C.H.A.V - A.O.K

So I've held off writing this post for a long time now, because I assumed it was a premature observation; but goddamn Koreans are chavs.  Off the bat I'll say I don't know what the dictionary definition of a chav is, but here goes my attempt at describing one:

They like to wear gold.  Lots of gold.  They hang around in same-sex groups on street corners in the middle of the night, doing very little except drinking.  They raise their children in their own image, that is to say in a terribly unhygienic manner, while making them wear horrific amounts of gold nonsense of a value roughly equal to their shoelaces, to the weight of several kilogrammes.  They like to be extremely loud and spit a lot.

(Although all Asians spit, bizarre right?  If someone said name an attribute of civilised Asia (Japan and Korea being the only first world countries, would fit this description) you would (at least I would) say they're sticklers for etiquette and manners, but they all spit.  As mentioned before - bizarre)

If this sounds like a chav, then Koreans love the whole chav lifestyle.  When I first saw this phenomenon I assumed it must simply be indicative of the island I live on, but it happens in Seoul too.  Half of the children I teach are spoiled rotten, and the spoiled ones are clad in gold.  In an interesting experiment, it is possible to see a direct correlation between killogrammes of gold attached to the child, and how obnoxious that child is.

I wouldn't be surprised if they invented that whole lifestyle, because, frankly, they have it down to an art.

So in other news, I got my grubbies on another camera.

A friend said something along the lines of, 'I love seeing how places [accommodation] evolve once you started living in them.'

To prove a point, I took a picture now, two months on from the last one, to show how drastically my room has changed.

These are the 'after,' shots, which, apart from a ton of bog roll, are entirely indistinguishable from the earlier shot:

Maybe when I get round to unpacking it'll become a house rather than a box with some stuff in.

Then again, if I've not unpacked after two months, I don't see any reason to suspect I'll unpack after ten.

The lack of 'homeliness,' is an endearing feature in itself.

Upside-down orientation, and particularly uninspiring camera angle aside, this picture adequately demonstrates the aeronautical nature of the cake I purchased on Friday.  It was to celebrate hitting 87kg and 14% body fat, which is only 3kg shy of my desirable weight and under my perfect body fat percentage.

And this is the cool artsy shout out to Paris Baguette who made this particularly delicious cake.  It cost twelve pounds, but damn, it was a tasty twelve pounds.

On a side-note, if I ever purchase my own camera, expect to see a lot more pictures of cakes.





A side-effect of insane humidity is that nothing dries.  I have had days where a cool breeze has blown through my apartment for nigh on twelve hours straight, and my clothes end up wetter than when they came out of the washing machine.  Couple this with a severe laundromat shortage, and the result is one crowded clothes rack.  Things then dry more slowly because they've not enough room to dry, and the cycle becomes self-sustaining.  If anyone knows any tips for combating this, please let me know.

This is the view from the top of my street.  My building is the tall one on  the left.  Immediately behind that is a tall hill, and behind that is the sea.  You can climb over the hill to the sea (twenty minutes) or you can walk five minutes to the ocean front.  For the first time this weekend I chose the first option, and boy, it's peaceful up there.  At a guess I would say it's two hundred metres high (the hill in the picture just keep getting steeper if you look to the left) and at the top, to my amazement, was a...  Well, keep reading and you'll find out.

A month or so ago I commented that you can see mountains (or big hills, I'm not sure what exactly differentiates mountains and hill technically speaking) from any angle, anywhere in any of the towns on the island.  This is a fact lost on all my colleagues, as they simply ignore them, or when forced to acknowledge their amazing existence, just grunt.  This being the rainy season, these mountains can often be seen disappearing behind cloud cover, wisps of which lick up the side.  Again, it's fantastic to watch, and no one acknowledges it.

To illustrate my point, the following pictures are taken around my town of Okpo, from  many different angles and vantage points, to highlight the hillbound nature of the island.

This picture is taken from the back of my block of flats.  I'm not sure what they grow on the terraces, but there is a path up to them, and I will find out one day.

It would be easy enough to ask someone I suppose...

(Oh and see what I mean by the obsession with overly large cars here?  The island is tiny, but they think they're american.  All the women also think they're on desperate housewives, but more on that in a later article.)

If anyone ever says keeping chickens is difficult, you can rest assured, it isn't.  All you need is a lot of string, the ability to play cats cradle, and the windscreen from an old pre-winding window car, of any description.  Those items and skills coupled with an old desk, and you're sorted.

There's no way of really judging scale, but those are container ships.  They're big.  That crane is also big.  Everything is big here.

If you click on the picture and view it full size, you can see a latticework of white girders onboard both ships.  Those are the guides into which the containers slide.  I don't know how many containers stack on top of each other, but from a casual observation they hold roughly seventy-five in length.  I can't begin to imagine how many that ship will hold in total.  Seventy-five times the depth, times the number it can hold in width.  That's a lot.  Each container is the size of a lorry trailer, and you see them motoring all over Europe.  That's probably not a big ship as container vessels go.  Mind explosion...

At this top of this deceptively steep hill is my gym, and another mountain.

Everyone lives in flats here, there are no houses.

This was taken from the middle of the street, but I sensibly waited until the light had turned red before stepping out.   I normally cross when the coast is clear regardless of traffic light colour, but just like Japan, the locals only cross on green.  It could be four in the morning, all the petrol on the island could have run out, and the whole place could have two people on it and both of them would still wait for the green light.

Bizarre.

The sea is a millpond here, even in bad weather.  The harbour is massive and so well protected that I'm sure it would take something monumentally devastating to get the sea level to rise here.  This is lucky, because the front door to my block of flats is probably three metres above sea level.

Local fishing boat: Check.  Massive container ship: Check.  Mountains shrouded in cloud. Check.

This pretty much sums up Okpo in one picture.

So the pictures are in no particular order now, but I wanted to (yet again) demonstrate that you're no more than a glance away from a big, cool looking hill on this island.

Ok so somehow we're back to this little fishing vessel.  Much like the chicken coop, this thing is made from bits of old house and rope that the man found lying around.

Congratulations are due for making it seaworthy.

This is one of the tall-ships on display in the harbour.

I didn't get a chance to go on-board but

Ok I kid, this is actually a zoomed in version of:

I felt compelled to take a number of pictures of this model as a particularly horrible child was playing with it.  As we all know, toys are not meant for playing with as they will inevitably break; alas no one told this kid, so I'm sure it's been turned into kindling.

A final picture of the pretty-cool-looking boat not-in-a-bottle.

It really was well made.

Another insanely steep hill that looks like nothing from the bottom, especially with a wide-angle lense.  Trust me, this hill is a demon, and it's the only way to reach the biggest town on the island, as the bus-stop is at the top of the hill.

This is a view of Okpo, from across the bay area.  yes, I know, the horizon is insanely wonky; it's surprisingly difficult to take a picture with a level horizon when you're as stupid as me.

The problem is that I always frame the picture thinking 'oh that looks cool,' with no thought as to the horizon, then when I get it back on the computer, the horizon is completely skewed.

One day I will learn... Maybe.

I like this picture because I think it gives a representative view of how much space the bay takes up, and what the town is all about.  Shipping and ship building are the primary employers of the area, and all other services are built around catering for that very industry.

This is looking out to sea.  Past the oil derricks being constructed, past the two prongs of land, is the big, wide, scary open sea.

There is a fun little walkway that takes you around the outside of the mountain I described earlier.  It's a bit rickety, but it's fun nonetheless.

The rickety walkway leads you to blown highlights and this manky little pebble beach.

This is a picture of a rock.  I don't know why I took it, but I did, so here it is.

Also notice the severe lack of a level horizon once again.

This tug was moving something big and heavy looking.  I don't know what it is, but the centre of gravity must be pretty high, let's hope he doesn't try any hand-brake turns with that badboy.

This is the view from the top of the hill behind my flat.

This is (obviously) looking out across the water, the other side was somewhat more spectacular however...

It really was this colour too.  I haven't edited any of the pictures, and this is what I saw as I poked my head over the top of the ridge.

At the top were a group of plaques dedicated to a number of different countries.  I can only imagine they're the countries either Okpo or Geoje have had dealings with in the past.

They have a similar setup along the main high-street in Gohyun, only this flag is attributed to England.  Someone took offence to this and scribbled out England with a marker pen.

This gazebo thing had a warning attached saying: Please do not use this building when severe weather warnings have been issued.

I promised myself that, should a severe weather warning be issued, I will make my way to that very spot.  If I have a camera with me, all the better.

This is my favourite picture of the top of this hill.

Interestingly, there is a free outdoor gym type place with a number of interesting machines, just underneath the ledge.  I will head back up there when I'm bored and try out some of the machines.  It's probably a twenty minutes run up the hill, and a fifteen minute run downhill, so it will be decent, free exercise.

And this is the main street into Okpo, from the very top of a large hill.  It was taken in the twilight, which is why the colours are all strange.

Here, more than ever, you can really appreciate the hilly nature of this island.  The towns are nestled among the hills, and when seen from above, are really dwarfed by the greenery.

Of course when you're inside the towns, everything is very tall, and the greenery can feel somewhat distant.  Now you've seen this picture, you know differently.

That's all for this bumper edition 151st post.

I've not had much free time to add entries lately, so hopefully this bonanza edition will make up for some lost time.

What I did Today:

What I did today was get very wet.

I decided to go to the botanical gardens; and seeing as today is my second to last full day in Kyoto, come hell or high water I was going to see these gardens.

Knowing this, He gave me high water.  It's the most rain I've seen since I've been here (including the 'typhoon' (if you want to call it that) because I was asleep when that hit, so I didn't really see any of it) and it finally enabled me to put on my waterproof trousers!  They saw some in anger use, finally!

The gardens are actually really nice, and they fit the tempo of the area to a nicety.  Kyoto is a relaxed city, if that's not an oxymoron.  It's certainly a lovely place to be, and I wouldn't mind teaching in this area.  Hell; I'd love to teach here.

After that expedition I went chinese dress hunting.  Kyoto is as traditional as it comes, and with that come traditional values.  Traditional values essentially means there are no chinese shops in this area, let alone ones selling chinese dresses.  I will continue my brave search however; maybe into the furthest reaches of Tokyo, who knows.

On another note, JET applications started today.  I spent an hour filling in the forms I'll need, only to find out their 'save' option doesn't appear to work.  It's going to take a considerable amount of time to complete, that's for sure...

If you're reading this JET officers:  Please let me come back here!  Please!  I'm begging you!

I'll put the photographs of today up when I have some time, but at this rate that may well be after I arrive back in England.

The Great Camera Review!

In importing this post from openoffice there were a number of formatting errors, as a result the following post is probably going to be all kinds of screwed up.  Sorry about that.

So in Japan there's a department store called Yodobashi camera. I don't know how to spell Yodobashi in Japanese, if I did I would write it here now. This begs the rather obvious question of how I know which store is Yodobashi, and which isn't. This is easily answered by a Japanese phenomenon I am going to call, 'jingle fever.'

It begins when you leave the airport on the first day, and continues until you leave the airport on your final day. I suspect however, that the jingles continue long into the memory. I know the final lines of the Yodobashi theme tune for example, and I've only been in there a few times to peruse their goods and buy a mouse.

Cute sells here, cute sells a lot of things. If porsche wrapped their latest hypercar in a fluffy hello kitty outfit and bought it here, they would sell out in seconds. 'It's okay dear, we can live in the car...' This barrage of cute doesn't stop at the visual and endorsement aspects of daily life, it also hits your eardrums. If eardrums could acquire plaque...

The train stations have a little jingle when a train is coming in, and when an announcement is being made. Every department store has its' own theme. The convenience stores here even have their own themes; seven 11s is particularly funny, as they manage to leverage the final three syllables of e-le-ven into a two syllable tune – becoming le-ven. Therefore, all Japanese people call se-ven e-le-ven, 'se-ven lev-en.' It makes me smile, no matter how many times I hear it.

So coming full circle to the beginning of this post; I can spot a Ydobashi from fifty paces, not by the visual cues, but because of the jingle that rings out around the shop.

I've taken a number of pictures of the business district around here, because there's some serious work going on. There are more department stores (presumably department stores) going up, and they are gargantuan. The Yodobashi is twelve storeys of shopping floors with a further four or five of storage (at a guess) with five floors below ground, two for shopping, three for parking. This sounds very tame height-wise, by Japanese standards; but the surface area is enormous. Everything here has an american influence, and their street design is no different; so everything is arranged in blocks. The Yodobashi takes up half a block in all directions. It's massive.

So now we arrive at the actual point of this post. Drumroll please... The great camera review!

I've wanted a DSLR for some time now, but haven't really had the need for one. (Need is subjective of course. I don't need a camera like I need, for example, air.) Coming to Japan has shown me that actually, having an exceptional camera would afford great picture taking opportunities; and I've steeled myself for some kind of DSLR purchase.

So Yodobashi camera, despite the name, aren't solely camera based. It is however in their origins, and they have an entire floor dedicated to photography equipment, so there's no better place to go in order to try them out bar perhaps being a camera reviewer of sorts.

Depending on your approach, the first choice is either make or model. If you go with Canon, you are stuck with a few 3rd party lenses and Canon lenses only. If you take the Nikon route you have a larger range of lenses in the Nikon range, and a large number of third party lense manufacturers. Having nosed around the lense section though, it seems Canon, despite having a smaller range, is still well catered for.

This is important for the simple reason that once you've got a couple of lenses for whichever model, switching to a different manufacturer is going to be far more costly. No one wants to replace lenses when they have perfectly good ones sitting on their desk.

This makes the manufacturer choice all the more important.

The Nikon D3000 caught my eye; so I tried that out. From the top down, both Canon and Nikon (the two I narrowed it down to) have an identical menu system from the top of their range through to the bottom. This means if you've picked up one of their other cameras, you're immediately familiar with the one you're holding now. This is extremely good in theory, and works particularly well for Canon. Not for Nikon however, as their menu system is not very intuitive. After finding the setting for 'change me to English,'(日本語) (Japanese I think) navigating is easy enough, but changing settings can prove to be a pain in the backside. And finding them was a little tricky too. That's not to say this system is impossible to use; with a little practice, and some custom menu settings in place I'm sure changing what needs to be changed would be easy enough.  I believe the Canon does have the advantage here though.

I think this is primarily due to the Canons' menu layout. The Canon has a two menu system, where half a dozen different menus are selectable at the top, then depending on which has been chosen, a number of options are displayed. The Nikon seems to just throw everything at you all at once.

Both have customisable menus, which means you can put the settings you change most often right at the top of the menu list, for immediate access. I think overall Canon gets the nod here, but after a little practice they'd both be usable.

The D3000 was pretty light, and easy to use overall. The body was a little small, but that's probably good in the long run. One complaint I have about all the Nikon lenses I tested was the fuzziness of the focus ring. It felt like it'd been oiled one too many times, it slid around with no effort and required a more delicate touch than the Canon equivalents; I don't do delicate.

The D3000 was pretty solid overall; but then I moved from there onto the big daddy. The D3. This is the camera for professionals, and has the professional price tag. It's heavy, and big, and generally feels great to hold. This is where I move on to complain about the Nikon cameras a little more. All the cameras have a large number of focus points to choose from; but being able to choose which the camera should use is a pain in the backside with the Nikon, where it's simply a single button press with the Canon models.

The Nikon has so many buttons and things to press and twiddle that I spent five minutes figuring out how to get it to autofocus on what I wanted; when I managed to set this up however, it was amazing. I don't know how many fps it shoots, but it was too fast to review them all. Obviously I can't talk about image quality, but they seemed sharp when I reviewed them on the screen, and the focus worked perfectly every time. Of course it's indoors and the conditions are perfect, but the cheaper Canon SLR's missed a trick every now and again when continuous shooting; one would turn up a little blurred. Maybe it's just because it's in the shop and has probably been brutalised by the customers.

Overall, I think the D3000 is a little too whimpy. The D3 is probably out of my price range, considering it costs as much as a car...

The big daddy Canon offering wasn't available on the shop floor, but the next best thing, the D7 was available.

In a nutshell. I want this camera. It's brilliant. The menu is a piece of cake to run through, the settings are easy to change on the fly, even for a complete beginner like myself. The focus options are intuitive to use, being mapped to a single button on the body, instead of being buried inside the menus like the Nikons. The zoom and manual focus of the lenses were a treat, while the autofocus was damned near instant. I want this camera! It's a shame about the price though... Another car would sit on the forecourt if I bought this camera.

If a millionaire is reading this, please buy me the D1 mk4 when it comes out. If Jesus is reading this, please buy me the D7 or the D5 mk2. I can't afford either, but one can dream, right?

In light of the entire post being about cameras, and not my travels, it is worth pointing out that Osaka is not very nice. It doesn't have as many big attractions as the other areas (it has a zoo and stuff like that) besides the Osaka castle, which is fantastic, there's not a lot else to do other than shop, eat and drink. (Well, to this untrained eye it seems this is all Osaka has to offer. (Of course there will be more under the surface)

Maybe that's why it's hedonistic?

On a separate note, I'm back to Kyoto tomorrow.  Yay!

Kyoto Shrine Travels

So the first day in Kyoto was a travelling day.  Travelling by shinkansen meant that I really could have gone to at least one temple that day, but I didn't realise I'd be so relaxed by the time I got here.  So I did nothing bar more relaxing, which incidentally seems to be a strong theme in Kyoto.  Japans' relaxed capital.

So the next day I went with Pascal to visit temples and shrines around the Kyoto area.  I took about 200 photographs; far too many for here, so I'll try and pare them down a little.

Here goes...

So of course blogger is being stupid again, so uploading the pictures is proving rather difficult.  I just have to write with no paragraphing I think.  Anyway, here goes for a second time.  This is the entrance to the first temple grounds we entered.  It's quite big, and is every bit as impressive in person, as it is in this picture.  It has a number of temples inside, unlike a lot of places that have simply one entrance and one temple.

I should probably use my space more wisely, rather than posting a non-descript picture such as this; however I like it, primarily because of the generic nature of it.  Most of the places look like this.

So yet another pond with a bridge over it.  As stereotypical as it may seem, there are lots of these in Japan.  This day was actually really bright, so the challenge was reducing glare, more than trying to find a nicer position.  In this spot it looks cloudy or dark even.  I assure you it wasn't.  The hundreds of steps in Kyoto definitely wore us out.

And here we see an example of those many, many steps.  Above this point were another two sets of steps  like these; even the native Japanese were resting when they reached the top.  Then again they may have been travelling from Tokyo, where every incline has an escalator.

This is the view from halfway up the stairs.  I was too tired to take any pictures once I reached the top!

Here is another shrine peeking over the top of some stairs.  It's difficult to distinguish the differences between them, other than their size and colour.  That is until you go inside, where they all have a different arrangement of religious paraphernalia, along with varying amounts of gold.

You can just about see the leaves starting to change colour for autumn in this picture.  The Japanese are very proud of their seasons, and the distinctive weather and foods they bring.  Kyoto is also especially beautiful in Spring, with the cherry blossoms (a national obsession over here) and in autumn, with the orange and red leaves.  Unfortunately I've come to early for the leaves, and months too late/early for the cherry blossoms.

So this is the view from another of the sets of stairs we climbed.  It was even better in person, but I think it gives you a good idea of the size and scope of the mountain we were climbing.  And just how many people live in such a small area, Kyoto only has a population of 1 million or so!

So I'm also including this one for no real reasoon.  It's not a spectacular photograph, I just like it.  Erm...  That's about all the description I can give really.

So lots of women wear the traditional dress in Kyoto; getting them to pose for a photo is somewhat difficult though.  At least I thought so, until we met a Japanese girl who was extremely forceful in asking for photographs.

So this little tea room marked the beginning of a fantastic walk along a street that sold traditional crafts and clothes; coupled with a bizarrely out of place boutique fashion place selling lime green items of, presumably, fashion.  Who would buy such things is beyond me though.

This is the street.  It extends for a long way and takes a number of gravity defying climbs and claustrophobia inducing streets to reach the end.  It's full of shops and restaurants, and quite a few people.  It screams asia to me.  You could transplant this into any far eastern country, maybe add a little fish gutting in the mainland areas, and it could be in a movie.

I was so proud of myself for managing to get a good quality photo of some girls wearing traditional dress.  How easy it would later prove to be...

Look at how many people there are!  Tons of loud kids too.  Despite the large volume of people it was still a great site.  This is the second temple/shrine area we visited, and contained a number of brilliant things.  These included a couple of fellow tourists who we later explored a shopping area of Kyoto with.  Unwillingly on my part, it must be said!

I'm not sure what this building does, or did, but it was recently painted by the look of it, and deserves an honourable mention for the brightness of the paint standing in contrast with the dark woods of the rest of the area.

The mid afternoon sun peeking out from behind the building above.

So this is overlooking the city.  It was a really great view, I just hope some of it can be translated in this picture.

A view of the pagoda that's one of the main features of this area.  You can see it from a fairly long way away, despite it only being a few storeys high.

So everyone knows mountains are a real pain to build on; yet they insist on doing it here.  Why why why...  The result is that basically the views are fantastic both from the platforms, and looking back at them.  Good job, monks!

So this is another shot of the temple.  Inside is  a shrine to (something), but despite not knowing what, I do know it matches the splendour of the outside by being loaded with gold.  Everything is gold; gold as far as the eye can see.  Inside at least.

I include this picture for comedic value only.  This girl was having photographs of her taken by a professional photographer, so she's either a model, or she's some kind of model.  Therefore I figured I'd go and ask for a photograph and try to make her laugh; which I succeeded in doing, but only  after the photo  was taken.  Damn her professional attitude!  But yeah that kind of getup takes an extremely long time to put on.

The leaning tower of Kyoto!

There was a shirt shop...  I really badly wanted to get a shirt here, but they were 20 pounds for a single stupid slogan, and 30 for one printed front and back!  To expensive for my tastes unfortunately.  I took a photo of all the different options available, and corrected the guys English in the hopes of buttering him up enough for a discount.  No dice.

I should probably have spent more time putting in pictures of Kyoto, rather than these stupid shirts; but come on now, who doesn't love the bottom left one?

Five great big gold stars for effort, but only two for execution.  Still, this will be the last t-shirt one I promise.

Ok this is the last one.   It's a shame this one is so blurred, but you can still make out the writing.

And that was a couple of days ago.

I'm super expert!