So, I Was in Japan a Few Days Ago and...

While a guy friend and I were in Osaka, I realized I'd forgotten certain feminine products and had to buy them. We went into a 7-Eleven and I grabbed a box of said feminine products and a few other things I'd forgotten to bring.
"Do you really need that other stuff? Or, are you just buying it for distraction?" my friend asked.

I proceeded to tell him that yes, I needed them. I'm a 23 year old woman, I said, I don't get embarrassed about buying tampons at this point. As I said this, the Japanese girl behind the counter rang me up and then proceeded to carefully wrap up my tampons separately in a brown paper bag.

As my friend pointed out, in Japan, they'll apparently be embarrassed for you.



Oh, and this was The Cutest Thing Ever.

Jumping photos...

...are AWESOME.

Don't Wait Until Your Golden Years

A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad: 

I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; 

then, to have seen much and to have nothing, 

is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

- Rosalind, As You Like It

Shakespeare might not have approved of traveling but it has always been one of the most important things to me. I love seeing other cultures, learning other languages, trying new foods - I think it improves you as a person and makes you appreciate your life more. In some ways, I'm dreading going back to the United States after my contract ends and getting a career where I can't travel often.

Also, I read and hear so much recently about 'peak oil' that I think maybe I shouldn't waste time if I want to see the world. If you haven't heard much about this, my layman's understanding is this: there isn't that much more oil to be discovered in the world and what we have found is running out rapidly. Once we hit 'peak oil,' it will afterward become increasingly difficult and costly to extract oil. In fact, we'll never run out of oil, but it will eventually become more expensive to extract than it's worth.

Many people think we'll hit peak oil in the next 10 years, if we haven't already. There was a very interesting documentary on all of this, A Crude Awakening. Or, you can go to NPR (the only thing I really believe in religiously).

When we do actually run out of oil, economies will collapse, massive famine and poverty will ensue, etc. But on an extremely myopic and self-centered level, all this makes me think that I need to travel now. Unlike our parent's generation, there won't be any waiting 'til our Golden Years for us.

Book Recommendations

Since I get the chance for a lot of reading in Korea (and since I bought a bunch of super cheap, illegally photocopied books in Vietnam), here are, briefly, my recommendations.


Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

Man, this is some throwback to the 1970's, when tofu was still a novel "food." But in a rather awesome way. As the cover flap claims, it "deals with the problem of redheads."

My favorite quote:
"Who knows how to make love stay?

1. Tell love you are going to Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if loves stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning." 



Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

A month after finishing this, I am still puzzling over what this book was about. I think that says something about both its engagingness and it's amount of making me really effing confused. Awesome.

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory."





The Quiet American by Graham Greene

I read this while traveling through Vietnam. Graham Greene's writing is amazing, as is his take on the situation in Vietnam leading up to the Vietnam War.

"If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation."

"I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings."  





Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I feel I should strive to read at least 1 in 2 classics. Truth be told, I generally stay away from contemporary fiction. This book was amazing.

On a side note, as my friend pointed out, Marquez seems to have a fixation with erotic enemas - they're mentioned in almost all of his novels. Please don't let this dissuade you from reading this book.



And that is all for now.

A Brief Love Note

Dear Korea,

For the past few months, our relationship has felt a little rocky. I never stopped loving you (you're awesome! I feel like we get along so well) but, well, you really let yourself go over winter.

I have to tell you, though, that whatever you have been doing recently is working for you. Cause daaaamn, Korea, you are looking so fine.

XOXO,

Brooke

Gangnam (where I occasionally drink and carouse and am merry.)

It's been getting so warm here that I feel the urge to walk everywhere. Today, I woke up with a random craving for rice cakes, and decided I would stroll northward to find some.

I walked for a very long time until I came to the freeway. So, I walked over the freeway. 

The bike path over the freeway is pretty.

I ended up walking to Hangang Park. It is just now becoming spring. How beautiful.

In the background in the National Assembly building.

I climbed up some stairs.

 Hey, ajosshi, get out of my picture!

Then I walked along the raised path that runs around Yeouido. Yeouido is an "island" by my house where rich people live. They also broadcast TV shows.

Cherry blossoms!

The cherry blossoms were beautiful and so I was happy.

Yeouido park

Then I bought some egg bread and ate it in the park. It was delicious. This took about two and a half hours. The walking, not the eating an egg biscuit. I never did find any rice cakes, though. Man, I get up to random things when I'm hungover.

Mmmm, egg bread