Birthdays!

Hey everyone!
Colleen here for the birthday update! Thanks to everyone for the b-day wishes and gifts, namely all the pencils and erasers I received from my thoughtful students who probably purchased them minutes earlier from the stationary/candy store located directly underneath our school. The month of August has just flown by, and we can't believe we are already two months in! It has been fun, frustrating, tiring, hilarious, exciting and absolutely dumbfounding at times, but the overwhelming consensus is that coming to Korea, and Ulsan in particular, was probably the best decision we could have made after graduating. We are already able to pick out certain words when listening to Koreans talk, and can order several dishes at restaurants that don't have pictures on the menu or wall. We've got two "How to read/speak Korean" books that came with the house, and sometimes you can hear me annoyingly repeating the "awe" "ooo" and "uhhh" noises, slowly and unassured as I attempt to read the Hangul symbols.

Anyways, onto the post topic of birthdays!
As I'm hoping all of you are aware of, both Jake and my birthday have passed in the past week or so and they were both fun and memorable. First up was my birthday, on August 23rd. On Aug. 22nd, Jake and I decided we would head down to Ilsan beach for a casual beer or two. We went to the WA Bar (the only Western themed bar in the area) and got some beers. Just to put a Korean Western bar into context for you, they sell "Western" dishes that you have never seen in the west. A popular one is pork cutlet in sugar-gravy with a strange vegetable on it. All Koreans assume every restaurant in the West will have this dish, and that it is the best seller too. Another head scratcher is the Koreans obsession of associating Western food with pickles. If you order pizza, it comes with pickles. French fries- you get pickles, spaghetti - you get pickles.... you get the drift. It's like some Korean a while back went to the "West" and informed the entire Korean population of the food we ate, but was sorely mistaken, or just couldn't remember the real recipes. (Probably the exact feeling Chinese people have when they eat at a "Chinese restaurant" in the West for the first time) So at the WA Bar, our favourite western food is shredded cabbage in a mustard-yogurt sauce with chicken, pickles, cherry tomatoes and jalapeño peppers on the side. Sounds just like home, right? Once midnight struck, and it was officially my birthday we headed to the beach, got a beer at the convenience store, and set off some fireworks. After fending off a drunk, soaking wet and feisty man by offering him a sparkler, we went back into the convenience store for one last beer, calling it a night, we had decided. However, when we got to the store we were greeted by a table of Sri Lankens and some Korean HHI workers (Hyundai Heavy Industries basically employs 90% of the city's population, give or take a percentage point). So, semi-well versed in English, we were invited to their table for soju and mekchu (beer in Korean). We obliged, and several hours later, not to mention a haphazard Joe Louis birthday cake and a fire work or two later, we stumbled home and went to sleep.
An hour before I turned 22 for real (at 8:01am) I was awoken by a phone call from my mom. Jake made me some breakfast while I snoozed a little longer and I opened my presents from him (jewelery, a singing card and a spa facial) and my mom (a card and pasta sauce in the mail) Work that day was fun, as I gave my students candy and a word search - I wasn't interested in doing much more. My boss served us birthday cake for lunch and I got lots of gifts from my students, some more useful or touching than others, such as 4 red roses from a shy boy named Dong Gew, or a wallet and notebook from cute Tay Eun and her sister Day Eun. We were too tired to go out that night, but strolled to Ilsan beach to play a few games- basketball, batting cages, and rock, paper, scissor machines.
Saturday we were treated to a joint birthday lunch by our boss. All of our coworkers attended, as well as Mrs. An's son and nephew. She took us to "the most expensive restaurant" in the area, which was a traditional Japanese restaurant where her husband has very important business meetings. Unfortunately for me, the entire menu was shellfish, and it was a set menu for everyone. She was well aware of my shellfish allergy, she even wrote me a post it in Korean saying "I am allergic to shellfish. Please do not serve me food with shellfish in it" for me to show at Korean restaurants. However, I think she was so excited getting reservations that she temporarily forgot my allergy. So, while strange snails, squid, eel, sea cucumber, sea urchin, sea squirts, and other indistinguishable foods were being cracked and consumed, I had a bowl of plain rice, kimchi and some tuna.
In the evening Simon and Min He came to our place for some pre-drinks, and we set off to the beach for a long night of football (Man City vs. Man United - Simon "obviously" roaring and screaming for Man. city through to their defeat). We enventually ran into the Sri Lankens we met the other night, and arrived home around 6am.
(Oh God, I write waaay too much... sorry)

Jake's B-day went well. We went out the night before for some Booldak (Fire chicken - seriously the hottest thing we have eaten in our lives, but soooo good despite the fiery hot pain!) and beer. We witnessed our second WA Bar birthday party; the lights go out, weird birthday music comes on and the bartenders juggle flaming bottles and make the b-day boy drink some fiery shot ..... its wild. They usually set off fireworks inside too. Thankfully we witnessed someone else getting the WA Bar b-day, don't worry, it wasn't for Jake. We played some games, and headed home in the pouring rain. Because it was well after midnight, Jake decided to open his gifts from me, and save the ones from my mom and his family until the morning. I got him some stretched canvass, acrylic and watercolour paints, and two books - a compilation of Nietzsche's work and F. Scott Fitzgerald's. The morning was a bacon and egg breakfast, complete with a talking picture frame from his family. A cake was consumed at lunch and he received pencils and letters from his students.
So there you have it, our birthdays mingled into one.

**Jake's pictures**
**Colleen's pictures**

Japan: Part Two -- Turning Japanese, I really think so.

Disneyland -- Luckily for us, the Happiest Place on Earth exists in more than one place, with one located just east of Tokyo. Tokyo Disney Resort contains the classic Disneyland portion -- which is an almost exact replica of the original Anaheim, California; along with the newly opened DisneySea, the most expensive theme park ever built. It contains a goddamn man-made volcano equipped with a lava dodging roller coaster. How cool is that? The park is comprised of several 'Ports of Call,' which are themed on different parts of the world (both real and fictional), including the Mediterranean, "USA," Aladdin's "Agraba," and more. Disneyland itself was fantastic. We spent a good chunk of our daylight hours in the magic kingdom, and more than satisfied our quarter-life-crises. I got to relive my wondrous journey to Disneyland in 1994, and Colleen got to buy the Minnie Mouse ears that her rich childhood friend would bring back every year from Florida. We feared massive line-ups (this is Tokyo) and blazing sunburns, but we made it through the day largely unscathed. The line-ups were not terrible and we were able to go on the vast majority of the rides which we wanted, and for some reason the Japanese sun doesn't burn skin. As the sun started to set, we made our way over to DisneySea, taking advantage of the 'after 6pm' discount. Lucky for us, this was about the same time that everybody went home. There was absolutely no wait time for any of the fantastic, more intense rides at DisneySea. Unlike the long line-ups for feel-good easy rides like It's a Small World in Disneyland, we were able to run through the queues and hope on intense roller-coaster rides like Journey to the Center of the Earth. Disney left us with the intangible magic that everyone seems to experience, regardless of age. They are so damn good at what they do. Right down the finest detail, Mickey and the gang spare no expense to make a trip to Disneyland something truly unique (not counting the 4 or 5 replicas throughout the world).

(the rest of) Tokyo - Our plans for the day after Disney weren't really solid. We had a room booked in Kyoto (a three hour bullet train ride away) that night, but we felt like we weren't quite finished with the big city. We could hop the train at any point -- one leaves about every 20-40 minutes (and the Japanese are very punctual). We decided to shove our bags in a locker at the Tokyo train station and take our time exploring a bit more, until we were satisfied. Our mission: Find the INTERSECTION. That's right, our goal was to find an intersection. Not just any intersection, no, we wanted the intersection, otherwise known as Shibuya Crossing. If you've seen any film (such as Lost in Translation) or tv show set in Tokyo, you've seen the Shibuya Crossing. Featured in the stolen, unauthorized photo to the right, it's supposedly one of the busiest intersections in the world. All traffic stops while swarms of pedestrians move every which-way as they try to cross. The Crossing itself, well, it was busy, but a tad underwhelming. Maybe we had built it up too much, but the crowd outside of Piper's Pub at around 2am on a Saturday night in Antigonish could have given Shibuya Crossing a run for it's money. That said, it was satisfying to reach the "Times Square" of Tokyo as several giant video screens played Ads above us, and we even managed to catch a glimpse of the world's busiest Starbucks. Below is a video of our 30 second journey across the 'the world's busiest.' That's a few small steps for Jake and Colleen, and a giant leap for .. ah, I don't know. (we've been experiencing technical difficulties with this one, folks... just click my YouTube link at the bottom of this post if you can't view the video here)

Kyoto -- We effin' loved this city. I'm not sure if we were simply biased due to our left-winged fondness for the environmental protocol signed there, or if its pure old-world beauty charmed us off our feet. I suspect it's a larger chunk of the latter. Kyoto was the former imperial capital of Japan before the feds packed up for Toyko, and contains a wealth of fascinating architecture and civil design to match. We arrived around 10:30pm, and made our way to our first Ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese inn similar to a Bed and Breakfast. We opened the door to find two large guys from the Southern United States playing Magic Cards in the ryokan kitchen/lobby. We unpacked our bags and checked the internet to investigate a supposed Typhoon which was heading toward our departure port, Fukuoka/Hakata, the next day. Mr. Internet told us that 120 domestic flights had been canceled in Fukuoka. We could find any direct info about our hydrofoil ferry, but we had a phone number. Unfortunately, we were well past office hours. Secretly, we hoped the Typhoon would blast Fukuoka, postponing our ferry, and allowing us extra time in the city we so desperately wanted to explore. With the office hours forcing us to play the waiting game until the morning, we did the only thing any self respecting maritimer or maritime-graduated 21 year old would do -- we cracked open my duty-free litre of Jack Daniels and then hit the town. In very broken Japanese, we asked a cab driver to take us to the Kyoto hotspots. He seemed confused, then responded, "Drink Street?" We hopped in the cab and he dropped us off in a curiously quiet neighbourhood, and told us to climb the stairs to the second floor of a boring looking building. We reached the top floor to find... (drumroll)... a Japanese restaurant. We were a tad bummed, until a waitress came up to us and asked us if we spoke French. Suddenly the night became more exciting. We crapped our way through about an hour and a half of drunken highschool French with our Japanese host, who studied French in high school. We also took a number of ridiculous videos, which we're currently debating whether or not to upload to YouTube. To the right is a picture of yours truly readying his chopsticks for an assorted grab bag of raw fish, complete with a shrimps head for garnish. Jack Daniels and Kyoto are not a great mix.
The next morning, I struggled toward the phone to see if we had to hop a bullet train and sail across the rough Sea of Japan. To our shock, despite the fact that the sea would no doubt "be angry that day," our ferry company said we were good to go. Suddenly, the ghost of Jack Daniels himself possessed me and I asked if we could change our reservations. Thankfully, we were able to push them back two days, which would allow us to both see more of Japan, and recover from the previous night. So, after shaking the cobwebs and finding another Ryokan for that night, we rented some bikes and cycled across Kyoto. It turned out to be a great idea. We were able to cover a lot of ground that day and check out some very interesting buildings and streets. Also, I bought a ninja death star. I hope I can get that puppy through customs on my way back to Canada. We finished our day with a great Italian meal (a little taste of home), made it back to the Ryokan before our 11pm lock-up/curfew time (the old lady who owned that place ran a tight ship). We decided to draw up some plans for our extra day in Kyoto. Half way between Kyoto and our ferry in Fukuoka was Hiroshima, and we thought we should check it out before we departed the land of the rising sun.

Hiroshima -- The city name seems to resonates within our collective conscience as one of those "we really shouldn't have done that" things, right up there near the Holocaust and other nasty things throughout mankind's history. We knew our stop in Hiroshima wouldn't be exactly a chipper way to end our Japan trip, but I think we both felt we needed to see their monuments and reflect on the destruction and devastation of the A-Bomb that dropped to end WWII. We hadn't realized it, but we arrived in Hiroshima a day or two before they were to commemorate and mourn the anniversary of the bomb, which dropped on August 6th, 1945. The city was bustling as people came from all over the world to attend the ceremony. Activists and important figures from all over the world were descending upon Hiroshima, which has now become a beacon of peace and tolerance. We were very lucky to get the last hotel room available, and after checking in, we set about trying to find the monument grounds. Perhaps the main monument in the Peace Park is the A-Bomb Dome, a government building relic which survived the blast. The bomb actually detonated about 600 meters above it, and due to the way the bomb exploded (outwardly, slightly), it didn't totally destroy the building. The city has preserved it as a constant reminder. We also viewed the Children's monument, which is based on the young girl, dying from A-bomb radiation induced cancer, who attempted to fold 1,000 paper cranes. The grounds contained a vast amount of breathtaking monuments, and the whole message truly struck home. It put the stats and time lines from history class into perspective, and it's not something that either of us will soon forget.

Back to Korea -- The next morning we woke up, and hopped on the train back to Fukuoka. It was by far the easiest train ride we took -- after a week of struggling, we actually understood how to properly and efficiently use the Japan Rail. Dems da breaks. The hydrofoil back wasn't so bad, a tad rocky, but we were glad to have avoided the typhoon. We hope you've enjoyed our 2 part trilogy on our trip to Japan.

Hope everyone back home is doing well. Our birthdays are coming up (Colleen -- Aug 23 / Jake -- Aug 29), we'll try and have a drink for each and every one of you.

Be sure to check out our photo albums of Japan:

**[Jake's: 1 ,2, 3]**

***[Colleen's millions of photos and videos]. ***

I'm also slowly uploading videos to my YouTube account.



Cheers!

Japan: Part One

Hello there avid readers!

Finally, the much awaited post to read, though quite daunting to even begin writing, the 7 days of adventures in Japan!

Alison and Jake Visit
Our week long holiday began with a friendly visit from our old Torontonian neighbours on Saturday morning. My high school lockermate Alison, and her boyfriend Jake (who was addressed as Jake 1 for the weekend as he is older than Jake 2... kinda like Thing One and Thing Two a la Dr. Seuss styles) have recently moved to a place near Seoul to teach English at a Hag won (Korean private academy school) as well. After hearing their stories of a lengthy, tiring and confusing trip, just from Seoul, Jake 2 and I wondered what would become of us on our taxi-bus-subway-ferry-taxi-Japan Rail path that would begin on Monday morning.
Nevertheless, we all managed to ignore the traveling blues and party hard, sight-see in the GUA (Greater Ulsan Area), bow in buddist temples, drink from the fountain of youth, eat too much Galbi, haphazardly shop downtown, attempt to see a sold out Die Hard 4, brave torrential downpour, Nori-Bong (private Karaoke room) with Simon and Blah for Simon's birthday, avoid being hit by a fire-breathing bartender juggling vodka bottles, and drunkenly set fireworks off at the beach after playing several unbeatable curbside vendor games (my favourite of which you purchase a cockroach for 2,000 won ($2 CDN) put it into a funnel, and watch it swim around until it chooses a sort of "gate". Whichever gate it stops at you win a designated prize. Alison won a loud pocket calculator that looks like a cell phone. Handy n'est pas?), all in two days. (Phew, that was a mouthful, 1 weekend, 1 sentence). A fun and enjoyed weekend indeed, and we have the pictures to re-live it.....and the sand that was dragged back into the apartment that night via shoes, pockets, and in Jake 2's case, hair (he had a wee lie down on the beach) that we still haven't swept up .....

**Pictures**

The Japan Trek Begins (Day 1 & 2)
So, Monday morning we awoke at 6:30am, did a final packing check - passports, Alien Registration Cards, rubber ducky - and got a taxi with Alison and Jake 1 to the inter-city bus terminal. We headed south to Busan, while Alison and Jake 1 went north for some more Korean sightseeing. Between an Ulsan taxi and bus, and a Busan subway and mad-dash-taxi, we arrived at the ferry terminal 15 minutes to "take-off". Unfortunately, our aggravated ticket attendant told us we were not going to be allowed on our 10am ferry. We pleaded, looked very lost and confused and white, but she didn't flinch. So, instead, we were able to make it on the 2:30pm ferry which got us into Japan at 5:30... which made us miss the last train to Tokyo, where our reservations were for that night. So, tired, frustrated and down-trodden we decided to JR (Japan Rail) it to the closest destination to Tokyo that the train went to and caught the last run to Osaka. We arrived in Osaka around 10 pm or so, and decided to wander outside the station and find the closest hotel to crash at. We found a rather expensive one, got some hot dogs and salad at the closest restaurant, showered and crashed.

We made it to Tokyo the next day (Tuesday) at 11am. We got off at our station in Ueno (an area of Tokyo), and wandered through a maze of escalators, train and subway platforms, restaurants, gift shops etc. towing our luggage behind us. With exhaustion, hunger and motion sickness all in full effect after finally exiting the station, we suddenly remembered that Jake had left our hotel directions, and a new 1 liter bottle of Jack Daniels in a bathroom somewhere in the station. After returning to the maze-like station, and with the retrieved bag in hand, we finally trotted along, through a park, of course getting lost again, backtracking and arrived at our Tokyo hotel. A nice place with a cute lobby and really nice garden. And, despite their cancellation policy, they didn't charge us the 50% of the cost of the room for canceling the night before! Great success, finally.
We explored our area of Ueno (one of the 3 busiest areas of Tokyo, and Tokyo's 'historical downtown), walked through the markets located between and under two rail tracks, a booming area called "Ameyayokocho" which is a street market district that "evolved out of an open-air black market that sprung up after World War II" (thanks Wikipedia). If interested in info on Ueno Park (our hotel actually was in the park grounds, which also included a zoo, temples, restaurants and more) click here.
At night we ventured to a man made island that supposedly had a substantial nightlife, but we didn't really find said nightlife. Instead we shopped and played arcade games and headed on another subway mission to find a good bar and restaurant. Unable to find sushi, literally after passing dozens of traditional Japanese restaurants in a decent area of town (outside of Tokyo Station and towards Ginza), we settled for an Irish pub that had Guinness on tap, and signed the pint with a shamrock imprint in the head. I enjoyed some fish and chips, and cherished my 700Yen Guinness. We once again attempted to find a bustling downtown bar scene, asking a local who gave us an uninteresting location, and settled for a drink in a random dead bar. We later realized that it was only a Tuesday, but hey, if Antigonish can have a booming Tuesday nightlife, why the heck wouldn't Tokyo!?? Also, apparently dancing and dance clubs are illegal in Japan... "dancing is considered a violation of public morality" (check out this article of a dance bar raid and it's owners sentiments) .
We headed back to the hotel to rest up for the big day at Tokyo Disneyland the next morning! Disneyland post up next!

**Colleen's Pictures**
**Jake's Pictures**

Back from Japan: Safe and sound

Dreams and Magic in Tokyo Disneyland!!

Hey there, just letting everyone know that we arrived back from Japan last night (Sunday night) at 9pm or so. It was an amazing trip and we got to spend 7 days there, and saw a good chunk of 5 cities; Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Fukuoka (Hakata). We are currently exhausted, so this post is just to assure you of our good health and spirits. We have over 1,200 pictures to sort through to show you and posts describing our wonderful trip will come shortly!
Hope all is well in all your lives!
xox
Colleen