The New Jersey of Asia
On the ferry from Japan, I met an expat from Texas who has been living in South Korea the last three years. When I asked about his travels in Japan, he explained that he only does visa runs to Fukuoka and he’s never explored more than the embassy! His reasoning is that South Korea is “the dollar store Japan”; basically that the cultures are similar, but everything is cheaper. Obviously, we’ve had different experiences but I don’t believe he could be any farther from the truth.
I can confirm that a couple things are a lot cheaper (most notably transportation, internet access and soju), but beer and quite a few other things are about the same price. The other thing I find wrong about his statement is that there aren’t many similarities to Japan at all. With the exception of the population being Asian, the abundance of Hangul (Korean writing) and ever present smell of Kimchi, it feels more like a clone of America than an Asian country at all. Every American I meet here seems to share the same bewilderment, but claims that there are deeper aspects of the culture that you can’t experience in less than a week. That’s expected, but the resemblance on the surface is undeniably analogous.
Gangneung, is basically quiet suburbs attached to a minor city. A short trip through the farms and fields brings you to the beach. All of this is remarkably similar to the state of New Jersey, where I spent the last twelve years. I remarked on this to Melissa, who is also from NJ, and we got a good laugh about the irony of her ending up here.
see all my photos from the Gangneung Immyeonggwan Site
Between the short bicycle excursions, most of the time consists of catching up with Melissa and conversing with the small ESL teacher crowd that has settled here. I don’t really feel as if I’m traveling here. It is almost like a quick trip home before venturing further into mainland Asia. The only exceptions are the language barrier and excessive, overused amount of poor English and stupid sayings on people’s clothes. In fact, hunting for the funniest Kongrish has turned into one of my favorite pastimes. I’ve also spent some time in Melissa’s classroom entertaining the kids and helping with lessons.
The only real adventure of the week was found in a trip to the beach at midnight. A set of fireworks and soju (Korea’s traditional distilled liquor) we bought for $2 provided all of the entertainment we needed as we mingled with groups of locals gathering for summer night beach parties.
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Tags: - Photography, - Reflection, Asia, Gangneung, South Korea
Adam Shane
Sounds a little boring… all the more reason to come to China.. now!! It looks like I’ll be going to Xian to see the Terracotta warriors afterall, but I will be in ZhengZhou on Sunday!! I’m so out of shape the first few weeks will probably be brutal but I’m so excited! See you soon!!!!
can take the boy out of jersey, but cant take jersey out of the boy. ha! im sure you’ll find great fun in the weeks to come anyway brotha.
best wishes to you!