Seoul's Smog

Here in Seoul today, I took a tour of the city.  Since it has been destroyed by a few invasions over the centuries, and then again during the Korean War, basically all of the palace sites in the city have been rebuilt in recent years.  Still lovely to look at, but I hate to admit that it takes a little shine off of it when they tell you it's 10 years old.

Anyway, a fairly thick layer of smog hung over the city today.  I haven't dealt with a lot of smog in my life, so it's hard to compare, but this is probably the worst I've ever seen.  3 different locals assured me that it was "Chinese dust" wafting over from Beijing and its environs.  Such a shame.  By the end of the day, I was feeling it a little bit in my lungs.  And maybe I'm imagining things, but when I got back to my hotel, my face just felt dirty.  Having to deal with more of this smog is all the reason I need to skip Beijing on this trip.

Here's a picture of central Seoul taken around noon.  At one point, I saw a very red sun trying to peek out amidst the dust.  The sun was so dull, one could look directly at it without any discomfort.

Shinjuku on a Sunday Night

After stumbling off my 14-hour flight from Dallas, I was ready for some Tokyo immersion -- and that means seeing the city when it really shines -- at night.  I'm only a here a short while, so there was no point in waiting another day.  After taking the train to the center of Tokyo and my hotel, I set off to navigate the subway and take a 30-minute ride to Shinjuku to have dinner.  On the way there, there was an empty seat next to me and two 30-something year old women travelling together were eyeing it.  I could tell they couldn't decide who would get to sit and whom should stand, so I offered my seat.  One of the women said something to me that I couldn't understand and just stared at the seat and then back at me, as if giving me a chance to change my mind and reclaim it.  After I smiled and shook my head, she bowed rather deeply, right there in the middle of the subway car.  That doesn't happen on the CTA.

My only other trip to Tokyo was 10 years ago and Shinjuku is a neighborhood I didn't get around to seeing then.  Even though it was 9 PM on a Sunday night, the warren of streets around Shinjuku Station were alive with neon and throngs of people.  Now, not every part of Tokyo is like this, but this is the Tokyo I wanted to see again.

Apologies for the poor photo quality -- this was not a misguided effort on my part to appear artistic.  Worse yet, it doesn't really do the scene justice.

As for dinner, there was practically a restaurant or cafe (or 2 or 3) in every building.  My choice had no English menus, so I went with the point-smile-and-nod method of ordering, and it turned out fine.  Tomorrow, I'll be seeing friends of mine here -- both from work and from Iowa.

An Open Letter to the Toilet Manufacturers of America

I'm staying at a rather modest, inexpensive hotel in Tokyo.  So imagine my surprise when I found this model of modern ingenuity in the bathroom.

Hard to tell, but among the caution warnings
is a drawing of a youngster throwing a bucket of
water onto the toilet seat.
The control panel is below.

 Let me walk you through the features:

1) Upon my entering the hotel room, it automatically starts warming the seat.
2) There's a control panel on the wall.  If the bidet option is a bit much for you, you can choose a gentle "spray" for when you're finished.  You can select your water pressure on a scale of 1-7.
3) After you flush, it automatically applies a "deodorizer."
4) There are some hilarious caution drawings under the lid.

Why don't we have this in America?  If we do, why hasn't anyone told me?  So, dear toilet manufacturers of America, get to work.  And step aside Snapchat, the Driverless Car,    and Google Glass: here is modern technology I'm ready for.

And ... We're Off

I'm off on my Big Trip 2013 (a/k/a Operation Maintain Airline Status) and it wasn't without a little drama right off the bat.  While flying down to Dallas to catch my flight to Tokyo, there was a medical emergency on the plane.  There's nothing quite like hearing the flight attendant call out "Is there a doctor on board?"  We landed in St. Louis and, thankfully, the woman involved was alert and responsive as she was wheeled out past me.  I've had planes diverted due to severe weather and mechanical issues before (complete with a line of emergency vehicles lined up as we landed), and I even once had a woman sitting across from me removed in handcuffs for disorderly conduct (not at my request, mind you), but this was the first such medical emergency.  All things considered, if you have to experience one of these events, I'd choose the disorderly conduct.

It Wasn't Me

I didn't notice this until a friend pointed it out to me, but it looks like someone is trying to frame me by vandalizing a Chicago landmark. Click here to see what I'm talking about.

I think it was actually Peter Scolari.

Pictures

As promised, here are 2 pictures from my recent travels. First, my caravan in the Sahara (I'm the second on the right), and second, the ancestral abandoned house in a Polish village that I referred to in my earlier post. I have plenty of other photos of Morocco and Poland (not to mention Scotland and France), including of my new favorite city in Europe, Krakow. If you want to see any of them, shoot me an e-mail.

I'm Home

I'm back stateside, and it's good to be home. I don't want to bore you with my travel itinerary, but I will just use this opportunity to relay a few stories from my vacation (once I get my pictures organized, I may update this to include a few).

First, Morocco. If you're looking to visit an Arab nation for the first time (and I don't mean a mega-rich Gulf state), Morocco is a good place to start -- mostly friendly people, a pro-Western government, and no history of violent extremism. There is poverty, of course, but I did not see the overwhelming poverty that you associate with many parts of the Third World, and I was not panhandled once. The streets of Fes do provide a little culture shock, though. Fes is an incredible city -- it was the imperial capital and supposedly one of the world's largest cities in the Middle Ages. It's not as heavily touristed as Marrakech, Casablanca, etc., so it provided the authentic experience I was looking for. There are few things like being awakened for the first time by the Muslim call to prayer broadcast on loudspeakers from the nearest mosque. The old city, where I stayed, retains a medieval flavor, as there are no cars inside the walls and donkeys are used to transport goods and the streets are a confusing warren of alleys and dead-ends.

My time there was mostly problem-free and I had a good time bargaining for a new briefcase (I ended up with a 40% discount). I may have still paid a little too much for it, but the haggling experience gave me a story that was probably worth more than the extra price I paid. I must add, though, that of the 12 Westerners I met, 3 had their cameras stolen and 2 were subjected to some fairly serious threats. In retrospect, it was probably just bluster, but unnerving nonetheless.

For me, the only annoyance was the teenage boys who wanted to be my guide walking around the old city. There would be a fee, of course, and from what I understand, all they do is take you to shops where they get a commission on sales (and of course, your price, post-haggling, is that much higher). In order to confuse them, I wore an Italian football jersey, which led to some trying to talk to me in Italian. I turned them all down politely, but there were 2 who stuck with me and 2 American friends of mine for about 30 minutes. After 20 minutes, I was about ready to give in when one said, "We'll stop hassling you if you pay us." Obviously, I could not pay at that point. We ducked into a museum and lost them.

On our tour of Morocco, we spent one night taking a camel for about 90 minutes out into the dunes of the Sahara to sleep in a tent. My camel was remarkably friendly and trouble-free. And I don't think I have ever seen the stars as bright as they were in the desert sky.

After Morocco, I went to Poland. Next time, I would just skip Warsaw and head immediately to Krakow. Warsaw is all post-1945 Communist construction, but Krakow was not bombed during the war and the old city is amazing. Auschwitz is nearby and, obviously, is an overwhelmingly powerful experience.

I hired a driver for one day to take me out to some very rural parts of southeastern Poland looking for the hometowns of my maternal grandparents. It's a poor area and it's easy to see why many Polish-Americans, including current immigrants, come from that region. There are some nice modern houses being built, but the pre-war houses that still stand are more like log cabins, or even shacks. My driver was an intrepid fellow and had absolutely no shame in asking any old person we found (there didn't seem to be any over 65, though) if they knew anything about my family. One pointed us to a house that had been abandoned for about 25-30 years and belonged to my great-great-grandmother's family. Who knows if she had actually ever been in it, but walking inside it, I did feel like this was what I had come for.