Pictures of me looking like a twit

Here are the pictures from the photoshoot that I talked about in my last post. Don't I look silly? I would just like to point out that I didn't come up with any of the poses, so please don't use them as an excuse to laugh at me.

Here's the mismatching hair:

The guy did something funny to me in Photoshop on this picture. He tried to make me look thinner, but he has made me a very funny shape. Look at my left arm. He cut off the part of my arm that is big because of muscle and left the part that is big because of fat. I look like I have absolutely no muscle tone whatsoever :(

Day 3 in Korea

January 10th was my third day in Korea. The weather was once again nice and sunny.

That day Miwa wanted to do something that she often does in Korea: have her own picture taken. Before we had gone to Korea, Miwa showed me a book of costume photos she'd had professionally taken several years ago. She wanted to go back to the same studio and have photos taken again. In the book there were seven photos: two in a wedding dress, one in a black dress, one in kids clothes, one in chinese clothes and two in traditional Korean clothes. Miwa asked me if I wanted to have photos taken too. At first I thought No. I mean, a wedding dress? I'd rather not . . .. But then I started thinking about the traditional Korean clothes, and I thought that I could put up with having my picture taken in a wedding dress if I could also have a picture of me in the Korean dress.

The studio we went to was a professional studio, if a little shabby. The makeup artist came to our hotel in a taxi to pick us up. It was a shiny black expensive taxi with leather seats, and we didn't have to pay for it. The studio was on the other side of the Han River, and took a little while to get to. When we got there, we went down to the basement-level studio and met the photographer. He was a middle-aged casually dressed fellow who, unlike the makeup artist, could speak Japanese. He had quite a forceful personality on him (like most Koreans do; compared to the Japanese, at least) and he tried to talk us into having our photos printed large and presented in a large hardback-sized book. But we had, quite on purpose, only brought enough money for the smaller paperback-sized albums. It is a good idea to split your money up like that in Korea. If people get really insistent you can say "Look inside my wallet. I really don't have enough money for that." That shuts them up.

We changed into robes and had our makeup done while the photographer was in the actual studio surfing the net on his rather expensive-looking computer with a huge TV-sized flatscreen monitor. Even though the studio was looking a little worse for wear, it seems as if he is making a decent amount of money. Then the costume changing began. We did not have much choice in clothes (the makeup artist chose everything), and no choice in scenery. First was the two Korean outfit pictures. I managed to avoid being put on a hot-pink top and instead chose a nice teal coloured one. There was only one other time that morning that I managed to make my own choice of clothes, and that was for the last photo.

After the Korean clothes came the black evening dress. There was no hairpiece to match my hair colour, so my hair looks rather weird in that photo. Then came the two wedding dress photos (bleh . . .) and then the 'casual clothes' photo. The makeup artist was going to stick us in clown wigs, but luckily I was sitting near the wig drawer. I reached in and pulled out a slightly more flattering wig (although it was pink) and managed to change her mind. Bizzarely, the pink wig suited me, just a little (I will post the pictures later).

Last was the 'summer clothes' photo. At first I was given a pink floral sleeveless figure-hugging top to put on, but I wanted to wear a something Chinese, and I knew from seeing Miwa's old photos that the last photo can be Chinese-themed if the customer desires. And as I did desire so, I went hunting through the Chinese wardrobe for something I could fit into. Miwa also chose a Chinese themed top. She got to wear two fake bundles of hair on her head and look very cute, but because the fake Chinese hair was only available in black I could not wear it. Actually, I went in with my own hair, which unfortunately was looking rather messy after being stuffed into wigs and such for several hours.

When we were all done, Miwa went to see one of her friends. Because she had no idea what she and her friend would be doing, I decided to go my own way. I took a taxi back to Meongdong (for the third time - it was the only place I shopped in Seoul) and did a little more shopping. I went back and bought a belt I had seen the day before, but did not have enough money on me at the time to buy. Then I scoured every floor of Migliore looking for a t-shirt with something in the Korean alphabet written on it. Maybe I would have had some success if it had actually been, y'know, summer.

I forgot to take a watch with me to Korea, and I didn't have my cellphone with me so I had no idea what the time was. After what seemed like hours of window-shopping and eating street vendor food (sausage on a stick and crab-meat in spicy pancake on a stick) I thought that it was about time to go back to the hotel. Another thing that convinced me it was time to go back was that I still had all the makeup from the photo studio on my face and I felt like an idiot. So I took a taxi back and when I got back to my room, found that it was 3.20pm. I had thought it was at least an hour later than that.

I didn't really have enough money to take a taxi somewhere else, so I just stayed in. I sorted out my suitcase for the trip home, I went down to the lobby and spent an hour on the internet (which was complimentary). I got all the silly makeup off my face. Then I spent an hour making the globe puzzle I had bought the day before. After having a long shower and double checking my suitcase, it was late enough for me to concievably think of it as bed-time. About that time Miwa came back drunk and pottered around having showers and stuff, but I got an early night.

Changdeok Gung

These are pictures from my second day in South Korea. They were all taken at Changdeok Gung. I don't know what anything is because I could not understand the tour guide, so I will not try to explain any of the pictures. With one exception: the second photo from the bottom, the one with the tree. That tree was half concrete. That's all I have to say.

Outspoken

Wow! Read this blogpost from jane's daily blah. The bit I want you to see is the part about USA and Canada.

Day 2 in Korea

My second day in Korea started with an expensive hotel breakfast and a taxi ride to Changdeok gung, a big palace in the old centre of Seoul. The day was bright and sunny. There was snow lying about all over the place inside the palace compound although most had already disappeared from the concreted city streets. Icicles hung from the eaves of the buildings. It was all very picturesque indeed.

You can only enter Changdeok gung with a tour, and the tour that was leaving when we got there was a Korean language tour. I didn't mind because I was there primarily to take pictures. There were only a few people on the tour, so it was very easy for me to take pictures without people in them. Later on our tour caught up to a huge gaggle of Japanese tourists. Miwa wanted to join up with that tour so she could understand the guide. Since she can understand enough Korean to realise that the Korean guide and the Japanese one were saying different things, I could not quite follow her logic, but oh well. After we joined the Japanese tour it was very difficult for me to take pictures.

Miwa and I did not find the weather particularly cold. It was sunny and there was no wind, after all. We did not even bother with gloves or hats or anything. But a lot of the other Japanese tourists seemed to be freezing their asses off. We saw one woman who had gloves, scarf and hat on buy a can of hot coffee from a vending machine and then hold it against her face because she was that cold. Miwa and I looked at each other and laughed. "Where do you think she's from?" "Kyushu? Okinawa, maybe?" (Two places down the south of Japan). Miwa has lived her whole life in Akita Prefecture, but I have only been here for a few years. It seems as if I have acclimatised, though. I wonder what this years NZ winter is going to feel like to me?

After we had finished the tour of Changdeok gung we walked to the subway station. We found an underground bookshop on the way. I bought some postcards and a 3D jigsaw puzzle of the world (as in, make your own globe). The map itself is all written in English, but on the box it says "For sale in Korea only." Mostly the map looks just like any other, but there are a few differences in Asia. Such as, South Korea and North Korea are not separated, but instead labeled together simply as 'Korea.' Also the Sea of Japan is labelled as the 'East Sea.' Interesting.

We went back to Meongdong to do some more shopping. The evening before, Miwa had her picture taken at a portrait place, and had ordered 100 business cards with her face on them made up for her, so we had to go back to the same area we had been shopping in the evening before. After that we had lunch in a restaurant in the basement of Migliore, a big cheap department store. Then Miwa wanted to go have an 'estee,' which seems to be a facial massage and application of creams and stuff like that, in order to make one more beautiful. People are always talking about estees to me as if I know the word. In Japan it is written in katakana, so everyone assumes it is an English word, but it sounds to me as if it is actually French, wouldn't you agree? Anyway, I didn't want one, so I sat in the waiting room for an hour. I took the opportunity to write out lots of postcards.

We browsed around in Migliore until 5pm, and then headed back to the hotel. We were very tired, but Miwa had already organised to meet some of her Korean friends for dinner at 6pm. A little after 6, we were picked up from the hotel by someone (I can't remember any names by the way. I should get Miwa to write them down for me sometime, because I can never remember anything unless I have seen it written down). The someone used to be an employee of the hotel we were staying at. Anyway, he drove us to the area of Seoul in which he lives, which is near a big university. We drove up and over a mountain, through these very winding steep streets. The man spoke quite a bit of Japanese, about as much as me. When we got to the area, we wandered down a street looking for another of Miwa's friends, who was arriving on foot. There were all these baskets full of goods lined up in rows along the footpath. It turns out that they were the Korean equivalent of a $2 shop. People come out of the University and have to walk between the rows of merchanside. Sometimes they get tempted and buy something. People can't avoid the shop because it is the footpath.

We ended up walking back the way we had come, finding Miwa's other friend (a really nice woman about my age whose Japanese was very good, much better than mine) and then entering an establishment. I would hesitate to call it a restaurant. It was much more casual and laid-back than that. It was the kind of place that only locals, never tourists, go to eat. There were lots of wooden benches and iron-frame stools in a small, dimly-lit brick building. The menu was written on a saucepan lid. Ecclectic music was on in the background and the front window was a plastic sheet that was, get this, zipped into place. I really liked it, although it was a bit chilly.

The first dish to come to the table was a big bowl of mussels (still in the shell) in a garlic soup. Everyone had a spoon and a set of chopsticks each. There were no little personal dishes to transfer the food to like there are in Japan. Everyone just spooned the soup straight from the big bowl to their mouths, or picked the mussels out with the chopsticks and left their shells behind. The soup was really delicious. Then a big plate of cheese-filled egg was brought out. It was kind of like a giant omelette cut up into lots of small pieces, but the egg did not appear to have been fried in oil. It was just nice and yellow and moist. However it was cooked, it had been done expertly. The guy who had come to pick us up randomly disappeared and came back later with two huge bags of puffy crackers, kind of like giant prawn crackers. I don't know what grain they were made out of. The next dish to appear was a large plate of seafood and rice stick stew. (Btw by rice stick, what I mean is sticky rice pounded until it resembles playdoh and then rolled into little sticks. There are similar things available in Japan, called mochi.) The sauce was bright red. Miwa would not touch the stew; she said it was too spicy for her. I dived right in (making sure to avoid the squid). The two Koreans were looking at me expectantly, waiting for the 'OMG! Hot hot!' but actually I had no trouble eating it at all. It was really delicious. The red chili pepper sauce gave it quite a kick, sure, but no more so than Tabasco. At first I was using a cracker as a dish, but then everyone laughed at me and so small plates were brought out. I thought it was much more fun using the cracker, but oh well.

A fifth person joined our little party, a student who had just finished his last class of the day at the University. He spoke no Japanese, and only a little English, but we were talking anyway. He is 24 like me, but has not yet finished University. Anyway, the five of us had quite a good time, although the guy who drove us at the beginning of the evening (who had seemed so boring and normal at first but who turned out to be a very strange and shameless person indeed) kept disappearing to give people drunken calls from his cellphone, and Miwa was not touching the alcohol at all. Speaking of alcohol, Koreans have a very interesting drinking culture. They don't just say cheers at the beginning of the evening, like their neighbours the Japanese do. They say cheers and clink their glasses together every single time they drink. They all sit there for 5, 10 minutes without drinking, then they clink their glasses together and all chug down everything that's in them. Then they fill each others glasses up again and spen another 10 minutes or so looking at their full glasses until enough time has passed that it is polite to call for another 'cheers.' I got told off for sipping at my drink over time.

Another strange thing about the restaurant that I have just remembered; the location of the toilet. It was outside on the main road. The door to the toilet opened right out onto the footpath. I don't mean a room of separate cubicles or anything like that. There was only one toilet, and only one door, so essentially it was a toilet cubicle that opened straight out onto an 8 lane road.

After we had finished at the restaurant we went to a karaoke establishment. It was the type of place that has separate booths. There was not a very good selection of either Japanese or English music, although the English selection was better than the Japanese one. All Japanese music was between four and ten years old, so there were no currently popular songs, and neither were there any classics. The English music at least contained some classics i.e. The Beatles. We did not stay there long because it was already very late. Miwa and I said goodbye and then caught a taxi back to the hotel, and by the time we got there it was already after midnight and we had to get up early the next day.

Gaudy Asia

It seems as if the school network and Blogger are willing to talk to each other now. Here are some disturbing pictures.

The lobby. Notice the giant snowman and the Neo-Classical restaurant.

This was decorating the bell boy counter. How embarassing.

The headboard of my bed.
A drawer. One of many.

This was on the cabinet that held the fridge.

This footstool was sitting in a corner where it could not be used. And who would use it anyway? Who sits on the edge of a bed and then puts their feet on a footstool?

This is not quite so disturbing. This is a department store (I think) located in Meongdong.

Day 1 in Korea

Well, I was going to talk about my trip to Korea with pictures, but blogger and the Nikaho City school network are not communicating very well at the moment and I can't seem to upload any pictures. Instead, I will just write and then post the pictures later.

Last Monday morning, Sayaka's friend Taisuke who has now become Miwa's friend drove Miwa and I to Akita airport. I was expecting there to be snow at the airport, because it is in the mountains an hours drive north of here and in winter is usually snow-bound (as in last year Amanda couldn't find her car in the carpark when she got back from Australia because it was buried under the snow). I don't know how so many planes can still land and take off at Akita during winter, but they can. Although, not all of them to be sure. Cancellations are frequent. Anyway, instead of the mountains of snow and the climbing over snowbanks to get into the terminal like there is most years, there was just a sprinkling of snow on grassy areas and none at all on any concrete. We checked in, drank coffee (no tea available) and were in the air by lunch time.

We got to Incheon by mid-afternoon and were picked up by a guide from the travel service we used. She was holding a card with Miwa's name on it. I've always wanted to be met at an airport by a card-wielding person. Next time it will be my name written there! (BTW now I think of it Mum, if you pick me up at Wellington airport when I return to NZ, please bring a card with my name. With the frequency that your hair changes colour, I might not recognise you.)

We were taken by van into Seoul with another family. We were dropped off at our hotel at about 4pm. The first thing I noticed when I entered the lobby was the twinkling tree and the next thing was the 8 foot tall inflatable snowman that was behind it. The hotel room was well and truly tacky too. I will post pictures later.

We went to a convenience store around the corner for snacks and then back up to the room. It was at this point that Miwa noticed that she no longer had Atsuko's camera, which she had borrowed for the trip, in her pocket. She remembered walking to the store with her hands in her pockets, so the camera couldn't have been there then. She spent 15 minutes tearing the hotel room apart before ringing the guide to ask whether a camera had been found in the van. The guide told her to wait while she checked. Twenty minutes later she rang back to say that the camera had not been found. No doubt either the van driver or the guide pocketed the camera, because it never did turn up in the hotel room, and we hadn't been anywhere else at that stage but the store.

We couldn't do any more about the camera, so we went into Myongdong, a famous cheap shopping area to spend the rest of the evening. I bought a few eye shadows at a pharmacy and got a free eyeshadow case, face cotton and if you believe it or not, a free Gucci rip-off cosmetics purse, with 'e's embroidered on it rather than 'G's. I mean, those things are illegal, and have to be smuggled out of the country. And I got one for free. I don't particularly want it - I don't really like Gucci.