Roka Koshunen , Tokyo

This weekend's outing was to Roka Koshunen (Garden). This small park is named after the Japanese writer and philosopher Roka Tokutomi, the pen name of Kenjiro Tokutomi. He lived with his wife in the house in the grounds from 1907 until his death in 1927. She donated the land to the city of Tokyo to be used as a park in 1937.

There is a small museum dedicated to the writer with a display of some of his belongings. Also exhibited are examples of his many published novels and a copy of a letter he received in correspondence from Leo Tolstoy who was very interested to know more about his beliefs.

When Roka lived there it was a rural backwater, now it is now a small oasis of trees in the middle of a heavily built up area. My photos of the three thatched houses that made up his property didn't come out very well, so instead, here's a photo of a small green insect that landed on me.



To get to the park take the number 23 bus from the bus stop near the South exit of Chitose Karasuyama station on the Keio line out of Shinjuku.

Thanks to Susan Pompian, the author of the book "Tokyo for Free" in which we found the details of this delightful little garden. We shall be following a lot more of her suggestions.

Dating and Dating for Dollars in Daegu Nov 24

Another forum on which I often give travel advice about South Korea is Trip Advisor.

Whilst sifting through the hoards of "what should I do in Seoul for 8 hours" questions I noticed an event that may be of interest to anyone in Daegu on Nov 24 2007.

A Canadian lady called Mel is organising a "Dining for Dollars and Wooing for Won" evening at the Moon Hwa Wedding Hall near MBC juction in downtown Daegu. The theme of the evening is speed dating and gambling. The proceeeds go to charity projects in both Korea and Kenya.

She's already raised $600 in her previous fund raising effort for a orphanage.
More details on her website MelsProjects

Jindai Botanical Gardens

This Sunday's day trip took us to Jindai Botanical garden. On the western side of Tokyo, in Chofu-shi , it was established by the Metropolitan Government in 1961. Over 4,500 varieties of plants are artfully planted in the 425,000 square meter gardens.

These fountains with surrounding rose gardens are in front of the large greenhouse.

It is the end of the Chrysanthemum season and Jindai, like Shinjuku Gyeon last week, had put on a spectacular display. This is just one plant:

There was also a display of bonsai Chrysanthemums.


This rather large hornet was busy pollinating the camellias.



There are several different routes to the gardens. From Shinjuku we took the Keio Line to Chofu station. We took the number 14 bus from bus stop number 14 at the North exit and got off after 10 minutes at the stop just after the Jindai Temple (one of the oldest in Japan) on the left.

Admission is 500 Yen for adults. Open from 9:30am to 5pm. Closed on Monday, except when it's a holiday when it's closed on the Tuesday.

Chrysanthemums in Shinjuku

We discovered the amazing Shinjuku Gyeon this afternoon. This beautifully landscaped park, just a few minutes walk from the hustle and bustle of Shinjuku, is an oasis of calm and greenery.

We were also delighted to find that the annual chrysanthemum display was taking place.

This, believe it or not, is just one plant.



The hundreds of flowers are teased and shaped using a unique technique to produce this remarkable display.



The Ichimonji and Kudmono-giku bed was a spectacular display of these two flower varieties.




The final flower bed on the route through the park is the Ogiku bed. 311 large flowered Chrysanthemums are planted in diagonal stripes. This style named Tazuna-ue is a speciality of the Shinjuku Gyoen.



The display is on until Nov 15. So hurry on down to Shinjuku Gyeon. The entry fee is only 200 Yen and the park is open from 9:00 until 16:30 (Last entry at 16:00). There are three entrance gates the Shinjuku gate is about 10 minutes walk from Shinjuku station.

For those of you unable to get to Tokyo to see it, the New York Botanical garden has a very similar display running until Nov 18th.

Odds and ends on blogging

One new feature from Blogger.com is a long overdue enhancement to allow those leaving comments to be notified by email if there has been a reply.

So, if you leave a comment expecting a reply, you can subscribe and receive any further comments by email without having to go back and check the blog each time. This pretty basic idea has been available on WordPress and MovableType blogs for a long time but blogger just launched it recently.

If you have a blog, the feature is available automatically to your readers if they use a Google account, you don't need to change anything on your blog.

I recently subscribed to blogrush.com. It has not brought me any visitors yet, but I've moved the widget up to the top of the blog on the right hand side to promote it. If you see an interesting blog post title there, click to visit another blog in the blogrush network.

I followed one link today and on the blog I visited, Violet eclipse, I saw a link in her blogrush widget to a my good friend Gdog over at The Daily Kimchi. I think that almost proves that relevant links are being generated by their system. I continued following links and it led me to Japanese Penguin which is a blog written by three English language teachers in Tokyo. One of them has the misfortune of being an employee of Nova, a rather large English language school that has very publicly gone into administration last week owing 7,000 teachers several months salary.

I try to keep my blogroll on the right hand side up to date with blogs that are still being maintained. I've said goodbye to several blogs that have stopped posting and added new blogs, particularly on Japan, as I come across them. Check out some of the new blogs added on the righthand side today.

There is no good equivalent of the Korean Blog List for finding bloggers in Japan. The top two blogs JapanProbe and Japundit have sizable blogrolls so I'll be working my way through those in the coming months. RokDrop always has some good links from Japanese blogs in his regular Rok Droplets feature on Sundays. I very briefly considered joining the Yamanote line Halloween party on Saturday evening. Reading about the event afterwards however, I am very glad I did not.

Happy Halloween to you all.

Standup Comedy in Seoul : Nov 11.

A few months ago we enjoyed the first of BH Production's 'Standup Comedy nights'. Thanks to being on their mailing list I can tell you that in November they are presenting another night of comedy at the B1 Lounge in Itaewon.

Don't miss Bryan Erwin and Nathan Timmel for an outstanding night of comedy. Bryan Erwin and Nathan Timmel, two professional comedians in the United States, are being brought over to Korea for a one night only show in Itaewon.

Bryan Erwin's comedic appeal is universally apparent: audiences everywhere can identify with his take on life, or as he puts it, "an ongoing series of awkward, uncomfortable moments." His satirical style has been featured at legendary comedy clubs such as the Comedy Store, the Improv, and the Laugh Factory.

Nathan Timmel is known for his edgy, observational humour unmercifully directed at contemporary culture and politics. Nathan has entertained audiences at numerous comedy clubs around the world, and looks forward to unleashing his act on a Seoul audience for the first time.

Venue: the B1 Lounge, Itaewon, line 6, exit 1. Go out exit 1, turn right at KFC, walk up about 20 meters. The B1 Lounge is on your left.

Time: Doors open at 5pm. Show starts at 6pm. General seating.

Tickets: 35,000 won, includes one free drink.


Here's a clip of Bryan on child birth, he sounds pretty funny.

Bryan Erwin "Me, marriage and birth"

Bryan Erwin | Cild birth

I must find some Comedy clubs in Tokyo!

Seoul City Hall construction site hoarding

These are some photos I took, before I left Seoul, of the hoardings around the construction site beside City Hall. As I have mentioned before, the Koreans build very high quality hoardings around the building sites and put a lot of effort into making them look attractive. The hoardings beside City Hall are particulary impressive.

From a distance it looks just like a normal picture.



As you approach you realise it might be some sort of mosaic



As you get closer you see it is made up of small photos.



Once you stand beside it you realise how cleverly it has been put together.



The artist has used thousands and thousands of different photos, some of them going back to the 1980's of all sorts of places, events and subjects. The photos do not appear to have been altered in any way, and yet they create the picture you see from a distance.





It's well worth taking a close up look if you've seen it from a distance. I haven't been able to find out anything about the artist or how they did it so if any knows or can find out I would be most interested.

Update: Thanks to Mark for the explanation. It's a Photographic Mosaic. Obvious really! There are at least ten programs available to download to create your own mosaic, and there are also online applications, here's one, so it's not as difficult as I first thought.

Update 2: Thanks to Mr Kim at the Delta Eagle's OC for letting me know it's from www.byplot.com. It's made up of 6 million images.

Update 3: Thanks to anonymous, the artist's name is Sylver Kang. He used Mazaika software. You may see some more information on his website http://www.mazaika.com/seoul2007.html

Volunteer Tour Guides offered in Seoul

I often visit the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum website and offer advice to travellers asking about Korea.

Today I saw a posting that I thought deserves a wider audience.

A group of Koreans have created a small organistion to offer Free guided tours of Seoul.

This is from Youngdae Kwon, the organiser's website :

Free Tour Guide in Seoul, non professional volunteer organization, was launched for helping overseas visitors experience Korean culture and customs.

Free Tour Guide in Seoul offers overseas visitors a free guided tour in and around Seoul, which has a myriad of exciting and appealing attractions.

Since we are volunteer guides, our members may not speak your native language perfectly. We can only offer visitors the services at weekends. However, we are full of energy, heart-warming hospitality, and cultural insights. Our latest information ensures that you will have a memorable experience in Seoul.

Even if you already live in Seoul, all overseas people are welcome. We may know about Seoul more than you do!

All you need to do is visit his website, complete the short request form and email it to him at the address on the site.

If anyone does take a tour with Mr Kwon, please let me know how you get on.

Korean news stories

A few news items of interest.
CNN has been running an Eye on South Korea section on their website which has some interesting articles including stories on High Definition cinema , Robots being used to build ships and the head of the Korean Toilet Association, Sim Jae Duck's toilet shaped house that he is building in Suwon.

From the Japan times an item on Korean day trippers going to Tokyo for Disney Land or to catch a baseball match.

Update: another picture of the Toilet shaped house.

More Korean news stories

I wasn't planning on doing more Korean news stories today, but the fact that Korea was mentioned on six pages in the Japan Times seemed worthy of note.

On the front page was the news that the South Korean government has set aside 1.5 billion won to help about 200 ethnic Koreans in Japan who are about to be evicted from a community they developed after being evicted from their homes at the end of WW2. In one Japan's longest running legal cases the Koreans have been fighting for their property rights in Utoro in the city of Uji, Kyoto prefecture. The SK government money has been earmarked to help the farmers retain the land they have lived on for sixty years.

On page 2 was news that North Korea had risen from last place in the annual press freedom survey from Reporters without Borders to second last place. That honour now goes to Eritrea. The Japanese were, meanwhile, congratulating themselves on rising to 37th place. South Korea is placed just behind them at 39th. Iceland and Norway top the league table.

Page 3 was headed by an interview with Shuichi Maeda, a veteran from WW2 who has some pretty grim recollections of his time in the army including his memory of the Korean women at the base.

On the letters to the editor page Vipan Chandra from Massachusetts defends the two Korean leaders. Why?

The Op-ed piece reports signs of progress of Pyongyang problem. I wish I had a dollar for every time we've heard that. As always 'The next few months is a delicate period...'. Does anyone remember a time when it hasn't been so?

In the business and finance section is the news that Microsoft has submitted a request to withdraw a court appeal against an antitrust ruling by the Korea Fair trade Commission. I think they've given up fighting the Korean legal system. There was a photo of of two models showing off new Microsoft products in Seoul that they have not chosen to put on their website.

Like the Koreans, the Japanese are also planning to ban the import of American meat, but only from one supplier who accidentally sent them some from cattle that were more than 20 months old.

And finally on the back page was the news that Seol Ki Hyeon the South Korean footballer who left Reading FC in August, thinks moving to Fulham was the best move of his career. And not just because he can get fresh kimchi just down the road in New Malden. (more from Sky Sports)

Blog Action Day : Recycling in Japan

Today over 15,000 blogs are participating in Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the world are writing about an important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment.

One topic that I am particularly interested in is the recycling of household waste. Here in Tokyo there are not as many categories of recyclable material as there were in Korea. Life was easier in the apartment block in Seoul, we could take everything into the basement and sort into the various receptacles. In Setagaya-ku we have to store up the materials and put out them out for roadside collection on different days of the week. This leaflet came round last month informing us of a new schedule which our friendly local shop owner helped us translate:



Bottles, cans, newspapers and cardboard are collected Wednesdays. Plastic PET bottles, which have just this month started to be collected, go out every other Saturday but only after they have been washed and had their lids removed. Metals and other items also go out on alternate Saturdays.

Before this new regime started refuse was sorted into two types : burnable and non burnable which corresponded to the two methods of disposal: incineration and landfill. The definitions of the two types of waste were, to my mind, counter-intuitive. Paper and food waste were classed as burnable and went to the incinerator, whereas plastics were classed as non-burnable and went to landfill. Why would you want to bury something uncompostable and burn something that would easily decompose? The answer was in an article in the Japan times last week entitled Clueless policy persists as Japan burns the unburnables.

Not surprisingly finance and politics were the main drivers. In 1973 the capacity of Tokyo's incinerators was insufficient to handle the amount of refuse being produced. The priority for burning was raw garbage, since it was considered too unsanitary to bury. Plastic was deemed OK to bury, so in order to ease the burden on incinerators all plastic waste was separated and dumped in landfills. By 1997 incinerator capacity had caught up with demand and improved technology allowed refuse to be incinerated at a higher temperature.

Now, Setagaya-ku is one of several pilot neighbourhoods that are switching to incineration of plastic waste. This will reduce the volume of material going to landfill and also provide energy from the heat of combustion. The landfill site currently used for Tokyo will be full in 35 years, and this change will only extend the life of the dump by 15 years.

50 years is all we have in Tokyo until we are swamped in our own refuse. It may sound like a long time, but the problem of waste disposal does not go away. Think of the three R's : Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Individually it may seem like we cannot do much, but every bit helps. For example, if all 12 million blog readers involved in Blog Action Day recycled one aluminium can it would save the equivalent of 3 million barrels of crude oil and reduce landfill usage by over five thousand cubic meters.

What are you doing to save us from drowning in our own rubbish?

Some other links on Recycling in Tokyo:
Pink Tentacle on Cell Phone re-use
Other Items you can recycle from Dumb Little Man
The Azerbaijan view of Japanese recycling
The Kiwi's view of Japanese recycling

Korea Top News

Here's a new website I've just come across Korean Top News. It's a bit like Digg but dedicated to Korean news. You don't have to register to vote for your favourite story, but if you do register you can discuss the stories posted.

They have subscribed to lots of Korean blogs and some news feeds so there are automatically plenty of stories to view. PopSeoul and K-Popped seem to feature a lot, so I'm sure Rain fans will soon find the site and vote stories on him up to the top of the list soon.

It's part of the I choson Networks group which is based in the US and dedicated to Lifestyle, Entertainment and Culture for Korean Americans.

Internet Domain names in Hanguel and Kana

News in today's Japan Times that next week ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, will begin the long awaited start of Internationalised Domain Names (IDN). The AP news story is available here.

The plans are still under review, but once they are approved 11 new domains will be created that read example.test in Arabic, Persian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil.

Discussion on using non latin alphabets for internet domain names started in 1996. The Japan times discusses the topic in 2001. In 2003 registration began for partially Japanese domain names in the .jp namespace. Request For Comment 3743 was created in 2004 and work has progressed since then.
The Korean IDN 휴대폰.com which translates as CellPhone.com was sold for $36,194 in May 2007.

The technology used in the 13 key domain name directories will not change, instead the IETF have developed PunyCode to convert the new domain names into standard ASCII characters.

The testing document from the ICANN website suggests that the first totally Korean and Japanese IDNs will be :

실례.테스트
in Hangul and

例え.テスト
which is a combination of Kanji Hirigana, and Katakana.

The whole world will be able to test with these new domains, but just in case they cause any problems to the rest of the internet a 24hr hotline will established to suspend the test if required.

I forsee this development will require new versions of almost all software that validates website and email addresses, which is good news for us software engineers and the rest of the IT industry!

Pro Blogger Birthday Bash Prize Give Away

I've mentioned Darren Rowse a couple of times before on this blog. I wrote the Top 5 Korean Festivals and included it in his group writing project. He has been blogging professionally for some time now and runs several well regarded blogs including Problogger.net about blogging.

To celebrate 5 years of blogging he is running a week of competitions open to bloggers, with prizes valued at over $54,000. In today's competition, one lucky blogger is going to win a pair of LG 20" LG USB monitors.

Well done to LG the South Korean company formerly known as Goldstar for producing such great monitors and for those clever adverts of well known paintings with LG products slipped into them. [Which I can't find any to show you right now!]

If you write a blog you have until Friday 8am EST to write a post and link to his site.

Yamanote line station chimes

We've been slowly exploring Tokyo by subway and JR Line railways since we arrived. I noticed that each station seemed to play a different "chime" over the loud speaker after a train arrives. I had thought it would interesting to try and collect recordings of each tune but, not surprisingly, some one has got there before me.These are the chimes for all the Yamanote line stations. The station names are all in Kanji, but if you translate them though google it gets about three quarters of them correctly, (but then the links to the chimes don't work so use the first link). The correct station names are here.

My favourite is Ebisu (Translated as "The god of wealth" on the list). What's your favourite?

Thanks to Gaijin Girl, who wrote an interesting blog on her life in Japan but has just left the country, for the link.

Some Korean Links

I recently put together a list of the 30 top ranked Korean websites. At the time I thought it would be interesting to try and rank the Korean blogs but I couldn't figure out a quick way to do it, so well done to Gdog over at The Daily Kimchi for doing something similar for Korean Blogs.

He has produced a list of the top 46 Korean blogs ranked by their Blog Juice. Top of the list is of course The Marmot's Hole followed by Mike The Metropolitician. In third place, a blog I've not come across before, is Web 2.0 Asia. It's written by Chang-Won Kim who is the co-CEO of Korea's leading blog software company, TNC. It covers lots of new web related stuff coming out of Korea.

The list continues with lots of other well known Korean bloggers, Oh, including this one too! In fact there was only one blog that was new to me in that list Everyday seoul.

I was asked recently about going to teach English in Korea and I was able to point them at this excellent summary of 44 Tips for getting a job in Korea from Chris that I had just read.

If you need to get from Cheonan to Seoul Station on a rapid train Delta Eagle, has all the details.

Japanese Tee shirt slogans

It was about this time last year, after a month in Korea, that I posted an item about Korean Tee shirts, with a photo of my all time favourite: The Convex Magnum Opes.

The Japanese also go in for Tee shirts with English slogans. Most of them are slightly more intelligible than some I saw in Korea, but not much.

This one would have been very amusing on a young lady:



I didn't have the heart to ask the young man what he thought his Tee shirt might be about.

If he was wearing it in Peterborough, England he might have risked a fine, as this chap did for wearing a strongly worded Tee shirt.

Stephen Colbert laughs at the Japanese

Just so that the Koreans do not get the idea that Stephen Colbert only makes fun of them, here he is on a new restaurant in Tokyo :



It's not a place I will be visiting soon.

Link from Keeping Pace in Japan which is another blog on Japan I've recently added to the blogroll.

Update: Here a video from a blogger who actually tried it out: from An American In Japan

Eros Museum Seoul

I discovered the Eros Museum of Seoul when I was wandering around the city in the area near the Blue House.

It had just opened its doors to the public for the first time on Aug 21st 2007.
It is on three floors and has a small but interesting collection of artefacts relating to erotic art in Korea, China, Japan and other Asian countries.


As this is a family friendly blog I will not show you the full image..

but there are plenty of examples of Japanese 'Shunga' works on display.
You will have to go to the museum to see the rest of the picture.

The museum is open every day except Monday. Admission is 5,000 won. You may not want to the take the children, unless you want to do a lot of explaining. To get to the museum go to Seoul Selection bookshop and continue walking north towards the Blue House. The museum is on the right hand side of the road. The local bus (number 11) from Gwanghwamun stops fairly close by.
The museum printed the name of their website on the flyer, but while they are paying for the domain they do not seem to be running a website there yet.

When researching some links for this blog post I came across the Asia Eros Museum in Seoul which was opened in May 2003 and was mentioned by the BBC at the time as the first sex museum to open in Korea.

Seoul Fine Arts Competition

On my last day in Seoul I visited a number of museums and events.

The Seoul Fine Arts Competition was interesting. It was only 2,000 Won to get in and I was brusquely informed that it was "Only Korean, no English". So nothing new there. It was in two halls. The first had some modern art pieces which were quite good. In the second hall were hundreds of scrolls of hanguel and chinese characters. Here's a collage of the photos I took:



The exhibition started Aug 21st, but I'm not sure if it's still on or not. If it is still running, it's at the Seoul Museum Annex beside the Seoul Musem of History building.