She Sells Sanctuary

Time flies like an arrow, as they're fond of staying here. Have I used that line already? I can't remember. It flies especially quickly when you know you're leaving. The other day I was sharing my thoughts about things running out and breaking and me not wanting to replace them with the new foreign English teacher at my school. Real nice guy, by the way - English this time, after two South Africans in a row - and definitely more fun for a wild night in Daegu than the last foreign teacher at my school (no disrespect, dear departed friend). Anyway, he suggested that maybe I would know it was the right time to leave on the day when everything runs out at once. A few days later, I was out of dental floss, opening a new tube of toothpaste, had just opened a new stick of deodorant and needed to replenish my laundry detergent, and I thought to myself, is this the day? Am I overstaying my welcome now?

Before I bought more laundry soap I actually counted out the weeks that I would still be here. Nineteen. Somehow the grocery store had the perfect package, too - thirty-eight loads for nineteen weeks (not counting the two weeks I'll be on vacation in Thailand and Cambodia). It certainly seems a lot shorter. The break for the Chuseok fall harvest festival just ended here and my school is now in the dreaded week before midterms. After that, there's only about seven or eight more weeks of regular classes for me to teach before the next exam and those two odd, vestigial weeks of school after final exams that I always fill with PG-13-rated Hollywood nonsense. I may get asked to do winter camps for two or three weeks in January (this is the first year I haven't avoided it by asking for vacation time during the most likely dates for camp - whoops, just showed my hand there, huh) but other than that, the bulk of my teacherly duties should be done after about seven or eight more weeks of real work. Three years away from home, and that's it - seven or eight weeks of work, a week of self-study, and then two weeks of watching "X2" four times a day, forty-five minutes at a time. Sigh.

Oh, and then, like I said, I'll be in Thailand and Cambodia for two weeks. So there's that.

So in my last post I teased you with the promise that I would tell you the story of how I almost joined a cult. Well, at the time the situation was still developing, so I couldn't say too much about it, but now I feel like I've got a slightly better handle on the situation, so sit back and listen well as I spin my yarn of betrayal and woe...

So earlier this year I decided that I should look for a language exchange partner to help me with my Korean. (Incidentally, I had also heard that this was a good way to meet women.) I had taken lessons at the YMCA in the past and had heard that they had a board for meeting language exchange partners, so I posted my name and contact info, took down some names and numbers, and hoped for the best. Out of laziness and perpetual fear of strangers I failed to get in touch with any of the people on my list. (Also I can't really tell the gender of Korean names, so that put a big damper on my secondary objective.) Eventually, however, I was contacted by someone looking for a language exchange partner and we agreed to meet at a coffee shop in Daegu. (By the way, this story will not include any names, including the name of the religious group and the name of the volunteer group in question. There's not much information about this topic available out there on the Internet and in the interest of the feelings of everyone involved, I don't want this to be the first thing that pops up in Google regarding the subject.) At the end of our meeting, my newly found exchange partner mentioned that he (damn!) was heading to a meeting for a volunteer group in Daegu that was sponsoring free language classes. This sounded to me like a good opportunity to find some more possible partners to help me with my nearly nonexistent Korean conversation skills, plus as the resident of a small town it's not easy for me to meet other English speakers on a regular basis. So I went along.

I liked the group. I began regularly attending language classes, trips to local Korean restaurants and the occasional service or public awareness event sponsored by the volunteer organization. As it turns out, I also already knew some Westerners who were helping the group organize events. I think all of us who encountered the group were really genuinely grateful to meet some Koreans who cared about foreigners enough to actually want to get to know them and help them with some of the parts of life in Korea that are difficult to navigate, like learning the language. I always assumed that the Korean members of the group were mostly motivated by a general desire to be diligent and helpful, along with the usual Korean pride in all things Korean and a desire to share Korean culture with others. Occasionally one of the Korean members of the group would mention something about their "leader" (I assumed this meant the president of the volunteer association) and his philosophy regarding community service. There was this spiel about the moon and stars and trees and victory and light and how the Earth gives us air for free so we should give good things to others for free, or something, but I never thought much of it. It just sounded like some feel-goody humanist sloganeering to promote the volunteer group and its mission. I mean, every group needs a catchy slogan, right?

So things were going well, aside from a few minor things. My language exchange partner got busy with organizing some sports clubs the group had put together, so we weren't able to meet very often anymore, and the free language lessons were repeating a lot of stuff I had already done at the YMCA with professional teachers so I wasn't all that satisfied with the Korean lesson aspect of the group. But there was a sports festival in the summer that was nominally for charity where everybody got wet and danced to "Gangnam Style," and there was a free trip to Gumi for a Korean Liberation Day celebration, so I was having fun. I have to say that events like the sports festival were really cool because they were an opportunity for all sorts of foreigners living in Korea to get together and meet and mingle. I meet other English teachers on a fairly regular basis here, but usually I don't have the opportunity to hang out with US service members, or foreign students at Korean universities, or guest laborers from South and Southeast Asia, and all those groups of people were represented at the volunteer group's events. It's funny that Korea is generally known for being extremely homogeneous and relatively indifferent to foreign influence, yet it hosts an extremely diverse community of foreigners who rarely get the chance to interact with each other. I thought that what the volunteer group was doing for foreigners, even if some of their service and awareness events seemed kind of lame or pointless, was a really amazing service for everyone involved. As I said before, it was really refreshing to meet a group of Koreans who really seemed to care about foreign people, even if a lot of it was done nominally for the sake of exposing foreigners to Korean culture. When you live so far outside the predominant culture in a country, it's easy to start to get the sense that no one cares about you, and these people really cared. Or at least, they seemed to care.

Now let me make it clear that I was suspicious almost from the moment that I got involved with the group that it could be a cult. I even think I joked about it with some people before I knew the truth. I became aware that the group really was somehow connected to an unorthodox religious sect of some sort pretty early on, as well. I don't know when I started hearing rumors about it, or from who, but the fact was generally known, or at least whispered about, by many of the foreigners involved with the group, that the volunteer organization was supported by or somehow connected with what would be commonly known as a "cult" in standard parlance. However, in short, at the time none of us really cared. I'm a naturally suspicious person (hey, I lived in New York City for a while, it's a survival instinct) and I'm fairly agnostic about religion these days so personally I wasn't too worried about being brainwashed by these guys or anything. I waited for them to start asking for donations or something, but that time never came. In fact, it seemed like a lot of stuff was happening for free, like bus trips, that seemed like it should cost something. So I figured I wouldn't worry about it until the day the other shoe dropped - and that day never came.

I want to make it really clear that no one in the volunteer organization ever pressured me to join their religion, or attend any meetings that explicitly related to their religion, or asked for any offerings or donations, or tried to group-marry me or anything else like that. In fact, nothing bad ever happened at all in the volunteer group. That is, nothing bad happened until people started asking questions about the religious sect behind the curtain.

The downfall started when a foreigner who's been living in Korea for some time and was more familiar than most of us with the ins and outs of Korean cults placed a post on a Facebook page that the volunteer organization had been frequently posting to (some would say spamming, perhaps) with notices for events. In short, the original post stated, "You guys know this volunteer organization is the front for a cult, right?" The subsequent conversation that happened in this Facebook thread made the relationship between the volunteer organization and the religious sect explicit, and pointed out a lot of similarities between the activities of this sect and its volunteer association and other cults active in Korea like the Unification Church (a.k.a. the Moonies). Personally I haven't seen a lot of evidence of cult activity here, other than the time I was handed a Moonie pamphlet outside the Seoul National Museum. Also, I once ran into some missionaries for some "goddess" cult here, but I just told them that I worship Slayer and kept walking. But in a nutshell, it's a classic cult strategy to start "secular" front groups performing genuinely valuable community services to lend a sense of legitimacy to the core organization, and perhaps even do some recruiting while they're at it. On top of that, foreigners, especially Westerners, as much as we're not exactly embraced enthusiastically in Korea, carry a certain caché in Korea by virtue of our foreignness and Western-ness. For example, every festival in Korea goes to great pains to show a large group of Westerners front and center in their advertisements as if to say, "No, really, this is an INTERNATONAL festival. Just look at all these foreigners!" (I'll never forget the time that the provincial office of education declared that all foreign teachers MUST attend some two-bit festival in my town, clearly just so they could take some photos of us. I was the only teacher dumb enough to actually show. When I got there, no one could tell me where to go or what I was supposed to do there. Plus it was raining. I'd really like to find whatever bigwig at the POE made that proclamation from behind his desk, without following through on it at all from his end, and relieve myself in his Sanka.) But back to the cult stuff! As I was saying, it's a classic cult strategy to start innocuous front organizations to help make the cult look legitimate. The Unification Church, for example, is famous for doing things like inviting US politicians to an awards ceremony for the "Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace" and then duping an Illinois representative into crowning the Rev. Sun Myung Moon as "humanity's savior [and] messiah." So basically, the Facebook post was a gentle reminder to all the foreigners involved with the service organization that, even if an organization looks legitimate from the outside, nobody wants to be the one stuck holding the crown when things suddenly get all messianic.

I actually have very little information about the cult involved in all this nonsense. Most of what's available in English about the religious sect has either been extensively pruned and cleaned up by the sect, or it's coming from mainstream Korean Christians who consider the group heretical - not exactly what I would consider unbiased sources in either case. I haven't heard anything too bad about the group, other than it clearly has some sort of messianic and apocalyptic elements to its beliefs, mostly based around a cult of personality encompassing the founder and his wife. (Oh, and get this - the founder and his wife both have taken on names that mean "light," and together parts of their names make up the name of the volunteer organization - sure makes all that stuff in the volunteer organization's official slogan about "light" seem a little suspect now, doesn't it?)

The Facebook thread that started the whole thing actually started while I was in Japan on my summer vacation, so all the really fun stuff went down when I was completely out of the loop. To summarize, a bunch of people got freaked out and abandoned or distanced themselves from the group. The volunteer group, after way too much time had passed, issued a press release explaining their (official) relationship with the religious sect, but not much else. In the meantime, a lot of people's feelings got hurt. I think the main reason a lot of foreigners I know chose to distance themselves from the volunteer group is because they felt the volunteer group was never very forthcoming about their relationship with the religious sect. Unfortunately Westerners and Koreans have very different cultural standards regarding what information is appropriate to share publicly, so sometimes it's difficult to tell when or why someone is being purposefully evasive, but in general in a Western country, if people feel like an organization isn't being transparent about something, people will believe that something funny must be going on behind the scenes, which is what people did. Basically, even before the walls came down, all the trust among the members of the group was destroyed. The foreigners no longer trusted the Korean organizers because they were suspicious of the religious sect's role behind the scene, and my impression is that the Korean organizers stopped trusting any foreigners who started asking too many questions because they felt like they had betrayed some part of their unspoken relationship. Trust is like a spider web - it's extremely delicate, and nearly impossible to rebuild once it's been snagged by a sticky situation. Add a layer of cultural misunderstanding to the situation, and you can see how things went very wrong very quickly.

I still have very mixed feelings about what went down, personally. On one hand, I have some serious questions about the religious organization standing behind the volunteer organization. Maybe part of it has to do with the recent death of Sun Myung Moon and all the details I read about the Moonies while I was trying to figure out how to handle this mess with the volunteer organization - I couldn't help but think that it seemed like, to paraphrase the greatest movie of all time, this sect had got the Unification Church playbook and they were running it step by step. Some of the parallels were uncanny. On the other hand, I personally know some of the Western organizers working with the volunteer group and I know that they were (and still are, in some cases) doing good work that has nothing to do with the cult behind the scenes. I think many of the Korean organizers in the group also had nothing to do with the cult and just genuinely wanted to help foreigners, although I've learned from reliable sources that some of the Korean organizers are members of the cult. I have no idea who is or isn't in the cult, though. In their press statement, the volunteer group said that its members were uncomfortable with being asked to publicly state their religious affiliations, comparing it to asking a Westerner to be forced to publicly declare their sexual orientation. I have no idea how much of that was a convenient contrivance and how much is genuine to the Korean concept of their public face, but I'm willing to respect their wishes to remain anonymous.

When the whole thing was going down and we were all trying to work out how we felt about the cult issue, some of us tried to draw a parallel between the volunteer organization and the YMCA, which also offers Korean lessons to foreigners in Daegu. On one hand, we know that the YMCA's primary mission in the modern day isn't to be an organization for proselytizing - Christians simply felt that the values of their religion compelled them to help people, regardless of those people's personal religious beliefs. On the other hand, "Christian Association" is right there in the name of the group - they're not trying to hide anything behind a secular veneer.

Since all this went down, I haven't been to any meetings or events sponsored by the group. (In all honesty I was planning to quit the Korean study group anyway - I'm not sure if it was doing me a lot of good and since I'm leaving in another nineteen or twenty-one weeks I'm not quite as motivated as I was before to learn Korean.) I've only talked to one member of the volunteer association extensively at any point since everything went down, and I didn't say much to her (via online chat) other than that I felt like a lot of foreigners, myself included, were put off by the lack of transparency in the relationship between the religious sect and the volunteer group. I have a feeling that at some point since this mess started I've been identified as some sort of "disharmonious" or "unmutual" element since I don't seem to be receiving invitations to events anymore. Meanwhile, in the lead-up to a large event for the volunteer group in Seoul that was co-sponsored by the cult (another factor that put a lot of people off the volunteer group) I suddenly started seeing people I had never seen at any events for the volunteer group trying to recruit new members around Daegu's main shopping district. Man, I hope the volunteer group didn't have a quota to fill or something. Not the best way to not make your organization look cult-like, though...

Honestly, as much as I'd like to give some of the people in the group a second chance as individuals, I don't think I can comfortably have any involvement with the organization anymore. After all, I'm pretty confident that I can remain independent of any sort of weirdness before they start passing out the Kool-Aid, but what if I want to bring a friend to meet the group, for example? I did introduce a friend to the group once, inadvertently - we had gone out for coffee (it was our first time meeting and we found each other on a dating site, so I guess technically it may have been a date) and as we were parting ways we ran into the members of my Korean study group. One of the leaders of the group introduced himself to my friend/date, talked to her about the group and offered to take her information down so that she could be informed of events. (Here's the funny thing, though - being a fairly staunch atheist, she asked him if it was a religious group, and he said no. How's that for transparency?) Later on, after all the cult talk started, I felt compelled to email her and warn her that I may have inadvertently introduced her to a cult. It was awkward, to say the least. (I haven't seen here in a while anyway. The date went well, actually, and we had another good meeting/date later on, but then she was really busy, and then I was kind of busy, and she lives in a different city... Honestly, I get the impression that maybe neither one of us was really that interested in going through the whole dating process, independent of how we felt about each other. Or maybe that's just my justification for being lazy and a dick. Yeah, sorry, I've been a dick. If you're reading this, I promise I'll be in touch again. One of these days. And no cults this time.)

I think what bothers me the most about the whole thing is how disappointed I am that, after finally meeting some people who really cared about foreigners in Korea, it turns out that they may have only been interested in us as a front for their cult. There's just no way to continue a friendship when every day you're looking over your shoulder wondering, "Are you being nice to me because you genuinely care about me, or is it because I make your cult look legitimate?" It's a real slap to the face to even consider the possibility. And, worse yet, as far as I know, they didn't even try to recruit any foreigners into the cult! How cold is that - good enough to make you look good, but not good enough to be a part of your apocalypse club? No thank you.

Yeah, so you though a story that started with, "So this one time I accidentally joined a cult..." would be giggles all around, didn't you? Nope. Complete tragedy. Hurt feelings all around. Lost a lot of friends, trust in people is shattered, nothing to do but be hurt and bitter now. Feel-bad story of the year. Well, at least I didn't have to spend my savings to send my cultist friend to California so that I wouldn't have to tell him that his Star Trek spec script was terrible or anything. At any rate, I'm going to try to put it behind me and focus on making the most of the rest of my time here, because Jon Lord knows I don't want to focus on the future beyond Korea right now. I finally finished "What Color Is Your Parachute?" and I feel like, as much as it gave me some valuable advice for finding a new job when I get home, all the self-discovery stuff really confused me about what I want to do when I get home. I kind of rushed into the whole accounting certificate thing in a panic, and now that I feel like I might have some other options and I'm considering how my personality would match up with that type of work environment, I'm not sure if that was the right choice. (If only somebody had given me the damn book BEFORE I paid all that tuition money...) Of course, the thing about the self-discovery exercises is that they all told me more or less that I should do the same type of thing I was doing in LA when I was out of work, broke and miserable. Let's face it, nobody wants to pay creative people to be creative; they want to pay greedy people to be greedy, but with their money (which is really not the type of thing I'm good at.) Right now I'm looking for something that might combine my interest in finance, organization and statistics with my entertainment experience, but this teaching job has really opened my eyes to the type of unusual opportunities that are out there if you hunt for them. Like, for example, I've been doing some more diving with Sea World Busan and one of the guys I met there came here to teach English, eventually bought into a private language academy, trained to be a divemaster in the meantime, and just left to run dives in Honduras. I mean, whose high school guidance counselor looks at them and says, "Hey, maybe you should teach English for a while and they go to school to be a scuba instructor in Honduras"? None of them. Because they don't know! People only tell you about the shitty job opportunities. They keep all the interesting stuff and the valuable stuff to themselves, and they only throw you the crumbs. But if you think outside the lines...

The only thing I know for sure is that I want to come home and give the USA another shot first. Or see if it gives me another shot. Either way, I know I'm not staying here. The ticket's been bought. I'm coming home February 26th. Hope you'll be glad to see me.

Japan (It's pretty new. You've probably never heard of it.)

Hey ho and what have you. So I just got back from my summer vacation in Japan, which was pretty great. Guess I should give you the blow-by-blow, huh? Here goes...

To get to Osaka, I took the Panstar ferry service from Busan. The main reason I went with the ferry instead of a flight was cost, although I've been told I should have checked out Air Busan before I opted for the ferry ticket. Either way, I don't regret taking the ferry. I got to see a lot more of the country by sea, traveling past  Tsushima island and through the Seto Inland Sea, than I would have by air. Japan is a fascinating country to see from the water. There's large amounts of fishing and commercial boat traffic on the water and several large suspension bridges (including the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge in Kobe, the longest suspension bridge in the world), plus it's just fascinating to see how a country has managed to crowd 127 million people onto a collection of very mountainous islands. (Japan doesn't always look very big on a map, but the distance from Kyushu to Hokkaido is roughly equivalent the distance from Boston to Jacksonville. So Japan is pretty much like taking the east coast of the United States, moving in about 15 million more people, putting the Appalachians in the middle of everything and then making it a separate country.)

While I was waiting to board the boat in Busan, I ran into another American passenger, who, in the interest of keeping this blog consistent as pertaining to the use of pseudonyms instead of real names, I will call Reggie. Reggie was a fellow former Los Angelean who had been working in Seoul as an English teacher and needed to go somewhere to renew his tourist visa while he waited to hear about a possible new teaching job in Busan. Once I got on the boat, I also met Sal (again, not his real name, just for the sake of consistency), who was another ex-Angeleno and an English teacher in Osaka. As three of the only English-speaking passengers on the ferry, we got to know each other pretty well over the course of the overnight trip, and Sal was nice enough when we landed to help Reggie and I get oriented in the city. Once we got oriented, Reggie decided to stick with me, since he came to Osaka without any real travel plans other than a lifelong desire to see Kyoto. So, much like Doctor Who, I suddenly found myself with a traveling companion.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm really glad I ran into Sal and Reggie on the boat, but after two and a half years in Korea with a rotating cast of compatriots who don't always share the same sightseeing aspirations as me, I've gotten kind of used to traveling alone. Of course, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that there's several disadvantages to traveling alone, with not having anyone to talk to or hang out with being primary among them. On the other hand, once I found out that Reggie, a guy who I had just met, was going to be tagging along with me, it was a bit difficult to snap out my usual "Loner, lone gunman, get it?" attitude and be grateful for the company, especially since I only had about five days (less, actually, since I had half a ferry trip on each end of that schedule) to see as much of the Kansai region as I could. Traveling alone does have its advantages, the greatest one being that you never have to coordinate or argue with anyone when time gets tight.

At any rate, I did manage to find my hostel and still make it to Osaka Castle before closing time on the first day with Reggie in tow. I didn't make it back to JR Osaka station in time to buy my rail pass before they closed (well, technically they closed at 8 PM and I made it there at about 7:57, but they wouldn't sell it to me at that point - you know how that goes) but while we were there we took the time to check out the view from the sky garden at the Umeda Sky building. Osaka's famed nightlife would have to wait for the return trip, but at least I had gotten a taste of the city on day one.

On day two, it was time to head for Kyoto. Kyoto was a capital of Japan before it moved to Tokyo, so the city is full of palaces, temples and other vestiges of Japan's storied past. Day one in Kyoto started a bit late as I had to buy my rail pass and we had to get oriented in the city, and we lost some time in the mid-afternoon due to a sudden rain storm, but I did get to see the quite stunning Zen gardens at Daitokuji temple and still manage to make it to the famed Golden Pavilion, Kinkakuji. (Reggie and I agreed that, as beautiful as the Golden Pavilion was, it seemed a bit ostentatious compared to the Zen gardens at Daitokuji.)

By the way, if you ever find yourself traveling to Osaka and the surrounding region, you may wonder whether the Kansai Thru Pass, which allows you to use any bus, subway or train in the region other than the Japan Rail (JR) lines for one price, is worth the money. The answer is a resounding "it depends," based on my personal experience and the opinions of just about everyone I asked about it. Trains, buses and subways in Japan are relatively expensive, and the trains can be confusing since many of the lines are run by separate private entities, with some rail lines even running parallel to each other and making almost the same stops. On the other hand, almost every city in the region has all-day passes for the bus and subway systems (but not both for the same price, unfortunately) that are comparable or lower in price than a day's worth of travel on the Kansai Thru Pass. The good news is that, if you've invested in the Kansai Thru Pass and you have large amounts of travel scheduled on non- consecutive days, you can choose two or three non-consecutive days on which you want to use the pass with no penalties - the pass is basically good for two or three 24-hour periods, and doesn't become activated for the day until you use it at least once on a day. And having the pass is extremely convenient, if you don't mind possibly paying a premium for that convenience. On the other hand, if you're looking to save money, you might be better off simply paying as you go and buying day passes, or saving the pass for the days when you know you're going to be doing an inter-city train ride and a lot of bus or subway travel when you arrive.

Reggie couldn't get a reservation at my hostel so we split up in the evening so he could look for lodging. After dinner and a quick shower, I decided to head out to Kyoto's fabled Gion district to see a little of what the geisha thing is all about. I already knew there was no way in hell that I could afford to hire out a geisha for a performance, since apparently having a classically-trained performer pour tea for you is something that only the very rich and powerful can afford (which I'm sure is a big part of the appeal). But I figured I could at least enjoy the old-style architecture and maybe try to snap a few pictures of geisha on their way to work, which apparently annoys the geisha but amuses Western tourists to no end. Nothing I had read or heard about Gion had prepared me for the reality, though. The vibe in Gion at night is just indescribable, although the first word I would use to try would definitely be "heavy." First, all the geisha clubs have doormen with radios, so you feel like you're walking past CIA headquarters or something as you walk down the streets and alleys. The clientele mostly show up to Gion in Kyoto's fancy black cabs, and the drivers hover around the borders as groups of suited businessmen saunter or stagger to the clubs and steakhouses - sometimes in small groups of two or three, sometimes with fully-costumed geisha, sometimes with at least one not-to-be-fucked-with security guard, but never with any female companions who aren't performing. There's also some clubs in Gion that are decidedly less traditional, with girls in sassy schoolgirl costumes or cat ears standing outside to promote what's inside. (As far as I know, I don't think there's any actual prostitution in Gion - every source I've read insists that geisha don't perform sex acts of any kind, and the prices posted outside the other joints indicated that they were probably strip clubs rather than sex clubs. Either that or I missed out on some fantastically cheap opportunities to pay for sex.) [Yes, Mom, Dad, and all my female friends, that last bit was a joke.] Either way, it's impossible to take an evening stroll there without feeling like there's something very, very secretive and heavily guarded going on behind every door, even if it's only a Japanese woman in white face paint and a kimono singing for some drunk business executives.

Day two in Kyoto was both astounding and a little bit frustrating. In short, Reggie and I had somewhat incompatible travel preferences. Since I had a very limited amount of time to travel, I wanted to travel to as many of the big-name spots on Kyoto's east side as I possibly could, snap as many photos as possible, and collapse in a heap when I got back to the hostel. Reggie, on the other hand, was much more interested in taking it easy, spending ample time at each site we visited and stopping for coffee breaks. I tried my best to be accommodating but Reggie could probably tell that I was chomping at the bit in some places. I really didn't want to be a dick about things, especially since I know I can tend to be a bit anti-social and I'm trying to change that for the better, and I really did appreciate his company for most of the trip. But like I said, I'm a bit of a lone wolf at heart, especially when I'm traveling and trying to see the sites. Our first stop that day was Fushimi-Inari-Taisha Shrine, a shrine (maybe a Shinto shrine? I don't know how clear the distinctions are between Buddhist and Shinto shrines in Japan) famous for its mountain paths covered by hundreds of red-orange torii gates, in long rows like dominoes. Scattered throughout the mountain paths are pockets of shrines with altars and statues of stone foxes, all gathered in seemingly disorganized mobs, especially when contrasted with the orderly rows of torii gates spanning the paths. It was all pretty overwhelming (especially in the mid-thirties heat and high humidity). From Fushimi-Inari-Taisha we walked to Tofukuji Temple, which wasn't on my itinerary but had been recommended to Reggie as a good Zen temple to visit. I learned something important about Kyoto at Tofukuji - it's not a city that you can see in only one or two days. For every temple that you read about in your guidebook that's listed as a must-see but turns out to be a chaotic mess when you arrive there, there's another that you're likely to skip past that will blow your mind. Maybe some people aren't as impressed by Tofukuji's white-and-brown Zen simplicity, but I was stunned by the immensity of the buildings there and the beauty of its natural setting. I'd say it's a can't-miss if you're coming to Kyoto (especially if Fushimi-Inari-Taisha is on your itinerary) but there's just so many can't-misses in Kyoto that it's impossible for me to label almost any one site taken individually that way.

Reggie and I stuck together in Kyoto as far as Kiyomizu-dera Temple, typically considered one of the definite must-see sites for all visitors to Kyoto. We had already agreed by that point that he would probably break away to take a rest after Kiyomizu-dera while I continued on to other sightseeing destinations on the east side of the city. Unfortunately, we got separated by the crowd halfway through Kiyomizu-dera and had no way to get back in touch with each other since neither of us had a working phone. Kiyomizu-dera was impressive, but it was extremely crowded and at least one of the major buildings was covered for repairs. (This is another major headache in visiting Kyoto, and Japan in general - since almost all the classic buildings are made of wood, it's almost certain that part of some major site you want to see will be closed, or have only limited access, for renovations.) I wandered out of the temple and into the side streets of the picturesque neighborhood nearby, and determined to make the best of the time I had left before sites started closing for the evening. The good thing about Kyoto is, no matter where you go, especially on the east side of the city, there's almost always something to see. I mean yeah, I think I walked right by a couple temples I wanted to see but couldn't find, I found out Chion-in Temple was under major renovations when I got there, and I may have accidentally left an incense offering for Japan's dead soldiers from World War II at another temple. Sorry, they handed the incense to me as I walked in and I didn't read the whole brochure. And there was a really big Buddha statue there! Also, I think they had a monument to all the unknown soldiers of World War II from all sides at that temple, so at least they were trying to be accommodating. It's the thought that counts, right?

Even though it was after 4 PM by the time I found a bus stop, I still tried to make it to the northeast edge of the city to see Ginkakuji Temple, another one of the city's widely-regarded must-see sites, before it closed at 5 PM. As you may have guessed, I made it there at 5:05, and the guard at the door had no sympathy for either me or the two French tourists who arrived at that time. Really, when it comes down to it, two days is not enough time to see Kyoto. I don't really have too many regrets about what I did see, though. I only wish that I had more time to see more of the city. It would be easy to spend a week exploring Kyoto, if you had that kind of time. Oh well. Maybe I can come back some day...

When I got back to my hostel, I tried to email Reggie to talk to him about the next day's plan to go to Nara. I really wanted to leave as soon as possible in the morning so that I could maximize my time there and still have time in the evening to see more of Osaka. I didn't get a definite response from Reggie until the next morning, but when he swung by the hostel at 7 AM he said that he was too tired to join me that day. I hate to admit it but I was secretly hoping he would make that decision. (Loner, lone gunman, get it? I like the lifestyle, the image.) Again, I had nothing against him personally, actually he was a really nice guy. Plus I'm not gonna say anything bad about the guy here because I'll probably be sending him a Facebook friend request some time soon and there'll be a link to this blog post on my account. But like I said, as much as I'm trying to teach myself not to run in fear from all forms of interpersonal relationships, I do prefer to travel alone, and I was on a very tight schedule. So off I went to Nara on my own, going down the only road I've ever known. Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone...

Nara was incredible. First, there's the deer. Nara is famous for its deer, which are protected by law and fed by all the tourists, so they've become completely tame. Seriously, you can stand nose-to-nose with an eight-point buck in Nara and most of the time he'll only sniff you for food. It's like another world there, where deer and man are somehow equals. Don't you just love Buddhists? Second, there's Todaiji Temple. Todaiji Temple is huge. Yeah, there's lots of huge temples in Japan, but Todaiji Temple also has Japan's largest bronze Buddha statue, which is just plain ol' HUGE. (And it's indoors, so you know that's a big ol' temple right there.) Third, the main tourist area in Nara is very walkable and surrounded by undeveloped hills, forest and grassland, and there's some very nice gardens in the area that take full advantage of that natural beauty. Here's the shot of Isuien Garden that I posted to Facebook to make my friends jealous:

This is the crappy iPhone version of this shot. The good Fujicolor 100 shot isn't back from the photo lab yet. (I kick it old school.)

It's fairly easy to see the main sites in Nara in about half a day, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the Nara National Museum, which has quite a nice collection of Buddhist statues and other artworks from the Kansai region, and still get back to Osaka at a reasonable hour. Yes, I appreciate the irony that I ended up ditching Reggie so I could leave early for Nara, and then it turned out that I spent a leisurely day there with time to spare. Whatever, these things happen.

Back in Osaka, I had heard that Den-Den Town, the city's discount electronics district, might have some camera shops with old manual 35mm equipment, so I headed there in the evening. I didn't find any camera shops, but I did find out that Den-Den Town is also apparently Osaka's otaku (roughly translated, "fanboy") district, so I did pass a wide variety of interesting record shops, toy stores, video stores and "maid coffee" establishments. "Maid coffee" is apparently a popular form of entertainment in Japan in which you go to a coffee shop where young girls dress like maids and you can play board games with them. Personally I don't understand this Japanese fascination with infantilized, subservient young girls and women. Why not a cafe with girls who can wear whatever they want and rub it in your face when they school you at checkers? Oh wait, you don't have to pay for that, that's what friends are for...

I had enough time left to check out at least one of southern Osaka's entertainment districts - maybe two if I was lucky. The main places to go for entertainment in Osaka are America-mura, which is mostly known as an area for trendy retail shops, Dotombori, which is known as the main place to party, and Shin-Sekai, which is known as a run-down shell of its former self that's now full of pachinko parlors. I, of course, headed straight to Shin-Sekai. What can I say, I love a good dive. Actually, I attempted to head straight there but got lost in some covered arcade south of Shin-Sekai that was home to some really, truly divey places. Ever seen someone doing karaoke loudly for a completely empty bar? It's not pretty. I did eventually find Shin-Sekai and get a couple shots of neon-clad Tsuten-kaku tower for the effort, but it didn't seem like the most fun place for a solo traveler. I suppose the right kind of group of travelers could have fun enjoying the Jersey shore (the boardwalk, not the TV series) type vibe there, but I wasn't going to find much to do there by myself. ("Hey," you're thinking right now, "maybe you would have enjoyed the nightlife in Osaka more if you hadn't ditched Reggie." Well, it's possible, but Reggie didn't drink, so I had kind of figured I would have to leave him behind for this portion of the trip anyway.) I did manage to get to Dotombori before the last train back to my hostel, and got some photos of the famous neon "Running Man" by the river, and got propositioned outside a hotel, which I think completes the Dotombori experience. So all in all I feel like I got to see the Osaka nightlife experience, even if I didn't fully participate in it.

I had to get back on the ferry on Friday, my final day, and they only thing I had time to do was check out the Osaka Aquarium. The Osaka Aquarium is allegedly the biggest in the world, and it's quite impressive. The entire aquarium focuses on animals from various locales around the Pacific ring of fire, and it's designed in a big spiral, so you start at the top with surface-dwelling creatures (including some aquatic birds and mammals) and as you continue farther into the aquarium you move to lower levels of the various tanks, so you can see the animals that typically dwell in much deeper parts of the ocean. The whale shark is the star of the show, although the otters, sea lions, dolphins and penguins do their best to steal the crowd's attention while they're still in the surface areas.

The first thing I noticed on the ferry ride back was that I seemed to be one of the only Westerners over the age of eighteen on the trip. Were I the type of person to see justice or a larger plan in the universe (which I don't), I might guess that this was some sort of karmic retribution for ditching Reggie in Kyoto. But since the universe is clearly a series of random, unconnected incidents, I spend the trip catching up on my favorite podcasts and catching up on sleep. Eat that, karma.

Hmm... is it worth including a closing paragraph to compare Japan to Korea? I could definitely see, while traveling in Japan, which country was the colonized and which was the colonizer. As grand as the temples and palaces were in Japan, it was hard not to retain some sense of the social injustices perpetrated on both the Japanese peasantry and, later, Japan's colonial conquests to build and maintain all that splendor. But really, I could say that about almost any world imperial capital. Why do so many truly great things in life seem to have to be erected on the backs of the less fortunate? I don't know. I do know that, when I got back on the cruise ship and got in line for dinner, and got pushed out of the way repeatedly by older Koreans, that I missed the Japanese sense of politeness and desire for social harmony. I definitely heard the Japanese phrase for "excuse me" more often than I hear its Korean equivalent here. But I think making comparisons is a fairly futile exercise. One has to accept every culture for what it is, both good and bad. Cultures do change over time, but not generally due to anything we can do about them. It's better to try to accept what we don't like about them, and try to remember to celebrate what we do like.

Well, the fall semester at work starts tomorrow morning, and it promises to be an interesting semester, if anything. They'll be some new teachers to meet, and some newly departed teachers to miss. (The current teacher at my middle school is vacating her apartment upstairs as we speak.) I don't think I'm going back to Korean class in Daegu, since at this point I'm pretty sure that twelve more weeks of lessons is not going to help my Korean to an appreciable degree before I leave. Also, I found out that the volunteer group that was helping me learn Korean might be a front for a cult. I mean, yeah, I knew they had some vague connections to a cult for a long time, but some recent information I've come across makes me more wary of spending time with them. (I'm sure there'll be a lot more about that in my next post.) I've been delving deeper into the book that's supposed to be helping me transition successfully into a new career when I leave this job, and all it's done so far is make me more confused about what I want to do and have more doubts about my employability in general. Clearly I have a lot more soul-searching to do in the next six months. And of course I still have to teach school and do a good job of it for the kids. Well, this chapter of the story may be winding down, but it's certainly not over. Let's see what twists and turns await before I can close the cover and start the next volume of this story.