Institution of Comparisons

So, I was going to compare Yosakoi to Tokushima ken's Awa-Odori festival, but then Blogger changed the font I was using and I couldn't change it back. So now for something not that completely different.

Tokushima ken is also on the island of Shikoku, but rather more connected to the real world. While Kochi is the last outpost of inaka-Japan, Tokushima is just a regular old prefecture. It's stunningly beautiful, although it lacks Kochi's rugged wilderness, but it has very similar weather (as does much of the island which borders the Pacific Ocean). So during the hot summer months when people in the cities are thinking about how to best honor their dead ancestors by floating a lantern down a river and telling the kids not to swim (lest the kappas drown you), Tokushima people get together in little groups and practice dances. Like Yosakoi, there is an established format that must be adhered to. While Yosakoi dancers are given the song "Yosakoi, Yosakoi" (or whatever it is called) to play and certain elements to include, Awa-Odori dancers are simply told to start their dance in a particular way - after the preliminary routine, which all groups do more-or-less identically, they can launch into something unique and creative.

Yosakoi dancers can wear any costume, I think. Some examples being:

Now, the damn thing is underlining everything I write.  I don't understand at all.

It thought it was a link. I didn't hit the link button except twenty times later to un-link the typing input. Damn thing.

Awa-Odori dancers are required to follow a certain dress standard, including wooden geita for women, straw hats, and funny handkerchiefs. As follows:

The dance is also accompanied quite differently. In Kochi, those little trucks rumble down the boulevard before the dancers. Atop the trucks are singers, microphones, drummers, guitarists, or the karaoke machine that spits out the music at full blast. The sound is deafening, especially in the little enclosed corridors of the covered marketplace down which the dancers march. Awa-Odori is a little different. The dance teams enter a narrow arena and proceed to do their dance. They start at one side, next to the cheap seats, and get all the way to the far side, doing the whole routine somewhere along the way. 

Gentlemen sit and await the start of their number.

The sound is also very different. Remember what I said about Yosakoi singing and belting away into a microphone? In Awa-Odori style, there are only four instruments - shamisen, drums, flute, and the human voice. This does not make for a quieter, more serene and nuanced performance, however. So bring your earplugs.

Dude, second to left, has a big bell-thing, too. A terribly atrocious clang
which only gets more horrid as he continues to ring!

Both dances involve countless hours of preparation and commitment. You have to design and teach, learn and demonstrate brand new routines each year because people's memories are longer than the dance itself. If you repeat or steal a move, someone is bound to notice. But the atmosphere in both locales is festive and rockin'. There are few better ways to beat the summer heat than to march to a tuneful beat. 

The festival street in Tokushima.

The main stage performances in Kochi.

Yosakoi, Yosakoi vs. Tokushima Awa-Odori

Kochi ken has few claims to fame in any guide book, but one of the most oft`mentioned notes of fandom is the annual summer Yosakoi dance festival. Teams from around the prefecture get decked out in a variety of summer kimonos and many-layered costumes, shake their wooden hand-clappers and try to beat the heat by working up a fevered sweaty dance to the age-old tune of Yosakoi.

I asked what "Yosakoi" actually means, but was unable to get a straight answer. It makes them very excited. It must mean, like, free beer, or something.

Synchronized dancing, with hand clappers. 

You can dress as Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist

The Yosakoi festival is a set of dance teams who must perform a traditional Yosakoi dance with their own clever additions or changes. They must sing the original Yosakoi song, but they can alter the rhythm, jazz it up, or remix to their hearts' delight. And generally, they must include a truck.

That is all ornate wood-working. Wowza.

I do not understand why I am still writing in "caption" font. Dammit, Blogger! 

It's Independence Day

Wednesday (August 15th) was Korean Independence from the Japanese Imperialists - or literally Restoration of Light Day. Cheonan City, where I was staying and participating in VBS, was a major seat for the liberation movement during the three decades or more when Koreans were trying to shift the Japanese out of the country. My friend Esther decided to take us to Independence Hall, a huge park area with monuments and museums dedicated to the kicking out of those nasty Nihonjin. We all wanted to go, since several of the kids who came to help out with camp had never had an opportunity to sight-see (site-see?) in Cheonan, so we girded our loins, outfitted ourselves in cooler clothing and headed out to the middle of nowhere where the Korean government set up Another Asian Monument.

I wasn't kidding.

The monument is a series of eleven or more buildings housing recreations of historical documents, scenes, and paraphernalia. The recreations and models mean nothing you see is the original, but this also means you are free to and actually encouraged to photograph everything to show your friends. Especially about the evil Japanese. 

To be fair, the Japanese were pitiless, cruel, harsh, and evil to the Korean populace during the annexation and colonial rule of the Korean peninsula. They crushed the peasants with high food tariffs, sometimes just taking food outright to help support Japan who was going through a near-famine crisis (which of course put Korea through a near-famine crisis), taking metal implements so they couldn't make weapons, taking cloth, resources, money, etc... Just take, take, take. And not bringing a whole lot to the occupational table. They maintained "comfort women" for Japanese soldiers and officers from among the Korean population and exercised arbitrary and harsh legal grievances including the right of the police to arrest, detain, or execute whomever they wanted without any evidence. They were bad guys who did what most colonial bodies do when they take over a place. Try to crush its independent spirit to make it easier to govern from a distance. 

The Koreans rose up against the oppressors and basically fought for independence for almost thirty years. Largely supported by Christian groups and encouraged by foreign supporters, they eventually threw off the yoke of oppression and promptly fell into a civil war about whether to be communist or not. You can't win 'em all, I guess. But the grounds are beautiful.

    

It's hard to miss the signs of Korean nationalism around Korea. Whereas Palo Alto, California had to have a committee meeting about whether they were allowed to put up American flags on the fourth of July, Korea considers it part of being Korean to be almost fiercely nationalistic. While the Japanese strive to create a school-fish or herd of sheep mentality among its citizens, Koreans fight to light the fire of "They tried to kill us and we brought up others in our stead who are more powerful than they can possibly imagine" within the hearts of young Koreans. And not without just cause. Even my friend, who admitted to wanting to learn Japanese and enjoying Japanese dramas on television, had the knee-jerk reaction response to almost　all questions regarding Japanese and Korean relations - "We hate the Japanese." 

Yes, they did execute all the Korean royal family.

Yes, they did burn down the castle in Seoul.

Yes, they did imprison and rape thousands of Korean women. 

Yes, they did unlawfully detain and torture thousands of dissidents during the March 1st uprising, including a massacre of peaceful protesters that included women and children.

But can you really keep teaching hate in your schools? 

Of course you can! And why not?

At the English Academy I found some essays written by students about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. 

I appreciate the change in tone by the end of the essay.

If I were there, I would die. Dude, earthquakes happen almost everywhere!

 

The last note about Korean and Japanese antagonism is this whole thing about extra islands. I think Rony is right. Japan has many islands. Thousands of them. They don't know what to do with the ones they have, so why not let it go? On the other hand, does South Korea need an extra island? It has plenty of its own as well. Why not declare it neutral territory and let all those resources go untouched as long as people don't need them? But this is not an option. As firmly as the Japanese place their hands on something, equally determined is S. Korea's (and N. Korea's and China's for that matter) desire to get it back. They'll like us when we win? Hardly.

Let`s talk about Food

At the moment, I am rereading Julia Child`s "My Life in France" memoir about living in Paris and Marseilles after WWII and all the food and cooking she experienced while there. I feel to be a kindred spirit in this sense, because I just returned from Korea, a country with a rich and varied cooking heritage that I was able to partly experience during my brief and torrential trip this past month. There was a simple symphony of flavors, foreign and domestic, that rose to my lips over our eleven day journey.

This is not the actual bibimbap I consumed, but it is quite close.

On our first working day, we had bibimbap for lunch. Bibimbap is a mixture of veggies, pickled things, sprouts, and egg over a bed of rice. You can adjust the level of spiciness to suit your own taste using the included side bowl of red pepper paste that you are supposed to generously dollop into your bowl before you begin mixing. I was sparing in the addition of my pepper, painting the whole ensemble only a faint cherry color while my friend Hyeungen drowned hers in a veritable blood bath of spice. "Bibimbap is supposed to be RED!" she cajoled at me, while I timidly spooned another small portion into my bowl. I was trying to be brave, but I wasn't yet very good with spicy things (and let's be honest, I still am not). Japanese food is just not spicy. The textures are what put westerners off it. Raw fish doesn't agree with everyone and many people find Japanese food relatively inaccessible. Korean food is rather more mainstream in texture, but definitely more of a fireworks festival inside your mouth.   

Every meal was an adventure of sorts. There were no rock-solid plans for any given moment of the day. On occasion, my friend would say she had a meeting later, but for the most part, everything was free-flowing make-it-up-as-you-go-and-pencil-it-in-for-later. But meals were calm islands in the swirling social current of church affairs. You might work until after midnight and get up again at 5.30 the next morning, but it was inconceivable that you would skip a meal. And if it took two hours to head out to that barbecue buffet, so be it. If you felt there wasn't time to head out, then you could eat in the church cafeteria or order food. Korea is very small and the people are very impatient. Any kind of food can be ordered from any restaurant at any time and be delivered within thirty minutes, piping hot, regardless (apparently) of the weather, by little dudes on red scooters, running red lights and shedding paper napkins behind them like old plumage off molting parrots. "Polly wanna, get the hell out of the way! I gotta deliver this! Kahmsammida!"

Some nights we ordered a pizza – spicy as hell chicken, potatoes, broccoli, and a modge-podge of other non-pizza ingredients. When we worked late, it was fried chicken, teriyaki or tandoori-flavored, with toothpicks for forks and cans of coke to wash it down and keep us up. McDonald's and Domino's (dominos?) came to the church regularly; we had standing orders with several establishments, I found out. People can live at the church if they want to. There are dormitories for sleeping, boys and girls separately, and showers on the premises. The fully-functioning cafeteria downstairs produces rice en masse and fifty thousand kinds of kimchi every day. We ate every kind of kimchi, rice, more bibmbap, tonkatsu, soup, fried tofu, sprouts, sprouts, and sprouts, bitter vegetables, and more spicy stuff.

If you want to go out to eat, you have a plethora of options. Coming from a small town tucked into the rice paddies with only one restaurant that serves the train station some tempura udon, and only a few mom-n-pop shops in the neighboring towns, I found myself overwhelmed with choices that are routinely as out of reach as an hour-and-a-half train ride into Kochi, or a three-hour ride to Okayama. Once we went to a barbecue buffet place with a mix of different styles, meats, and regional flavors. Another time, we went to a seafood restaurant, but Hyeungen was reluctant to over-do the fish side of Korean cuisine because, let's face it, I live in the fish capital of the world.

The Korean ability to pick and choose and mix and fuse the best parts of the cuisines they liked was also appreciated. We went to a chabu-chabu (Japanese boiling method) Vietnamese fusion place and made our own rice paper spring-rolls with sprouts and veggies and beef and spicy sauce. 

First, you dip your rice paper in a bowl of warm water to soften it.

Then pile veggies and meat into it. Roll it up and presto:

I had coffee and espresso whenever I turned around. We had bread for breakfast, from an EXCELLENT French bakery, little airy yeasty melon-pan looking cakes, mochi with goma seeds, chestnuts and walnuts, a super crisp on the outside chewy and airy on the inside baguette with creamy sweet milk filling, warm dutch crunch rolls with cream cheese inside, soft white-bread cheese rolls, a sweet red bean paste filled nutty bread, and sandwhiches that were delicious. For dessert, it was frozen yogurt, ice cream, or an iceberg treat which I remember from Texas, but didn`t like as much then. A glorious little fountain of shaved ice with red beans, fruit and sweetened condensed milk all mixed up. So good!

We had ice cream for snacks at work, green tea ice cream and soda flavored ice cream (which tastes like bubble gum, bleh, but was novel at the very least). We had burgers at this burger place, two beef patties and a thick slice of juicy onion and tomato and cheese, no bun. I mean, why waste precious space on simple carbs? 

For lunch on Friday in Seoul, Esther and I had Italian food. I had a lasagna that was basically a lasagna with risotto rice instead of pasta and it was AMAZING. She had a garlic pasta, we both tried to pound down a pizza with extra cheese and brie. We couldn`t finish it all, but damn, we wanted to. After Independence Hall (see later post) we had a sort of beef stew that was basically mouth-meltingly tender pieces of beef on the bone and you pulled it off, cut it up and ate it with your rice. We had a cake for Joseph`s birthday and MC Donald`s for breakfast during VBS. I ate sparingly of that, but it was actually very balanced and not bad for you. Dude, it's eggs and toast and coffee. Oh, the coffee. I drank so much coffee, I had trouble sleeping at night, even though I was exhausted. 

At one dinner, Esther took our Up and Away, Sing and Play, Fly Away Finale group out for a king's dinner. This was a twenty-four course meal that basically only king's ate, way back in the day. I have pictures, but they're not too terrific, so just be patient. 

 You can see all the dishes.


  and also Keith's hand.

And at the end of VBS, the church took us all out to dinner, teachers, cast, crew, pastors, etc... to say thank you! We went to another seafood place, run by a member of the church, where I had simply the best crab I have ever tasted in my life. Tender, sweet, and ocean-fresh, we licked our fingertips as the kitchen staff explained patiently that, yes, you certainly can eat the shell. And why not?

There is a reason the Koreans use metal chopsticks. I was told, a long time ago, that the chopsticks were silver and thus when placed in poisoned food, they would instantly tarnish and show the delectables to be deadly. Since then, I have realized that the correct reason is because  Korean style eating is very communal. Everybody eats from the same dish, and no one worries about contamination or backwash. I have wandered into a singing rehearsal with my bottled water and the tenor and the soprano both said, "Oh! May I have some?" I naively assumed they meant for me to go retrieve them another bottle each, but the tenor simply relieved me of the bottle in my possession, drank from it and passed it to the soprano. Ah. I see. The communal nature of Korean food-sharing was brought home to me at the amusement park where Penny bought me a funnel cake and thereby earned my friendship for as long as we both shall live. Possessed of my fried goodness, I tried to share it with her and Taeyoung, both of whom politely excused themselves saying, "Later." I worried that I would have to eat the whole thing myself, a feat I normally could accomplish without batting an eyelid, but this day my tummy had begun its end-of-trip revolt. I wandered around for another three minutes worrying that I would have to throw the remainder away. I should have known. No sooner did we run into Sleki and another girl, did they pounce on the funnel cake and begin to devour it. Then Penny jumped in to get her fair share and I was left with the cardboard skeleton of an american classic. So the reason those chopsticks are made of metal? To fend your friends off of your food.