New Feature

I’ve added a “Travel Photography Feature” page at the top of the blog, where I’ll post a picture I’ve taken of somewhere interesting that I’ve been at frequent intervals.

The first pictures are from Hokkaido, Japan.

Click here or at the link at the top to read a bit about it.

Soccer With My Student

Some photos from a while back, thanks Tom! Taken at the World Cup Stadium when South Korea faced Iran in the last qualifying game for the 2010 World Cup- I was there with my student Yoon Shik and Tom, visiting Seoul for a few days.

Busan

It was nice to get out of Seoul for the weekend, and down to Korea’s second-largest city, Busan. I managed to catch the sun on the crowded but nicely sandy Haeundae Beach, go see a Lotte Giants baseball game (vs SK- good ground, good fans, and a 1-0 win), and explore the other sights of Busan- Gwangan Beach and bridge at night (where I gorged on raw fish), and Bomeosa Temple. We had a great time!

A couple of pics- more on Flickr:

More on Flickr. www.flickr.com/stevesayskanpai.

Doosan Lose Out as Hanshin Recover

Last night was painful-

Doosan Hustle Downs Mokdong Slummers

Doosan edged a nervy

I Hate Twitter

I hate it. I really do. I know coming from a blogger this could smack slightly of hypocrisy, but there you go. In fact,  I take that back. Blogging is one thing- expressing one’s thoughts in a ramblingly long and hopefully rounded update on whatever one is writing about. Then there’s facebook- letting your friends know how you are and what you’re doing, and perhaps taking a quiz to see which type of biscuit you are. But twitter actually does take the biscuit- its Facebook status updates gone mad- egotistical nonsense about random crap that no-one should care about. On the Guardian website they’ve been summing up each artist’s Glastonbury performance “in a tweet”- 96 or whatever characters (or less). Since when did brevity become such a virtue that it locks you into a one sentence review of something?

I hate Twitter.

Follow SteveSaysKanpai on Twitter at http://twitter.com/stevesayskanpai. His Twitter status will never be updated.

Shifting Winds

Plans are proceeding apace- Jeju Island, Busan, paying for flights, paying for hotels, getting things and sending things, Vietnam and Thailand, and thinking about where I’ll live next year.

After being offered some cash by SOAS it looks like London will indeed be my destination after all- I can always travel in the future (and, in fact, surely will travel in the future), but a year back in the UK isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Plus SOAS is full of wonderful Japanese and Korean people.

Not sure where I’ll be living in London yet though- a nice penthouse apartment would do, but unless my suitcase gets mixed up with another suitcase full of cash at Heathrow airport, this is unlikely

Tell Me Your Wish

New SNSD song is out- not as catchy as Gee, but a nice tune. Still, I always liked them more for their pulchritudinous qualities than for their musical talents.

A Brief Update

Things have been quiet on the blog front recently- apologies. In fact, things have been quiet on every front really, with usual till-morning drinking on the weekends, and lessons during the week, with the occasional trip to the gym. Underlying all this is the growing list of tasks I need to complete before leaving Seoul: visa for Vietnam, flights to England, parcel back to England…

Baseball is also quiet this week with the Japanese Kouryuusen, or Inter-League, finished. To be honest I lost my way with it toward the end, due to Hanshin’s general crapness. Softbank triumphed for a second year in a row, and Hanshin came 9th. Games resume from Friday, with Hanshin facing the Baystars at Koshien.

From the weekend the baseball hots up- Korean baseball that is! Doosan take on Samsung on Saturday, then there’s a run of three Heroes-Doosan games during next week. I don’t have any lessons, and my friends here are a motley bunch of Heroes supporters, so this is the closest to a baseball rivalry that there will be for me in Korea. I’m going to try to make it to all three games if I can.

Since finishing Heisig my kanji studies have taken a backseat too- I think a rest is ok, and although I’ve started on my next project- Kanji Odyssey’s approach to learning the readings of kanji through compounds, after adding a few cards to Anki I realised my reviews per day were very quickly increasing. So I’ve stopped- I’ll take a few weeks off, then try to hit the books again. The marathon of Nihongo continues…

Expect some Korean baseball excitement on the blog next week, as well as some other stuff if I get round to it during my copious free time at work.

Girls Generation New Album

SNSD with “Marine Girl” theme for their new album, to be released 25th June.

The sort of babes Colonel Gaddafi has as bodyguards!