Cherry Trees

One of the really beautiful things that happens in Northeast Asia in the spring is the almost mystical flowering of the cherry blossom trees. Every year, without fail, as soon as the weather warms and the chill of winter has been chased away, the white flowers start to appear on the trees that are scattered throughout China and Japan.
The first thing you notice is that little pink buds start to appear on the ends of the trees and in the nodules of the branches. Then, ever so slowly, as the wather warms a few degrees more, there appears a white flower. First just one or two but after three days whole trees and groves of the winding trunks are covered with the white petals.
It doesnt last long, this display of nature, one week, maybe ten days at the most, but while it is here people travel from all over by bus and car, loading up the whole family, just to see these white flowers.

The Coming of Spring

The Coming of Spring

1.4.07

Pictures

1. A magnolia tree in almost full bloom. Look at the colour of the sky and notice the yellow hinge, the haze, this my friends, is a prime example of yellow dust.

2. Coming out of a tunnel in the foothills of the mountians I miracously found the road free of cars and was able to snap this picture of some sort of yellow flowers that lined the road.

3. The start of the cherry blossom bloom

4-5. Early spring flowers

The first thing that I do every morning, as most of us do, is sit up and fling open the curtains to check the weather. I, like almost every other human being, want to know if the day is cloudy or sunny, and from this information I plan my activities for the day.

Today I followed my usual routine, a little later than usual, it was Sunday after all, and looked out of my window to a strange sight.

It seemed to me that an eerie sort of twilight had descended on the little town of Sokcho. Everywhere I looked was this pale, sickly, mustard yellow; there was no sun, no cloud, just this ugly haze covering the city. Odd really considering that there is almost no heavy industry here in town to cause such a massive level of pollution on this scale.

When I looked down from my sixth floor window to the parking lot below I saw that this strange yellow hue did not affect just the air. The cars, lined up in their semi-neat rows, were covered with a fine yellow dust. When I got down to the parking area and ran my hands over them they came away tinged with a pale, gritty, yellow, substance, almost like……..sand!

There kids, is the answer, the yellow grit, the haze in the sky, the lack of sun, and the low clouds, well, they were all the gift of China to Korea, yellow dust.

Yellow dust comes to us from the great, open, sandy expanses of the far western edge of China, the Gobi desert. After the cold of the winter leaves the soil, winds whip the yellow dust into a frenzy and push it ever eastward. Along the way, luckily for us in Korea, it sweeps over the massive mega cities that line the eastern edge of China, and picks up all sorts of heavy metals and pollutants from the mass industrialization programs that are taking place along the rivers and seas of the great country of China.

As the wind blows eastward, towards Korea, it sweeps across the Yellow Sea, carrying all of the topsoil, heavy metals, and manufacturing by-products that it has picked up along the way. By the time it reaches the western shore of the Korean peninsula the dust has became laden with all the great things that China is giving to the rest of Asia.

The first you hear of it is on T.V. as the warnings and dangers of the yellow dust storm are broadcast for everyone to hear, then the masks come out and everyone stays indoors to weather the storm, everyone, that is but me, who thought it was a fine time to head out and shoot some pictures of spring flowers.

traditional dances

Traditional Dance
1.4.07

At Expo Park the other day I got to see some traditional Korean dance and was able to snap some pictures.
While pictures 2 and 3 are pictures of the dance, picture one is a book that I saw on sale at a flea market. Notice the title.
I hope that you all enjoy the new layout of my blog, any feedback would be appreciated. As always you can reach me at jonofragusa@yahoo.com
Take care

A Soju Saturday

A Soju Saturday

Pictures

1. The view from the bridge to nowhere, the houses of North Korean refugees who fled the D.P.R.K. at the end of the war in 1953. For some reason these humble homes occupy some of the best sea front property in all of Sokcho, fronting a wide sand beach with a great view of the sea. How long will it be, next year, maybe the year after, when all these humble homes are torn down to make room for hotels and mindless monuments to consumerism?

2. Looking back across the small pond that this mamouth bridge crosses.

3. I love dogs, and can never take enough picutres of the nice puppies that I find around the town.

4. The fishing port of Sokcho. This is where the boats dock when they are not at sea. On the far side of the channel you can see the back of the main street of Sokcho.

5. Squid boats under the bridge to nowhere. These are squid boats, the mainstay of the Sokcho industry. These boats head out night after night, sweeping the seas clean. They use the powerful lights that you can see to attract the squid to the lines.

Conner and I went for a long ramble through the streets of Sokcho today. Fueled by generous amounts of soju, Korean traditional liquor, that we drank with a late lunch of scallops and squid down by the port, we had the energy, the will, and the drive, to conquer the streets of Sokcho.

After a late lunch down at the port, we spent the day exploring the streets of our little town. We rambled far and wide, hitting both the high points and the low, from the bridge to nowhere to a bit of North Korea, it was a grand adventure.

A Sunday Stroll

A Sunday Stroll

Picutres

1. Korea, like Japan, is well known for its cherry blossoms. Down in Gwanju they have a festival for them and its is incredibly bueatiful. Up here, where it is cooler we do not have the mass of cherry trees they do in the south but there are a few scattered around. These blossoms, outside a little farmhouse in the country, are the first I have seen this spring.

2. When I walk and drive in the c0untryside here I often stop and look at the old tumbeled down buildings that somehow litter the landscape. It is amazing to me, that after thousands of years of war, strife, invasion and colonization that there are any old buildings left, but here they are. How long has this wall stood on this spot? How long have people been living in this village? A hundred years, a thousand?

3. Rural village, street scene. No stores, no schools.

4. A couple boys enjoying there sunday off.

5. The dog.

Finally spring has come to Korea, well at least up here in the far northern reaches of the peninsula. Down south the weather has been great for a couple of weeks now. In Gwanju the cherry blossoms are already out and in Busan people have been enjoying temperatures in theT sixties for a couple weeks now. It has been so much warmer that my buddy Greg down in Pohang, about two hundred and fifty miles south of here, has been seeing mosquitoes in the fields and his apartment.

Up here, in the cold and snow of the far north, we have, just last week, seen significant snow fall both the mountains and in town. While the migratory ducks and geese have been flying over us for a week, heading to their summer homes on the taiga of Siberia, the land here has been locked in the tight embrace of winter.

But today, just today, spring finally arrived. When I got up around eleven I could feel, by putting my hand outside of my window, that the wind was finally blowing from the south, bringing with it the warm air of the tropics. Well, not really the tropics, but it was a lot warmer than it has been.

That being said it was time for a stroll around the countryside. I grabbed my friend Connor and Aubrey and Paul and headed for the countryside to take in the sights and sounds of early spring.

Walking along, climbing the pass of Chundaesun mountain, we could hear birds singing, and on a few trees, the first pale green buds of spring poked their way out of their winter homes.

snow

Finally, after almost the whole winter with no snow, we have a little bit of white stuff in the neighborhood.
From my window I can see the mountians. They look like someone has taken pieces of black construction paper and folded it, like orgami, rubbing the creases with their fingers so they are sharp and defined. Every ridge, every peak has these sharp triangular edges on them.
After whatever great artisit it was that made the lines in the mountains was almost satisfied they had to make it more incredible.
Over all these sharp lines, over all the angles and creases, the artist sprinkled a heavy layer of wet white snow.
In places, above the tree line, there are thick fields of pure white. Lower down the slopes the artist has stuck in pine trees, sprinkling the white with pinpricks of black and grey.

Chick Corea in Korea

Pictures
1 and 4
Luckily enough the U.S.-Korea FTA (Free Trade Agreements) were taking place in Seoul this past weekend. The FTA is vehementaly opposed by almost every union and worker in Korea as they see the agreements as a vehicle for the U.S. to totally flood Korean markets with U.S. products and therby costing them their jobs.
The cool thing about all of this was the great protest that Greg and I got caught up in in the street as throngs of people stormed out of the subway and shut down traffic on one of the main streets in the city.
It was cool to see the banners and hear the chants as people fought the police. In my mind though though the need the sixties, as my friend Greg says, to really be able to counter the lines of riot police.
To protest successfully they should have showered the police with bricks, bottles, and stones rather than try to force the line of plastic shields and helmets with their bare hands.

2. Even in the middle of a city of twelve million, you can still find pockets of old Korea as this picutre from my hotel window shows.

3. Late at night in the red lite district.

Chick Corea in Korea

10.0.07

This past weekend I was incredibly privileged to go to Seoul and see one of the best jazz duos of all time play in a very small, intimate venue at the Seoul Arts Center.

I have long admired Chick Corea and Gary Burton, a pianist and vibraphonist who helped to revolutionize jazz in the mid-seventies and it was one of the high points of my time in Korea, and maybe my life to be able to see these two in concert.

The concert hall holds about two thousand people and has three levels. When we arrived, right at show time, the space was about half full facing a small stage on which was placed Chicks piano and Gary’s vibraphone.

When the two came out it was like a spark of light as the elite of Seoul and the hard core jazz fans there applauded wildly, knowing that they were in for a fantastic treat, and what a time it was.

For over two hours, through three encores, the duo played song after song; some new, like Alegria, and some old like Crystal Silence. On and one they played and the music seemed to float like air from their respective instruments.

For piece after piece Chicks hands flew over the piano keys totally from memory. Only once, for a brand new piece did he need sheet music, and then only very little. Every piece was known by him from memory and you could see how absolutely passionate he was about his music.

For Gary it was almost the same. Time after time his mallets banged out perfectly pitched melodies from an instrument that looks so simple, but in reality is terribly difficult.

The music was almost like a duel as the two experts flew at each other time after time, complementing each others playing with increasing speed and skill, the notes flying back and forth as the melodies flowed like a deluge from the stage. It was incredible!