Hello Good folks of the lounge... I am back. (KIMI IS BACK!!!)
Last edited Mon Jan 13, 2014, 03:21 PM - Edit history (3)
I thought it would be a blast in South Korea, but It seemed I was the only one who could speak English, and my Japanese isn't all that good. I am so glad I brought a bunch of notes with me, just in case I needed to look up things. I don't have a lap top so I had to use my parent's one, and they get all touchy thinking I might end up pushing some button and erasing a life times worth of work. Meh.
Stayed at my Mother's grand mothers house. Lots of relatives I didn't know I had. Two young cousins were cute. Slept on a futon on the floor, which is no biggie for me, since I have one. The food at times was a bit spicy, but it was cold there, and I enjoyed that they actually had a fire place. I did not get the chance to go very many places, as most of the time we stayed at the house. Someone had a car, I don't know who, but they had to go off to work every day and take it... the kids walked to school, with an aunt.
Korean TV is weird... Anyway..I am so glad to be home. My parents promised a better trip to Japan in the future to go see my Dad's mother's house in Osaka and see his brother, my uncle.. I hardly even remember any of the Korean words I heard.. I am not good at retaining that kind of thing. My Japanese got me by a bit... but I would use English and get blank faces. :/
I don't think I would want to go back, frankly. But now I can say, I have been there, even though I was cooped up in a house with strange smells, 24/7.
Did I miss anything? I had heard about MFM..I still have some of his messages in my message box.. I cried a lot.
PS.. Photos I snagged off the internet, my mom has all the photos she took.
= new reply since forum marked as read
or should I say ..
jib-e osin geos-eul hwan-yeonghabnida! 
Hey, the only good thing for me was introducing jrock to my cousins who only heard Kpop. Now I have corrupted them with LOTS OF gAZETTE!
Good to be home! 
Gwanju City.. South Korea ...
held hostage with my Ipod since BEFORE CHRISTMAS 
Or maybe vice-versa.
(I occasionally wake up in alternate universe San Francisco, sometimes San Diego or Mexico City. Never been to Korea.)
I'm always a danger to myself and others when I don't know what I'm doing.
Welcome back!
Most of the stores had signs in Hangul.. I can't even speak it, or even read it. We always ate at home. My mother's step sister cooked, and I was always up for kitchen preparation. Cutting up veggies.. my mom told them about my food needs, so it was always fish or chicken for me. We ate a ton of kimchee..
Prepared it so often, I could almost do it blindfolded. I think I have had enough for a life time, frankly. Its funny, I was often called, (This according to my mother) the American Japanese cousin. I was often called Kimi~awn-nee. or, Kimi chan, (Japanese way).
interesting! 
so she could see all her brothers and sisters whom she hadn't seen since she left Germany during the terrible years of the mid-1920s
They were all delighted to see my grandmother -- mostly, it seems, because they all remembered that she never sent them money from America during WWII, and they wanted to be sure she knew how very angry they still were about that 
Then one of my mother's cousins decided that my parents needed to hear "the truth" about the Nazi years, so he dug out an uniform to show them while he remembered how much fun he and all his friends had in the Hitler youth 
Well fortunately there was none of that.. I didn't really want to see where my mother inherited her anger from. woah. 
arigatou! thank you.
thanks for pics, and look forward to any tidbits you may have to share.
I wish I could have brought their bathtub home with me. One of those ceramic kind...with the three clawed feet. I would not have fit in my home, unfortunately...
しばらくだったね
Senzai!
You mean, this? 
when written like this: 千載
I was making a joke, of course, with another meaning of "senzai"-- detergent! (洗剤
We've missed your humor here! I just found your Rice Krispies post and did a double-take:
AsahinaKimi is back! 
Good to be back in the ol' USA....for MY friends who think living in South Korea must be paradise, and that SHINEE...AND SNSD:Girls Generation are walking in the streets...its not like that at all.
There are no Super Junior members hanging around singing in the rain. Life there is not a Kdrama, and BoA lives in Los Angeles NOW!!!
no... no... no... (gee, gee gee!)
"Dou Itashimashite."
Osaka is a beautiful city, from all the images I have seen...
My father says the family house is a few miles outside the city, in a very rural area. Its an old fashion Japanese home with tatami mats on the floor, and laid out in a very traditional way. My father joked, that you could smell the ancestors there... I am surprised the house was never sold but My uncle has preserved it as much as he could, with his three daughters helping them.
I look forward to meeting my cousins, especially Sachiko chan, who just got married to a nice Doctor from a local Hospital. I don't recall the ages of the other two, and have never met them. Sachiko did visit me about 10 years back...when she was still going to school. She had been on a break and came to the USA to visit her American Uncle, the Dr. Asahina.
Her English was not bad, but probably better than her two sisters. That I look forward to, where as I was not so comfortable in South Korea..with relatives I hardly knew.
I was wondering what happened to you! Glad you are back!
I missed you good to be home, looks like the place is much the same, (grabs a broom and starts to sweep in the lounge) I have missed this place, very much! 
pssst.... I trust that my little sis has been behaving her self? YuiYoshida is great at parties..When we go, she is first to be on the dance floor...or right into the middle of conversations with people I don't even know. She is like "come on!!" waving me over.. I sometimes wonder if she is going to drag me into a battle.. or something 
You know, I just had a thought, I didn't even have time to snatch up a duty free souvenir at Gwangju Airport. I had planned to, but we had to run to our gate.. to board. 
We don't talk enough , but I noticed your absence 
Sorry to hear your trip didn't go better, that you were cooped up at home most of the time, that can be real boring. I'd love to go back to Asia, but not under those circumstances. Still it sounds like you made the best of it welcome back to DU!
yoroshiku ne! 
It's brighter already!
(but… what's with the strange smells?)
Kimchee permeating the walls? Dry rot? I dun know.. it was just weird. I got used to after a while, so I guess It wasn't all that bad. Maybe it was the smell wafting down from North Korea? 
