Has anyone here been to Japan before ? Or any asian country ?

[Aim64C]

Sounds like fun man. My brother is out in SK currently in the Air Force. He loves it there and is going to Italy next. Did you go to SK on deployment or just visiting?

There are two annual exercises - Ulchi Freedom Guardian and Foal Eagle. I was part of a reserve unit that would send people to support those joint exercises.

We would stay there for a few weeks, do what we were asked by the resident commands, and then go pal around out on the town.

The last time I went, I had their alphabet almost figured out and was working on how they were formulated into a compound symbol (more complex sounds are built from structural primitives). I was getting to a point where I could speak what was on a sign without knowing what the hell I was saying.

Well, I was getting casual greetings down and some food.

We were working with some of the locals one time, helping out with a school - and it was really fun trying to communicate instructions and plans when neither of us could really communicated verbally. When a guy looks at you and says: "Kata-kata" (or something like that) while making a wrenching motion, it is amazing how quickly you can break through language barriers.

It was interesting how distinct Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sounds after you've been there for a while. A lot of it had to do with the frequent flights and the multilingual instructions - they'd go from Chinese to Japanese to Korean (if I remember the order correctly). Chinese just sounds choppy. Korean sounds like Japanified English - it's still got its hard consonants like we do, but it's got a little more sing-song to it than we place into our normal speech (that's the Germanic influence). Korean will be interspersed with "se-yo" and in the context of an airline briefing, will always end in "kam-sa ni-da" - meaning 'thank you' - although 'ni-da' is, I believe, is the concept of gratitude - so it is an adverb/adjective amounting to 'I appreciate what came before this word.'

I would never tire of how they would say hello - "An-nyeong ha se-yo!" The inflection on it is just cheery and sounds like they are glad to be around. That, and they get that whole combination out in about as much time as it takes us to say 'hello.' Occasionally they'll let the ending "o" drawl - but I think that has an obscure context (san vs kun, maybe?). Koreans are usually pretty flattered that we'd bother to try and learn anything about them - so offending them while butchering their language seemed to be a difficult task.

It was pretty funny, though, as we'd walk around town - the girls would come home from some form of secondary schooling near Seoul and begin their own prowling of the town. Of course - the fair-skinned westerners blundering about would usually become subjects of their attention - so we'd have a gaggle of girls following us around and giggling amongst themselves.

A few would even gather up the courage to come up and try to talk or shake hands, or something - and it was totally adorkable... right up until a camera came out. You can put your arm around their shoulder to strike a pose for her friends - but if a camera comes out that whole group scatters like matter from the big bang. They stopped after a short ways and coalesced into a giggle-fit, again, but it was not the reaction any of us were expecting.

It's all fun and games until there's evidence, I suppose.

Again - this wasn't near Seoul.

The restaurants over there were tons of fun. Sit down around a grill in the middle of the table and cook the hell out of some pork, beef, and garlic. A lot of the restaurant food over there was priced for something like a family serving, and it was quite affordable by our standards. You could party as a 6 person group on $40-50 - complete with enough soju to put half of them into the gutter.

If you ever go there - watch that Soju - somehow, it has some kind of delayed effect on it, or something. I'm not a drinker - so I don't completely understand it, but it caught quite a few of our guys off guard.

Oh - and get yourself an Asian Pear while you're over there. Not these ***** little golf balls they sell as an Asian Pear here in the States (or, that's all I've ever seen them as, here). Over there, the smallest ones are the size of a softball and are like everything you love about an apple with everything awesome about a pear.

But don't buy a watermelon. The only one I saw for sale there was like $15 - **** that.

Depending on where you go, you can find good deals on the street markets/vendors. Live fish and eels are sold there, as well as services to process them (follow the smell!) - the only concern I'd have with the local seafood is lead and mercury content.

That carries over into the municipal water supply - just don't. Not even Koreans drink it. Again, it's not that you're going to be getting Admiral Yi's wrath, or something, and be glued to a toilet (or grow tentacles from your ass) - but the lead in the water is fairly high (or it was when I was there).

Oh, and in some places the bathroom is still a glorified hole in the floor.

Still beats the UAE where the Pakis would wash their feet in the sink - or use one of 'our' toilets and be so totally confused that there were footprints and water all over the seat. It reminds me of the stories of how people in Iraq literally had to "walk" the Iraqis to make sure they didn't crawl up under vehicles to take a crap or something or to make sure that when they did poop, it was cleaned out of the yard they did it in.

Anyway - dining customs for Koreans are pretty loose. Just about all is permissible except blowing your nose at the table. Drinking from the bottle/can is seen as unhygienic and barbaric - always pour it into a glass. When pouring into a glass, it is customary to serve others.

Any time one is making an exchange, it is customary to use both hands - and it is customary to receive with both hands. If someone is pouring you a drink - both hands are on the glass as you receive. For actions that really only work with one hand, the second hand often clasps the wrist.

This is going by the way-side with the tempo of western culture gaining ground - but contrary to popular belief - we don't try or aim to offend locals. I'd actually wager that most of the people foreigners assume are American simply aren't. Some of the most disrespectful douchebags I've seen in my travels come out of Europe. You can only tolerate seeing Pier shove his crotch into the face of a girl from the Philippines so many times before you're ready to turn him into a floor stain. Granted - that was in the UAE - but it was still far more common for us to be asked about Britain in both environments.

That's another fun story from the sandbox.

One of my buddies and I are enjoying the end of our deployment, going out to the mall, grabbing some ice cream - and there's a young lady there to act something like a hostess. She hands us a menu before we get up to the counter and we go on about our business. After we get our ice cream and sit down - here comes Douche-o-matic with his side kick, Douche-nozzle (as he would later describe their roles). Walking up like he owns either the place or the girl, he walks up to within an inch of her while his sidekick boxes her in from behind. Bless her heart, she's trying to be polite and give him his menu with a smile on her face as she dodges around, only to be flanked again.

My buddy and I exchanged glances and were about three seconds from intervening in a way that would probably lead all involved to a jail cell before they left. You see that type of thing a lot.

Briefly makes me wonder what happened to her - or quite a few of the other people over there. One of the guys who worked for the security contractor we had on our dime had a kid back in the Philippines. One of the Ghurkas became a grandfather, I believe. There was the Indian lady who would work the front desk where we stayed...

Or in Korea, there's a guy there who had a sort of sewing/embroidery shop. We used to go to him to get some of our uniform stuff done or for souvenir type stuff. I wonder how his family is doing. Not that he'd remember me, specifically, or anything - but he's a good man who deserves good things out of life.

I've been reminiscing too long.