can find, even though I rarely understand what I’m reading. I find Hangeul to be a much clearer writing system than our English alphabet. Sometimes, when reading signs or product names that are written in the English alphabet, I get confused over pronunciation: Is that a long a sound or a short a sound? Hangang: is it han-gang or hang-ang? I look for the Hangeul version to help, knowing that there’s one pronunciation for each character and the syllables are divided for me. (It’s han-gang with short a sounds, by the way, and it means “Han River.”)

After the Japanese colonization in the early 20th century when the script was banned, Hangeul has emerged as Korea’s only written script. (The only place I see Hanja is in the subway, where it’s written on station signs along with English.) Most Korean personal names can be written in Hanja, but this practice is quickly fading with the younger generations, who are choosing native Korean names for their children. In 1989, UNESCO has recognized the uniqueness and importance of Hangeul. Every year, a prize of $20 000 is awarded to people fighting illiteracy with the UNESCO King Sejong Literary Prize. This year, the prize went to People’s Action Forum in Zambia, which uses the local language to educate rural women in its literacy programs. Today, Korea has one of the highest literacy rates, and modern linguists sing Hangeul’s praises as the most scientific language in the world. Hangeul Day, celebrated each year on 9 October, reminds Koreans how special their language is, not only to their country, but to the world.

taekwondo

Walking home from work in the evening, it’s not uncommon for me to hear little boys and girls practicing taekwondo in the small studio around the corner from my apartment. If the timing is right, I see groups of kids walking home in their white uniforms, practicing a few moves on each other as they head home. Taekwondo, Korea’s national sport, is popular not just here in Korea, but all over the world.

It most likely developed from other forms of Korean martial arts, like taekkyeon, which is commonly described as a more “dance-like” version of the sport. Korean martial arts have passed through several waves of popularity and near-extinction throughout the years. As recent as the early 20th-century, during the Japanese colonial period, the sports were prohibited. But, having been passed down secretly, they survived. After liberation, the government decided to eliminate Japanese influence from its martial arts by merging several forms into one. And so taekwondo was born.

The word “taekwondo” combines the characteristics of the sport: tae (“foot” or “kick”), kwon (“hand” or “punch”) and do (“way” or “discipline”). The World Taekwondo Federation defines the sport as “the right way of using all parts of the body to stop fights and help to build a better and more peaceful world.” Like most martial arts, taekwondo is more than just combat; it combines self-defense and philosophy and teaches its students self-discipline, courtesy, and perseverance.

students’ work

the immortal flower

The Mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon, or hibiscus syriacus) has been an important flower in Korea for thousands of years. The Silla Kingdom (which ruled for almost 1000 years, until 935 AD), called itself the “Mugunghwa Country.” Today, the flower is mentioned in Korea’s national anthem (“Mugunghwa samcheolli hwaryeo gangsan“ or “Rose of Sharon, thousand miles of beautiful mountain and river land”) and is found in other national emblems, like the Coat of Arms. The government adopted the Rose of Sharon as an official symbol of Korea after the country was liberated from Japan.

The Rose of Sharon has many characteristics that make it the perfect national flower for Korea. The flower blooms for a long time—from early July through late October—and there are thousands of blooms on each plant. It’s a tough plant that can bloom in difficult situations; cut and placed in a vase, the flower lasts longer than many others. Korean word mugung means “immortal”. The strength and beauty of the flower represents the Korean people and the many trials they have overcome.

go & stop

Go-Stop is a classic Korean card game. It comes from Japan, where it’s called Hanafuda. It’s wild, fast-paced, and anything but easy—despite what my students wrote.

I tried to play it once. I went to a co-worker’s dinner party and after our meal we sat down to play a card game. I’m personally a big fan of card games (‘King in the Corner’ and ‘Weehole’ are a couple personal favourites) and was excited to learn a Korean game. They pulled out the Go-Stop cards and we got started.

Learning the rules was next to impossible; they seemed to change at a whim and multiply by the dozen as the game went on. I can’t even begin explaining the rules, so take a look at this explanation here.

I told myself I would learn the game and even bought myself a deck of Go-Stop cards, but I haven’t had the nerve to play again. One day…

korea & japan

In spring 1592, Japanese ships landed in Busan, Korea, intending to invade the country and find passage to China. This was the beginning of the Imjin War, or Seven Years War, between Korea and Japan, and the beginning of a difficult relationship between the two East Asian countries.

In the late 1800s, Japan was an emerging country that wanted to protect itself, and Korea was seen as a threat. Nothing personal; just a little too close for comfort. Japan sought to annex the country before someone else—someone more dangerous—could. To get Korea, Japan fought China for several months between 1894 and 1895 and fought Russia between 1904 and 1905, winning both. So, on 22 August 1910, Japan officially annexed Korea.

For 35 years, Koreans endured harsh colonial rule and cultural genocide

For thirty-five years, Koreans endured harsh colonial rule. This period in Korea can be considered a “cultural genocide” because of the suppression of the Korean language, removal of Korean artifacts, modification of old songs and poems to refer to Japanese emperors instead of Korean emperors, and physical alteration or destruction of Korean temples and monuments. On top of that, the Korean people suffered immeasurable pain and destruction. Some people were burned or buried alive, some men were conscripted into the Japanese military, some women were forced to serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers, and some families were forced to change their surname to a Japanese name.

While some scholars argue that Korea gained some economic benefits during the Japanese Imperial Period and suggest that things could have been worse if Russia or China had won the opportunity to annex Korea instead of Japan, this period definitely didn’t improve the personal relationship between the Koreans and Japanese.

Today, the Japan-Korea rivalry surfaces in the dispute over the ownership of Liancourt Rocks, two small islands known as Dokdo (“solitary island”) in Korea and Takeshima (“bamboo island”) in Japan. The islands, currently occupied by Korea, are located roughly halfway between South Korea and Japan in the East Sea. Small and rocky, there’s not much to see on the islands, but they’re located in a valuable fishing area and could potentially hold natural gas reserves. Both countries are desperately searching old documents and maps for proof of territorial claims.

In July of this year, the Japanese government decided to mention the dispute in new junior high school textbooks and claim the islands as Japanese. Around the same time, the US Board of Geographic Names changed its listing of Liancourt Rocks from South Korea to “Undesignated Sovereignty.” Korean politicians and citizens protested both issues, and the US quickly reversed its decision and relisted the islands as under South Korean control. At the height of the “textbook scandal,” the South Korean government temporarily removed its ambassador from Japan and protesters killed live pheasants (the Japanese national bird) in demonstrations in Seoul.

When asked to make a poster advertising Korea, one group of my students chose to make a poster advertising Dokdo. Looks like the Japan-Korea rivalry isn’t going away any time soon.

scenes from japan

fire at namdaemun

11 February 2008

Yesterday evening, an arsonist set fire to Namdaemun Gate here in Seoul, destroying this Korean Historical Site #1. When I woke up this morning and heard the news, I found feelings for this historical structure I never knew I had. Koreans everywhere are saddened to hear the loss of this gate, which was once part of the wall that surrounded Seoul.

Namdaemun, officially called Sungnyemun, was completed in 1398 during the Joseon Dynasty as the southern entrance to the old city of Seoul. Now only Dongdaemun, the old East gate, still stands. The Japanese destroyed the protective walls around Seoul in the early twentieth-century during their rule here. Officials added a pretty green lawn around Namdaemun Gate two years ago and reopened the site after it had been closed to the public for a number of years. It sat peacefully on its grassy island surrounded by a noisy traffic circle and tall highrises, reminding this modern city of its long history. While it had gone through a number of renovations, it still contained some original timber, making it the oldest structure in Korea.

Click here for an AFP news article, with pictures.