Springtime can be cold.

I mentioned that we joined a running group in my last post. We went out and ran today with the group. It was perhaps 58-60 degrees out, and raining. It was fine while we were running. We did our post run stretch in the subway station (where we were approached by not one, but two different Korean families who wanted to convert us), and then waited for the bus back to our neighborhood. It was all fine until we got off the bus about 100m from our apartment, then we were COLD. A few minutes under the covers and one bean burger later and I'm warm enough to take a hot shower.

Anyhow, on the bus on the way back we saw 2 trees that still had cherry blossoms. Carolyn pointed out those might have been the last two cherry blossoms we'll see in Asia. Almost a little sad, right? I'm thinking that's okay. We might have to make a spring trip to Japan one day.

Spring is Springing

Spring in Korea is a huge blast of color on a fairly bleak and desolate canvas. It really blew up over the past couple of weeks. We saw our first cherry blossoms of 2012 about 2 weeks ago on a dog walk for the animal shelter, and on Wednesday we went to Gyeongju to see an easy to get to set of destination-worthy cherry blossoms. The weather wasn't perfect, but it was really nice.

Let me tell you a little bit more about Wednesday. It was election day in Korea, so all of us public school teachers had a day off. A few of us met bright and early at DongDaegu station and took the first train over to Gyeongju. At a speed of 275km/h it only takes about 20 minutes to get to Gyeongju. We met another friend who lives in Busan at the downtown train station and wouldn't you know it, the sky opened up and it started raining. We needed somewhere indoors-ish to go, so we made election day erection day and headed to a famous Gyeongju site, the Gyeongju Love Castle.

How do I describe this in a tasteful manner? Hmm. If Gyeongju Love Castle needs to be described in a tasteful way I guess I can't really describe it. Here's a comparison: Did you by any chance see that Portlandia sketch where they "put a bird on it?" If not you can watch it right here:

Now imagine some things for me here before I move on. You need to imagine a turtle, a frog, a battleship, samurai sword, and a bunch of door handles. Now, instead of putting a bird on it, put a weiner on it. No, not the kind of weiner you put on a bun with chili and cheese. It was quite a display. In the first building there were all sorts of sexually explicit paintings, then the path led you through a penis statue garden, into a sexually explicit hardcore porn garden, right along into a smaller gallery with a hilarious set of clay statues of various scenes you might imagine from say, American Pie movies (a flasher, boys dry humping each other whilst getting humped by dogs, boys frantically trying to turn off a porn movie as their mother opens the apartment door, and so on). From there you take a magical walk through a mock-up of a Japanese "accessory" shop, and a real Korean one (if you need penis shaped salt and pepper shakers I know where you can get some). Then comes one of the most disturbing things of the whole experience, a walkway through a forest where they were playing "lovemaking sounds from around the world." Apparently the world is comprised of the US, Japan, and Korea. Then a small cafe where you can watch soft-core porn and nom on a hot dog.

It was a lot of laughs. I don't know what else to say about it in a public forum. I mean, it was full of laughs from start to finish. There was nothing really too incredibly graphic I guess, because one family was there with their two small children. Okay yeah right, what the hell were they thinking? Those kids are going to be scarred for life...and what was the deal with all the references to sex with dogs? But anyway, if you're more interested in this topic I'd recommend going to Gyeongju and checking out the Love Castle.

We went back into town on the bus and popped off at a great little pond surrounded by some really dense cherry blossom action. Our friends decided that they needed to shoot engagement photos for us so we handed over our cameras and had a super silly photo shoot. If you need to see those I'd recommend heading over to my flickr page. Here's the spot we spent a bit of time before grabbing lunch.

As you can tell, it was quite pretty. We had a quick lunch (I had a donkatsu, haven't had one of those in a while, and it was delicious) before walking along the lake in Gyeongju and back to town. We caught the 5:30 train back to Daegu (this time the slow train) and got back to Daegu just in time for dinner. We were pretty tired after that, and a quick shower put me right into bed for the night. Not bad for a day off in the middle of the week.

The Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival

sakura sakura

noyama mo sato mo

mi-watasu kagiri

kasumi ka kumo ka

asahi ni niou

sakura sakura

hanazakari

sakura sakura

yayoi no sorawa

mi-watasu kagiri

kasumi ka kumo ka

nioi zo izuru

izaya izaya

mini yukan

This weekend Carolyn and I went to Jinhae, a small naval port west of Busan, for the annual cherry blossom festival. I've always thought of cherry blossoms as a Japanese spectacle, but seeing as Jinhae was a Nihon Kaigun port during the Japanese occupation it only makes sense that the town would be covered with cherry blossoms. We took the saemaul train after work on Friday and arrived in Jinhae at about 10:40pm.

Even under complete darkness it was obvious that the cherry trees were blossoming in a huge way. It was obvious that the town was painted pink with these delicate, beautiful flowers that only stay bloomed for about 10 days before they peacefully float away in the breeze. The festival at night was quite brightly lit, and several people were shooting off fireworks in the night. It was quite active and exciting. After months and months of working to get ourselves to Korea we were finally in a festival that we could absolutely not be at anywhere in the United States.

After stumbling around the festival for a bit we decided to find a place to sleep, and the only place available was a Korean LOVE MOTEL. A love motel is a place you can rent, umm, by the hour. We had luck finding a place to stay, but were amazed by the amenities. The room came complete with a circular shaped bed, a table and chairs (complete with fresh stains...) and a half empty bottle of control lotion, a half empty bottle of "Exciter" lubricant, and a can of bug spray. Classy to the end. After midnight I had the unique experience of listening to a sailor from the navy base (I'm pretty sure an American) get his money's worth from one of the working girls. I was tired enough to sleep until about 8:00am, when we got up, got ready, and headed out to join the festivities.

The first thing we did in the morning was pick our jaws up off of the ground, as the cherry blossoms were out in full force. The streets were all lined with cherry trees, and the weather was gorgeous.

We immediately climbed the "year" stairs, which get their name from the simple fact that there are 365 of them. From the top of these stairs you could see the entire waterfront surrounding Jinhae, and many beautiful blossoms. It was an astounding sight to see, with streaks of pink in and around the city, and covering the sides of the hills and mountains in the distance. You could see into the Sea of Japan, where the distant islets and mountains hung like mysterious clouds on the horizon. What an amazing sight.

Unfortunately ever since the earthquake in Japan a month ago our internet service in Korea has been somewhat unreliable. If you want to see more cherry blossoms you should go to my flickr page where you can see the rest of the day's photos.

We also met up with some friends who teach english in Busan, and after spending the day cruising the festival and sipping on soju we went to a no rae bang (singing room) for some Karaoke action. I might have sung "Toxic" by Britney Spears, among other horrible songs. We finished there at about 3:30am and headed out to grab a bowl of noodles. Hot udon on a cold night is an amazing treat. Then we started looking for a place to sleep. The Motels were all full, unfriendly, or expensive, so we tried to find a jjimjilbang, which we were unsuccessful in locating. Luckily the dude from Busan we were with is a total computer gaming nerd and knows PC bangs pretty well. We pulled into Bobo's PC zone a little after 4:30am and slept in nice comfy chairs until about 7:00am, for the huge fee of 3,000W each. Super cheap. Then we boarded our train for Daegu and headed home.

The festival, the blossoms, and the time we spent with friends were all amazing, and I can't wait to do something like this soon. Very soon. We're going to Seoul this weekend.