This Blog is Not a Pun

My brain is suffering from strange and sporadic sleep, so I nearly named this blog something lame like "Seoul Searching" or "Seoul Power." But I overcame that strange, 5 am desire, and I am pleased to report that This Blog is Not a Pun. The title will probably change once I think of something jazzier, but right now I'm too tired to try.

To keep with the theme of jet-lag and sporadic things, I will begin with a stream of consciousness description of what's currently going on.

I am in Fukuoka, Japan. The toilet seat in my hotel room is self-heating. It's hard to understand the bus system when you don't speak Japanese. My lunch yesterday consisted of miso soup, a sampler plate of 6 ambiguous dishes (one being fish, one being a strange hambuger patty in soy-like sauce, one being unidentifiable vegetables in a grey sauce, one being a tasty potato and vegetable hodgepodge, one being more unidentifiable vegetable, and the last being a creamy squidge of ginger-decorated tofu), and unlimited rice. Instant noodles are basically the same as anything you'd buy in the international food aisle in Kroger, the one big difference being that I can't read the labels here. Bread and cakes are very squishy, very soft, very moist, very fun to sink your teeth into. Pokemon is even stranger in Japanese.

I'm getting my visa back from the Korean embassy later today, and after that I get to putz around for 8 more hours before I go to the airport to check in for my 9pm flight back to Incheon Airport. I might go see some temples and some castle ruins.

And now let's go back in time a little bit. Here is what I wrote in my notebook during the flight from Germany to Korea:

"I'm on my way to Korea. I can see my reflection in the personal television screen in front of me. I look tired and warm. There's a Korean man sitting next to me, and I'm afraid to ask him if he speaks English because I'm ashamed to have learned so little of his language this summer. I justify this by promising myself I'll sign up for Korean classes once we're settled in our new temporary home. He seems nice, even though we haven't said anything to each other. I suspect this will become a familiar feeling to me - the sense that someone is nice, but without the linguistic capacity to find out. It seems that you can get far with body language, though. The reasons I suspect this man is nice are that he smiles a lot, and he passed my empty plastic cup to the flight attendant for me. I may not become fluent in Korean this year (though by God I'll foolishly try), but I'll probably hone the skill of reading people's bodies and communicating with my own - in a sense, become fluent in body language.

For perhaps the second time in my life (the first being my first flight, because who can help but be excited?) I am looking forward to the in-flight meal. They're serving Korean food, and it's my first time eating bibimbop miles above Russia..."

It turns out I was right about both things. The man sitting next to me continued to be extremely nice, even though we couldn't say much to each other, and the airline food was actually awesome.