I spent today lying in kiln-shaped sauna rooms and relaxing naked it giant hot baths at the Dragon Inn Spa. No, its not some shady establishment I’ve taken to frequenting, but one of Seoul’s most famous jimjilbangs, Korea’s answer to the Japanese onsen.
Jimjilbanging (an excellent verb I will claim as my own) is a brilliant way to reduce stress and relieve tension, especially after a night out. Thus after waking up this morning in pain, armed only with the courage to face hoards of Koreans naked, I left my apartment at 2pm hungover and headed for the ‘bang. Once inside you get a keycard that acts as a key for your various lockers, and a credit card on which you can buy many extra things- water, snacks, whole meals, massages. I headed up to the bathing area on the 5th floor, where you strip (no towel as in Japan), scrub yourself clean then move between the 6 baths they have available- some at different temperatures, some with special water. After bathing for a while, I went down to the 1st floor where they have a large area of floor for people to sleep, and various hobbit-sized doors around the edges of the room leading into saunas built of bricks and shaped like ovens. There were also two larger saunas shaped like pyramids, massage chairs, big tv’s, restuarants, in fact everything you could want. After sauna-ing until my Spa clothes were thick with sweat, I headed back up to the baths for one more relaxing soak.
The whole experience cost me 15,000 won (£7.50), and was a great way to spend a hungover saturday. It’s a more comprehensive experience than Japanese onsen’s, though you do have to put up with whole families (too many kids!) and a general mass of people, meaning that finding a good space to lie down, drink your Cass beer and listen to a podcast on your MP3 player can be difficult. Nontheless, you can’t beat soaking in hot baths, interspersed with sauna visits, especially when you’re hungover as I was today.
I thought I’d break up the seriousness of this blog in recent times with something a bit different. Anyone who listen’s to The Times’ podcast “The Bugle” will be familiar with their “Hotties from History” feature. It never really entertained me that much- yet what I lack in interest for long dead historical hotties I more than make up for in interest for Hotties From Korea! Thus a new chaper in this blogs existence is born, a tabloid-esque “Page 3″ of a feature that will pull in the crowds who simply want to oogle some Korean…well, hotties.
Presenting Hottie Number One- Lee Hyori! She’s sooooo hot it’s unreal, so hot that she deserves to have several shrines built to her hotness. If the picture above isn’t enough hotness from this hot hottie from Korea, then you should check out her K-Pop video “You Go Girl”, which is not only a catchy pop tune but also presents Lee Hyo Ri in all kinds of wonderfully hot outfits.
After staying up till around 4am last night to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration, I had the pleasure today of dissecting his inagural address with my winter camp class at school. Many commentators have noted that while the pomp and ceremony of inauguration day was conservative and traditional, Obama’s speech was anything but. Not only was it a repudiation of the Bush administration, but it was a call to arms on a number of issues, and spoke not only to the American people but to the world.
Weighing in at just under 3000 words, the speech set out the problems material and immaterial that America (read “the World”) faces. After some “spirit of inauguration” fluff (forefathers, Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sanh, Great America) it then went on to deal with four main issues. The economic section understandably reaffirmed a commitment to the free market, while calling for “a new foundation for growth” through national infrastructure programmes, a route Obama believes could steer the US away from recession. Yet as well as this building scheme Obama asserted that we will “harness the sun and the winds and the soil” in a strong message of green growth through what could be his largest green economy programme- non-gasoline cars.
The foreign policy section started with a clear repudiation of Bush’s use of torture in Guantanamo Bay. In one of the most memorable lines Obama spoke “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals”, going on to say these ideals “light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake”. He committed to pulling out of Iraq and finding peace in Afghanistan.
The West vs. Muslim World” section contained another memorable line- “to those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to uncleanch your fist” (it’s worth noting here that, for the first time in a Presidential address, Obama made reference to “non-believers” in this patchwork heritage/inclusivity section- good stuff!) Obama also mentioned the “poor nations”, a nod toward 3rd world aid. He backed up this whole section from the outset with a strong power passage- “we will work tirelessly…nor will we waver…our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you”.
The final message of the speech came in the “ask not what your country can do for you” section. Obama reaffirmed JFK’s message of citizenship- “selflessness…courage…willingness”, references to New Orleans and 9/11. In a moving section he spoke “Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them amy be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honest, courage and fair play, tolerance and curisity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true.”
All in all it was a great speech, lacking that killer line as many have noted, but solidly positive, emphasising things I support and repudiating so much of what Bush has done to hurt the world. Well done Barack!
Ok the title needs some work, but I’m only three weeks away from returning to good old Japan for a two week soujorn. Already loaded up on lunch appointments and drinking parties, I’ll be looking to cut costs while I’m there through the two miracles of hitchhiking and couchsurfing. These two together offer an unbridled chance, a chance many travellers would pay money for, to interact with the land and the landscape, with people and places. Adding in Japanese skills should surely make it all a stress free fun-times-for-all adventure…well we’ll see.
I haven’t updated the blog for a while…that’s because I haven’t been doing a great deal, after the expenses of Christmas I’ve been saving like mad (with all the wild crazy fun that involves), studying my kanji (up to 500 on Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji now!) and occasionally going to the gym (although my right legs been injured somehow).
This latest attack demonstrates the absurdity and the brutality of Israel’s attack on the occupied territory of Gaza. Why is Israel carrying out these attacks and what can be done to stop the violence?
As usual with political issues in this age people seem to join facebook groups to express their support one way or the other. I searched for “Israel” and “Palestine”, and found many groups for those who supported Israel and its policies, and many groups calling Israel an illegal state. It’s this polarisation, especially on the anti-Israeli foreign policy side, which makes discussion, let alone resolution, so difficult. The group “I bet I can find 1,000,000 who dislike the state of Israel” professed ‘ we don’t dislike the people of Israel, we don’t like the polics of Israel’, yet one member wrote ‘FUCK YOU ISRAEL’ 40 times as a message post.
I don’t hate Israel. I don’t dislike Israel. I don’t dislike Israelis. Yet I find some of the reports about the bombing of UN schools and the denying of aid abhorrent. Does Israel really think that this is the way to solve the conflict within its borders? And does it honestly think that bombing Gaza like this will reduce the support of more extreme groups like Hamas? I don’t know- once again we can only hope that the European states and the international community takes some sort of lead, as the US under George Bush is clearly unwilling to do so.
I should add that there were two things that surprised me about this test. Firstly, almost all of the modern political leaders appear in the top right quadrant of the spectrum. Secondly, I’m fairly confident that an overwhelming majority of my friends would join me in the lower left quadrant. What does this tell us about the relationship between “us” and our leaders?
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Original post…
If you have a spare moment, go over to www.politicalcompass.org and take their test. It’s very illuminating. I won’t explain the results for you- and you shouldn’t read the analysis beforehand, only after taking the test. Here’s my graph…
Economic Left/Right: -4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.74
Thanks to Reed Daigle’s website for reminding me to take this. What’s startling, and also very interesting, is the graph of “famous people” and their relative positions on the chart.
There’s also a graph that explains the changes in position of the 3 major political parties in the UK since the 1970s- worth a look.
After eight days of bombing a captive population of Gazan Palestinians, Israeli tanks are now rolling into Gaza with little hope of any political or military victory. Seemingly happy to kill hundreds of innocents in a vain attempt to capture and/or kill a number of the Hamas leadership, Israel’s policy can only backfire both within the Occupied Territories and throughout the international community. Yet the real victims are the hundreds of Palestinians killed by this disgraceful policy. A full scale land invasion of a contained population can only result in horrific tragedy, and now the world waits to see the extent of this. My thoughts are with the Palestinian people.
