Sometimes when I think about where I’ve ended up in life, I get pretty impressed. Not with myself, but my surroundings: living abroad in itself is a unique opportunity—count how many times I’ve said that on this blog, I dare you!—but even more than that, Aso is probably the most interesting place I will ever live. It may not end up being my favorite (my favorite, I’d hope, would be where I live in the future), it may not be the coolest or the hippest, or if I move somewhere really fancy it may not be the most beautiful, but I have come to terms with the fact that I will likely never live in such a extraordinary place again. There are a lot of factors going into that statement, and even if I’ve mentioned some things in passing, I’d like to talk about all of them. About Aso, about the people who live here, about the mountains and the volcano and precisely how this place was made, about how that affects the city, and about how that makes for a pretty impressive, if tiny, dot on the globe.
Let’s talk about the mountains first: you can’t escape them no matter where you are in Aso, but they have a little secret—most of them aren’t mountains. The grassy highlands around the city certainly look like mountains but they weren’t formed in the normal mountain-y way. I’ve mentioned before that Aso City lies in a caldera, and that a caldera is a volcanic sinkhole. I fondly call it a crater, but well…it isn’t. To picture the shape of Aso Caldera, imagine a big C…or if you want to have more fun, a giant Pac-Man: Pac-Man is made of fertile lowland, and the surrounding elevation that cuts out his shape are all “mountains.” The tallest peaks sit inside Pac-Man’s open mouth, and because of that central location you can see them from anywhere in the caldera. These five peaks are known collectively as Mount Aso (阿蘇山), and are not only Japan’s largest active volcano but also one of the largest active volcanoes in the world. (Note: largest active, not most active…thankfully.) Naka-dake, the central peak from which you can see the fun volcanic action (hot sulfuric water pools, smoking, erupting, generally looking volcano-ish), sits smack in the middle of Pac-Man’s mouth and is flanked the other four peaks, Taka-dake, Neko-dake, Eboshi-dake, and Kishima-dake. These five peaks make up the central cone of the volcano. As of now, your mental Pac-Man Caldera should be labeled in as such: Pac-Man=fertile lowlands. Open mouth area=ashy danger volcano. Borders=questionable mountains. This border, while it at first glance looks the same as the rest of Mt. Aso, is actually made up of ex-volcanic “cliffs.” Because of the greenery these cliffs often look like mountains and not very often like cliffs, but they are steeper than normal mountains (as their faces are made by “drop off”, as opposed to tectonic plate movement) and if you have a keen eye and some experience you can tell that they don’t look quite right to just be mountains. These cliffs used to be part of the original Aso volcano, but are now separated by flatland Pac-Man. The breakup went as follows:
Science estimates that somewhere in the range of 300,000-90,000 years ago the Aso volcano underwent a series of four eruptions to create the present caldera. These eruptions may have ejected enough ash and rock to cover half of the southern island of Kyushu, and were so powerful they significantly reduced the amount of magma in the volcano’s underground reservoir. This chamber, mostly empty after the eruptions, was structurally unable to support the weight of the volcano above it; a fracture ring formed around the volcano and eventually collapsed, making a giant sinkhole where the central cone had been. The parts of the volcano left standing is what can be seen today surrounding the caldera, and while they once were mountainous the formation of the caldera made them geologically different.
The story doesn’t quite end there: while the central cone of the original volcano was destroyed with the formation of the sinkhole, today Mount Aso and the Aso Caldera are classified as a somma, a type of caldera where a new central cone has emerged, taking up some of the flatland formed from the eruption and consequent collapse. This is why Aso Caldera looks like Pac-Man: while the fracture ring was relatively circular, the high elevation of the new volcano has eaten into that border, making it look like it is part of the original volcano’s remaining “mountains.” Even though the new central cone isn’t the same as the old one, it definitely got the Mount Aso fire mojo back because it remains an active volcano to this day, with the most recent serious eruption being in 2016. (Nobody panic; it wasn’t a Vesuvius eruption as much as a “watch out for hail-sized rocks falling from the sky for a bit” eruption.) Smaller eruptions and other activity aren’t uncommon if the volcano is acting up, but when all is well visitors can drive up to Naka-dake and look into the cone. Some days the steam will be too thick to see much, but if there’s a bit of wind you can catch glimpses of cerulean water far below…and the wonderful smell of sulfur.
Mt. Aso in early August of this year. This was likely a small eruption that I was lucky (or unlucky) to witness from a few kilometers away from the summit.
That’s all well and cool, but calderas themselves are not an unheard-of phenomenon, so with that alone Aso isn’t making too many headlines. However, what makes it a bit more notable is that it’s one of the largest calderas in the world, and is also one of the largest inhabited calderas in the world. Many calderas become lakes or have no permanent settlements, but not Aso: there are three separate cities within the somma, Aso, Minami-Aso, and Takamori, and within Aso there are also smaller towns. What is now Aso City was, only a few years ago, a number of municipalities that have since been combined, which means there are large stretches of land between different parts of the city. The intermittent flatlands are comprised of fields—the volcano makes them arable and rich in nutrients, with most of the soil being almost black—and forests, mainly of Japanese cedar with accents of bamboo and assorted deciduous foliage. The forests also blur the border between the caldera base and the somma cliffs, making it difficult to tell just how steep the caldera is. While from a distance it may look like the land gradually slopes into mountains, areas where the trees don’t grow brings the true geography into sharp relief: near my house there is a famous waterfall known as 古閑の滝 (Kōga-no-taki) that flows down the cliffs, surrounding its base a place called Naki-Inu-Zaka, (鳴犬坂), or “Crying Dog Valley.” The valley is supposedly named as such because when cattle herders used to take their cows along the caldera’s rim to graze, the herding dogs that followed prey down into the caldera’s valley couldn’t climb back up the steep cliffs and were left crying at the bottom. Sad of a story as it is, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true. Kōga Falls trickles straight down the side of the caldera, which at that particular spot couldn’t look more like a cliff if it tried. It’s too steep for trees to grow, so while the valley beneath is covered in cedars the bare rock walls that surround Kōga Falls give away the true nature of the landscape. The road in and out of the caldera tells a similar story; while the actual distance to get over the edge of the cliffs isn’t far, the paths up it have countless hairpin turns to keep the incline manageable for even Japan’s tiniest cars. Even still the incline is often 9 or 10 degrees, and cars are equipped not only with a D2 gear but also an engine break button that automatically prevents gaining too much speed when going downhill. Because two of my schools are in the mountains surrounding the caldera these roads are an everyday commute for me, though I worry in the winter and the rainy season that they’ll be closed from snow and flooding.
While these kinds of things can be found in many other parts of the world, all of them in combination with the added bonus of a resident volcano start to make Aso feel like a pretty interesting place to live. There are special benefits and frustrations to consider that you might not have living in other places, and those things have all made their way into the culture here. Just like Canadians having accepted that half of their winter will be spent shoveling snow but the other half will be spent marveling the actual, proper amounts of snow they get, having a volcano in your backyard means life will be a little different. Ash, something I only saw around fireplaces and bonfires in America, is now something that falls from the sky on a regular basis, and it has all sorts of previously unconsidered effects. Since February Mt. Aso has been fairly active, so even on days where there isn’t an eruption ash is constantly pouring from the central cone. At some of my schools they keep the weather on in the staff room, which shows the predicted ash fall direction, but some days we don’t need it; just like you can tell if an eruption is coming by the smell of sulfur, you can tell if ash coming your way just by looking outside. Everything seems hazy, but instead of the grey-blue of normal fog there is a yellow-brown tint to the world, and you can’t see the volcano at all because of how dense it gets. Kids are told to wear their hats outside and some people put on masks to protect their lungs; windows are closed and laundry taken in, and you won’t see as many pedestrians out and about. When it isn’t falling on you the ash is falling somewhere else, and you can usually tell where as long as you’re a little ways away from the volcano—the stream of ash, carried in the wind, forms a perfect (and perfectly dirty) banner across the blue sky, and if you go anywhere where the ash has already been you can find piles of it nestled into the landscape, sitting atop leaves and forming patterns across the ground as the wind blows it about.
This is what the plants look like after an ashfall | August 2019
The ash coats everything, even getting inside houses, and when it comes it comes in force. A friend’s car, parked at my apartment for only a few hours, was covered in ash when we returned, so much so that closing the door made the entire car go poof in a cloud of grey. Unfortunately, as my apartment is closest to the volcano of all the ALTs here, my car gets ash on it almost every day. Not even rain will wash it off, as the ash is so fine there’s always a bit leftover!
These are the kinds of things I never would have thought of as being part of life when I lived in the Midwest, which has a distinct lack of volcanoes. I had no idea how much of a pain ash could be or how thick it could get; in fact, the first time I saw a proper ash fall I was surprised at its appearance. From inside it may just look misty, but if you are outside in the ash you can see that it falls like snow, heavy enough that you can see individual pieces falling with your eyes and in videos. It’s almost convincing enough to be snow, except it isn’t white enough, and while snowflakes are soft and cold being in the ash makes you cough and your eyes sting. You can feel it get into your eyes, gritty and unmelting, and it just…feels wrong. It looks so gentle and serene as it falls, but in contrast it can be abrasive and painful! My first proper ash fall had such an impression on me that I even wrote a haiku about it, which sounds lame (it’s probably lame) but pretty par for the course for my life at this point.
JapanesePoetic TranslationLiteral Translation
静かでも Gentle fall of ash Even though it’s quiet
積もったヨナが covers the weary earth with the accumulated ash
重たいか a tremendous weight is somehow heavy
Yeah…I’m That Nerd who actually writes haiku. Five-seven-five in both English and Japanese; beat that, language barrier! …Or maybe I shouldn’t challenge anybody, considering my Japanese one is questionably grammatically incorrect. I tried, I’m not native, nobody come for me.
What’s relevant for today’s post isn’t whether or not I can effectively write Japanese haiku; it’s a word I used in the haiku: ash. There’s more than one word for ash in Japanese, actually, as they make a differentiation between normal ash (灰, hai) and volcanic ash (火山灰, kazanbai), but I didn’t use either in my writing. Instead, I used the word ヨナ (yona), which to most Japanese people doesn’t make any sense. Yona is not just a regional word for “ash,” it is a word found specifically in Aso dialect, which is a variant of Kumamoto dialect. I’ve talked about Kumamoto dialect before and how its speakers are stereotyped as rough country bumpkins, so I can only imagine if Aso dialect had a public perception it’d be dangerously close to “unintelligible mountain redneck dialect.” There are a significant amount of differences between Kumamoto dialect and Aso dialect even though Aso is within Kumamoto Prefecture, and this can be partially attributed to the caldera: it forms a natural barrier between the settlement in Aso and the rest of the island. While contact with the “outside” is regular enough to keep Aso dialect and Kumamoto dialect mutually intelligible, there’s enough separation both geographically and culturally to create a distinction. And as for what I mean by cultural separation…we’re back to yona and the volcano.
Aso life is volcano life. As I mentioned before, with the constant presence of ash or the unique landscape it’s hard to miss the simple daily impact of the volcano on Aso. In winter, snow falls but never sticks for long in the caldera—it isn’t so hot you can fry an egg on the sidewalks, but the magma deep beneath the earth makes the ground too warm—and Aso’s famous natural hot springs, popular with locals and tourists alike, all find their origin in the heat of the volcano. Just like living by the sunny beaches of California dictates how residents dress and act and spend their free time, these volcanic influences add up and make a different lifestyle for the people here. And with that differentiation of lifestyle sometimes come a differentiation of words. Ash is an important part of Aso for previously described reasons, so it isn’t too hard to see why local language would develop its own word for it. Unlike the English I use in the Midwest or the Japanese I studied in volcano-less Osaka, Aso is a place where the word ash comes up quite often; it is a more significant, more essential word to people here than it is to others. How the word yona came etymologically about I have no idea—I couldn’t find any research on it with a quick look—but it exists as a regional variant because there’s a place for it in the “Aso language.” Today, distinct intra-regional vocabulary is losing popularity with younger generations as rural population rates fall, but in this case I think it’s another example of Aso’s distinctive charm. I’d probably sound like an old person if I used the word yona instead of kazanbai when talking with my coworkers, but I think it’s a shame for such a pretty word to fall into disuse.
Extending on the topic of Aso dialect, there’s another yona word that I was introduced to just recently that also is intertwined with volcano life: yona-ame (ヨナ雨). Ame is the Japanese word for rain, so I’m sure you can start to imagine what yona-ame means: ash rain. Like acid rain, yona-ame is a specific type of rainy whether where (I’m assuming) the rainclouds mixed with volcanic ejecta while over the caldera, and the resultant raindrops are full of ash. Also similar to acid rain it can be difficult to tell if you’re dealing with normal rain or yona-ame just by looking at it, but my music teacher taught me an easy way to check: if you look at the cars and they’re getting clean, it’s rain. If you look at the cars and they’re getting dirty…it’s yona-ame. (In related news, my white car is basically a grey car at this point, and while I know the ash isn’t good for the paint I’d be broke if I went to the carwash as often as it needs it.)
My car, currently. The ash is easier to see when it’s wet like this! Bottom right is what you see when you use windshield wipers to clean the yona-ame off your windows…
Another interesting feature of the caldera is that it more or less has its own weather system beyond just ashy rain. Though you’d never guess from how low the caldera looks in comparison to the ring of mountains and cliffs around the city, Aso is at a higher elevation than most of the rest of the prefecture. With the elevation comes cooler temperatures, so much so that on occasion my friends and I have dressed for the season in Aso, left the caldera to go shopping, and ended up sweaty messes because we forgot to account for the climate difference. In Aso it can be easy to forget that you live on the southern island of Japan, but if you explore the less mountainous parts of Kumamoto there are palm trees year-round the ocean is never far from view. Aso feels like a different world in that sense; the surrounding mountains get tons of snow in the winter, the summers, while blazing, have mountain breezes to cool them off, and we even have a bit of fall and spring in between—not a given in the southern climate! Winter itself is a bit of an anomaly this far south, but in Aso it can last four or five months of the year, and many seasonal changes in nature like the autumn leaves and sakura blossoms happen at different times in the caldera than in the rest of the prefecture.
The same mountains that give Aso its height also act as hurdles for any other weather pattern on the island. Sometimes the rain hitting the rest of Kyushu will miss us entirely, whereas other times we’ll be the only ones to get soaked. Some days going to work I will head outside into a downpour only to leave the caldera and find it pervasively foggy or even sunny, leaving me in eternal confusion as to what to expect in terms of weather. What I’ve learned is to always bring an umbrella in my bag, just in case, and it’s best to have an extra jacket in the car. Aso is chillier than Kumamoto and my mountain schools are chillier than Aso, so between the three there’s always a bit of planning to be done before I leave the house.
These cliffs and mountains are also all-important in both drawing in and keeping away tourists. On the positive side, for those who love hiking, cycling, nature, hot springs, or winter sports, Aso is a destination for domestic and foreign outdoor enthusiasts. What’s more, without the caldera most of the popular attractions of Aso wouldn’t exist. You can paraglide from the edge of the somma with views of the whole city, visit the grassy plains of Kusasenri nestled between Naka-dake and its surrounding mountains, peer into a volcano, eat a special type of beef only raised on the grassy slopes of the surrounding mountains (it’s on another level of meat, honestly), drink the milk from said cows (also superior to all other dairy), see the completely frozen Kōga Falls in winter, pay respects at the famous Aso Shrine, and on and on. Even some of Aso’s festivals are related to the geography; the Fire Festival in March (where you swing blazing bales of hay around by a rope) is done to celebrate and honor the marriage of two local gods, one of which I believe is the goddess of fire of Mt. Aso, and the yearly burning of the mountain grasses, while meant to renew the soil for the coming spring grasses, is an event in itself because you can see it happening from most anywhere in the caldera. These are things native to Aso, to the caldera, and they make this place into one unlike any other. A caldera isn’t unheard of, but a lived-in caldera with many natural and cultural traditions and events…everything combined makes for a place you will never find anywhere else, which is why many people are drawn here.
All that said, those without a car can find getting to Aso to be tricky. The main road in and out of the western part of the caldera was destroyed in the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake, as was the westbound train line, effectively cutting it off from the prefectural hub (Kumamoto City) other than a winding mountain road and one or two out-of-the-way detour paths. Three and a half years later the mountain road continues to be the only practical way to access Aso—while the eastern roads are undamaged, the cities to the east of Aso are not connected to major public transportation routes like the bullet train, making it trickier to come from that direction. With both trains and highways out of commission, mountain-route buses are the only way to get here without a car, and those buses only run once every hour or hour and a half, and only within restricted hours (about 9 am to 6 pm) even on weekends. Despite having an airport only 40 minutes away, then, it’s difficult to go anywhere without a car, which can be an issue if you are traveling via public transportation or do have a car but don’t want to pay parking fees. What’s more, with all those vehicles crowding a mountain road that was never intended for heavy traffic, sometimes the caldera feels as much like a tourism barrier as an invitation.
From inside the crater, I often have a lot of conflicting feelings about this geography. Aso is indisputably, indescribably beautiful, and even after over a year of living here the view of my own surroundings still takes my breath away. The brilliant emerald greens of summer that impressed me so much when I came don’t last all year, but equally striking are the waving grasses that turn the mountains the color of barley, the snowcapped cedars shivering over frost-decorated fields, and the flush of springtime, painted like a rainbow with all its wildflowers. These seasonal changes have been harder to see this year because of the volcano, with the ash often robbing residents of our clean blue sky, but that only makes me appreciate more that I was able to come last year, when there was nothing to mar my first impressions of the scenery. Changes in weather also do little to make the caldera less majestic. In the rain the mountains are blurred by fog, peaks forming an ominous grey backdrop to the dreary weather, and some days the haze is so thick you can’t see the mountains at all. When it storms the pine thickets roll as if they were an ocean, and on dim autumn mornings the sun filters through their dew-laden branches, creating misty spotlights on the forest floor. Cloudy days where the mountain peaks are swathed in white make it look as if we live in the sky, or when it’s a little more clear the cumulonimbus clouds make huge patches of shade on the mountain slopes as they scoot across the sky. Rainbows in Aso feel as if you can find the end and catch them, as the base is usually inside the crater, within sight. When you leave the caldera the mountains frame the horizon, distant, familiar silhouettes fading from tones of navy into Prussian blues and periwinkles.
I also can’t help but be grateful that I have the chance to live somewhere so entirely foreign and unique not only compared to America but also to the rest of Japan; while I completely understand tourists coming to see places like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, myself and other ex-pats sometimes joke that any city from Kobe to Tokyo is “not real Japan,” not because they don’t represent a part of Japan, but because if you only ever visit those central hubs you might not experience the country to the fullest. Now, that being said, I lived in the “not real Japan” part of Japan for a year, and I both love it and think you can find “real Japan” there if you take the time to observe and find opportunities to learn about the culture. But having lived in both the city and in the country in Japan, I can say the two sometimes feel like different cultures, and the country is where you will find more of the traditional Japanese ways of life.
I suppose every country is like that. Still, I’m glad that I can really sink my teeth into Japan here, studying language and culture just by going about my daily life and interacting with what’s around me. That’s something I consider to be invaluable, and I have the caldera to thank for it. If I lived in a city I may not have so many opportunities to use Japanese or to experience traditional culture; I may not have seen so many waterfalls or climbed any mountains. I may not have such small, intimate class sizes, and I may not have known my students’ names, let alone their personalities. I may not have ever understood Kumamoto dialect or met the “salt of the earth” people who live here, and knowing what I do now, that feels like it would have been a loss.
But at the same time, the fact that Aso is what it is has made this adventure a lot harder. I don’t find the mountains to be any less stunning now than when I came, but I do see them as infinitely more inconvenient. If I were to be dramatic I could say that the caldera is “the most beautiful prison I’ve ever lived in,” but this isn’t Shakespeare so I’ll try to tone down the theatrics. I moved to Aso at a very tricky time: with transportation infrastructure damaged, I have never lived in this city at a time when it was easy to get in and out. I have a car—couldn’t get to work without one—that allows me to travel anywhere, but while the as-the-crow-flies distances from Aso to the big cities isn’t very far, the current road limitations make traveling outside the caldera quite time-consuming. For reference, the closest mall to me is only about 20 miles away but I can’t get there in any less than an hour, and that’s assuming I don’t get stuck behind a slow semi! That mall is home to places like the closest clothing store that has somewhat youthful fashion, the closest Starbucks, the closest McDonalds, the closest movie theater, the closest international food store and so on which, as you can imagine, can make Aso feel quite isolated. What makes the caldera even more lonely is the lack of young people: like much of rural Japan, Aso has an aging population, with the percentage of people over 60 being a little over 30% last time I checked. I believe I’ve mentioned before that the Aso JETs joke there are only three types of people here—our students, our students’ parents, and our students’ grandparents—and that still feels as true now as the day I came, even though I’m now more connected, more involved, more…aware. Part of the reason for this age disparity is the immigration of younger people to urban areas, which is a problem in all parts of the country, but in Aso that movement is reinforced by the fact that we have no university. The closest colleges to Aso are in Oita City and Kumamoto City, both about an hour and a half away, and many students don’t return to Aso after they graduate. There aren’t many job opportunities in Aso other than farming and forestry and other such careers, and there isn’t a young population to draw others in, either. That or the population that does exist here is hidden—I’ve found that there are young women about my age who live here, but most of them are mothers and spend all day either at home with their children or at preschool with their children, making them hard to locate and befriend. While right now Aso’s population is simply aging like the rest of the country, I worry that if trends continue it will become a terminal town whose population isn’t large enough or balanced enough to sustain itself. There are many elementary schools in the city that have closed in the last 10 years as the student populations aren’t large enough to keep them open, and while the middle schools have full enrollment at this time it’s a concern that they will eventually be affected as well.
This is quite the depressing topic, isn’t it. Still, I don’t say these things to be all doom and gloom about Aso—local government has reported that by autumn of next year they will have not only finished repairing the previously damaged highway and train line, but will have also completed a new highway tunnel connecting Aso to Kumamoto City. Further construction will complete a freeway from the western side of the island (Oita City) to the one that’s being finished in Aso. This infrastructural overhaul will create multiple time-efficient roads to travel to and through Aso City from two major cities, and will provide more public transport options to travel east-west on the island. With these projects completed, Kumamoto Prefecture also has the chance to funnel its funds into cultural repairs, like Kumamoto Castle, Aso Shrine, and Laputa no Michi, all three important historical or natural sightseeing spots that were badly damaged in the earthquake. (Aso Shrine, which once had an impressively large and old main building, completely collapsed, though I have been told that the pieces “fell apart” rather than broke which should allow for eventual reconstruction.) With things finally turning around after what will be four and a half years at the time the construction finishes, I’m sure Aso will find it a bit easier to get back on its feet with increased tourism.
While this gives me hope, these commodities have not defined my time in the caldera. Aso is the most isolated place I have ever lived, especially socially, and as I’ve mentioned many times before it can be lonely here. I have many opportunities to practice Japanese because there are so few English speakers here, but that also means it was a very difficult transition to speaking so much Japanese, as the mental energy it takes to be translating all day every day can be exhausting. It’s true that I’ve had a lot of amazing cultural and traditional experiences, but part of the reason those things are so prevalent here is because there are very few young people. Few young people means fewer friends…because while I love the older people I’ve gotten to know here, but the generation gap in addition to the culture gap makes can make things difficult. Finding young people outside of Aso also isn’t easy, as getting to them is no easy task. I’m geographically not far from areas with a larger young adult population, but the time it takes to get there is a deterrent, and the lack of public transportation only exacerbates things: it’s one thing to sit on a train for an hour, reading or doing something on your phone, and end up in the city; it’s another thing entirely to drive for an hour, often with no one to talk to and being unable to multitask, just to get a fast food hamburger. All these things combined make me regard the caldera with a range of emotion. It’s picturesque and powerful, stately and striking, but also a sizable obstacle in many ways. I can live my day-to-day life inside of it without struggle—we have our supermarkets, our few restaurants, and our doctor’s offices—but what I struggle with is feeling like I’m living life as a young person here. I’m not a city girl, but I miss having people my age around me, having shops that I can stop in, having cafés to visit if I want to study. I miss being in the same time zone as more of my friends, so it’s easier for us to communicate when we’re all on tight schedules. I miss the ease of traveling in flat Illinois, or living near Osaka, when I may not have had a car but I had what felt like the whole country at my fingertips just by boarding a train. I miss visiting parks on the weekend, or taking day trips with friends, or people-watching, or feeling like I’d had enough of people and wanted alone time. Nowadays, I have a lot of alone time, and even as an introvert there’s almost always too much silence.
But with all of this laid out, I don’t want to end on a negative note, because I don’t think that any last note, impression, or impact from Aso will be negative. It’s true that this is tough. Really tough. And it’s true that there are times where I think I was crazy to come here, crazy to stay a second year, crazy to not just break contract and go home. And yet, at the end of the day, I come back to the reassurance that I’m not just yelling into a void. These difficulties are helping me to mature (not mature enough to keep me from playing Pokémon; sorry mom) in different ways than some of my peers. I know some JETs in the cities who live as if they were still in college, getting smashed on weekends, only ever interacting with friends in their clique, and hating their day job, and while I can’t judge the lifestyles of others I think Friday nights spent writing poetry will build some kind of character and self-awareness, and meeting so many people unlike myself will look great on a résumé when worded as “strong intercultural communication skills.” Living here will help me appreciate the things I have wherever my next stage in life takes me, and the lack of shopping availability is definitely helping me save money at a time in life where many people overspend. It just takes that other angle to see things in a more balanced light.
As has been my motto for many years, “Anything worth doing will be hard, and if it’s hard, it’s probably worth doing.” For me right now, it’s Aso. Aso is a hard placement, but it will be worth what it has taught me. In daily life it’s also important for me to keep track of what’s worth it now—it’s worth it being placed here to have the wonderful schools that I do, it’s worth it to live in a rare and scenic location, it’s worth it to have the opportunity to pursue my own interests and goals abroad. Sometimes it’s also nice to remind myself that I made it here, and while this job is a privilege it’s also a job that I worked hard for and that I’m proud to work hard at. If I had been in charge of my own placement, I probably wouldn’t have chosen Aso. But if I had chosen my own placement I wouldn’t have been as challenged to grow: I wouldn’t have known about Aso or it’s beauty, I wouldn’t have met the friends I do have, and I wouldn’t have had near the same opportunities. To put my best into this job isn’t just to show up at my school and parrot foreign words at the kids, it’s a dedication to further the cultural exchange between two countries, even in its most rural calderas, and to extend friendship to the students, to the teachers, and to my community. That’s not easy, but it’s worth doing. And when I am done in Aso, I won’t be sad to leave the difficulties it imposed but I will be sad to leave my crater. My inconveniently beautiful crater. I’ll be sad to leave my kids and my schools and my really, really good pork-and-horsemeat-ramen restaurant that’s across town, but that will be worth it, too.
When it’s my time to leave Aso, I will go. I’ve been thinking a lot about when that is, but regardless of the timeline the going, just like coming, will change me as a person. I like the idea that people are not who they were yesterday, nor who they will be tomorrow, and while we all have constants in our lives I think we can all also strive to use our experiences to better ourselves. We will not change overnight, but there is very little that does. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was Tokyo, or Aso, or even the caldera. And yet they each have a great impact on their little part of the world…and one day, maybe I can, too.
If there’s a time when I want to leave Japan the most, it’s autumn. Many people may think winter is the hardest with all of its holidays and the inescapable frozen tundra of a landscape, but somehow winter in Japan still seems preferable to autumn, if only because back home winter is equally cold and depressing save Christmas and New Years. Autumn is a different story.
I’ve talked with a few other East Asian ex-pats about this, and there’s a consensus that autumn over here doesn’t feel the same as it does back home. It’s actually when a lot of us find ourselves most homesick, and for a long time I couldn’t quite put a finger on why. Sure, Halloween and Thanksgiving are in fall so it’s a bit of a bummer not to have them, but the homesickness isn’t because we miss candy corn, and it seems to have mostly gone away by the time Thanksgiving comes. Late September to early November is the peak time for autumn homesickness, and after two (non-consecutive) years in Japan, I think I have a good idea as to why.
In America, where myself and the other ex-pats are from, autumn has two distinct sides to it: cold and warm. The season feels balanced between two opposites, because while the weather may be chilly and the plants dying, people seem to grow closer to compensate; fall feels like the season for family dinners, for cooking and baking together, for sharing blankets and coats and hot chocolate. We have very autumnal foods, too, like apple cider, cinnamon-sugar donuts, pumpkin spice everything (love it or hate it), potato soup, chili, and cornbread. Of course we can eat these things whenever we please, but fall is when everybody really goes ham. Fall is also the time for bonfire get-togethers, potluck nights, and coffee dates; there’s something about the season that makes each little activity feel more cozy and intimate. Even crisp autumn mornings, which could very well be perceived as unfortunately chilly, are welcomed as a refreshing change of pace that lets you take a few friends and venture out into an apple orchard. In some ways, even as nature is dying people seem to really come alive in autumn. The best way to sum all of this up is to think of how big a role “coziness” or hygge plays in Western fall—when the outside is beginning to look a little dismal and cold, having that shared sense of comfort and warmth is all-important.
In Japan, there isn’t much of a conceptualization of hygge. Autumn here does have its own foods, and they’re even some of my favorites—chestnut, kabocha squash (which my kids will eternally confuse for pumpkin), sweet potato, and Asian persimmon (one of the most wonderful fruits on the planet)—but they don’t feel inherently warm to me nor do they have the same impact as American favorites. What’s more, the Japanese perception of autumn is drastically different than the West: while the West tends to think of autumn as a beautiful and refreshing time to share with family and friends, Japanese autumn is a season of nostalgia, contemplation, and mourning. Japanese society has a strong belief in mono no aware, an originally Buddhist concept that focuses on accepting the brevity of all things and might be summarized as “things are beautiful because they are impermanent,” and this especially pertains to the spring cherry blossoms and the fall leaves. Autumn is a time of passage where the beauty of the earth fades and people remember the years that have come and gone: near the end of summer is the annual festival for the dead (comparable to Dia de los Muertos in theme but not necessarily in tone), and in the following months it feels as if there is more of a reverence about the transience of life. One of Japan’s beautiful floral displays, the higanbana (cluster amaryllis), is in full bloom in mid to late September, but it’s also a very somber flower that is associated with death and the afterlife. Because this flower is said to guide souls to their next reincarnation it is planted in abundance around graves and cemeteries, linking beauty with that sense of loss and longing. The higanbana, I think, is a model of Japanese autumn as a whole: it may be just as beautiful as autumn back home, especially with momiji (Japanese maple) being so widespread here, but that beauty feels heavy, burdened with the passage of time. I think that is the biggest contributor to how homesick many of us get when September rolls around; we can’t find anything homey and warm in the season in a place where autumn mornings are just cold, not crisp, and the turning leaves, though picturesque, are melancholy.
Making things harder for Aso ex-pats in particular is the fact that, while fall certainly exists here, I’m sure at least 80% of the trees on the mountains and in the caldera are cedars, which means they don’t change color, only rust into a brownish tint from late October until April. The lack of autumn colors makes it feel like the cold has come without anything to brighten it up, and watching a few dogwood trees change as the goldenrod comes and goes almost doesn’t feel worth the weather getting colder. All of these things put together is the reason I’ve been so furiously trying to replicate apple cider in Japan, why I’ve been throwing cinnamon and nutmeg into random lattes hoping they’ll taste more like home, and why I’ve started burning so many candles and listening to so many vintage autumn playlists. Nothing around me looks very much like fall and other than the weather nothing feels like fall, so I’m doing everything I can to make fall for myself, if only so I don’t want to hop on the first plane back to America.
So instead, I chose to hop on a plane with a shorter ride so I can see a familiar face and some real autumn colors.
Just like last year, I decided to take advantage of a long weekend and visit my friend Emily in South Korea, where there were more trees changing and the promise of tried and true human companionship. Luckily for me, not only did we both have a museum we wanted to visit, my long weekend also coincided with the peak autumn foliage prediction for Seoraksan, a popular hiking mountain in one of Korea’s most famous national parks. I’d been wanting to hike there for a few years, and Emily had been only a month before and enjoyed it, so I was excited that we would be able to go. It might just be a little excursion outside the border, but I knew the change of scenery would do me good! So if you’d like to hear about a long weekend abroad, sit back, grab some snacks, and read on; I have a long post for you.
While I had been looking forward to some fresh air to perk me up for several weeks before I left, that Thursday morning I started to worry that it was too late to be rejuvenated—I woke up with a sore throat, and while I initially blamed the dry air in my apartment, the fact that my clock said the room had 72% humidity and that I felt worse as the day went on meant it was more likely I was getting sick…just in time to travel. I copped out of my commitments for the evening, hoping to get some more rest, completely screwed up my sleep schedule in my sick-induced haze of packing and napping, and went to bed hoping to wake up better.
I didn’t wake up better, but at least my throat didn’t hurt. Friday morning started too early, and I could tell by the hint of sniffling and the tickle in my throat that a cold was just revving up. Frustrated but determined to have a good time I got ready for a long day of traveling, finished packing my bags, and set off for the bus at 9:15. First I caught a city bus that took me from my closest train station to the city’s main train station, then took a highway bus from Aso to Fukuoka, where I would be flying in and out of. Fukuoka is about three hours from Aso so by the time I arrived in Fukuoka it was about 1 pm, and I was very hungry. I shoved my bags in an out-of-the-way coin locker on the ninth floor of Hakata Station Amu Plaza, grabbed some delicious Hakata ramen (my favorite type of ramen ever, pork bone broth ramen with thin, firm noodles only found in and around Fukuoka City), got some Asian pear juice from my favorite Wonder Fruits store, and wandered around the mall until it was time to head to the airport. A few of my stops were to bookstores—one in Amu Plaza, one in the nearby Kitte Mall, and a third down the street at a Book Off—as I was trying to find volume one of a recently popular Japanese comic, Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃), but turns out it’s so popular that all three bookstores were sold out of volumes 1-17. Yikes. So much for spending the plane ride reading.
I got to the airport at about 3:30, two hours before my flight, spent so long in the check-in line that I thought it would close before I could even get through, then breezed through security in two minutes and made it to my gate with plenty of time. The flight itself was not fun—I typically have a lot of difficulty equalizing pressure in my ears during descent, and with my cold having invaded my sinuses completely I spent the last twenty minutes trying to yawn with no success. By the time I arrived in Seoul it was about 7:00 in the evening, I could hardly hear out of my right ear, I was disgusted by the amount of my own snot, I had been traveling for 10 hours…and wasn’t finished yet. Rushing to the bus terminal after exchanging money I tried to catch the 7:45 bus to Chuncheon where Emily lives but was given a ticket for 8:30 instead. That gave me enough time to eat a fruit cup I’d gotten at the airport (by the way, Korea, you’re nasty for including cherry tomatoes in a fruit cup), check the seasonal displays around the arrivals/departures area (Incheon is the best, most beautiful airport ever, I swear), and hit the bathroom in preparation for another 2-3 hours of bussing. Thankfully the traffic in Seoul wasn’t bad—unlike last year—and I arrived in Chuncheon at about 10:45 pm. I was immensely grateful that Emily was waiting for me as I had already bumbled around in clumsy Korean enough for one day, and I apologized (for the first time that weekend) to her about my cold as we took a taxi back to her apartment. Both tired from our days, we caught up over some samgyetang (basically soup with an entire chicken stuck in it, minus the head and a few organs) before heading to bed.
On Saturday we woke up early, caught a train to the capital, ate some delicious honey-sesame-syrup-filled songpyeon at the station, and headed to the center of the city, our main plan being to go to the Seoul National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA). Honestly I haven’t been to many modern art museums other than the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Itaewon, and while I wouldn’t say I’m a connoisseur I have found modern art to be more interesting in the last few years. More of a draw to this particular museum came from the promised exhibition of one artist in particular, a man by the name of Ho-suh Do. Do is a famous South Korean sculpture artist whose work can be found in several countries, but what drew me to his pieces was the thematic focus. Though he has made works on a variety of topics, two common studies in his work are ideas of collectivism versus individualism and “the intercultural self.” These topics emerged from Do’s experiences at home and abroad: while he was born and raised in Korea, he went to college in America, and now lives in London. This exposed him to societies that valued different things and challenged his identity as not just a Korean, but a Korean living in a different country. I could go on about his work, but the reason I wanted to go to the museum was to see just one piece: “Home within Home within Home within Home within Home”…which I will refer to as “Home” from now on because otherwise my word count will be off the charts. “Home” is a piece made from translucent fabric, though if layered enough times it becomes opaque, and consists of two structures: a traditional Korean home, called a hanok, and an exact replica of the house Do lived in while he was in college in America. The hanok has been placed inside the American house and is suspended in the air, so that when looking at the American house you can see through the fabric to the building inside. You can also enter the house and walk under and around the hanok—that’s how big the whole thing is. …and I’ve just now realized how much easier this would have been to include from the start, but here’s a picture of “Home” if you’re curious.
While I can’t know Do’s exact intentions with his art without asking him, as soon as I saw and read about the piece it felt very important to me. Living abroad can be an internal game of tug-of-war where you are constantly both trying to fit into a culture that isn’t your own and yet maintain as much of your personal identity as you can. This often leads to people asking—or at least me asking—how much of my home identity makes me who I am, and how much of my Japanese identity actually reflects that? How much of my home culture can I give, and what must I hold onto? How much of Japanese culture can I take, and what can I never accept? What proportion of There and Here and Over There makes up my identity, and how will that identity change when I move on in life? How much has that identity already changed? The hanok at the center of “Home” suggests that no matter where we live and who we become, our core will always be that of our home culture, and that’s something I can both agree with and that I have thought about a lot on my own. But the artistic exploration of the struggle between that core and a different cultural setting felt so relatable to me I couldn’t help but be excited to see it in person.
Good thing it wasn’t at MMCA.
I say that sarcastically, of course; I was not hyped to discover that “Home” was no longer on exhibition at MMCA, and was even less hyped to see that the last recorded location was several years ago meaning “Home” is not likely on display at all. But still, we had come to MMCA to see some art, and heck if we weren’t going to see some art. Maybe not the art we planned to see, but some art nonetheless.
Strangely, it isn’t just “Home” that had a short stay at MMCA; all of the exhibitions there are temporary. There isn’t a single piece of art that’s there forever, but I suppose that made the experience more interesting because we would never have seen the same things if we had come at another time. Some of it was the weird, “I kind of don’t get why this is here” art that I unculturedly expect from modern art museums, but there were definitely a few cool exhibits…and most of them were a little creepy.
Four exhibitions in total stood out to Emily and I, with two runners up that I’ll mention briefly beforehand. One of our runners up was a kind of “string graph” that created an interactive art piece for visitors who had taken museum tours. The color of string you took to participate was determined by your gender and age (Emily and I would both be a buttercup yellow, for females in their mid-twenties), and after tying your string to the beginning of the graph you would create a line by stretching the string between different pegs that corresponded to your level of connection and intimacy with certain areas of your life. There were four topics: country, ethnic group, family, and company/school, and after hundreds of participants of all string colors had added their input, you could see trends emerge in what people considered to be most important and intimate in their lives. Family was at the top of the charts for almost everyone, but the other categories had a pretty large array of answers.
The second runner up was a large interactive display called “The Perfect Family,” where you could look into draws, peruse pamphlets, and read case files for a company that rented companionships. Their employees were trained to be your friend, your mother, your father, your sibling, your significant other, a mourner at a funeral, a bridesmaid at a wedding; you would hire them for a certain amount of time and they would stand in as whatever you needed. It was an art exploration, of course, commenting on the weakening ties of family and community in the modern world, but to someone who lives in Japan where rental families, rental boyfriends, rental friends, rental people are actually available in bigger cities, it felt a bit more real than other modern art may have.
The four pieces that we liked the most, then, started with a very simple one. There were two connected walls in the middle of the room—a divider, it seemed, between some other exhibits—that were painted all white, like someone had taken one corner of a room and edited it into bigger one, mismatched floor and all. On the left wall, in large bolded letters, was printed the word US. On the right wall, in a similar fashion, it said NOT US. And in the middle, directly in the corner so that some of its letters were on different walls, it read THIS IS. That was it. Stark white walls that, depending on how you read them, said either “This is us” or “This is not us.” Call it a byproduct of living in rural Japan, call it a self-centered mindset, call it the intercultural thinking cap I had on in preparation for Ho-suh Do, call it whatever, but when I see comparisons of “us” and “them” I automatically think of foreigner vs national. Of course, there is no “them” written into this piece, only “us,” but there can’t be one without the other. The two statements of what a group is or is not, so closely written but on separate planes, feels like a question of what makes “us” the group that it is…and as someone who doesn’t feel like part of the “us” despite efforts to be as much like “us” as she can as to not stand out, this piece felt like an important question, no question mark needed.
The next piece we liked did have a question mark, and had more of an uneasy tone: when we turned a corner to go to the next exhibit, we were greeted by a sentence printed along a long, white wall, written in both English and Korean. The English was written left to right, but the first part of the sentence we saw was the right side (the end), so it took us a minute to figure out. In a similar way, the Korean was written top to bottom, right to left (whereas it’s usually written left to right), which makes it a little jarring when you first try to figure out what’s being said. There was only a simple phrase on the wall, with no title or artist name: “Can we live with them? 우리 저둘 과 같이 살 수 있을까?” Again, terms like “we” and “them” are unspecified, but Emily and I couldn’t help but see it through the lens of our own experiences. It felt like the wall was asking if the Korean people (and by extension for my case, the Japanese people) could live with foreigners in their midst. But such a question interpreted in such a way makes me feel a bit sad, almost; I understand the sentiment, but as someone who tries to blend into the culture of where I live to be respectful, it feels like there’s no reason to ask if people “can” live with us, as if it’s difficult or troubling for them. Of course, international, interlingual, and intercultural communication will always be complicated, but asking if it’s even possible for “them” and “us” to live together makes it seem as if it’s too great a barrier for “us” to overcome. I’d hope not, as in my case and others it’s the “them” that are working to adapt the “us” to begin with. With that in mind, the phrase on the wall felt relevant but haunting; it felt like it was something I shouldn’t have seen as part of the “them.” It certainly sparked a discussion between Emily and I, and I’d love to hear other interpretations of it from either the “us” perspective or the perspective that the piece isn’t about foreign/national relations at all.
The third exhibition we liked was, admittedly, one that we at first thought would be kind of ridiculous. I think I went in thinking “oh yeah, this is going to be another one of those weird ultra-modern ones that shouldn’t be in a museum,” as the first part of the exhibition you come upon is a long, lime-green hallway with a strange family portrait at the end: three figures with humanoid bodies but heads that are made of weird minerals and rocks. “Pangea Voices,” the title read, “by A-young Kim,” and Emily and I commented on how weird it was, snapped a horror-movie-worthy photo of her in the hallway, and drew back the curtain to enter the main room.
It was wild in there.
One of the walls was covered in assorted illustrations of the figures we had seen before and text that appeared to be related to land claims, building plans, and immigration policies. Things like, “Certification of Refugee Status Recognition, Permission to Stay (F-2).” Some of it felt oddly religious, almost cult-like, which added to the eeriness. The walls, floors, and lighting were in colors of lime green and deep purple; weird, unsettling colors that made your skin crawl when smashed together. There was a video playing on a large wall in the middle of the room, and when we came in the audio was an uncomfortable muddle of incomprehensible whispering, creeping through the surround-sound and up our spines like the ghosts of little insects. Confused but somewhat intrigued by the video we decided to sit down and watch a bit of it. Most of the segment we saw was a conversation between two…people. One was definitely a people, at least; a Korean man in his 30s or 40s, spectacled and wearing a smart, clean suit sat at a table, speaking to a floating, shifting amalgam of gold cubes at the other end. The man spoke only Korean (Korean, English, and Arabic subtitles were provided), but the alien only spoke distorted English, like its voice had been put through the same filter Imogen Heap used in “Hide and Seek.” Neither party seemed to notice the language barrier. The man was interviewing the alien: asking where it came from, how it came to be there, if it was aware of the current rate of immigration (though the word was never mentioned), describing detainment processes, asking if it would be dangerous for the alien to go back where it came from, and talking about where it may be sent if it spent too long in detainment. While this summary makes the topic of the artwork seem pretty cut and dry, the video itself is a long, meandering explanation of events with a lot of non sequiturs and apparently random monologues that were hard to decipher at first, and no matter how long Emily and I watched we still felt pulled to watch just a little more. There was an evident conflict between the cold, impersonal interview of the man compared with the more passionate, sometimes angry desperation of the alien, even though the voice of the former couldn’t be more human or the latter, so robotic. Emily theorized that the use of mineral-like “aliens” was also a connection to our use of and relationship with natural resources, which I thought was interesting because I definitely hadn’t thought of it that way. I was too preoccupied with the trippy visuals, to be honest. After a while the video became geometric and abstract which started to give me vertigo, so we decided to move on…but the exhibit wasn’t quite over yet. Going around the central wall where the video was playing, there was a smaller wall projection hidden behind, only about half as tall as me and not very wide. On that wall they were showing real world footage, mostly of planes and boats and other forms of transportation from a first person perspective. When the scene would change so would the text at the bottom, and each one told a story of leaving. One was about someone leaving because of an expired visa. Another was about fleeing because of war. But all of them had to do with immigration, coming and going between countries, and the various situations that might make you leave a place. It tied the room together thematically, it felt like, and was a nice closure to the array of experimental media we’d analyzed to get there.
The final exhibit that we enjoyed was called “The Sleep” by Yang-ah Ham, and was comprised of two videos projected simultaneously on two walls connected by a corner. The videos were almost identical; the angle of the shots would be just a little different, or the movement a little off, but for the most part they were showing the same or similar things. To put it simply, the video showed people sleeping…but as the work’s description said, it was made in a way that would instill an unease in the watcher. The intent of the art was to explore the role of social structures and groups in the case of a disaster, and despite the simplicity of the film everything about it made us feel uncomfortable. All of the people sleeping were sleeping on black mats on the floor of a large gymnasium—instantly indicating to viewers that something is wrong, as gymnasiums are common evacuation centers. Some people sleep alone, some hug one another, some are close but not touching, and most are adults; they all wear neutrals and have bare feet, and the close angles they’re filmed at creates a sense of tense intimacy. You can see them breathe at times, and move, but no one has their eyes open. No one speaks, no one lifts their head, no one coughs or clears their throat, and no one turns over. All the while a low, humming bass note plays in the background, sometimes growing louder and quieter, and it makes the whole thing feel deafeningly quiet. You know the people in the video are alive, but the way they’re filmed makes it feel as if they aren’t, and even the black mats in the videos appear to have rough white outlines around the bodies, as if it’s a crime scene. There are also scenes of about ten people sitting in folding chairs—all dressed as if they might be mayors or officials—watching the entire thing, hardly blinking. Instead of ruining the illusion of death it almost makes it more intense, because having those people just watching the silence, themselves quiet and almost motionless, feels like something is horribly, horribly wrong. If you watch enough of the video, you’ll see the camera cut back to those chairs with the officials slumped over in them, now appearing to be sleeping where they sit. That was the eeriest part for me. It was as if something had swept over them suddenly; you didn’t see the moment they fell asleep but the awkwardness of their poses and the stillness with which they sat created the illusion that they had fallen victim to something. At the very end of the video, there is a cut to one woman standing on her mat—just standing there motionless, speechless and stony-faced, and waiting for the video to fade to black and start again. I’m no expert on art, but I do think that “To Sleep” was ingeniously done. The scenes in and of themselves are not scary, shocking, or unnerving. There’s nothing about the actions or the subjects being filmed that feels like it should be interesting—it’s literally just a hundred or so people getting paid to pretend to sleep—but the addition of background “music,” strange camera angles, and color palate creates an experience that really does make you feel like something isn’t right. No one mentions disaster or death, but those two themes seem so palpable that, even from the safety of a bench in the basement of MMCA, a sense of dread and intrigue washes over you. It was an unexpected discovery in the museum, and both Emily and I agreed that it was cool…and unsettling.
Overall we were glad we visited the museum even if none of Ho-suh Do’s art was there, even if after a while I got a headache from a mix of dehydration (my Thermos did too good a job of keeping my tea hot), erratic abstract art videos, and sinus sickness. We both found pieces we enjoyed, and as an extra bonus we got in for free because our international age is at or under 24. Sweet. I got into Jeju’s Manjanggul Lava Caves for free two years ago for the same reason, but didn’t remember the benefit continued for that long! I wouldn’t mind America taking a few notes, either: free entry to some museums, nature parks, and public attractions as long as you aren’t due for a quarter-life crisis? I think that’s a great idea…but maybe just because it still applies to me.
When Emily and I left MMCA we initially planned to wander around Insadong, a traditional area of Seoul, but we were lucky to catch an important event before heading that way. To give you a mental map for reference, the art museum is across the street from Gyeongbokgung, one of the most famous palaces in Korea, and starting right in front of Gyeongbokgung’s famous front gate (Gwanghwamun) is a long, large boulevard (Sejong-daero) with some performance centers, national museums, the US Embassy, and statues of famous leaders and generals. Even more important is that this street is a path to the Blue House, the South Korean equivalent of the White House. Usually that wouldn’t mean too much to me at this point: I have visited to Gyeongbokgung and Gwanghwamun twice, seen the changing of the guard, taken lots of photos, paid mad respect to the statue of King Sejong (he’s a legend for linguists, but I can talk about that some other time), and have generally seen most of what’s visible along the street. But that Saturday was different: there was a protest.
Now before I get into this, I’m going to put out a disclaimer that I’m not a political expert, but this is about to get a little political for the sake of everybody understanding what’s going on. Honestly, before this trip I didn’t know much about their government at all, other than name of the president, Jae-in Moon. But according to the grapevine (what my friend heard from coworkers) and a little bit of research I’ve done, there’s this guy in the government, Kuk Cho, who has been accused of doing some shady things, and because of said corruption allegations he recently stepped down from his position. This was a big deal for President Moon too because he had, a month before, ignored the claims against Cho and made him the Minister of Justice. Cue public outrage, possibly justified. As I understand it, another point of scandal is that President Moon, prior to being president, had been part of protests to impeach former president Geun-hye Park, who was removed from office for disregarding the voice of the people. Fast forward a few years and, after ignoring public and political outcry against Kuk Cho being appointed Minister of Justice, President Moon now is in a somewhat similar position with his reelection chances not looking stellar. I don’t know more than this and I don’t intend to write a hugely political rant, so I’ll leave the news recaps at that. But basically a lot of people were really mad, and protests were organized pretty quickly. As Emily put it, “Korea is a small country. You can be in Busan (in the southeast) and hey, there’s an event up in Seoul (in the northwest), and all you have to do is take a train for three hours to get there. It isn’t like America where it’s hard to organize or attend events unless you live in a big city.” That accessibility that the Korean people have to congregate is what helped to make these events so large so quickly, with reports of the protest from the week before I came estimating attendees at about 1.2 million people.
That’s a lot of people!
Of course, it’s good to keep in mind that anti-Cho and anti-Moon protests are not the only side of the story; pro-Cho and pro-Moon protests have also had large turnouts from what the news is telling me, and while I haven’t heard much else about that side of things I do want to say that Korea isn’t of one mind about these issues.
All of this exposition, though, is leading up to what you may expect: Emily and I emerged from MMCA full of existential thoughts and feeling cultured, but as we walked down by Gyeongbokgung we were distracted by the sound of a lot of people chanting. From more grapevine info we knew it was an anti-Moon protest—a big one—and we figured this might be our only chance to check one out, for science purposes. We didn’t want to attend specifically in support or in protest because neither of us were properly sure of what had been happening, but as two girls from ruralish Midwest towns we hadn’t had a lot of firsthand exposure to politics in action and figured it’d be interesting to take a look. …Also, we were pretty darn sure we’d be safe at this protest, which isn’t something you can guarantee in every country.
Following the walls of Gyeongbokgung toward the main promenade we could hear the changing get steadily louder and louder, and we began to notice heavy police presence along the roads. Once we reached the road that ran in front of the palace, it became very clear why they were there—the protesters were coming towards the palace from Sejong-daero then turning left, going around the palace, and heading towards the Blue House…and there were so many of them they completely filled the streets. Traffic from the promenade and in front of the palace was completely blocked off because of the amount of people, and policemen were trying to redirect cars while making sure pedestrians could safely cross the congested roads around Gyeongbokgung. When we finally made it to the front gate of the palace, a good place to watch some of the happenings, I immediately felt bad for anybody who had come for tourism that day—the doors of Gwanghwamun were closed, and no guards in traditional clothing kept their posts like usual. In addition, people had swarmed everywhere around the palace with Korean flags, political banners (some with inflammatory messages or less than respectful images of President Moon), megaphones, and…American flags. Wasn’t expecting that one.
Actually, American flags were one of the more common things being carried by the protesters, sometimes even being attached to Korean flags in a sort of combination banner. Emily had explained as we walked towards the protest that this would likely be the case, as many people carried such flags the week prior. We both agreed though that we had mixed feelings about the presence of our flag among the more expected Korean ones. On one hand, Emily explained, many people were carrying the flag in a respectful way, as a symbol of democracy (America leading by example) and as a reminder to the Korean people that they should uphold the values that America helped win for them in World War II. Most of the protesters were from older generations, and some of them remember the effects and aftermath of Japanese imperial rule, with many of them expressing gratitude for what America did. These people feel that their country needs to remember the right they have to political freedom and where that right came from, and while America is not perfect nor the only force of democracy in the West, it is a meaningful symbol for some. Emily has even been thanked before for being American, she told me, which I can imagine feels somewhere between flattering and undeserved.
On the other hand, while the American flag may be a protestor’s symbol of democracy and freedom, it’s a little uncomfortable to see it so closely associated with a conflict that…frankly, not many people in America know or care about. The image of the American flag at protests may bring the assumption that America supports the protesters’ cause, and while I again don’t know enough to say definitively where American opinion would fall it makes me uneasy to know that the face of my country is being put one side over another. Has America similarly protested against something like this, leading Korea to use them as an example? Are they just supporting America’s democratic model? It’s hard to know, but it makes me feel a bit weird about the whole thing. And on top of that, even though I understand Americans are “extreme” (compared to other countries) when it comes to flag culture, it does give me a little twinge of discomfort to see people use that flag, knowing that they might not treat it with the same respect it would get back home.
International symbolism aside, attending the protest was fascinating. I’ve never really been to one, so I started with a pretty big fish—I don’t have numbers for how many people attended, but for as long as Emily and I were there, the stream of marchers was endless (you can see a photo of one of these protests walking down Sejong-daero here; for scale, keep in mind that the gates you see at the far end of the street are the massive doors of Gwanghwamun). We couldn’t see a starting point down the boulevard, and while the route disappeared around the bend of the palace towards the Blue House I had no doubt it stretched far beyond. Beyond the marchers, people lined the streets as if it were a parade, chanting with the protesters and encouraging them as they walked. Some people shouted that Jae-in Moon was a traitor, others yelled that he should go to jail. A particularly vicious banner had a picture of his face, modified to look like a pig covered in blood and bruises. It was intense.
While I can’t comment on the actual politics of the event it was clear that there were a lot of people that were unhappy with the way things were going, and it was a valuable reminder to how lucky people are in Korea—and America—to have the right to make the beliefs of the people known in such a public fashion. I’m sure President Moon heard their message, as did the rest of the country, and whatever happens going forward at least no one will be shocked as to where many people stand.
After watching the protest for a while, Emily and I headed towards Insadong for a break—we’d been walking a lot, and I could stand to sit down to (very discretely, femininely) blow my nose for ten years. We made a beeline for Suyoil, a place I talked about in my café review blog post, and lucked out in getting a table on the balcony with a perfect view of the streets below and a handful of adorable sparrows that visited us every once in a while. As the day was just slightly chilled and the wind nippy, we both opted for traditional Korean jujube tea, warm and thick and smelling like the food equivalent of a comfortable armchair. I would’ve loved to get five tastes tea, my usual summer go-to, but there was just too much autumn outside to convince myself against the molasses-y jujube. We left Suyoil feeling cozy, made a stop at Osulloc to restock on leaf tea, and ended up at Insadong Station with plenty of time before our evening train. That meant we could head one last place before going back to Chuncheon: Seoullo 7017.
Seoullo 7017 is a kilometer-long urban walkway extending across central Seoul, most easily accessible from Seoul Station. It is elevated above the busy roads that wind through the skyscrapers but keeps the landscape green with huge planters lining the pathway; Seoullo has flowers, ornamental grasses, bushes, and trees all growing above the city. It also has interspersed pianos painted with murals that allow people to play music along the walkway, raised lookout points, and little street-market-esque craft stalls in the evenings. Honestly, if that place had a chic bar, I’m sure it’d be a huge hit! We were lucky to arrive at the perfect time to see a magnificent pink and periwinkle sunset, and as the streets became darker and the lamps began to turn on we finished walking the length of Seoullo, turned around, and returned to the station under the quiet lull of a woman playing piano. We had had a wonderful, productive day, but at this point I felt my head may as well explode to save me the misery of a cold, so we got some yuzu (east Asian citrus) tea to go and hopped on our train heading east. Once back in Chuncheon Emily made some delicious kabocha stew and sweet-potato avocado toast, which warmed us up before we turned in for the night.
The next morning we rose early again, excited for the day but but not eager to get on the road. This time we would be traveling to eastern South Korea, specifically to a costal city called Sokcho. From Sokcho we would then take another bus inland to Seoraksan National Park, where we planned to hike and enjoy the fall foliage. Unfortunately for us the weather was worryingly foggy when we left the city, and even as the sun rose further into the sky there was little indication of it burning off. Then, about halfway through our two-hour bus ride, we came out of a mountain tunnel and like magic the fog had vanished, leaving brilliantly sunny skies and fiery autumn trees in its wake. I was so hyped I spent the next half hour writing a haiku about it, though I’m not sure if that says more about how lame I am as a person or how much a former Japanese professor’s influence got to me.
When we arrived in Sokcho there wasn’t a trace of bad weather to be seen, and the air was perfectly crisp and refreshing. To make things even better we caught a city bus to Seoraksan almost immediately, which gave us hope we’d arrive at the trails earlier than expected. However, we weren’t the only people who knew it was peak foliage season—the bus was packed to the point of concern for all of our safety—and once we got within a few miles of the national park entrance there were so many buses congesting the road that our progress slowed to a crawl. It was pure torture to see the mountains, the nature so close, but to be moving so slowly towards our destination! The other people in our bus seemed to agree, so as soon as we got within a few stops of the top a few frustrated grandmas more or less threatened the bus driver to open the doors and we all rushed out, warming up our muscles by walking the rest of the way to the trailheads.
It felt wonderful to be in the open air, especially since I had come to Korea specifically to get my fill of autumn in all its glory, and by the time we reached the park entrance we both couldn’t wait to start our hike. However…we had an unfortunate handicap to keep in mind: I was still miserably sick. My trip overall wasn’t dampened by my cold and I was able to do everything I wanted while there, but I was a gross mess the entire time I was in Korea. Also, while I would’ve loved to hike all over and under and through the mountains like Bilbo Baggins, by Sunday I had reached the unfortunate stage of “not being able to breathe out of my nose, and also occasionally coughing because why not,” which wouldn’t make such strenuous activity possible. Having a lack of nose air was going to suck when hiking, I knew, and we also had to consider that I’d probably get tired more easily than normal, so we didn’t want to set out for, say, an expert-level trail, only to end up with me laying on a rock halfway up the mountain inviting death to take me.
Figuring it was better to play it safe than sorry we picked the shortest trail, one that was about 25% “easy” and 75% “moderate” in difficulty but promised at least two pretty waterfalls along the way. When we reached the start of the trail we discovered there was also an extension that stretched about half a kilometer further but was “advanced” (the second most difficult hiking level), so we figured that would be a good challenge if I wasn’t dead after the main hike. The destination of said main hike was Biryong Falls, a name which means “Flying Dragon.” Apparently you can see a dragon in the shape of the stone by the waterfall (spoiler alert: we couldn’t), and along the way there were supposed to be a lot of smaller waterfalls and no shortage of deciduous trees. Perfect.
And perfect it was. The hike was beautiful, and the combination of lovely leaves, perfect weather, and good companionship made everything feel more like home than I’d felt in a long while. We off-roaded, took photo stops, talked about nothing, and made bad puns that we refused to laugh at, and it was so nice to just relax and enjoy everything. I mean, I was heaving air through my mouth like a fish out of water, my lungs were burning on some hills, and my quads started to protest at some point, but the experience was somehow better that way. More authentic. We saw scenery that practically rendered us speechless and little details of nature that were just as beautiful, we both suffered our way across a wobbly, freaky bridge, and Emily even let me steal some of her photo angle ideas. And honestly, when we reached Biryong Falls…well, it was nice, but personally I think it paled in comparison to some of the other sights. So of course we just had fun taking silly pictures with it and moved on.
Silly pictures like this, you mean? ・ Biryong Falls, Seoraksan National Park, Oct. 20, 2019
At that point, even though I was tired of breathing through my mouth I was still feeling sufficiently up to hiking, so we decided to take the advanced trail extension to the waterfall lookout at the top. Though this part of the trail was short it was more or less an endless series of stairs straight up the mountain, which made our legs kind of sad. Or at least my legs were sad; Emily had been killing the hiking game over the past few months. We both managed to haul ourselves up, but about halfway there I remember calling for a tissue break and a breather (perhaps more accurately called a “heave-air”), blowing my nose with minimal improvements to my airways, and declaring, “I am full of mucus and regret.”
It was the only complaint my muddled brain could come up with at the time, but I’m still pretty proud of the ring it has to it.
Pushing through that mucus and regret was worth it though: when we finally arrived at the lookout we realized that, even though we couldn’t see the promised waterfall across the gorge because of the angle of the sun, if we looked the other way we could see all the way down the mountain and to the ocean. Through a dip in the mountain peaks Sokcho’s red bridge was clearly visible and beyond it the aquamarine expanse of the sea, lit by the afternoon sun. With the help of binoculars provided at the lookout, we could even make out some traffic trundling through the city from far, far away. How cool.
After taking sufficient photos (if you don’t have pictures, did you even go?) from the highest peak and saying goodbye to a particularly cute chipmunk we found up there, we began the long hike downwards…which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, as both of our knees wobbling like Jello. Legs tired from the trip upwards, we had to hold onto the railings most of the way down so our baby deer legs wouldn’t give out; when it wasn’t slightly dangerous it was pretty funny. But we made it back without any issues and only a few stumbles, even having enough time to stop by a bright red momiji we’d found earlier to take more pictures. By the time we reached the trailhead we knew we didn’t have enough time or energy for another hike that day unless we wanted to get back to Chuncheon really late, so we made a quick visit to the giant Buddha statue in the main hub of the park before getting back on the bus to central Sokcho. Once there we ate a quick dinner (I had a ridiculously huge bowl of manduguk (dumpling soup)), tried to find the ocean to watch the sunset, only found a commercial fishing pier with some fish guts strewn about and a mediocre view, and decided we’d just camp out at a pretty café until our bus came.
The next day was Monday, and while I was lucky to have vacation through Tuesday, Emily had to go to work. That meant I was on my own for the day, which didn’t bother me much other than getting to and from Seoul. While I’m quite familiar with getting around in the city I’m less well-versed in rural transportation, and with Chuncheon’s intercity train and bus stations both being too far away to walk and there being no subway I only had the options of city bus or taxi. Emily gave me directions on exactly what to do or say if I needed to grab a taxi before she head to work, as it didn’t look like a bus was coming anytime soon, so I sat down at the bus stop and nervously started practicing my Korean. Looking at what she had written, “시외바스타미널에 가 주세요” (“Please take me to Chuncheon Intercity Bus Terminal”), I knew in my head how it should sound, but also knew I wouldn’t be able to replicate it very well. After reading it over a few times I was just about to resign myself to hailing a taxi, but glanced at the electronic bus schedule one last time…and was saved by the announcement that the bus I needed would be arriving in two minutes. It hadn’t been there before, but I didn’t care—I just really didn’t want to speak Korean. If I’m ever going to properly learn Korean I should probably get over that fear of speaking it, but Monday was not that day. I just took the loss and got on the bus.
From the bus terminal I caught a second bus to Dong-Seoul, the capital’s eastern bus terminal. This dropped me off on the same side of the city as Gangnam, which was close to my first destination for the day. First though, I needed to pre-order my bus ticket home. There were a number of incredibly easy-to-use automatic ticket vendors set up all through the main lobby of the terminal…and none of them accepted cash or foreign credit card. Unlike Japan, where many places don’t take card and cash is the reigning payment method, Korea is almost the opposite. There are few places that don’t take card, but there are definitely places that don’t take cash! This can be very convenient or very inconvenient depending on how you look at it, but in this case I was bummed because it meant I needed to go to a kiosk and get one from a human. I was alright just buying a ticket—I can flub the Korean pronunciation of “Chuncheon,” “one,” and “ticket” well enough—but I also needed to specify what time I wanted, which I had no idea how to do. Thankfully, Google Translate saved the day: the terminal had Wi-Fi, so I was able to speak my way through half of the process and show the lady the rest on my phone. Bless modern technology.
Return ticket secured, I hopped on the subway to Sinnonhyeon Station, a place I’d never been to before. It was within walking distance of Gangnam Station—the two aren’t on the same line, but are connected by a massive shopping road—but Gangnam wasn’t my goal: I was actually headed, on a whim, to a pop-up shop. I’ve talked about pop-up cafés and shops and how incredibly popular they are on this blog before, and this one was brand new, only having been announced and opened three days prior. When I planned my trip, then, I had no intention of coming because it didn’t exist, but since I had a free day I figured “why not?” Even better I could come on a Monday: this place was going to be busy…because it was a BTS pop-up shop. BTS anything will draw a crowd, especially in Korea, but this shop was even more likely to be overflowing with people because the final concerts of BTS’ world tour were scheduled to be in Seoul for the weekend after. This meant there was to be a huge influx of fans, both foreign and national, to the capital between the weekend I was there and the two weekends following. In fact, I would have been one of those fans if I’d scored tickets, but when I couldn’t get any and the weekend before had perfect timing for a vacation I had just decided to show up anyway and have fun doing other stuff. The timing for the pop-up to line up with the concert finales was intentional, I’m sure, but it threatened massive wait times if I didn’t choose the right day to go. I only heard about this after I went myself, but some people had waited over ten hours just to get in!
I figured I could stand to wait a little if I needed to; I didn’t have any pressing plans that day, and seeing the exhibitions would be fun since I wouldn’t be going to the concert. Walking towards Gangnam from Sinnonhyeon, I followed my pre-photographed map through a few narrow, hilly roads, and after about a ten minute walk was greeted by unmistakable evidence that I’d come to the right place: while the building was difficult to see, set off the road a bit and with trees hiding some of its exterior, there was a long line of people of all ages, races, and countries waiting in front of it, and fashionably-dressed staff members were walking around managing everything. Just like the building’s exterior (and several of it’s inner rooms), staff were wearing the shop’s colors: white button-ups and soft pink robes. I say “robes” because the pop-up is called “House of BTS” and is meant to represent a house for BTS and its fans, but to me they almost looked like very comfortable, chic trench coats, so the uniforms didn’t seem to costume-y. Ingeniously, staff also wore large round pins on their lapels that indicate other languages that they spoke. With a very diverse fanbase and an expectation for the pop-up to be a destination for many foreigners, this system made it easy for visitors speaking English, Japanese, and Chinese (the three most common non-Korean languages in Seoul) to find help if they had any questions.
Before I get into my experience at the pop-up, I’d like to briefly mention how cool it was to see the BTS fanbase (called ARMY) in action while I was there. I’ll have another anecdote about this later that fits a little better into the blog post, but overall I really was wowed by how international and extensive ARMY has become, and how these fans interact with one another. When I came to House of BTS it was a normal Monday in Korea, so I didn’t see any young fans (they were in school) or working fans, as I’m sure they were busy. Many foreign fans had come that day as I’m sure they were on vacation and could come whenever, and while I was in line and in the store I heard no fewer than six languages—Korean, English, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and a Scandinavian language I couldn’t pinpoint. I may have even caught a hint of Russian, but I wasn’t paying too close attention. These fans aged from young adults to fans in their mid-40s or early 50s, and while the younger ages were more well-represented they certainly weren’t the only ones there. Even more surprising, the older fans weren’t all Korean, and though some of them were parents accompanying their kids, I heard many of those who didn’t have kids speaking excitedly about BTS amongst themselves. I find that intriguing. In East Asia, while I’m not saying you’ll see grannies on the street doing dance-offs for their favorite K-Pop group, there seems to be more of an acceptance around older people liking such groups. Whereas in America it might be seen as cringeworthy if someone likes Justin Bieber music when they’re 35, in Japan and Korea it’s been my experience that as long as you’re a normal human being who doesn’t go nuts about it, people don’t think you’re that weird. What’s also nice is that, generally speaking, ARMY seems pretty accepting of these older fans into the fold. I can’t know if that’s the case for everyone, of course, and I don’t know the Korean side of the fandom well, but the atmosphere among fans, both at the shop and online, seems to welcome everybody with open arms. And hey, that’s a nice thing to see.
While I was at the shop I did notice that there were less Korean fans than I expected, even with it being a work day. There were definitely Korean ARMYs there but the proportion of foreigners seemed a lot larger, and while I didn’t think about it too much at the time I was a bit mystified by it afterwards. I resigned myself to think it was just my timing until I had returned to Japan and saw a message running round the ARMY forum app: someone had been checking and translating news from the Korean fanbase, and had found a message that said something along the lines of, “After the opening weekend, let’s (Korean fans) refrain from going to House of BTS for a few weeks. There will be many international fans here for the concert, and they can only go to House of BTS while they are in Korea, so let’s make sure they can get in!”
Faith in humanity: restored.
The pop-up shop was announced to be open for about four months, so with the reassurance there’d be plenty of time for everybody the Korean fans had decided they’d hold off so that international visitors had shorter wait times. Not being able to read Korean I can’t confirm that’s true, but it would explain why I saw so few Korean fans, and also I’d like to think it’s true because it’s a heartwarming display of human kindness at work. This experience wasn’t intended to be the focal point of my visit, but it certainly impressed me and made me happy that I was part of ARMY. To know that, even with all the political issues of today (especially between Korea and Japan!) a group of people with nothing in common—race, nationality, gender, age, religion even—could unite under a shared interest was cool to witness.
But enough of the mushy stuff for now. To get back to my actual experience at the pop-up store, it started with a line. The line began at the front of the shop and extended down the street, but before the end of the block the line was cut off, presumably to keep people safe and let traffic pass (no sidewalks, as per usual for many side streets). A pink-robed staff stood at the corner with an official-looking headpiece, and when I asked him about the line he instructed me to go right around the corner and walk towards the end of the street. I did so, and about two short blocks down there was another staff member at the next start of the line, who directed me to turn right around another corner. Down this street, which was parallel to the original one, was the end of the line. This made it tricky to tell how long the line really was: I’m used to lines being broken up for traffic, but I’d never seen a line with such a large gap in it before so I couldn’t visualize the time it’d take to get to the end of it. However, figuring I might as well stick around, I joined the line and waited.
Within 20 minutes I had gotten halfway through the line and was already in the frontmost section, so I felt alright about how quickly I’d get in. When the front of the building came into view I had to stifle a laugh though: behind the row of trees and in what would be the shop’s “front lawn,” hundreds and hundreds of cardboard boxes were stacked up in columns, all bearing the logo of BTS’ parent company, BigHit Entertainment. No doubt that’s where they were keeping their merchandise stock! I can’t blame them; the amount of traffic that place must’ve seen in the first few days was probably insane, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that trend continued for a month. It’d be impossible to not sell out of anything without a massive amount of preordering. Still, it was funny with how rest of the shop was so manicured and organized that the front lawn looked like a hoarder had bought a lifetime supply of BTS T-shirts. Once I rounded the trees and was almost to the building, staff members welcomed the group of us at the front of the line, handing us each a clear plastic bag with a few items inside. One was a short, light pink pencil, another was a similarly colored snap bracelet (been awhile since I’ve seen one of those!) that had “BTS Pop-Up: House of BTS 서울 Seoul” printed on it, and a large, detailed pamphlet that was…again, the same color. If you aren’t familiar with BTS’ discography, I suppose it may clear things up at this point to mention that their last EP was almost entirely pink, one of their most popular music videos is at least half pink, and the series of albums they just toured with have a lot of pink in them. There’s been a lot of pink with BTS these days, basically. The pamphlet was printed in several different languages and contained both maps of each floor and a complete list of merchandise sold in the shop. There were tons of items to choose from, each with a picture and price you could reference at any time, and little boxes printed beneath each one. The maps made the building look pretty big, too: the whole basement was a showroom of the goods you could purchase with a little added VR area to take pictures and a massive screen to play music videos, the first floor had areas to order and pick up merch, an area to check your purchases (even that room was themed), and a mini café counter where you could get drinks. The second and third floors were interactive exhibition floors, with little rooms or areas dedicated to several of BTS’ songs or albums (for interested fans, they had two displays for “Boy with Luv,” and one each for “IDOL,” “DNA,” “MIC Drop,” The Most Beautiful Moment in Life era, “Persona,” and “HOME,” as well as an “ARMY Bomb Forest” on the third floor patio). I was excited to see what they had in store (pun not intended but appreciated), as I’d never been to a music group’s exhibition before.
The entrance to the building was, unfortunately, not the end of my wait; the pastel pink doorway led straight down a set of stairs, where there was a line waiting to enter the basement. From where I was I could see a set of rules written at the bottom of the stairway, just before the grand-looking double-door entry, and while I couldn’t read any of it from a distance I could hear a staff member explaining in Korean to a group in front of me. When that group entered and another with a particularly large amount of foreigners neared the doors, I heard him switch to English and, explain again. I breathed a little sigh of relief that he could translate, but started to tune him out when I heard two middle-aged women talking behind me in Japanese. I had noticed they were speaking Japanese earlier but was trying not to eavesdrop; however, at this point I figured it might be a good idea, as they were discussing what the staff member was saying below…or rather, asking each other if they had any idea what was going on. They both sounded confused and a bit concerned, so at the risk of looking a bit nosy I turned around and told them, in Japanese, that he was explaining the rules of the store. I had only caught one or two of the things he said but I gave those rules as examples to the women, and they “ahhhh”ed in comprehension before they went back to their conversation and I resumed trying to entertain myself while alone in line with no internet. I felt a little awkward for jumping into their conversation as I didn’t want to seem like I was trying listen in on them, but I figured it was more helpful to explain.
After about a total of an hour of standing in line, I at last reached the doors to the basement entrance. I had nearly gotten through with the group before; there was only one woman in front of me, probably in her 40s, and from how she was chatting with the staff member about merchandise I knew right away she was Korean. When the staff member went to explain the rules of the shop, then, he said them first in Korean, which I understood maybe 30 or 40 percent of through context clues and common sense. After he had finished, the staff looked at me and asked, “Do you understand?”
“A little,” I responded honestly, thinking he’d just re-explain in English.
When I said as much, though, he looked a little troubled about my lack of understanding. I immediately felt bad for making him translate everything in a language he may not be comfortable in—I know how that feels on a very intimate level—and, thinking back, he didn’t have a pin with an American flag on it to show that he spoke English, so I shouldn’t have assumed. Just as it was starting to get awkward, with the two of us standing around not knowing how to continue, the woman in front of me spoke up in perfect English, saying,
“It’s okay. I can explain it to her.”
Her language aptitude blindsided me. I’m so used to people around me, especially the older generations (not calling anyone old here, I promise!), knowing very little if any English, so to hear her speak it so easily came as a surprise. Both the staff member and I, however, were very grateful when she turned around and began to repeat the rules.
“We’re going to start on the basement floor, but then we have to go to the second floor, not the first floor,” she said. “The first floor is where you check out and get your stuff and leave, and once you exit you can’t come back in, okay? So you need to also check any purchases before you leave, because they won’t let you return. You also can’t return anything unless it’s damaged, and you have to return it within 24 hours. After the second floor you go to the third floor, and then you can go and check out. You can only get up to three of each item, and you mark how many you want of each thing on your pamphlet, in those boxes by the pictures. That way it’ll be easy for you to check out. I think that’s everything.” She turned to the staff member when she finished, who probably had no idea if that was indeed everything but seemed relieved regardless.
After I thanked the woman I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned around to find the two Japanese women I’d spoken to earlier.
“Can you explain the rules to us?” One asked.
And so I did. I repeated the rules in Japanese, and when I was done I turned back to the woman in front of me, who was giving the staff member an impromptu English lesson on how to talk about “amounts of merchandise.” The staff member was nodding thoughtfully when he suddenly seemed to remember something, and quickly told the woman in Korean a rule he’d forgotten. She in turn explained to me in English, and I then explained to the other women in Japanese.
There was a brief silence when everyone understood the rules, broken by one of the Japanese women.
「本当に国際的なコミュニケーションだね。」
“This is really some international communication we have going on, huh.”
I agreed, and once again considered just how weirdly cool of a situation I was in.
But that was about all I had time for, as I was finally let into the shop afterwards. I won’t say too much about each exhibition in the pop-up, partially because it’d take forever and also partially because it’s a bit difficult to describe some rooms other than to say things like, “The IDOL room had those streamer things from the music video,” but I’ll talk about some of the highlights and if you’re still curious I have some photos on my Instagram. One of my favorite sections was the MIC Drop area, which was a cute metal lattice mini-house with microphones hanging from the ceiling, some of which were little lights. I also enjoyed the Boy With Luv display, which had old-Hollywood-style theatre signs for BTS’ popular albums and songs above a floor piano, and the Persona bar area, which was lit up in pink neon. Also fun, though not an exhibit, were the lights in the showroom, which were shaped like the album cover designs for Love Yourself: Tear, and all of the windows on the second floor. The windows were covered in a one-way-mirror type of material, so you could see outside but from the outside it was hard to see in…and it was all metallic rainbow colors, which made for fun reflection photos. I also got a few interesting galaxy themed shots from inside the DNA experience room, where you could watch an immersive version of the music video.
나란 놈을 고작 말 몇 개로답할 수 있었다면 신께서 그 수많은 아름다움을 다 만드시진 않았겠지. “If I were answerable in just a few words, then God wouldn’t have made all that beauty.” Persona Bar, feat. some of my favorite lyrics from the song ・ House of BTS, Seoul, Oct. 21, 2019
Overall I spent a few hours at House of BTS, though most of it was waiting to get in and to go from floor to floor, but it was still a good time. I’ve heard that it may be a touring pop-up, and from Seoul it may continue on to a few cities in Japan and America, but even if that’s the case I’m glad I went when I did. It was fun to be in the right city when something like this came out (usually when a pop-up opens or an event happens in Japan or Korea I’m either in the countryside and unable to get to it, in a different country, or in a different hemisphere), and even if it comes to Japan I’ll still have the original store’s merch, namely the snap bracelet. I’ve learned that in East Asia, when it comes to concert or store merchandise, things will often be color-coded or printed with the name of the location so that it’s different from the other places in the tour, so my “Seoul” snap bracelet shows that I went to the pop-up actually in Korea. That’s a fun little souvenir to take home!
After finishing up at the store I navigated back to the main road and started walking towards Gangnam, where I was planning to catch a train to Myeongdong so I could do some shopping. Along the way I ran into a Kakao Friends shop—never a good sign for my wallet—and my mug addiction bowled me over the head when I found a giant (490 mL!) mug of their character Ryan sitting in a forest with some woodland friends. I’m not too mad; I’ve been using it a lot so I’m getting my money’s worth.
I was on the train for about 30 minutes, and when my stop started to get close I began double-checking my map with some skepticism. I didn’t remember the exact station I needed to get off at, unfortunately, as I usually traveled to Myeongdong from the blue line, and I was currently on the green line. I knew there was a green line stop right next to the other end of the main Myeongdong street, I knew I’d ridden it before, and I knew that it was one of the Euljiros. …I just didn’t know which one. 을지로 (Euljiro) is the name of a district in Seoul, and it’s divided into smaller districts called 가 (ga) in Korean. Three stops on the green line, then, are called Euljiro. There’s Euljiro 4가, Euljiro 3가, and Euljiro 1가. Don’t ask where 2가 went; I have no idea. Looking at my subway map it looked vaguely like Euljiro 4가 was the closest to Myeongdong Station, so I figured that had to be my stop and got off accordingly. However, when I climbed back to street level, I knew this wasn’t where I was supposed to be. The surroundings looked nothing like I was familiar with. But, I thought, I know I’m supposed to get off at an Euljiro, and hey, at this point maybe I’ll run into Myeongdong halfway if I just walk, so I’ll just follow the train line from the street.
Maybe not the best idea, but an idea nonetheless.
I walked along the road, following the signs for Euljiro 3가, until I came upon the next station, and when I realized this wasn’t the right one either I just kept walking instead of doing the sane thing and getting back on the subway. I continued on, passed street signs for Euljiro 2가 and Euljiro 1가, and was beginning to seriously doubt my sense of direction when I finally saw a sign for Myeongdong a little past the ones for Euljiro 1가. Also on that same stretch of road I saw the huge Lotte Mall I was familiar with, which made me feel a lot more at ease. I now had a lot less time than I would’ve…but at least I didn’t get lost, I just got off the train two 가s too soon.
Once in Myeongdong, I had a few missions in my head: I needed to go to Innisfree, Étude House, ArtBox, the LINE Friends Store, Tom n Toms Coffee if I had time, and definitely a few of my favorite street food carts. Unfortunately I was starting to run out of daylight, as I’d have to get back to the bus terminal at least 15 minutes before my bus left, but I had one advantage: when previously vacationing in Seoul I’d always stayed in areas close to Myeongdong, so I was familiar with the layout of the crowded, confusing streets. It definitely came in handy in the time crunch! Innisfree was the first stop as it was the closest to the station, followed by Étude House and ArtBox. I stopped by LINE as it was nearby, checked my watch, briefly wallowed in my sadness at not having the time to go to Tom n Tom’s for some of their bulgogi pretzel bites, then sucked it up and went hunting for some of my favorite Korean street foods: mozzarella-and-ddeok skewers with sweet milk sauce, croissant taiyaki (which is technically Japanese but hard to find in Japan), fresh orange juice, and fresh pomegranate juice. I’m sure the latter two sound really silly given the fact that they’re just juice, but the juice from those street vendors is some of the best juice ever. You can watch them make it straight from the fruit with no additives, and they also serve it in fun Ziploc bag looking things with a straw. A nice refresher after a long day, though not particularly eco-friendly.
When I had finished my snacks, it was time to head back to Chuncheon. Getting to Dong-Seoul Bus Terminal took about half an hour and the bus from eastern Seoul took about an hour back to Chuncheon, so by the time I returned it was a little after 7. I was getting pretty hungry at that point—between waiting unexpected amounts of time and hustling between shops, I had only eaten some street food and a granola bar that day—but before Emily and I sat down to eat we booked it over to one of her favorite cafés in the area, called Enrich, where they were serving an amazing apple cinnamon tea drink. The closest comparison I can make is Starbucks’ Caramel Apple Spice, though this version was less overpoweringly sweet and more authentic. So authentic, in fact, that there were still pieces of apple in the drink that you could eat out with a spoon, and you had to watch out for chunks of cinnamon stick along the way. It was the perfect final evening to a trip to find that hint of “fall” that I missed in Japan.
Waking up the next morning at 4 am, however, was less than exciting. Emily and I left the house a bit before 4:30 (thank goodness taxis are 24/7 in Korea!) and arrived at the bus terminal not long after; I would be taking the ride back to Incheon to catch my plane, and Emily would be heading into Seoul to hike another mountain. At 5 am sharp I got on the bus, still sleepy and wishing I could stay a bit longer, and waved goodbye to Emily as she waited for her own bus.
I don’t know if anybody remembers the mess I was last time I left Emily’s house to go back to Japan, but I didn’t cry this time. That’s an improvement. It shows I’ve adjusted a lot more to Japan, and while I still find the isolation of Aso to be one of the most difficult parts of living there it was encouraging that I didn’t feel quite so disparaging after a year. Instead, while I would have loved to have more fun with Emily or explore more of Korea, I was looking forward to my school’s culture festival the coming weekend and hiking the weekend after that, and I even had a performance to get back in time to practice for. Well, maybe I wasn’t so excited for the performance; I was more nervous for that. But it was better than nothing.
Once back in Fukuoka I bought a final bus ticket to Hida Bus Terminal, where a friend would take me back to Aso. Having a little time to kill before the bus left I picked up some Starbucks (it may be the most basic coffee chain ever, but when you don’t have one you miss the convenience), took a quick peek at the Amu Plaza bookstore again to see if the comic I’d been looking for was there…and was lucky to snag the final copy of volume one. Bus reading!
To my excitement, while I still had to keep my dictionary app open half the time, I was able to read a lot more than I thought of the book during the bus ride; it was a nice reminder that, since trying to read Japanese comics when I was here three years ago, I have gotten better at the language. Good to remember when I don’t want to study for the JLPT…or when I think about not wanting to start Korean because it’ll take forever to be able to speak it. It seems like just yesterday I couldn’t talk with anyone in Japanese, but here I am, four and a half years later. As long as I actually try to study, one day I won’t need a dictionary when I read Japanese comics…or maybe I won’t need to pull up Google Translate to ask for bus tickets in Korea.
Language talk aside, I’m glad I was able to get over to Korea again this October. It won’t always be so easy for me to travel between countries, I won’t always have free lodging, and I won’t always have friends there that can babysit me through moderate illiteracy and an inability to order my own food without pointing at things. What’s more, the combination of fall colors, foods, and familiar company made the world feel a lot more like proper autumn, which was my goal in going. I can’t thank Emily enough for making that possible as well as dealing with my snot and misery for five days, and am only glad that she didn’t get sick after I left! I’m very lucky to have the chance to have these kinds of adventures, just like I’m lucky to have the life I do in Japan, even if I get annoyed with it sometimes. Thankfully with this trip I feel a lot more refreshed, and am spurred onwards into winter by the promise of being home for the holidays.
Until then I’ll continue to enjoy the uniqueness of Aso with all its cedars and its coming snows and its volcano that had been smoking for nine months before deciding blow up last Saturday, and if I haven’t perfected an apple cider recipe by Thanksgiving then I’ll just have to move on to hot chocolate to give life here the cozy feeling of home. One day I’ll find that perfect balance…then shall spend the rest of my days living as a wise hermit atop Mt. Nekodake. Now that’s a future goal if I’ve ever heard one.
WabiSabi She 