Baka Goes To Japan

I'm really looking for it. Troubles. It started in Busan. I'm so fucking clever that I don't want to listen to people's advices. When I bought the ferry ticket I just told the guy that I already know everything concerning schedules and so on and went drinking on the roof. Sure that boarding starts at 7.30PM I came (already drunk) at the gate at 7.40 to find the hall empty and the gate closed. 7.30 is the boarding closing time. Luck was on my side since the employees haven't left home yet and in a split second everyone, including customs officers, was back at their job. They also called the ship that an idiot has yet to board. Not to mention how embarrassing it was, the worst had to came. The duty free shop was already closed. No smokes, no alcohol. I mean the cheap ones. Will have to buy them at Japanese prices. Urgh. At least the ferry saved me some money - I bought smokes from a vending machine with duty free prices and without age verification. Drawback - it accepted only coins so I was buying lots of snacks from another vending machine that accepted bills and returned me coins. Which gave birth to another trouble. Since I had no more beer I opened the 1.8 litre bottle of soju and went to the smoking room where I woke up at 4 in the morning and after surprisingly little effort found my cabin and had two hours of decent sleep. Hangovered as hell I went through the Japanese immigration in a blink, just couldn't believe it, then got stuck at customs. Literally stuck. I have no other words for the woman working there so I'll call her a bitch. Because that is what she is. A mean skinny bitch. I do know what are the duties of customs officers. I was prepared to give up on my kimchi smuggling attempt. But she didn't give a shit about my kimchi, soju and other Korean food and drinks. No, she spotted the Japanese snacks. Fucking suspicious. How come you have Japanese snacks with you? Didn't you just arrive in Japan today? Well, my lady, it happens that the ferry is Japanese so they sell Japanese stuff on it. Really? Why they sell Japanese snacks on the ferry?
I was speechless. I looked her straight in the eyes, searching for any sign that she was making fun of me, that she was trying to piss me off, whatever, but no. She was on it for real. And I didn't know what to answer. I really don't know how to explain why on Japanese ships they sell Japanese snacks. So I stayed silent but she was not giving up. She really wanted an answer. She demanded it. I felt sort of like I was waiting for Godot and I told her that I suppose that a Japanese ship is loaded with snacks in Japan, not in Korea. Nice shot, she was happy with the answer. Next she wanted to know when I left Slovenia. One year ago, more or less. And where is the stamp in your passport that will prove it? Huh? What? I have not a single stamp from Slovenia in my passport, only Japanese, Korean and from Hong Kong! Saying that I fly from Italy would equal to another hour of idiotism with her so I went with the EU zone shit, no borders and the like. Lucky again. Why do you stay in Korea? Easy one, I practiced this lie a lot so it came naturally to say that I have a Korean girlfriend. And why do you go to Nagasaki? Easy again, I go to visit a friend. BANG. The bitch doesn't know the difference between a friend and a GIRLfriend. I saw her turning from her emotionless to an icicle. So you travel between them all the time? Hell no, you got it wrong, lady, it's not what you think, I have a MALE friend in Nagasaki and... Too late. She already decided that I'm a male pig, and a gaijin on top of that. And we repeated the routine. When did you leave Slovenia? When will you go back to Slovenia? What is your occupation? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Where do they live? Can I check again your bag? On and on and again. She didn't bother to check my reservation in Akari. No, she really jaust wanted to make my life miserable. And she was good at it for something like 20 minutes or more. She would probably go on for more, but it happened that in this time all the Cammelia passengers went through the customs on the other gate, I was the fucking last one, hostage of the bitch. She noticed it too and finally let me free.
Few hours later I was in Nagasaki, really hot, first stop was the liquor shop, next door to the hostel. Sixpack of Kirin, then yelling into the Akari reception, HELLO, THE DRUNKARD IS BACK. Joke wasted, nobody at the reception. But they did hear me, Tomoko and Kaz were in the kitchen. Kaz also wasted my sixpack joke, he welcomed me with cold beer from the fridge. Dag san, welcome back, we have many beers for you and the day after tomorrow we will have a party for you!
Tadaima.
More beer, soju, umeshu,  a visit to Kentaro's place and there I blacked out. Last thing I remember is me drinking beer at Kentaro's, next is somebody shaking me. I open my eyes and I see the street. Actually the first thing I saw were the streetcar rails. I was sleeping on them. And a police officer was waking me up. I have no clue where I was, but for sure I got lost after leaving Kentaro's bar. And at some point decided to take a nap in the middle of the street. Baka. The policemen were really nice. Their English was really poor, but they did their best and they actually gave me lift to the Akari in exchange to check my documents. They even apologized for bothering me with ID check. When they wished me oyasumi I bowed really deeply and fell on my face. It was 4 AM and it was a call for a beer on the Baka Bridge.

The Secret Garden, Unveiled

Tomorrow is time for my visa run. I was planning to spend two or three days in Nagasaki, but since I checked my passport without glasses and tried ferry ticket reservation in the last minute, I will have to spend eight days in Japan. Not that I worry about time, still have plenty of it. For the few days extra in Japan I have to cancel my winter time in warmer places. Yes, few days in Japan will cost me as much as the return ticket to and two months of  accommodation in the Philippines. Ah well. I'll do my best to have great time in Nagasaki, frequent visits to the neighbor, nights on the Baka Bridge...
Today I'm packing. Not that I have much to pack, but anyway. Early in the morning I was weeding my fields and picking the ripening tomatoes to dry them.

 The tomato plants don't look really impressive because I had to do a lot of cutting - after a week of ceaseless rain and high temperatures the plants started rotting and I had to remove all the lower branches.

The tomatoes are finally doing well, they started growing faster than the bugs can eat them. When the fruits started growing it was a complete mess, the damned bugs ate them all. The bastards *completely* destroyed the crops of rutabaga and broccoli. Ate them to the ground. The ginger, cucumbers, pumpkins, hot peppers, sorghum (S. bicolor) and sunflowers are doing fine. Common flowers, too.

 A month ago I was really pissed with the bugs. And it was starting to be really hot. And I always wanted to try something - forest gardening. The forest is just at the end of my field, only a stream between. Ideal.

 

 So I moved some plants in the forest, just to see what will happen. I called it my secret garden because I didn't want to be laughed at for my crazy ideas. Alas, not long after I had to disclose it... little Guryun, damn those curious children, just sniffed that something weird is happening. Don't ask how he did it, have no clue, but soon I heard rumors about me planting something in secrecy in the woods. Hell, no. Can you think about more than one plant species that I could be planting secretly?  Well, I didn't want for the folks here to think about THAT plant so I had to explain in details what the hell I'm doing there.
First of all, I'm cooling myself there. The plants are scattered along all the slope, but working in the shade is way more relaxing than doing it under the blazing sun. Second, I'm cooling my beer in the stream. Third, I'm resting - there are no weeds and almost no bugs there.
The secret garden starts just across the stream.

 

It's not only because of the bad picture, even in reality it's hard to notice it. To give you an idea I dotted the tomato plants with red and the sorghum with blue.

Tomato close-up.

Sorghum "field".

Only from today is possible to notice the tomato fruits. That's the drawback of a forest garden: plenty of shade to rest, not enough sun for the plants. Actually I should say "barely enough sun" - the plants are slower. And the fruits are smaller. But I'm in no hurry and I will have plenty of big fruits from the official field.

Beds prepared for the late summer rutabaga planting. I learned the trick when I was planting wild ginseng in the mountains of Gangwon do.

This was a post about idyllic natural life. Don't get too shocked if I'll be posting something from Nagasaki. It will most probably be from the red light district.

kung kung tong

One year ago I had an argument with a Korean guy who was praising Korean's working habits. I just laughed at him because he was implying that abnormally  long working hours are equal to hard working hours. He was just pissed off when I told him that Korea is really at the top of the OECD's list by working hours, but it' also ranked number 20 (or somewhere like that) by productivity - being surpassed by countries where workers spend almost half of the time at work compared to Koreans. So don't tell me about hard working people. He just flipped. Then how do you explain our economical success? The so-called Korean miracle that happened in the 90's? That we have many leading industries and the largest corporations in the world? Here he had a point. How? I have no idea how that is possible. I can only guess that this is the reason why it was called "miracle" - definition by dictionary: noun 1. an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.
This is a sort of an answer to the comment on my last post. And it's not only about cars. Think about all the electronics. I really really wonder how do they make all such stuff.
I had lots of funny things to write about the house we're building... but take a look now, I bet you'll find it quite nice...

Just.. just don't try to find a square angle in it. Mission impossible. But it looks good, doesn't it? Oh yes, I really don't know where I found that there was eight of us carrying that large bastard of a bookshelf because all the time there was only six of us working... My bad. But, anyway, here's a picture of it, made from 8cm boards.

And Friday we were off. A nice long weekend. So on Friday I went to my first class of 장고, the slim waist drum, in an unused school. I played this one:

 Some of my classmates:
 
To play it you use two different beating sticks, one for the high pitch (right hand) and for the low pitch in the left. And we started. Ta (high pitch, kung (low pitch) and tong (both simultaneously) then tong tong kung ta-tong kung kung tong kung-ta and so on. I was out of rhythm almost all of the time but nobody yelled at me or called me stupid because mostly everyone was there for fun. And at times it really was fun, when all 16 of us managed to catch the rhythm and the teacher started to speed it up it felt really great. Here's our teacher, on the left:
  On his right is the hapkido master. When we finished our beating session h asked me if I would like to join the next class, his class. Um well I'm not really sure... Don't worry, we'll go easy on you. I survived. The only thing that still troubles me is a big wooden board in his dojo (actually another classroom in the same school), full of small holes. Near it a box of chopsticks. First thing, like a monkey on an IQ test, I checked if the size and shape of the holes match the chopsticks. Perfectly. I told you I wouldn't mess with that guy. But I love drinking with him. After lessons we had along drive somewhere in the middle of Mt. Jiri, where people try to live in the traditional way, but it seems that the place is now quite popular with tourists.
But if you just turn your back to the bus parking and the neon signs, the place is amazingly beautiful.
In this same place we had dinner and lots of homemade makkoli, later lots of mulberry wine. They served us a pile of meat to roast, crap, I stopped complaining about that long ago, be it, I'm their guest and they are doing their best. It took me two bottles of makkoli to remember that the hapkido master is a vegetarian. Hey, how come you eat it?It's dog, I can eat that. Urgh. OK, at least they weren't silkworms. Now I know, I can eat dogs, but not silkworms.

From The Mountains of Madness to the Mountains of 강원도... And Back

According to Giobbe Covatta (and I fully agree with him), fairy tales are populated with idiots. Like Little Red Riding Hood, for example. Not enough that her loving mother let her go in the wood alone, no, there she meets a wolf so stupid that even the WWF would be pleased to exterminate him and not to talk about her granny. Do you have a dog? Put him on your granny's nightgown and a pair of glasses. Does he resemble your granny? Well, do her a favor... shoot her.
The Fairy Tale of a Roof
I bet you thought that my construction comedy was over... so did I. But it was just the beginning, the woodwork. Then came the roof. And two trucks of tiles. Luckily with a crane, so we had to unload the pallets on the roof, which took us one afternoon. The next morning.. comedy again. Two days earlier we made - I lack the correct words - something like a wooden frame on which to lay the tiles so that they will have the correct curvature, as in the Korean tradition. Well, when all the roof was covered with piles of tiles the trade masters found out that they made it wrong. Great. You were two days on that roof and you didn't notice that before? Now what? Yep, remove the tiles (3kg each). Luckily the scaffolding around the house was still there so we managed to remove the tiles and repair the frames in one day and in another two days the roof was completed. But without me. The last day of that job I was awoke at 5 am as usual and was drinking coffee when Ssang Pyeong came to pick me up, but I had no more nerves. I told him that I was taking a few days of, going to Gangwon do to visit my princess.
Gangwon do And Seoul
It's a long way to Gangwon do by bus. I managed to have a long conversation with text messages with my princess and only once I had to forward one sentence to my teacher (yes, it was all in Korean and I'm proud of it).  And, oh bliss, she was happy as me when we met again, she didn't care about the cake, the chocolate and the gifts, she just hugged me and smiled. 

She was a bit upset when I told her that I came for a really short visit and that I don't know when I'm coming back, but she promised she will come to visit me during the summer vacation. I hope she will. Then it was time for her skin care with a hwangto facial mask...

  

And I got my share too... 

 

And it was time to go. I stopped in Seoul for some shopping - big size shoes, got me a nice pair of trekking shoes and  a pair of AllStars. And a hard disk of 250GB, the smallest they had, for 40 000won. And, the most important, to have lunch with a good friend.

And We're Back After A Short Break

The roof on the house was done, but not yet the walls. I had a day to work on my field, cleaned maybe 10% of the weeds and was back at the construction site. For the walls.  Now I have to warn you again. I know this will look all made up. The Theatre of the Absurd. But I know one guy who worked there with me and he will believe every single word. Pudding (aka The Little Budda) was not there and God knows how I missed him. That says it all.

When I see building a room without windows I have no troubles with that. Maybe the guy is an amateur photographer and wants to have a darkroom. Cool! But.. why does he need three (3) darkrooms? Oh crap, we forgot the windows!Oh well, if it's nothing worse, we'll just pull these three walls down and make them again. Yes, and order another truck of bricks. 

If you think that's all you're dead wrong.

One of the masons must be a true fan of E. A. Poe, especially of his Cask of Amontillado. Because one of the above mentioned rooms without windows almost ended also without a door. Almost. Nevertheless we had to pull down a part of the wall to remove a huge piece of scaffolding from that room. At least the guy was not a complete moron, he was playing the part of Montresor, not Fortunato.

It's all chaos. We move every brick at least three times. There's another guy that works there with me like unqualified labor force, we move the bricks (three times at least), mix and carry the mortar, clean up and so on. He is actually a hapkido master and even if I can carry more than twice as he can I would never dream to start a fight with him. But I still can bet with him. Yesterday the brick laying boss showed us a place where to move 600 bricks. I looked around and just nodded, saying, just to myself, cool, the most stupid place in the house, I wonder when we will have to move them again. The hapkido guy heard me (he speaks a decent English) and asked me why do I think so. Because we're in Korea and this is the Korean way of doing things. He was puzzled by my negative attitude so we did bet. We were both lucky, me twice. We didn't move more than 100 bricks when the same boss came around and was shocked why we're putting the bricks there. No no, put them in the other room! Dag, how the hell did you know this would happen? Because we're in Korea and this is the Korean way of doing things and I'll be damned but I still think in a foreign way and can see stuff like this and... you lost, the beer is on you today!

No, I'm not over. 

There was a huge (really huge) bookshelf we had to move in the house before the front wall was made, so big it is. It took eight people to lift it and carry it, a massive bastard of handcraft carpentry art. We all had to change our gloves for a pair of new ones because it was so beautifully made. And mind on the corners, don't scratch it! After a lot of sweat (and swear) it was in the house... and now where do we put it? Just here, we're going to wall it up in the bedroom. What do you mean by "wall it up"? That we're going to wall it up in the bedroom wall. Christ on a cracker, why were we so freaking careful then if it will end walled up? Because it's so new and beautiful! But it's gonna end walled up the same! So who cares if it's scratched, dirty or even broken? But it's new and so beautiful!

I gave up. I was too afraid I might eventually agree with a logic like that.

But it makes me happy. I might have realized every kid's dream - to live in a fairy tale. OK, I admit it, this was a low blow, but it makes my point.

There are moments when I miss Ramon and others when I'm really happy he's not here. Like last Saturday when we went out for an all-out drinking rampage. Never mind that I had the dinner ruined with somek - I love somek, but a shot of soju in a glass of beer, not a shot of beer in a huge glass of soju. It tastes awful. It also didn't matter that I had to endure hours in a freezing nore bang (singing room). My moment was when in the bar the waitress (a pretty one, mind me) brought us a round of beers on the house - just because I'm so damn handsome. Her words! Finally it was NOT Ramon the handsome one. Take this!

The Story of Little Budda and Other Bullshit

Positive thinking is a load of bullshit. It's worth only for exceptional liars or in fiction, but in the real world it just doesn't work, no matter how hard you try. In the last post I mentioned that the company at the construction site is cool. It was a lie, but I tried to convince myself that it is so. It hit me back hardly.
And here goes the story of Little Budda. He's a friend of Ssang Pyeong and it seems he's the chief of the construction, some kind of supervisor or what the hell do I know. He is a small fatso and with Ramon we nicknamed him Little Budda also for his appereance, but mostly because on his cellphone the ringtone is the Heart Sutra. Later we changed the nick to Pudding (based on an Italian wordplay, being Il Piccolo Buda e' un Budino). After few days he was only and just Asshole.
Warning: If you're an architect, carpenter, mason, free mason or even Perry Mason, DO NOT continue reading. If you do, forget everything you ever learned about building and don't try to sue me for writing nonsense.
Disclaimer: All the events and characters described in this post are real. All similarities are intentional.

Let's start with a quiz. Suppose you work on a construction site. Before you start making the concrete floor you neatly even the gravel tampon, you put the water piping and you're supposed to cover the tubes before the trucks with concrete come. I wanted to fill the wheelbarrel with gravel to cover them but I was told not to it that way, just to use the gravel that is already in the basement. OK, I can handle that, it's even easier! WRONG! When I started covering them - cleraly I had to dig holes around them to do that - I was told not to do it that way because the surface must stay even. WTF? That was the first time that I suspected Asshole is not only stupid but completely insane. To make everybody happy I took the rakes, removed the gravel from the pipes and filled it back in the holes I made and I continued raking close to the pipes. I didn't cover them a milimeter but Asshole seemed so happy that I learned something new about construction!
Few days earlier I tought he's just stupid because there was a stone wall that needed quite a lot of concrete to fill all the holes. A not very important wall so we did the job with hands, nothing fancy, but when we finished Asshole decided it needs a good washing so he took the high pressure pump and washed the wall. Can you guess how much fresh concrete remained in the holes? But it was all OK, he didn'd do it to make us redo the work, no, I will never say he's evil or bad, just... stupid.
We had many jokes about him but now I remember only one. When doing something we were in constant fear he will come to instruct us on how to do it and thus complicate our life to the top. So we kept watching for him and once Ramon asked me what is Pudding doing. I looked around and saw him on the roof. He's doing shit, I told him. Oh no, is he cloning himself?
The worst of all was that we had to live with him for a week.

On the way to Pudding's place, backpacks full of beer

The house we are building - for a priest - is in Okcheon, more than an hour drive from here, so it's really a waste of time (and sleep) to go there every day. We had our daily little scruffs with Asshole and more than one time I told him - with a big smile - that he's a fucking moron, clearly in Slovene, sometimes in italian or Serbian - and he just smiled back. Then the carpenters came. Of course he knew better then they how and what to do with wood - and they all ackonwledged his wisdom and continued to do whatever they were doing the way they were doing it. Everybody was happy. Except Ramon and me. We were given orders by asshole and, luckily, there was always a carpenter neraby to save the day. He kept giving us the wrong coatings or wax for wood but that was OK even for me, for three days we were stoned all the time for inhaling the vapors.
The real fun was watching the carpenters. They were measuring everything ten times, cutting with a precision of half milimeter, yet when they tried to assemble the stuff together it just wouldn't fit.

So the finishing was always done with the chainsaw and huge hammers.

The Korean Thor ^_^

But do not think they are some amateurs or apprentices, hell no, they are the flower of Korean carpentry!
Urgh. Argh. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Now this is a real horror story, even His Horrorship THE King Stephen couldn't make a more scary one. It happened to me to have almost a heart attack many times when some joker went boo to me out of the dark, but this time I almost shit my pants. You see, I'm writing this in my outdoor kitchen, drinking beer and fighting with frogs, mosquitos and flies that are invading my place, listening classical music from the radio. The only other sounds are the frogs from the rice fields, so I fell pretty much like there's nobody miles around. And then... Hello. Mr. Dag! Out of the darkness.. No, it's a hallucination! It can't be real! Asshole! No, not me, it was Him, THE Asshole. And he was real. I didn't notice when he came to visit my neighbors, but he payed me a visit when he went out for a smoke. And he sat in front of me, we were smiling politely at each other, and he was gone. It was like a dream. Hell no, it was a nightmare! Uh, I had to drink half bottle of beer to set my mind on the rails again...
And it was just during my last Korean lesson that I learned the word 정도 - which means an approximation, about, by the eye and so on. A very important word for Koreans! I knew that already, without knowing the word itself. It's their way of doing. I call it sloppiness. I was asked by the carpenters if I'm intersted in learning their trade, with them. I was tempted to accept but Ramon put me on the ground, saying: Yes, you are sloppy when you do things, but only from a western point of view. For them you're too accurate and you'll get your ass kicked for trying to be perfect!
And again this 정도 is another load of bullshit. Just another excuse. The same person that explained me how important is 정도 in Koreans' everyday life was pretty upset when she asked me the recipe for my bread. Um, usually I take something less than a kilo of flour, add enough makkoli and water and some salt... But Dag! You can't do it like that, you need exact measures!
Go figure.
The clou of idiotism on the job came near the end. It was time to fill the gaps on the roof with the allmighty Korean hwangto - THE clay. So to prepare a good mixture I was instructed to mix 20kg of baek cement (have no clue what it is, just that is completely white), two shovels of honest-to-God Portland cement, twenty shovels of sand and twenty shovels of dry clay. And 정도 half liter of water. I swear, it's not a joke nor is irony. It's a fact. And I was mixing that dry crap for half an hour and Asshole came to see the result. He took a handful of it and held a war council with Ssang Pyeong. The verdict: it's too dry, we need to add more water. Wow, how come you can see that? And fuck me, Asshole added less than a glass of water. Another quiz: can you guess how the mixture looked like after another twenty minutes? Yes, completely dry, as it was in the beginning! Dag, more water please, but just a little bit! OK boss, here I go, half of glass will do? Perfect! And when they turned their backs I sloshed two full buckets in the shit and in five minutes they decided it was good to use. And since I was doomed to prepare the mixture for all the day it was troublesome to put secretly the water in it every time. You see, the mixture was too moist only the times when I was seen to put "too much" water in it, otherwise it was perfect. And don't think I'm bragging about this, I've prepared tons of hwangto with Challenger and I DO KNOW how it is supposed to be the real stuff.

The last day on the site was like a holliday: Asshole was sick! It was such a joy working!

We arrived home late and a message was waiting for us: the next day Challenger will pick us at 7AM, work to do. Cool, we go to finish the roof we started two weeks ago! More than a roof we did an artwork. Not to mention the chimney - the guy really is an artist, everything is made from old broken rooftiles!

And the best of all, I made me a new friend!

After two weeks I was off for three days. The first day I did nothing, too hangovered since I had a farewell party... well, a farewell drinking with Ramon till 4 AM, we slept till 10 and after lunch Ramon was gone. The second day - yesterday - I spent the morning on my field, pulling and cutting the weeds and picked the first lettuce for lunch. In the afternoon we had some storms during which the internet connection has gone. Has not been reinstalled yet so we are all offline for the time being and I will post this as soon as we go online again.

Busy Time

Sometimes even more than busy.Today, for example, I was on my field at 5.35AM prepairing the beds to plant hot peppers, perilla and the third round of tomatoes. The early hour is nothing special in the farmer's life, but at 8.00PM I was already stomping on the last tomatoes I planted because of the dark. And didn't manage to plant a single pepper or perilla today. OK, I don't have so many tomatoes. It's just that besides my little farming hobby now I work also on two constructions sites. One is in a village nearby so I can do an hour or so on the filed in the morning and the same in the evening when we come back. But tomorrow we go on the other that is pretty much far away so usually we don't even come back home every day. And when between all this work I can manage a day off, the only thing I want, I can and I actually do is to drink myself unconscious. I'm not complaining - we work with nice people, on one site the boss is my host Sang Pyeong and on the other is the many times mentioned Challenger. There's a lot of beer all the time and even more in the evening when we end the working day. Only my field looks really disgusting compared to the others nearby and it became a common mockery that I'm growimg weed (not THAT weed, but the common nasty green crap you can use for nothing, not even in Korea).
The worst is with my Korean lessons. You haven't done your homework? What? You haven't studied a single minute? But I really didn't have time, in the evening I'm so tired I go to sleep at nine... How can you say that, I saw you today going to the village to buy beer! You have time for THAT and no time to study?
Ah, these harsh Korean teachers! Of course in a way she is right, I'm not arguing about that, but, as I explained to her, my mental sanity is first. And I also know that the Korean educational system and their way of teaching/learning are less than perfect, to use an euphemism.
What I really start to hate are the bugs. All kind of bugs. Flying, crawling, digging, they're everywhere. It's just no fun sitting outside, drinking beer and writing this. Maybe next time I will be more productive on writing another post...

*Extremely* Pissed Off

I mean really badly pissed off.
You know the feeling when you know in advance that you won't be able to do something you really wish... and you accept the Fate. And that's nothing to be pissed off. When things start turning to the better it's time to be afraid. But I'm making it too complicated, better to explain what exactly happened.
One year ago, saying our goodbyes to our volunteer friends in Iwanuma, Okano san promised to organize a volunteer meeting in his restaurant in Kobe this year. He fullfilled his promise, the meeting is this Sunday and lots of people will show up since it's the start of the Golden Week in Japan. Ramon also left for Kobe today. As for me, I knew it from the beginning that I'll have no money for the trip. I accepted my Fate. And then, suddenly, some money popped up from the sky. Yay, it's enough for the ferry ticket, for the ryokan and even a few beers! I felt like being in haven. And a call to the Panstar ferry operator dropped me in the abyss of desperation. The morons. The idiots. The motherfuckin' bastards. Who in his sane mind would suspend the line for the yearly check of the ship exactly during the Golden Week, when all japan goes on some kind of trip? Baka! So, no direct ferry from Osaka to come back in Korea. The other chance? By bus from Osaka to Hakata and to Pusan with the well known Camellia Line (I use it every three months for my visa run). When I added all the expenses for this trip I wanted to cry. I can't make it. The freaking bus is way too expensive - yet it's the cheapest transport in Japan. And I'm too stubborn to borrow money. The most stupid thing is that I have to make my visa run in these days anyway - and I can't make it to Osaka. To make things worse this evening I have Korean lessons. I hate myself and I hate the world.
I'm going to bake some bread and try to cheer up.

It's gonna be hard. Even the weather feels pity for me so it's raining cats and dogs. Great weather to be depressed.