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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsHello Good folks of the lounge... I am back. (KIMI IS BACK!!!)
Last edited Mon Jan 13, 2014, 03:21 PM - Edit history (3)
I thought it would be a blast in South Korea, but It seemed I was the only one who could speak English, and my Japanese isn't all that good. I am so glad I brought a bunch of notes with me, just in case I needed to look up things. I don't have a lap top so I had to use my parent's one, and they get all touchy thinking I might end up pushing some button and erasing a life times worth of work. Meh.
Stayed at my Mother's grand mothers house. Lots of relatives I didn't know I had. Two young cousins were cute. Slept on a futon on the floor, which is no biggie for me, since I have one. The food at times was a bit spicy, but it was cold there, and I enjoyed that they actually had a fire place. I did not get the chance to go very many places, as most of the time we stayed at the house. Someone had a car, I don't know who, but they had to go off to work every day and take it... the kids walked to school, with an aunt.
Korean TV is weird... Anyway..I am so glad to be home. My parents promised a better trip to Japan in the future to go see my Dad's mother's house in Osaka and see his brother, my uncle.. I hardly even remember any of the Korean words I heard.. I am not good at retaining that kind of thing. My Japanese got me by a bit... but I would use English and get blank faces. :/
I don't think I would want to go back, frankly. But now I can say, I have been there, even though I was cooped up in a house with strange smells, 24/7.
Did I miss anything? I had heard about MFM..I still have some of his messages in my message box.. I cried a lot.
PS.. Photos I snagged off the internet, my mom has all the photos she took.
yuiyoshida
(41,831 posts)or should I say ..
jib-e osin geos-eul hwan-yeonghabnida!
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Hey, the only good thing for me was introducing jrock to my cousins who only heard Kpop. Now I have corrupted them with LOTS OF gAZETTE!
Kaleva
(36,298 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Good to be home!
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)I was wondering where you were. I missed you, your posts often brighten my day.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Gwanju City.. South Korea ...
held hostage with my Ipod since BEFORE CHRISTMAS
hunter
(38,311 posts)Or maybe vice-versa.
(I occasionally wake up in alternate universe San Francisco, sometimes San Diego or Mexico City. Never been to Korea.)
I'm always a danger to myself and others when I don't know what I'm doing.
Welcome back!
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Most of the stores had signs in Hangul.. I can't even speak it, or even read it. We always ate at home. My mother's step sister cooked, and I was always up for kitchen preparation. Cutting up veggies.. my mom told them about my food needs, so it was always fish or chicken for me. We ate a ton of kimchee..
Prepared it so often, I could almost do it blindfolded. I think I have had enough for a life time, frankly. Its funny, I was often called, (This according to my mother) the American Japanese cousin. I was often called Kimi~awn-nee. or, Kimi chan, (Japanese way).
hunter
(38,311 posts)...unfortunately of the Berkeley Breathed "Tales Too Ticklish to Tell" sort.
I know how to make both buttermilk from government surplus powdered milk and kimchee or sauerkraut..
I often eat and drink fermented food I make myself. Yeast and rye, slightly alcoholic at the moment...
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)interesting!
Kablooie
(18,632 posts)It's exclusively phonetic and the character shapes mimic the way your mouth forms the sounds.
It was designed to be a logical language by and ancient Korean emperor.
Completely different from chaotic written Japanese.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)That's what I learned!
struggle4progress
(118,282 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)struggle4progress
(118,282 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)of the correct phrase...in Japanese.. or say chotto matte...while I look something up. I am sure secretly they were glad to be rid of me...speaking Japanese may have been difficult for them as well. English was virtually non existent in the Park Family. I also did manage to tell them how I once went to go see Chan Ho Park pitch at Dodger Stadium. My mother had to translate most of my story for me. I bet she was wishing she should have taught me Japanese and Korean as a child! heh!
struggle4progress
(118,282 posts)so she could see all her brothers and sisters whom she hadn't seen since she left Germany during the terrible years of the mid-1920s
They were all delighted to see my grandmother -- mostly, it seems, because they all remembered that she never sent them money from America during WWII, and they wanted to be sure she knew how very angry they still were about that
Then one of my mother's cousins decided that my parents needed to hear "the truth" about the Nazi years, so he dug out an uniform to show them while he remembered how much fun he and all his friends had in the Hitler youth
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Well fortunately there was none of that.. I didn't really want to see where my mother inherited her anger from. woah.
bluesbassman
(19,372 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)arigatou! thank you.
Kablooie
(18,632 posts)I'm surprised that they know some Japanese there but not English though when I lived in Taiwan it was the same.
I didn't know Chinese but knew some Japanese so I could speak a little with some of the people I met.
Many of the older Taiwanese had to learn Japanese when Japan occupied it before the war.
It must be a little more difficult for Asian Americans when visiting Asian countries.
If you look European no one expects you to speak but if you're Asian they do.
My daughter, who's half Japanese, was visiting Japan with her Australian boy friend and they'd hand him English menus while she always got the Japanese one, (which she couldn't read).
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)We were "family" and ate at the table each night. Same bat time, same bat channel!
Kablooie
(18,632 posts)Japanese love showing their country and culture to visitors.
My wife's relatives were always welcoming and took me around to see the local sights.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)One of our Uncles, did drive us around a bit, only because my father wanted to see the city, but we mostly stayed at the house. I think my father got to go out to several places, but us "Woman folk" would often just stay at home and prepare the dinner for that night. What fun!
elleng
(130,895 posts)thanks for pics, and look forward to any tidbits you may have to share.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)an ancient mountain, or went to a Buddhist shrine..but no. The family did have a little space put aside for prayers. Light candles.. burn incense. We didn't go anywhere.. stayed home and waited for the Uncle to come home from work... At least I got to take a bath...I hate my shower. No one there screams at you for wasting water! Yush!
steve2470
(37,457 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)I wish I could have brought their bathtub home with me. One of those ceramic kind...with the three clawed feet. I would not have fit in my home, unfortunately...
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)しばらくだったね
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Senzai!
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)You mean, this?
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Senzai referred to like a huge long period in time. That's what it felt like...Like a century was going by!!
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)when written like this: 千載
I was making a joke, of course, with another meaning of "senzai"-- detergent! (洗剤
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)We've missed your humor here! I just found your Rice Krispies post and did a double-take:
AsahinaKimi is back!
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Good to be back in the ol' USA....for MY friends who think living in South Korea must be paradise, and that SHINEE...AND SNSD:Girls Generation are walking in the streets...its not like that at all.
There are no Super Junior members hanging around singing in the rain. Life there is not a Kdrama, and BoA lives in Los Angeles NOW!!!
no... no... no... (gee, gee gee!)
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Did I get it right? I don't know the HTML to get the little thing-a-ma-jiggies over the 'o'!
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)"Dou Itashimashite."
HipChick
(25,485 posts)Staying with this relative or that..
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Mothers, Mothers home. They took my passing grandmother home to South Korea the year before, so they were invited back of course. This time they had it set up so I could spend Christmas and New Years there. Nothing exciting really. I did experience South Korean home life, doing lots of chores, and contributing to making the meals, etc. I just wanted to come home to my cat... Not the kind of vacation I expected.
GoCubsGo
(32,080 posts)We missed you! Sorry your trip wasn't that exciting. I am already jealous of your potential trip to Osaka. Been wanting to go there ever since I saw that episode of "Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations". I would love to visit the whole country, Fukushima excepted.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Osaka is a beautiful city, from all the images I have seen...
My father says the family house is a few miles outside the city, in a very rural area. Its an old fashion Japanese home with tatami mats on the floor, and laid out in a very traditional way. My father joked, that you could smell the ancestors there... I am surprised the house was never sold but My uncle has preserved it as much as he could, with his three daughters helping them.
I look forward to meeting my cousins, especially Sachiko chan, who just got married to a nice Doctor from a local Hospital. I don't recall the ages of the other two, and have never met them. Sachiko did visit me about 10 years back...when she was still going to school. She had been on a break and came to the USA to visit her American Uncle, the Dr. Asahina.
Her English was not bad, but probably better than her two sisters. That I look forward to, where as I was not so comfortable in South Korea..with relatives I hardly knew.
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)I was wondering what happened to you! Glad you are back!
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)North Korea... I don't think I would have wanted to go there anyway. Everyone who goes there seems to disappear...and than Dennis Rodman goes and tries to bail them out.
Small joke... seriously...
I am so glad to be home. You don't know how many times I wanted to click my heels together and say..."There's no place like home...There's no place like home...There's no place like home..."
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Sorry to hijack your thread, AshiniaKim-san; but, your journal says you are an anime fan. Actually, as a science-fiction fan, I am too, and so are many of my friends. I belong to, what was once a Star Trek fan club, and is now just a group of friends that meet often. For our New Year's party, we watched Mamoru Husado's Wolf Children, a beautiful anime about the children of a human and a wolf man. This concept of a wolf man was totally at odds with the horror movie Wolf Man concept we get in the west.
If you haven't seen this yet, I recommend it! The imagery and the story are simply beautiful.
We've watched -and loved - other anime features, like The Secret World of Arrietty, and Hayou Miyazaki's wonderful Howl's Moving Castle. I really love Miyazaki!
I know many these are considered children's movies; but, we loved them. When I say 'we' I'm talking about people that have been meeting for 20 years; meaning many of us are in our 50s or older.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)The other two i I do not know, but I might know a place I can watch them. There is a website open to members only called: http://aznv.tv/ that features a ton of anime and movies, but you have to be invited to join. I still have my password, I think..I can look there and see if those two movies are listed. Would like to see them, thanks for the post
~~<3 Kimi
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)progressoid
(49,988 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)warrior1
(12,325 posts)Welcome back.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)thanks.
Kurovski
(34,655 posts)AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Locut0s
(6,154 posts)We don't talk enough , but I noticed your absence Sorry to hear your trip didn't go better, that you were cooped up at home most of the time, that can be real boring. I'd love to go back to Asia, but not under those circumstances. Still it sounds like you made the best of it welcome back to DU!
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)It's brighter already!
(but
what's with the strange smells?)
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Kimchee permeating the walls? Dry rot? I dun know.. it was just weird. I got used to after a while, so I guess It wasn't all that bad. Maybe it was the smell wafting down from North Korea?