Tidbits

Lower, right:
The Steeves family's biggest news this month: Eri, 5 1/2,  lost her first tooth. She refused to pull it and just let it fall out on its own, so she already has her first adult tooth in, too.

We put her baby tooth in this little cloth tooth holder, which sits on a battery-operated tea light so the tooth fairy can easily find it in the dark.

 It worked! Eri woke up to find $1 and 1,000 Won (about 91 cents) on her nightstand.




MERS:
As Korea tries to contain the Middle Eastern Respiratory Virus, I try not to freak out (or touch anything). Eri attends an international school off-base and it was closed for a week, though it was work as usual for me and my Korean co-workers. (Geoff and Leo stay on base.) It's still OK to ride the subway, though everyone is taking precautions.

This is my MERS mask. I am frowning beneath it.




Household goods:
After nearly seven months of anticipation, our household goods have arrived. I wish they had been lost at sea. We really need to downsize.

This is a picture of our kitchen waiting to be organized. I am frowning here, too.



Baseball Game:
We recently attended a Korean baseball game with Geoff's co-workers and their families. The games are a big deal here and a lot of fun. Very lively, to say the least. I can't remember the name of the team we root for, but we're huge fans, as evidenced by our Steeves 1, Steeves 2, Steeves 3 and Steeves 4 baseball jerseys.

We are numbered by age, not importance.




Father's Day:
Koreans celebrate "Parents' Day" in May, but on the U.S. Army base where we live, it was Father's Day just like in the states. Eri made her dad a photo-box pencil holder for his desk at work. Leo made a hand-print craft at preschool, where Geoff attended the "Donuts with Dad" breakfast with him.



Not going to his usual classroom in the morning really threw Leo off his game and he cried rather than eating donuts with his friends and their dads.




Ouch:
Although it looks like we're dressed to pick up trash along the highway, these are actually the spa clothes where Geoff and I recently got a couple's massage. This is a noteworthy cultural experience for two reasons: Before you get your massage, you soak your feet in a pool where little fish nibble the dead skin off (I didn't get a lot attention, though Geoff's feet were pretty much completely covered with fish. Anyway.) Secondly, massages in Korea are not a relaxing, tranquil experience, but rather meant to loosen and realign you, while testing your pain threshold (I think). A tiny, yet freakishly strong person kneads, twists, bends, and pounds, often using his own knees and elbows as leverage. Instead of listening to a CD of a babbling brook and birds chirping, you hear the sound of skin slapping and sometimes a sharp cry (probably mine). Geoff, however, thoroughly enjoyed "just the right amount of pressure."

This picture is five minutes before I know what is coming. And it's not good.

Shopping in Seoul

Seoul, by all accounts, is a shopper's paradise. It's a little difficult to describe, though quite worthy of a blog post. So here goes: Every thing out there originated somewhere, right? Well, I have been to the origins of it all, and it was amazing.

 

The city is filled with "markets." In these markets are countless little shops that are grouped with other like-shops. They are a mix of indoor (giant warehouse, several stories high) and outdoor (side-by-side storefronts, which span city blocks) and sell anything you could possibly imagine from clothes and shoes to toys to kitchen items to electronics. And lots of it. Row after row. After row.

 

I was completely overwhelmed on a recent trip, and only magaged to buy a (super cute) hair barrette for Eri. There was so much of everything, it was impossible to make a decision. I could only follow my guides (two Seoul-market-shopping veterans / Air Force wives) at a ridiculously slow pace.

 

 

Seoul's Dongdaemun Market:

The market is divided into five districts

over 10 city blocks, with 30,000 shops and 50,000 manufacturers.

It's open from 10:30 a.m. until 5 a.m. The quantities here are astounding.

 

Buttons. Millions of them.

Belts.

Scarves.

Hats.

Shoes.

Ribbon.

Necklaces.

I am actually not much of a shopper (I lack time and patience, plus I have Amazon Prime), so these markets are more of a cultural experience for me. The one exception: Costco -- also worthy of a blog post. Seoul has 11 Costcos and one is right next door to my office building. I spend many lunch hours there, and am toting home one piece of that warehouse at a time. (This is huge downfall of riding the subway, which I only fully realized after hitting many of my fellow commuters with my four-pack of bulk wrapping paper, so 96 rolls of premuim toilet paper are out of the question.)

 

Korean Costcos feature the Kirkland brands we all know and love, plus chicken bakes, those huge muffins, and lots of things geared toward the Korean shopper (see below).

 

Costco:
So wonderful, in any country.

Bulk squid.

Bulk octopus.

Bulk ? (maybe it's sea urchin).

Japan

Japan!

 

We've kicked off our travels in Asia with a 10-day trip to Japan. Because of its proximity to Korea, we were able to take a two-hour train from Seoul to Korea's east coast, where we caught a ferry over to Japan. We made our way around the country via bullet train, stopping for several days each in: Fukuoka (coastal city); Skihoku (mountain town) and the Kansai area (the big, bustling cities of Kyoto and Osaka). Seeing so many diverse parts of one country was definitely the best part of this trip. That, and all the attention the Japanese people lavished on us. Geoff, meanwhile, was able to practice Japanese, which is his first, second language. Based on what I know of the language, (domo arigato, Mr. Roboto) he seemed to be doing quite well.

 

 

Japan is primarily made up of four large islands, and
lots of little ones, with a population of 126 million people,
many of whom asked to have their picture taken with us.

 

Nearly three years traveling around South America apparently
did not teach us how to pack light. We had a tough time
 fitting into the teeny-tiny Japanese taxis, hotel rooms and elevators.

 

Stowaway on the train.

 

Love Boat.

Geoff is, of course, still in touch with his high school Japanese teacher back in Idaho.
She arranged for two of her friends to meet us in Fukuoka. These sweet ladies spent the day
touring us around and helping us with the language barrier, .....

 

.... which was particularly helpful when, moments after
 this picture was taken, Leo pressed the SOS button above our heads. Sirens
went off, the subway immediately stopped and security guards came running.

Lesson learned and behaving well.

 

Food: A big part of our trip was the food. We ate so much traditional food -- lots of sushi, udon noodles, soups, and, our favorite, okonomiyaki, plus drank a little sake and Asashi.

 

I can't remember if this was dinner or breakfast because both meals are
often served with cold fish. As it turns out, I'm more of an oatmeal
person in the mornings.

We ate okonomiyaki three times and talked
about how much we miss Molly and Scott each time.

This is green tea ice cream and red bean ice cream
(otherwise called "chocolate" if you're a picky eater
and still learning to read). Both are topped with a soft-serve tofu ice cream.

 

Ditto. But no complaints.

This little can had exactly two sips in it, but it's so cute.

The noodle bowls with shrimp tempura were a second favorite.

 

 

Popularity: We couldn't believe how incredibly friendly and welcoming Japanese people were, especially to Eri, 5, and Leo, 22 months. People often wanted to know where we were from and when we told them the United States, they responed with "woooow," "ooooh," and "thank you very much."

Countless times, student groups would approach us,
reading from a script, to ask: "Can I speak to you in English"
with lots of giggling. It ended with us autographing
the script along with "USA" and a group picture.

This picture doesn't do this incident justice.
Groups of Japanese people formed a semi-circle to snap pictures of
 Leo playing in the gravel. This seriously went on for several minutes, and
then a line formed for more people to take turns posing behind him.

Poor Leo. The spotlight can be tough after awhile.

  

Our hotel gave me a shout-out on Mother's Day.

 

 

The same hotel also sent two staff members
out in the rain to wave goodbye to us (with American flags)
 after we checked out.

 

Fun: Trips highlights include touring the temples and shrines, rafting, shopping, biking, Universal Studios, feeding monkeys and using our new selfie stick whenever possible.

 

Universal Studios in Osaka!

Eri and I dressed up in kimonos one day,
which lots of women do when they're headed out and about.

 

Eri-chan. Just one of the girls.

We totally blend in.

                                   

 

 

Biking around Kyoto.

 

 

Love him!

Buddies.

Eri wrote her name in English and had her dad write it in Japanese on a
candle in one of the Buddhist temples.

Celebrating my 36th birthday. So lucky.

Japan is really expensive. This cantalope, which
we did not buy even though it
has a bow, is thirty-some dollars.

Just seein' the sights.

Very zen.

A kiss for Godzilla.

 

Our Japanese friends were very patient with our energetic children, whose
favorite part of touring the temples was playing in the
hand-washing pagoda fountains meant
for people to clean up a little before going inside a temple.

Uh-oh. We've got another hard-core river lover on our hands.

Eri and I rafted one afternoon. Our Japanese guides all spoke
English with a New Zealand accent, which was really charming.

Feeding the monkeys in the Kansai region.

Taking it all in.

Eri and Geoff on the Harry Potter
rollercoaster at Universal Studios.

So sweet.

We love seeing Asia! Indonesia here we come ...