To bidet, or not to bidet

*** Originally posted to personal blog on Nov. 30, 2007


This is a question I've asked myself quite a few times since arriving in Seoul, particularly since I actually have a bidet in my apartment. I'm not sure I ever had the opportunity to use a bidet before visiting Japan and Korea--they seemed like something only "rich" people had and I always felt a little awkward even talking about them. Nonetheless, I had seen bidets in the U.S., usually an entity completely separate from the toilet, no lid, faucet-type thing mounted on the back.

All the bidets I've seen in Korea are actually built into the toilet and most modern models are electronically controlled. The one in my apartment, seen here, is a modern type with multiple functions, including a separate setting for women (I call it the "chick" button), a dryer, and even a seat-warmer. It seems most functions have varying degrees of intensity, but my Korean isn't good enough yet to understand what any of it means. If there isn't a picture of a butt with water hitting it, I'm out of luck.

The day I moved into my apartment, I recall standing in the doorway of my bathroom just kind of looking at my toilet, skeptically sizing up this apparatus with colorful buttons and flashing lights. It was almost like having another person in the apartment! I wasn't sure what to think about it and I was certainly apprehensive about pushing the buttons. Usually, I feel the need to touch just about everything around me, but this was different. I was intimidated by a household appliance! I mean, where exactly is that water coming from? That was my first question.

Sometime during my first week in Korea, Sophia told me a maintenance man would be coming to my apartment to fix my bidet. "Fix it?!" I said. I had no idea anything was wrong with it . . . and I was sure as hell happy I hadn't tried it out yet. So, that evening I experienced a priceless exchange of hand gestures with an middle-aged Korean man who was determined to restore my bidet to full function. Not only that, but he was was also adamant I understand what would be accomplished by pressing each button. Now, just imagine . . . this man spoke no English. My Korean repertoire at the time was limited to greetings and thank-yous. This means we engaged in a surly comical charades-like "conversation" about a rather personal hygienic device. Basically, this meant him pointing repeatedly to my nether regions, both back and front, accompanied by ambiguous hand motions and a few sound effects thrown in here and there.

All this only increased my apprehension about my bidet, so I unplugged the thing and until recently have been using the spare electrical outlet for my curling iron (a much less intimidating device). This weekend, however, I vowed to conquer my fear. What's the worst that could happen, right? Sparing you unsavory detail, I'll say everything went off without incident. And with the fall days in Seoul growing cooler and cooler, that seat warmer is really growing on me!

Back to Seoul, time to diet!

Two weeks and undoubtedly two-to-three kilos later, I'm back in Seoul after a trip home to the U.S. for the holidays. Another whirlwind trip that included stops in Chicago, central Illinois, North Carolina, and airport drop-ins in Detroit and Atlanta, was in fact a relaxing break from the hustle and bustle of Seoul life. Reuniting with friends and family was a pleasure, but my most salient memories all seem to include food! Here's a picture of my plate during the Rhodes Family Christmas celebration. Mmm! Of course, after two weeks of burgers, pizza, casseroles, and pie, I was pretty anxious to get my hands on some kipbap.


On my way back to Seoul, I was reminded of just how small the world can be as I checked into a small, regional airport in Peoria, Illinois. The gentleman at the airline ticket counter noticed my destination was Incheon and asked why I was headed to Korea. Turns out, he is one of our listeners! He later posted a comment here on my blog, which came as a pleasant surprise when I booted up my e-mail back in Seoul. It's always great to hear from our listeners, but running into one back in small town America was a particularly nice way to be reminded that KBS really does reach all corners of the earth.

Andong Mask Festival

Here's a belated report from an early October trip to Andong, Gyeongsang Province, a few hours southeast of Seoul. The area is famous for traditional Korean cuisine eaten to honor ancestors (heotjesabap, similar to bibimbap), an old Confucian academy, and Andong's annual mask festival. Matt Kelley and I joined throngs of festival goers on an uncharacteristically hot October weekend. Here are some photos from the festival. For more information about North Gyeongsang Province, visit Matt's "Discovering Korea" website.

Seoul, city of SOCKS!

Can't decide what to buy your friends and fam for Christmas? I suggest socks! And Seoul has plenty of 'em. One can't help but notice the prevalence of sock vendors around the city; in the subways, along the sidewalks, and one after another in any shopping area. They range from the practical to the downright wacky. They're long, short, plain, colorful, and some even get political. Korean heartthrobs grace the cotton of some varities, along with old standbys Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Hello Kitty. Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and "Coach" socks go for just two or three dollars a pair on the streets of Itaewon. In fact, they're as afforable as their less illustrious counterparts. So, this holiday season, stuff the stockings with . . . stockings!

I'm particularly keen on the variety of tights in Korea. In a rainbow of colors, they come with feet, without feet, and even with half a foot . . . but no heel. A fashionista's options are endless!

Wintertime offerings get warmer 'n fuzzier, but socks are plentiful in Seoul year-round.

The won-yen exchange rate has brought many a Japanese tourist to Korea in recent weeks just for shopping. Something tells me they aren't buying "Dokdo Love" socks, though. I wonder if there are "Takeshima Love" socks in Japan???

Street squatting

In a previous post, I marveled over the prevalence of squatting among Koreans. It seems like anywhere you go, from the bus stop to the peaks of Mount Seorak, you'll find locals young and old resting on their haunches for seemingly excruciating amounts of time. I thought I had seen it all until I noticed a particularly dangerous display of this cultural phenomenon on my way to work a couple weeks ago. Does this woman have a death wish, or what?! Unfortunately, my video doesn't actually do this death-defying act justice. By the time I wrestled my camera from my bag, the traffic light was changing from green to yellow and the cars were slowing in speed and frequency, but you get the picture.

Kimjang

'Tis the season for kimjang (김 장)! Ask people worldwide what comes to mind when they consider Korea and you're likely to hear "kimchi", the famous side dish of spicy, fermented cabbage with a powerful taste and a distinct smell, especially on your breath a few hours after you've eaten it! Kimjang is the centuries-long practice of making loads of kimchi to last through the winter. The custom has become less commonplace in modern times, as today's career women simply don't have time for the hours upon hours of washing, chopping, stuffing, and storing, and buying imported varieties in supermarkets is cheaper (and easier) than making the real deal. Still, many Korean homes are equipped with a refrigerator designed specifically to hold massive amounts of the accoutrement. Some families continue to store kimchi outside, buried underground. Since the trademark dish is served with nearly every Korean meal, making enough to last a family three or four months is surly a daunting task. My "Worldwide Friendship" co-host, Haewon Yoon, recently toiled with a group of friends for two days, turning 200 cabbages into kimchi. She was nice enough to take my camera along to capture the event.

This is how it all begins. Haewon and friends used about 200 cabbages for this year's kimjang. The entire process takes about one week. Day 1 is spent washing the cabbages, preparing other ingredients, and soaking the cabbages in salt water.

Just a few of the many tubs of ingredients.

Haewon, middle, and friends, preparing cabbages, radishes, and onions for kimjang.

The cabbages are halved and soak in salt water overnight before being stuffed on Day 2. Kimjang can be great exercise; Haewon came into work bemoaning sore limbs after two days of throwing hundreds of cabbages around.

Here, Haewon is mixing up kkakdugi (깍 두 기), another popular side dish, made of cubed daikon radish, red pepper, garlic, onion, and spices.



On Day 2, many gloved hands stuff hundreds of cabbages with red pepper powder, fish sauce, minced ginger, garlic, and green onions to create the delicacy widely regarded as one of the world's healthiest foods. After the stuffing, the kimchi will be packed in plastic containers (or earthenware jars, traditionally) where it will ferment. It's ready to eat in about a week and stays good through the winter. In fact, many people prefer aged kimchi over the freshly-made.

Over 2,000 volunteers came together outside Seoul's City Hall last week to make 58,000 cabbages worth of kimchi to be donated to underprivileged families. (Photo courtesy JoongAng Daily)

The CSAT stresses everyone out!

From The Korea Times. A student is rushed by police escort to a testing site.

This Thursday marked one of the biggest, and most high-stress, annual events in South Korea. About 590,000 high school students across the nation took the college entrance exam (College Scholastic Ability Test), which many believe will seal their fate when it comes to their future career prospects. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the exam is a "national obsession", and its impacts stretch far wider than the students who take it. State employees go to work an hour later to cut down on commuter congestion. Oversleepers are rushed to exam sites by police escort. Parents wring their hands with worry that their kids' performance may reflect poor nurturing. Around the time of last year's exam, I posted the following entry to my personal blog:

National University Entrance Exam Day
11/17/2007
This Thursday the high temperature in Seoul dropped a noticeable five degrees from the previous day. Those five degrees were enough to make everyone feel like winter is right around the corner. I hadn't really thought about it feeling colder until I was walking to the subway after work and remembered a sidebar to a prominent news story this week. Thursday, November 15, was national university entrance exam day. Legend says temperatures always dip on this very important day for Koreans. When I first heard that theory, early in the week, I was ready to call the BS card immediately, but I'm not kidding you; it was COLD Thursday!

The temperature is just a small part of the story that surrounds exam day. For one thing, it really is just one day a year. High schoolers get one shot a year to put on their best game face and try to earn their way into one of Korea's top three universities. It's called aiming for the "SKY" because the top three schools are Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. If you score well enough to be accepted into one of these schools, you've got a great chance of making your career dreams come true. If you don't score well enough, many Koreans would say you might as well crawl into a hole and die. That's how much pressure there is on these kids to do well. So much that in recent years several suicides have been attributed to the stress associated with this make-or-break exam.

Korean kids are groomed for academic success from the age of two or three. They're enrolled in "nursery schools" where they aren't just cutting out shapes and sloppily gluing them onto construction paper. They're learning foreign languages, how to read, how to play a musical instrument, and a variety of other things. Once kids start going to school, the intensity picks up. School gets out earlier here, around 1:00 or 2:00, but most kids spend the rest of the afternoon and evening attending several different academies. Sophia's daughter, for instance, goes to an English academy, a piano academy, an art academy, and takes swimming lessons. Most of the time, she doesn't go to bed until after 10:00PM . . . and she's 7 years old! Many parents will practically go broke paying for their kids to attend these academies (or "hagwons") because they know their kids can't be competitive academically without additional instruction. I tutor a 14 year-old once a week in English. I meet with him at 7:00PM to help him learn English, just as he's getting home from spending an hour or two at an English hagwon.

So on national university entrance exam day, the government urges all civil servants to go to work one hour later so the public transportation system is less crowded for kids trying to make it to test sites on time. The military halts all flights and shooting drills so as not to distract students during listening portions of the exam. Mothers across the country take photos of their kids to local churches and Buddhist temples to be placed on altars.

So while all these kids were biting their nails and drying their sweaty palms, I started reminiscing about taking the ACT as a junior in high school. I could have taken a prep course to get myself ready for the test, but I thought it sounded boring. I could have purchased a study guide to familiarize myself with the format of the test, but I needed that money for clothes! I probably could have at least gotten an adequate amount of sleep the night before the test, but I was too busy packing because as soon as the exam was over, I was heading to Florida for a vacation. Although I could have taken the test as many times as I was willing to pay to do so, I felt satisfied with my first score and really didn't want to deal with another four-hour exam, anyway. My score was hardly stellar, but just good enough to get me into the university of my choice. I'm not sure pressure entered into the scenario at all. I can guarantee you that even had I scored very poorly, I would not have considered my life to be over. Ironically, most Koreans would look at me in my current situation and say I'm very successful. The sad part is, that's mostly because I speak English.