Coffee Helps

We arrived in Kyoto on Monday night, a lot later than anticipated owing to our unplanned adventures in Hiroshima. We were staying in a very traditional Japanese guest house, the owner of which had insisted, on the phone, that Irish Friend Two was French. We don’t know why – perhaps her name sounded French, perhaps [...]

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“Let’s just go and get some money out before we go to the Peace Park”, suggested Irish Friend Two as we headed out on Monday morning to explore Hiroshima. This simple, 5 minute detour ended up taking us most of the day. It wasn’t our fault, obviously. We are responsible, organised, together adults, as I [...]

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WRITTEN ON SUNDAY BEPPU The title of this post refers both to my condition throughout most of today, and to the Nine Hells of Beppu (real name, not made up by me) which is where we spent the day.  I’m not sure how much hotter than Korea Japan really is, if at all. However, when [...]

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WRITTEN ON SATURDAY  FUKUOKA In Korea, they’re mad about ramen – noodles in a thin broth. There’s always a whole aisle devoted to ramen in even the smallest of convenience stores, and it’s the ideal quick meal when you don’t have time to cook in between work and rushing out somewhere.  However, I never really [...]

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WRITTEN ON SATURDAY FUKUOKA Irish Friend Two and I are very alike. Painfully alike, it might be argued, given that we both have reputations for being scatterbrained and disorganised, in the kind of way that if we lose something or forget something or do something demonstrating a lack of general common sense, people who know [...]

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I’m going to Japan on Saturday! It’s all very exciting. Much as I love living and working in a country that is foreign to me, I’m surprised at how quickly a lot of the “foreign” feel disappears. Things that once seemed bizarre, odd, unusual, or exciting to me are now common, everyday things that I [...]

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Oh!!! Koreans make this surprised sound a bit differently from how I’m used to hearing it. They sort of… breathe it rather than say it, and add undertones of grunts so that it comes out sounding like they’ve been punched in the stomach. It’s terribly dramatic. I spent all day on Monday hearing this sound, [...]

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Every July, in the midst of monsoon season, the soil in the coastal town of Boryeong turns into masses of thick mud and clay. This mud is rich in minerals, very good for the skin, and used in many Korean cosmetic products. And, being Korea (where everything from strawberries to butterflies to cherry blossoms is [...]

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Taxis in Korea deserve a post all to themselves. For a start, I privately enjoy the fact that the Korean word for taxi is pronounced in exactly the same way as the Ballymena one: teksy! It’s a small world after all. However, that is where the similarities end, for Korean taxis and their drivers bear [...]

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I’ll be back in a minute… could someone clean the blood off the floor please? Just your typical day in school. I leave my 7-year-olds wiping blood off my classroom floor with toilet paper, and propel Suzy along the corridor, holding a towel to her nose and clutching a toilet roll and a pile of [...]

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