As I remarked in yesterday's post, I did not return to the house until 5:30 this morning. Considering I have yet to pack or make any kind of substantial plans for my upcoming trip to South Korea, I whizzed around trying to get everything in order - sending off last minute emails to a Korean friend in Seoul, confirming my hostel booking, looking up transport options from the airport, finding train departure times for Narita Airport, and so on and so forth. Within a few hours, I said goodbye to Maki-san and Takumi and caught a train for Nippori Station, where I would then transfer onto the the KEISEI Limited Express line for Narita airport. (Details on why I am going to South Korea this weekend.)

It was only a 2-2.5 hour flight from Tokyo to Seoul, but from the moment I hopped on my first train to the moment I landed in Seoul I was only awake for a handful of minutes. It was a real shame I slept so much because the air hostesses on Air Korea were gorgeous!

After clearing immigration control in Seoul, I caught a "limousine bus" downtown. It was an 80 minute ride, so I was able to coordinate all my plans and start learning the basics of the Korean language. At 5:00 p.m., I hopped off the bus at ANGOK Station and walked 15 minutes to the BEEWON Guesthouse. My immediate impressions of the city were of cleanliness and a shock at how mountainous the landscape is! I have long heard that if Korea was flattened, it would equal the size of its dominating neighbor, China, but I never imagined this could be true! In fact, there are actually mini-mountains scattered throughout the city, not to mention the chains of peaks engulfing the city in the distance.

I dumped my bags in my dormitory room, locked up my valuables in a locker, and took a quick shower. At 6:00 p.m., a Korean friend of mine named So-Young picked me up and took me around the city. So-Young and I first met in Taipei two years ago during Taiwan's National Day Celebrations. She is currently a graduate student at Korea's famous University of Seoul.

I picked this guesthouse because the location is smack in the middle of the city, and it was only a 10 minute walk to the famous tourist-street called INSADONG. We have not seen one another for two years now, so there was plenty of catching up to do - and in fact I was very grateful she met me on such short notice.

We stopped for dinner at a traditional restaurant that branched off from the main avenue pictured above and ordered several standard Korean dishes along with Korean's Cass beer. The food was exactly to my liking: diverse, spicy, and filling. Unlike the rest of Asia, Koreans use metal chopsticks that make it easier to deal with meat. I find the flat, shorter metal chopsticks more difficult to use, but perhaps it is only because they are fairly new to me. (On a side note, I never would have imagined that I would know the differences between different chopsticks in the world, but in Hong Kong, China, Japan, and South Korea they are all different.)

After dinner we continued touring the INSADONG area before heading deeper into the city to see Seoul's recent protests firsthand. For the past couple of weeks there have been around 80,000 protestors marching on the streets of Seoul in protest of the re-introduction of American beef in the Korean market. The fear is related to past incidents of Mad Cow Disease, which affected much of the United States' cattle market several years ago. I was assured by So-Young that there is little for me, an American, to fear because the protests are against the Korean president's apparent reluctance to "protect the Korean people from dangerous food."

The protests took a turn for the worse two days ago when riot police attempted to disperse the growing crowds using tear glass and batons, and ever since there has been a massive police presence dispersed throughout the city. There is currently a 20 block radius with groups of police standing on guard, and on the main avenue next to City Hall there were large police buses blocking the roads. I was cautioned against taking pictures of the police presence, but that didn't stop me from snapping a few discreetly.

Outside City Hall, which is pictured to the left, there is a large park that has subsequently become the main camp for the protestors. Large organizer tents, numerous food stalls, capitalistic vendors with anything they think may sell, and a variety of other protest-related things covered the ground. Although tonight there was only a "small" showing of 10,000 people, it still felt like a lot when they were all holding candles and chanting in unison. There is no way any protests will ever top this experience in Taiwan from two years ago.

We next headed toward the famous Cheoyyenge Stream, which is a man-made waterway cutting through the heart of Seoul. It is easily one of the most photographed places in Korea, so I do not feel ashamed for posing in the "I have been here!" photo shown to the left. In fairness, the stream and surrounding walkways were far nicer than I would have imagined for such a touristy area.