Seoul 2014 - sights to see

My mom and I said farewell to the horde and we headed into the neighborhood to see what there was to see.  We ended up walking a couple miles or so over the course of the day up and down the hilly streets of the Itaewan area...

...perused the street fare...

...and ended up at the lovely Leeum Samsung Art Museum

Seoul 2014 - dining out with the horde

The first evening meal in Seoul with an amazing representation of the world with Germany, Poland, US, Australia, Iran, China, Japan and South Korea represented here for a dinner featuring kim chee soup.  The less stout of the stomachs around quailed a bit at the spice but it was very tasty to my point of view.  Jet lag was definitely hitting some of the travelers hard as they struggled to stay awake at what was 3:00 AM home time.  At least there were foot wells here so our legs weren't asleep, too!

Seoul 2014

Well, Typhoon Phanfone passed through Tokyo right on time so that the skies cleared and the sun came out just about an hour before we were due to head out of our little house to catch the train to the airport. Many profuse apologies could be heard along the way for the little delays caused by the weather. The plane was late leaving Tokyo and we ended up landing about 10:00 PM in Incheon.

Beautiful airport...poor defenseless cacti...

Typhoon Phanfone

Oh by the way - we're taking bets whether we'll be on our flight to Seoul tomorrow evening...  (story here)  ... We narrowly missed a typhoon last year leaving Seoul for the US; that one turned inland to China at the last opportune moment. Phanfone looks to park itself over Tokyo either 12-24 hours before we leave OR just as we're leaving.  Tokyo seems to be taking it relatively in stride with the big complaint being the cancellation of a Grand Prix Formula 1 race.

Tokyo part 2

We had a beautiful day yesterday hanging out with my high school buddy, Sue B., who has been living in Japan for about 8 years now.  On the itinerary was walking, the Imperial Palace,

more walking,getting lost in the insanely huge Tokyo station

(which meant more walking - searching for the underground Ramen Road for a lunch of noodles),

more walking to get back to the fountain park where we sat for a long while eating dessert, talking

and watching the neighboring couple freak out at the sight of a ginormous orange-headed bee-thing (this thing was literally an inch and a half long - one of our yellow jackets would fit in its abdomen).

We ended the day back in one of Sue's favorite parts of the city, Sensoji Temple in Asakusa.

Perfect end to a perfect day!  Arigato!

Sumire House, Japan

I'm sorry to see that it's been a year since my last posting - sad state of affairs, eh? But at least I've got a good reason for posting now - a report from Tokyo!

After leaving on October 1st and a long and thankfully uneventful flight we landed at Narita airport on the afternoon of October 2nd. The international date line always bends my brain...

Our humble abode for the next few days is Sumire House, a tiny house that survived WWII, amazingly so considering how much of Tokyo burned.  It's also amazing that the house has survived given the single strand knob and tube wiring mounted against the original wooden ceiling beams - not in use any longer; unlike another house we know that had knob and tube wiring used until 2005.

I don't have so much of an issue, but Resident Spouse needs to watch the beams at key junctions.

Sokcho not in the cloud

Been in a bit of internet limbo now that we've moved to the condos where all the competitors are staying. The internet cafe gets me online for about a dollar for 30 minutes but the stinking browsers are all in Korean with no options for translation. Oy! Even Google is in Korean...but I finally got logged into gmail and from there to Blogger...so here I am. Anyway, it's been a fantastic two days here. We got a little beach time, a little time in town, a little history time (the latter at a little town that has about the only original traditional architecture around because everything else was bombed flat during the Korean War). Apparently this little town was saved because it is nestled in a valley between a couple, three small ranges and nobody could see it to know to bomb it. The beach was nice - we were at a small pocket beach near town. This was different from some of the other beaches we've seen because there's no barbed wire blocking access. The watchtowers were in evidence though, apparently keeping an eye out for the stray North Korean invasion... Yesterday us non-archers stopped by the arena to check things out before going on our merry way and it's always so interesting to watch the people and horses, with each acting out in their own ways. There are times the machismo is as thick as the sticky rice we've gotten for lunch.