2 weeks of fun and insanity

Where should I begin?  I don't even know....this is going to be a big post.  I can tell that much from the beginning.  Okay so in a flash of brilliance I just copied and pasted from the mass email I sent a few of you so as to save time and sore hands.

I participated in a local YAMAKASA festival with 2 teachers from my high school.  I wore tradtional clothing with included "Jika tabi" = 2 toed booties often associated with ninja's. And a "Shimekomi", which is more like a sumo mawashi (for those of you who don't know what a Mawashi is, it is the ONLY thing sumo wrestlers wear when competing).   It is about 15-20 feet long but folded and wrapped several times.  They tie it in knot in the back and pull it so it goes snuggly UP yer rear, much like a thick canvas G-string.  Then the front has a big swath hanging over it....so you are wrapped tightly in canvas and then have a big flap covering you in front. And then for a top you wear a HAPPI....which is hard to explain, but basically a wide sleeved shirt that ties in the front with a big Japanese character on back...this is to announce what section of the city our group represents.  To add a finishing touch we all put on headbands, do some chanting and clapping to get us all "pshyched" and then run to the designating meeting place for the festival to begin.  About 1,000 guys come out dressed like this and we race through the city streets in teams, pushing/pulling/turning these gigantic wooden floats with 4 guys sitting on top directing and cheering on the pushers!! The city streets are completely lined with spectators who cheer and dump buckets of water or hose you down to keep you cool and give you power (chikara mizu) It was absolute MADNESS!!!

I haven't been so utterly and completely exhausted in a long time.  Afterwards we all went out and partied. Although tired and sore and soaking wet, I would have to rate this as one of my craziest and most exciting experiences to date.  Although I don't find the shimekomi to be very comfortable, I am very much looking foward to next years festival, and perhaps even winning the race for our section of town!!   I then got up 4 hours later and went to work!! I have pictures, most of which are suitable for viewing! HA!! 

Following that unforgettable experience I decided I still wanted more. 

Off I went to Korea with a Japanese friend of mine (Akiko Takayama) rather suddenly after she was unable to meet up with a Korean friend she has here.  She didn't want to cancel her tickets and I had a 3-day weekend ahead of me and have always wanted to visit Korea. SoooOOo off we went!!

Our first 5 or 6 hours in Korea proved to be quite trying on us...  We tried to exchange our Japanese currency into Korean before leaving Japan but for some STRANGE reason the exchange window was closed when we got there at THREE PM!?  So they said don't worry the exhcange is open until the last boat arrives on the Korean side so you can just do it there!  Oh, well super-dee-dooper! WRONG!!! We get off the boat and the exchange is shut down so we are in Korea with no Korean currency and...(I found this out when we were thinking of what to do {Both my WSECU Credit card AND my Washington Mutual debit card are EXPIRED!!!}) But no problem, Akiko has a Japanese credit card with a visa logo on it so we're fine right?  WRONG!! She can't remember her pin number for the ATM because all she ever uses it for is shopping so she just signs the reciept!   No problem the info desk lady says at the ferry terminal, you can pay for your hotel in Japanese yen or with a credit card. Right ok so go to the hotel and get some food and sleep with Akiko's credit card and exchange money in the morning!  We're going to be just fine right? WRONG!!

Here we are in Korea at 9pm with NO Korean money and NO ATM access....so we CAN'T ride the subway to our hotel because we don't have the equivalent of 50 frickn' cents in Korean wan to ride our way 2 stops down the line to our hotel.   So we figure no problem people here speak more English than in Japan so we'll just ask to borrow from someone or see if we can't offer to go into a convenience store and have Akiko pay for a pack of cigs or something with her card and have the person give us the change for the same price....NO ONE understands at all.  Crap.  So next I see 2 white guys walking along run up to them and start blithering about our troubles....until I realize they are looking at eachother and scratching their heads.  Then one of them opens his mouth and I instantly recognize the same heavy slavic accent as the guy who tried to sell us the stolen/totalled car in Everett 6 years ago!!  MIGHT have been English, I don't know!? 

SoOoO we go to a police station and meet an officer who speaks OK English.  Instead of just offering to give us the 50 stink'n cents we need to ride the subway, he tells us all the money exchanges will be closed this weekend because it is a national holiday, so then after confering with OTHER fellow members of the Korean POLICE force, he suggests we either walk 45 minutes to our hotel, OOOOOR go to the main train station and look for bookies who ILEGALLY exchange money for a lop-sided rate!!!  This is from a POLICE OFFICER!?   We are flabbergasted.  

Finally we run into some younger Koreans (mid 20's ) who speak about 3 words of English.  I manage to gesture that we have NO WAN but we need to ride the subway, so can we CHANGE YEN for WAN?  He agrees to this and we swap with him giving him about twice as much as he gave us because we were so glad to finally be able to ride the subway! We ride the subway to the hotel and prepare to pay in Japanese YEN like the KOREAN woman at the tourist information desk said we good...but OoOOH NO!!  They only take KOREAN!  (In case you haven't picked up on this yet it seems INFORMATION desks are quite efficient at despensing information....the only PROBLEM with this is that on rather important topics such as foreign currency, they dispense WRONG information!!  But this time we are OKAY>  They take VISA and all we need after they swipe Akiko's card is her signature.  FINALLY a break.  So after collapsing in our hotel room we decide that it is only 9pm and we should trek to the main train station and ask around about banks or hotels that have exchanges.

We make our way to the train station and go to the tourist information desk, where a nice woman who speaks a tad bit of Japanese references us to the hotel next door which has a money exchange.  YES!!!  We run to the hotel and find the front desk, a big money exchange sign with the current rates, and a woman in uniform sitting behind it!! We rip out our wallets with stupid grins on our faces.  "Can we exchange money please?" we ask....  "NO, NO MONEY, ONLY ROOM CHARGE ONLY."  Says an old guy sitting next to the woman.  HA!! I say, there is an exchange sign here with the current rates all lit up!!  "No exchange, only room charge" they say again.  At this point I am am doing that thing they do in Loony Toons cartoons...you know the whole flapping your finger across your lips while your eyes rotate in opposite directions as you utter incoherent sounds that would look something like "Blaleeebaleeeeballeeeeballeeee!!" if one attempted to type such a ridiculous thing.  (which I just did.)

Right so NO exchange. Back to the train station's info booth we go.  This time they call out a young fella who speaks pretty good English.  We explain our sitiuation to him for about the bazillionth time, and he promptly leads us back to the SAME hotel we were just turned away from. Right maybe there was a mis-understanding do to the language barrier!  NOPE. Despite valliant efforts in flawless Korean, our natvie-born helper is also shut down.  So he shrugs his shoulders and leads us across the street and into some shady looking allies.  We see signs posted all over the place with dollar signs and yen signs!!  They were everywhere!! He explained we probably wouldn't get the best rate because these were illegal shops that the police ignored that mostly pimps, bookies, or foreign shady black market-types used, but that they were open and we could get some cash. DEAL.  FINALLY.  After some older rather not so on the "up and up"  looking Russian guys left with wads of American money in their shirt pockets, Akiko and I FINALLY swapped our travel money from Japanese yen to Korean WAN!   YAY!!!  *cheers, bows, roses are thrown*    

That was the first day of a 4 day trip.  The rest went MUCH more smoothly.  I had a great time over all.  Might I just recommend exchanging money before you leave your base country DESPITE any assurances you get about how easy it is to take care of once you arrive in the country you are visiting.