Studio Ghibli Museum

As soon as I learned about the Studio Ghibli Museum some months ago, I decided that whenever I went to Japan, that was going to be my first stop. Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miazaki are responsible for animations like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo, not to mention a slew of older movies.

The museum is in Mitaka, which is a bit outside of Tokyo proper, but only a few stops down on the JR Chuo Line from Nakano, not hard to get to at all. Tickets to the museum must be purchased either at a Lawson's in Japan, or at a designated travel agent outside the country. We bought our tickets through a travel agent here in Korea without problem.


You can't take photos inside the museum, which makes this post a little boring. There was one room that explained animation without words. They had various samples of how you can make things appear to be moving or appear to have depth when in fact there is no depth or movement. That part was fairly interesting. They also had an original animation (no dialogue, so it can be understood by anyone) that can only be seen at the museum. I think they periodically rotate the movie to encourage guests to come back again. The rest of the museum seems to be dedicated to showing sketches from various movies, show sample animator's desks, and showing copies of the storyboards for various movies.

It was interesting, but I feel a little let down. All signage was in Japanese, so I couldn't read any of the explanations for any of the exhibits. Though I was surprised at just how few foreigners were there on a Saturday. It was teaming with Japanese visitors though. Much more crowded than I expected since you have to reserve a time to come in. Anyway, if you're a Hayao Miazaki fan, and you have time, the museum might be worth it. If you're pressed for time, it might not be a priority for you. Perhaps going on a weekday might be better since the crowds should be smaller.

Sensoji- Asauksa Kannon

Late Saturday evening we wandered over to Sensoji in Asakusa, which is Tokyo's largest Buddhist temple. It was only about 10 minutes from our ryokan. We walked around while it was still light out, and it was quite nice.



I had seen some night photos from here, so we decided to stick around until the sun went down. Fortunately, nowadays, the sun is down by 5pm, so we didn't have to wait long...

Night time has to be the most spectacular time to go here, as nice as the daytime is. I highly recommend Sensoji in Asakusa.

My brush with fame

Otherwise known as: "I was on Japanese TV and all I got was this lousy pen"

We were informed last week that the Japanese broadcasting company NHK (equivalent of KBS here in Korea) was coming to our Korean class to film a show about Korean language classes. They instructed my class and some other advanced students to come to school an hour early and film the show. We were also told that the Korean drama star Yoon Sang Hyun would be coming too for the filming. We didn't know who Yoon Sang Hyun was, but evidently he's a fairly big deal in Korea and has been in several dramas.

They made a mock classroom of six desks in two neat rows with men and women evenly separated. Normally it's just three of us ladies with desks strewn about the place wherever we feel like sitting.
Next they filmed us for an hour and 20 minutes... saying the same lines over and over again

What classes do you offer?
We have a 2 week class, a one month class and so on.
How much is the two week class?
The 2 week class is 100,000 won.

By the end of this, 1 hour and 20 minutes later we were so sick of these phrases that we never wanted to hear them again. The filming crew shot from various angles. The best was when Yoon Sang Hyun finally came into the classroom for his spotlight. They filmed him close up with us in the background saying Wow! They speak Korean so well! It's amazing! I still haven't figured out what the point of that was...

My poor teacher who had to teach this "class" on film.. plus one of the Japanese filming crew on the left.

After they finished with our class, the evidently moved on to the front desk where Yoon Sang Hyun tried interviewing the our young secretary. She seemed so nervous that she couldn't follow the script and kept jumbling her words. We all went to spy on them during our class break...

Finally at the end they interrupted our class to announce that Yoon Sang Hyun would take a photo with all of us. Of course, he's a star and couldn't be bothered to let everyone take a photo with their own cameras, so though someone out there has a photo of me with him and my classmates, I've been unable to track this anonymous someone down for a copy. I'll have to settle with this photo of some of our teachers with the curly-haired effeminate Yoon Sang Hyun

Yoon Sang Hyun is second from the right.

After all was said and done and Yoon Sang Hyun had bid farewell, the NHK crew presented us each with a wrapped gift. I thought maybe it would be something really special for all my hard work, aka actually doing my make-up and straightening my hair and coming in over an hour early when I'm usually 20 mins late... and I opened it to find a cheap plastic pen. Oh well, at least now I can say I've been on a crazy Japanese program... even if I'll never see it... I guess it won't air til next season, sometime in Feb. or March... in Japan.

A signature from Yoon Sang Hyun that my classmate chased him down for... in her Korean notebook...

Tsukiji Fish Market

*Warning: this post is not for people with weak constitutions...

Our first stop in Tokyo was the Tsukiji Fish Market since we got in so early in the morning. It took us a while to get ourselves orientated with the subway and find our way there, but after getting some help from the woman working at the train station at the airport, we made our way there with no problem. We arrived around 7:00 am. The first thing we encountered were all the little restaurants. The price seemed really steep, even for Japan. 3,000 yen for one plate of sushi? No way were we going to pay that. We wandered around and accidentally wandered out of the market on the other side, but serendipitously, we found a very nice, uncrowded (unlike the restaurants in the market) sushi restaurant. We were able to walk in with no line and get served immediately. We ordered one breakfast set for about 1,600 yen plus we got some extra hand rolls for about 300 yen each or so. It might have been a little pricey, but considerably better than the prices inside the market.

After breakfast we made our way into the real market. I guess it wasn't tooo different from a Korean market, but it was huge and went on forever, besides, I just never get sick of seeing weird things in markets...

Tuna!

Culinary Tour of Tokyo

We went to Tokyo with only a vague idea of what we wanted to do, so instead we turned it into what all good trips turn into, and that is a culinary tour. We basically stopped to eat every few hours to eat a new dish.. whenever we saw something interesting, we had to try it. We were at least economical about it, we would just order one dish and just split it between the two of us each time.

Before I describe the food, I want to mention how to order food. At many restaurants, you need to order from a vending machine. Outside of Japan, the idea sounds ridiculous, but actually, it's amazing, because you don't have to worry about any language barrier. You just look at the picture on the machine, put your money in, select your food, then you can bring your ticket to the chef who will cook your order. No speaking involved. For me who speaks no Japanese and has no idea of the names of food, it's the world's greatest invention.

I must say, I didn't know much about Japanese cuisine before going to Japan... besides sushi, that is, but I was impressed. We didn't eat in any expensive restaurants, just your average joe places on the side of the street, but of all 12 times or so that I ate over the span of two days, the only thing I didn't like was the pasta. I'd already tried this style of pasta here in Korea, since the Koreans imported Japanese pasta. Everything else was amazing. The Japanese don't blast your mouth with spice, like the Koreans, and I expected not to like it (since I only eat spicy food nowadays... if it's not spicy, I'll put spice in it). I was amazed to find out that non-spicy food actually can taste good. I had forgotten what it was like to live two days without spice, but it was quite enjoyable.

Here are some photos of the food I ate. I'll try my best to get the names and descriptions correct, though if the boyfriend hadn't been there I would have had no idea what I was eating the whole time.

Convenience store cuisine. And since Japanese convenience stores have no chairs outside, we had to squat under the eave of the building in the rain to eat this. We're not in Korea anymore.

Our friendly sushi chef making our sushi

Our glorious second meal of Sushi.

Takoyaki- A small piece of octopus fried inside a ball of dough with delicious terriaki sauce and mayo and other deliciousness.

Japanese Ramen... a little different from home, huh?

Okonomiyaki (I might have this one wrong, I'll check later). Octopus fried into a pancake with terriaki sauce... amazing...

Japanese-style Pasta- Just as terrible as the Korean version.

Inside of the crepe shop.

Our amazing berry cheesecake crepe.

Soba noodles and yorichobab for breakfast (yorichobap is the korean name... I forget the Japanese name)

The real Donkatsu... kind of tastes just like the Korean Donkasu

Tempura!

Frying us up some Yakisoba (fried soba noodles).

Our Yakisoba... it smelled better than it tasted. It wasn't bad, but the BF said he'd had much better.

Udon Noodles

Our first meal of sushi... for breakfast at 7:00 just after we arrived. We got this right outside of Tsukiji Fish Market. It was cheaper outside the market than in...

The boyfriend's new obsession. Natto. It's a fermented bean with soy sauce and mustard. It's ok, but I would never crave it. Now there are 6 boxes like this in my fridge.

And yes, to answer your question, we did manage to eat all this in 48 hours.....pretty sick, huh?

Swine Flu... for real

I'm way behind on posts this week, I applogize. There's about 10 posts in my head but every night I seem to have something going on and they never get written. I don't know how it's Thursday night already. I left for Tokyo a week from yesterday, and I've been back since Monday morning and there's not a single post. And my apartment is a wreck. And I've been worrying about securing this job for March. And I've been looking for hotels in San Fransisco for my way home. And I've been looking at flights for Ecuador for my "vacation". I guess I'm pretty busy.

Anyway, since the week before Halloween, swine flu has been hitting Seoul hard. For our halloween party for the Tuesday/Thursday students on Oct. 29th only 16 of our 32 students came to class. That's half the school missing. All this week I've had 1-4 students missing in nearly every class, and students leaving school half way through class feeling ill.

We were told that the school would close if we had anyone with swine flu, but now we've even had one teacher who had swine flu (looks like she got it from her boyfriend, not her students) and we still haven't closed. Good thing too, because we wouldn't get paid if the school did close for a few days or weeks.

Kids are wearing masks all over, although I must say that the mask wearers were out in full force in Japan, even more so than here in Seoul. I was surprised to see that one. Here I mostly only see kids wearing the masks. In Japan, it was mostly the adults.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I don't get swine flu... or if I do get swine flu, that I get it while in Korea, since I'll have no health insurace when I go home :-[ .

People seem to be recovering pretty fast nowadays, especially if they get the Tamiflu right away. My co-worker didn't seem to have much of a problem, just missed two days of work and her weekend.

Getting Closer to the Nobel Prize

Two friends of mine were featured in the Korea Times today for their efforts to translate a work of Korean literature into English!!! Amazing, I can't wait to read it!

Getting Closer to the Nobel Prize

By Han Sang-hee
Staff Reporter

A Korean writer winning the Nobel Prize for literature may seem like a distant wish, but with more efforts from people like Jessica Conte and Han Hae-min, that dream may well materialize in the future.

We have so many good works of literature but there are few translated ones). I feel the need of more translated literary works, so someday the Nobel Prize may go to a Korean writer,'' said Han, who, along with Conte, won the Commendation Award in Fiction for the 40th Modern Korean Literature Awards.

``Jessica and I have always talked about the lack of English translations of Korean literature and movies. Although there are many good works, when they are translated in English there are mistranslations and even grammar mistakes. We felt this was so unfortunate,'' Han said.
Conte, 26, and Han, 30, chose famed novelist Jeon Gyeong-rin's ``An Angel Stays Here'' for the contest.

``Jeong is one of Hae-min's favorite writers, and she recommended her right away. An Angel Stays Here is such a thought-provoking piece that covers very controversial topics, Her language is very precise and the cadence of her narration is wonderful. The story itself was fascinating, but the protagonist's interaction with the world around her was even more compelling,'' Conte said.

``Her work contains many Korean issues like the present status of Korean women, domestic violence, and the beauty of Korea's scenery. We wanted a female author who was liberal and wrote about Korean women,'' Han added.

Like any other translator, finding the perfect word or expression can take days, and this was exactly what happened to the two.

``One of the biggest difficulties was translating metaphors in a way that was consistent with writer's style. At these times, Hae-min and I would sit down with the passage in question and discuss what it meant to us and what it meant in terms of the overall narrative. I remember going over one particularly descriptive passage for hours, talking about things like smell, color, and emotion and how they dealt with the protagonist's development,''' Conte said.

Conte and Han have each experienced the difficulties and joys in mastering another language: Conte, who was born in the United States, started learning Korean three years ago through language exchange programs and lectures, while Han, who is currently teaching Korean to foreigners at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, learned English through her students.

As both serious learners who went through a quite pleasant literary journey together, Conte and Han had worries and suggestions to encourage more English translations of Korean books.

``I think the Korean government should support the translation of Korean literature. People from other countries know a lot about Japanese literature, because there are lots of translated Japanese works in other countries. This makes people interested in Japanese culture too,'' said Han.

Conte mentioned the need for more diversity.

``There are so many great works by Korean writers that the world should see. Also, I think that the best way of creating serious interest in Korean literature and culture would be to have a multitude of translations for each piece. Often you see just one 'definitive' translation of one work. Translation is an interpretative art and we need more than just one perspective,'' she said.

sanghee@koreatimes.co.kr