Two Mondays ago, foreign faculty members were required to attend an event on sexual harrassment, and I realize I had not mentioned it, but it was very congenial and informative. The Director of Counseling Services, Dr. Paul Chae,
a most amiable and warm older man who studied for quite a while in the US, somewhere in the midwest — I tried to get that information from him but couldn’t,  an unusual failure for me  who has been exacting those kinds of  bits of information for decades – was the one and only speaker.

The powerpoint presentation, not my preferred kind of show, intentionally pitched from a serio-comic mound and designed to  hold everyone’s attention, was audience friendly, as was the lecture component.  He  asked us, about 15 men and 4 women, “How long is it permissable to look at a woman in Korea?”  That question actually had a concrete answer, although no one of us volunteered. After all,  as one of my buddies in high school who, to my knowledge, never answered a question correctly, said in his own defense after being berated by an exasperated teacher, “Well, there are a lot of answers!”  He went on, by the way, to major in philsophy in college and wrote his PhD thesis on “The Infinite.” After some suspense, Dr.Chae broke our silent contemplation ( everyone suspected this to be a “trick question”) and told us “4 seconds!” Then he counted off 4 seconds to drive the point home. The main point of the event was a simple cultural rule here: “Don’t embarrass anyone, in any way, about anything in Korean culture” particularly a woman student at Sungshin Women’s University.

The powerpoint was brief but offered insights of the intracies of not doing things such as rolling your eyes if a student did not answer a question to the instructor’s satisfaction.  There were a lot of subleties, ergo surprises. As an example of the spirit in which the event was conceived, I am including the frame from the presentation which gives you a good idea of surface, symbol, and grip on life here in its extended profoundities. We should be successful in our dealings with our students. “How does one measure success?” Dr. Chae asked, as he came to the end of his talk.  See for yourself: How to measure success. See for yourself:

How to measure success

At birth..….success is….breathing
At age 4…..success is….not peeing in your pants.
At age 12…success is….having friends.
At age 18…success is….having a drivers license.
At age 20…success is….having sex.
At age 35…success is….having money.
At age 50…success is….having money.
At age 60…success is….having sex.
At age 70…success is….having a drivers license.
At age 75…success is….having friends.
At age 80…success is….not peeing in your pants
At 90………success is breathing

The Kyoto Caper:
September 20-25, 2010

The City of Kyoto was founded almost smack in the middle of the 8th century CE, and it was a planned city from its very first street. Everything is on a grid, and this goes very far to obviate getting lost because you can right your course just by groping around the block. Seoul is the antithesis of Kyoto with its come as they happen winding streets and maze of back alleys. The closest analogue in New York is Mahattan below 14th Street while everything above that demarcation after 1800 is gridded.  Kyoto is filled with Buddhist temples and shrines, endlessly it seems, and I think it would take two weeks on the trail around the city to visit all of them, but their architectural emminence and wood and stone spirituality are never repetitious because of their founders’ and  perpetuators’ singular devotion make each one a new experience. The largest wooden structure in the world is here and it’s a temple. Many of these structures were burnt to the ground at several points in their history, either through war, fires getting out of hand, and probably more than one arson in the history of Japan. Many of them were rebuilt following the original plans, and many buldings were also lost to the ages. Since our combined knowledge of Japanese history stretches only from the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1867 to now,  what happened here for the better part of two millennia displayed itself in daunting and frustrating  complexities.  Kurasowa…help me! The first three days were torrid and sweat drenched as we climbed up to sites; fortunately Seoul had provided basic training and more for both heat and inclines, so I claim that we were miraculously in shape for the trip.

We stayed right next to the JRWest Railway Station, the central bus depot, and a new building  called “The Cube” because it looks like one in dark gray marble. It houses several floors of restaurants with a selection of global cuisines, and we didn’t find Kyoto any more expensive than New York as far as food went, but there was one sashimi piece of belly tuna that accounted for almost half of one evening’s dinner check.  At least it wasn’t at a restaurant in Jersey City. Both in Seoul and Kyoto there are endless malls of all strata of prices, but there is so much available of high quality that seems uncannily affordable. The gourmet food sections of department stores are fascinating with every kind of food one has ever ingested and every other kind that makes you want to try it. Rice cakes and candies some of which look like objects in a Dali painting…endless varieties and flavors. Tofu is one of the prized specialties in Kyoto. I am sure that Kyoto would be a wonderful place to be exiled to.  The vitality in Japan and Korea, just in these two cities alone, the extent of our contact with Asia, overcomes you. Nations of of invention and imitation, going one better than the Romans who were great improvers and copiers. That’s not truly fair…but they’re not going to come after me for that.  There is no sense of menace in the streets, and this must in part have something to do with national, ethnic, racial…whatever you wish to hang it on…homogeneity.  Almost everyone “looks the  same.” And again, people do their work like they mean it, and it is visible everywhere. The railway car cleaners on the train we took from Osaka to Kyoto (which was inexplicably held in a station for over an hour and forty minutes late – this never happens we were told), did not allow us to board until this meticulous crew of  cleaners vacuumed , dusted, and immaculatized each car, and then…and then someone pushes a button in each car and the seats perform an about face for the trip to Kyoto.

After a perfect flight back to Seoul, we finally ran into a couple of misadventures beyond the train delay in Japan. Climbing carefree into a taxi, and our taxi experiences have  been extra good and we have taken a lot of them on nights we just didn’t want to climb the mountain to our apartment, and the driver simply did not know how to get to our part of town, the precint called Seonbuk (pronounced “songbook”), despite his having his superb GPS mounted on the dash board. Technologically challenged driver with two passengers  in proud possession of a total of 30 words of Korean make for getting  nearly  terminally lost for almost an hour. “Where is he taking us” occurred to me. “His brother-in-law’s chicken barbeque restaurant…a geriatric white slave camp…back to Kyoto?” That was the first time we found ourselves on an extended play out-of-control trajectory. I knew he did not know his way by highway to our part of the city, so he drove through a vast expanse of Seoul, not entirely a loss because we got to see much more than we had before. Here’s the secret: Seoul is big.

Finally arriving at Poonglim Apartments, after not thanking the driver, and after not having the psychological weight of what to tip him for the outrageous price of the ride, given we’d gone for less than half the price to Gimpo (pronounced “Kimpo”) the previous Monday, we reached our apartment door with its electronic push button system, only to find it dead. Entry denied. How many people do you really know in Seoul at a moment in time like this? The security guard outside the building tried to help and we made contact with our two only other university contacts. The trick was, the university rents the apartment, and then it’s a territorial battle over who’s responsible for maintaining it. The university or the building super? Need I ask, “Know the Drill?” We clearly could not get any maintenance help, and with the guard’s help got a cab and went down the hill to…a hotel…The Rodeo Hotel. What’s in a name?  That name’s got to be worth a thousand pictures, and I could really take off on it, but I won’t. For 60,000 won (about $56.00) for the night who’s to say what? The desk clerk was not dressed in black, as Elvis had him costumed in his famous hotel song, but he was wondering what these two sextagenarians were doing, checking in at 11:30 on a Friday night. The sublime nature of Kyoto paired with a hotel on a Seoul back street. What a ride. Rodeo indeed.

Gary