Okonomiyaki Step by Step

It turns out that I very thoroughly photo-documented the process to making this dish, so here it is in its entirety.  Note the spatula doodad.

Step 1: The Bowl
At any okonomiyaki (don't know what okonomi means, but the yaki appears often and means grill as far as I can discern) restaurant, the whole adventure starts with the decision: what goes in your bowl?  It's similar to Subway.  Before you customize and whatever, you need a basic meat package.  For this I've gone with shrimp and squid, but they've also got chicken, pork, and beef in all sorts of combinations.  Also in the bowl will be a heavy handful of shredded cabbage with a raw egg and a dollop of batter.  Everything gets stirred thoroughly before we start.

Step 2: Shaping
After you've stirred the bowl to an even consistency and dumped it onto the grill, you have to scrape it into the pancake shape.  This is one of the ways the little spatula doodad comes in handy.

Step 3: Wait
They must cook it on pretty low heat, because it takes about 15 minutes from start to finish for the sweet rewards to be yours.  I held my hand over the flat top to confirm this, but it felt hotter than I had anticipated.  Regardless, there's a lot of waiting involved in this food.  Plenty of time for you to deal with the extra, Osaka-only step.

Step 4: Yakiudon
While you wait for the pancake to reach flipability, you can opt for the Osaka twist.  A heap of stir fried udon noodles makes a great addition texturally.

Step 5: Bonito Flakes
One of the signature parts of all okonomiyaki, these brown, translucent flakes are in fact a dried and then finely shaved fish.  Bonito flakes, when they warm, crinkle and flap like a handful of baking butterfly wings.

Step 6: Flip
Now that you have all your primary ingredients and the bottom is crisping up nicely, it's time for the flip.

Step 7: Sauce It Up
The bulk of okonomiyaki's flavor is in the sauces.  Start with a ladle full of creamy, sour Japanese mayonnaise, then add the savory, sugary eel sauce (like a thick, rich teriyaki).  Swirl them all together to evenly distribute.

Step 8: Enjoy
That weird spatula doodad is also great for segmenting and serving "slices" of the okonomiyaki, which is what makes it kind of like pizza.

December 26th, 2010

I'm back at the hostel, and what a day it has been.  I started off early at the train station to meet DW.  Unfortunately, it was the wrong station.  After about a half an hour of waiting for him to arrive, I decided to borrow a phone and call.  Another first: total rejection on the phone borrowing.  The girl didn't even say, "Oh, sorry.  I don't have one..."  She just gave me a blank stare and then made an 'X' with her arms.

Luckily, pay phones are super cheap.  This one cost a penny for 30 seconds, which is plenty of time to locate DW and coordinate our meeting.  We're soon together and on our way to food.  First up on the menu?  Noodles.  We keep it simple with two Japanese classics: udon, the thick noodles that came with okonomiyaki yesterday, and soba, a thinner buckwheat-based noodles.  Both were satisfying and delicious, especially for the price.

We head out from there to witness some unique architecture.  The iconic building of Osaka, the Umeda Sky Building, is essentially a pair of office buildings that are connected at the top by a glass doughnut.  Several escalator columns and hallways also span the abyss between the two towers.  Everything inside is decked out with couple sofas and photo opportunities.  In Asia, Christmas and Valentine's Day are virtually indistinguishable.

Our next goal is to see the palace of Osaka, but not before eating again.  We stop in for one of my old favorites called kaitenzushi, or sushi by conveyor belt.  This sushi bar is set up kind of like a capital 'B,' with the sushi chefs sitting inside of the letter, the customers positioned around the arcs, and the kitchen along the straight edge.  Tracing the entire "letter" is a miniature conveyor belt crammed full of sushi plates.  All you have to do is grab the plate that you want to eat, then wait until another delicious looking fish passes you.  All the chefs have to do is see what's missing on the conveyor belt and just keep things stocked.  No ordering, no waiting.  A culinary first: fatty yellowtail.

Before we make it to the palace (maybe we got lost and walked several blocks out of our way...thank goodness Japan has maps on every street corner), we again stop for food.  This time it's takoyaki.  These warm dough balls have a small piece of octopus in every bite, and a lot of sauce to boot.  Though it's available throughout Japan and even in parts of Korea, it is quite highly regarded in Osaka and for good reason.

The palace was finally within our grasp but the sudden rain deterred us.  We chose rather to duck into the museum of Osaka history.  There we learned that there are several different grind patterns that can be used when sharpening a katana blade, and that the majority of buildings in the city that are older than 100 years have either been burnt or shaken to the ground at least once.

By the time we've finished in the museum the rain has subsided.  On its exterior, gilded dragons and tiger guard its walls.  It's multiple roofs jut out impressively, adorned with brightly gilded fish.  It is perched in a garden on top of a high stone wall which towers like a man-made mountain above a murky moat.  Its gates are ominous and hewn from a wood that is near black either by nature or age.  Though distinctly Japanese, it feels as impenetrable as any good castle should.

Our first impressions of the interior are much less grand, however.  The entire castle has been gutted to make room for a sort of museum, but it is lackluster.  Then we hit the jackpot: a collection of traditional samurai armor.  The face plates were gruesome and foreboding.  The helmets were frequently crowned with stag beetle tusks or golden antlers.  My personal favorite was the black helm whose back had been affixed with long metal sunbeams that splayed out radially like some cross between a peacock's eminence and a scorpion's menace.  Pictures were strictly forbidden.

The day was capped with you guessed it, more food.  My last Osakan meal consisted of another sampling of takoyaki, a plate of chicken karage, and miso ramen.  Unlike other Japanese ramen I've had, this broth was incredibly thick.  It was as if rather than thickening water they instead opted to thin peanut butter.

I close Christmas weekend with a final pre-dawn trip to the airport.  Incheon International Airport welcomes me with yet another frightening airplane moment.  I hadn't noticed that we had exited the cloud line because everything beneath it, including the ground itself, was the exact same white out.  While I was away Korea had properly entered winter.  Touching ground was a startling turn of events, as until the turbines had begun to blown away the powder there had been no way to see that ground even existed.  I wondered whether or not there was even enough friction between our tires and the pavement for us to reach a full stop in what had over a weekend transformed into Fargo International.

Now I'm on my way back home, where language is mine and comfort abounds.  With any luck, I'll be able to snag a quick shower before I have to start teaching again.  This trip has made Japan my single most frequently visited country, at three times.  A big thanks to DW for making the four hour hike on the 4:30 train from Tokyo just to meet me for a day.  It really made my Christmas wonderful, despite the exhaustion and unfamiliarity of travel and new cities.

December 25th, 2010

Cold. And dark.  So cold that the ink from this pen is not liquid enough to steadily write these words, forcing each thought to be deliberately carved into my paper.  So dark that there is not enough light in my alley to glint off the mist which is surely billowing up from my mouth as I plod towards the subway.  That's how my Christmas morning begins.

Christmas Eve hadn't been this way.  Carols streaming on the laptop, fresh food on white and red paper plates, a tree-shaped candle: it almost had the warmth of family.  It was a special evening full of good laughs with good people.

But now it is cold and dark.  We're talking white knuckles, Russia at its bleakest.  Why am I up before the sun has taken a go at heating up this city?  It's not the whimsical hope of catching that glimpse of Santa's  boots as he exits through the chimney.  It's the 8:30 from Seoul to Osaka.

No, this is not another fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants ticket purchase, though it is already shaping up to be that kind of a weekend. I have been able, from my collection of cards, to procure no more than 30,000￥. I don't know yet what that means as far as purchasing power, but I intend to do my best. I have no Japanese skills, no other access to cash, and no plans except to meet my friend DW tomorrow and eat some of the famed, probably over-rated Kobe beef.

This is a morning of personal firsts, though none of them are yet Japan-specific. I had the pleasure of riding Seoul's new-ish express line this morning, and I flew out of Gimpo International rather than Incheon. The Asiana flight I am on is also a much smaller vessel than I've ever ridden on before. As we descend in on Japan's coast, I am coming to the realization that this equates to feeling the smallest movements of the plane much more dramatically. Making our approach on this windy, winter morning while staring out over Osaka's choppy, grey harbor, I had my first visions of plane crash in many flights.

We're low enough that the plane hits the water with most of the passengers unharmed, but the impact snaps the fuselage in half. Those icy grey, Pacific waves lap further up the isle towards me and I wonder whether my flotation device is between the seat cushions, under the seat cushions, or the seat cushions themselves.

*          *          *        *          *

The hostel is as nice as any I've stayed in. I quickly drop my things and move on to the rest of my Christmas. I take the hostel owner's advice and head over to sample a local delicacy: okonomiyaki.

Granted I'm no stranger to this dish, but Osaka puts a nice twist on it. Rather than the straight cabbage, meat, and batter pancake that I've seen before, the locals here make it double-decker. The second layer? None other than stir-fried udon noodles. A phenomenal lunch that I am simultaneously sad and satisfied to watch disappear.

When I finish, it's time to skip town for the day. Since I'm saving the majority of Osaka's see-ables and do-ables until DW arrives, I get back into the current of public transport and hitch the next train to Kobe.

*          *          *          *          *

It's only a thirty minute arc around the bay to what wikitravel dubs "one of Japan's underappreciated cities." There isn't a tourist guidebook, area map, or information counter to be seen, so I start off in a random direction.

It doesn't take long before I've run into the ocean and a whole myriad of activities. There's a tower with a bay view and a handful of ferries if you'd rather witness it up close. There's also a long strip of restaurants and shops which remind me strongly of the Pier 39 area of San Francisco. I spend some time in a memorial park dedicated to preserving the memory of one particularly devastating earthquake. The city has locked a segment of the sidewalk in time by rooting the crooked lampposts to the ground exactly as they are. It provides an almost eerie contrast to the rest of this well-groomed area.

There was a freak flash snow,
so I guess... White Christmas!

After milling about the docks for a while, I decide it is time to satisfy my ulterior motive: eating the legendary Kobe beef. My journey to a recommended location for said beef, however, leads me through a series of tunnel malls.  That is to say, underneath a length of subway rails lies a series of shops called Motoko. Each Motoko was separated from one another only when a perpendicular road needed to cross through. This meant each one was roughly a block long, and they were numbered accordingly.

I started around Motoko 3 and followed the tunnel until Motoko 7. I wouldn't have gone so far, but I was intrigued. What a random collection of stores! There is everything from goofy jewelry to fancy watches, nice clothes to 1970's electronics, action figure collectibles to religious icons, and of course none of it in any particular order. It is a lot like a block party meeting a garage sale.

With no end in sight, I peel myself away from the insanity at 7 to find that I'm tantalizingly close to Christmas dinner at Steak Land. I will eat meat from a cow nurtured with honey and massages. I will taste the sweet flesh of an animal who has lived the high life.

The chef behind the flattop is a presumably 95 year-old man. His wrinkles are deeper than my pockets, and Asians age well too. This dude is an expert at his craft. He effortlessly controls the speed at which the delicate bok choi cooks by shifting it into the exact right amount of heat. He flips multiple pieces of zucchini with a single flick of the wrist. His knife is incredibly accurate. Never once does he cut something misshapenly or in an odd number of pieces.

The vegetables are warm all the way through but still crisp. The scallop rivals the ones I ate in Charleston at a wedding rehearsal dinner, and those had been braised in duck fat. The shrimp he places on the grill was in fact still alive. I watch its tail jerks and legs scramble as its right flank turns pink. And the beef! Marbled and beautiful, I would have eaten it raw (btw try miming "rare"). There is not a piece of gristle to be found. Every bite is succulent, fat and all. It is truly sublime.

Jeonju

Experiential value is one of the primary reasons I am living here, and lately I've been lacking in local experiences.  Yesterday, I decided to change that.  Catching the first subway to the express bus terminal and then the next bus available, I and three of my friends made the way to the renowned southern city of Jeonju.

If you zoom in, you can see the contrast of the traditional roofing to the rest of the city scape.

Since it was only a day trip but the bus ride takes 2 hours, we had to limit our goals while in Jeonju.

1. Eat bibimbap, the dish of fresh veggies and rice stirred together with red pepper sauce, until we find the one style that makes this city so famous,
2. Explore the traditional  HanOk Village, which is the largest zone of the country where people still live exactly as they did hundreds of years ago, and
3. Enjoy some of the towns famous makolri, an alcoholic rice beverage.

The first place we explored after getting off the bus was HanOk village.  While it had the appearances of a traditional village, it didn't have the feeling.  The buildings looked right.  The roads were cobblestone.  The palace was like the rest.  Unfortunately, besides the architecture, the rest felt strikingly modern.  There were coffee shops, street vendors with bad knickknacks, and swanky restaurants.

The highlight of the village was the palace, where we inadvertently became a member of yet another children's field trip.  The tour guide was exceptionally welcoming, and made sure that we understood his explanations of some of the architectural features of the palace.  He also made all the children greet and bow to us.

On the edge

Before and after this village roaming, we ate bibimbap.  Prior to coming, We had heard two different rumors.  One was from fellow westerner and Korean blogger hiddentreasures.  Every time we ate bibimbap in Seoul, she reminded me that it just doesn't compare with Jeonju.  This city was legendary for having the "stir rice" to end all "stir rices."  The other rumor was from my 6th grade students, who claimed that there was nothing special to be had in Jeonju.

We first tried a back alley, local looking place.  It was sandwiched between two other clearly non-tourist restaurants and across from an elementary school, on a street that featured no other bibimbap at all.  The prices at this restaurant were absurdly cheap, the ingredients were fresh, the stew that came with was above and beyond, but the bibimbap itself was quite bland.

Not to say it didn't look delicious.

 Our second attempt, after the roaming, was at a tourist restaurant.  We figured maybe swankier was tastier.  While this one was high-quality, with such delightful features as raw steak, it was not the bibimbap to end all bibimbaps.

We decided that maybe it was best we left it that way.  While it's a bit disappointing to go to the city of bibimbap and not have the best I'll ever get, it's perhaps more disappointing to spoil an entire dish for the rest of my life.

We moved on to our third goal, the makolri.  The most notable difference between this and other rice liquors, like sake or soju, is the filtration.  Most rice-based alcohols come clear, like vodka.  Makolri, on the other hand, does not have the ground rice filtered out during the fermentation, leaving it opaque and chalky.  Think beige Pepto Bismol.  While it may take a bowl or two (it is drank from what look like rice bowls) to get used to, it grows on you.

Here, things went much as we expected they would.  The price was comparable, the flavor was identical.  There were two massive differences, though.  The first was that the makolri itself was clear, like a pale apple juice.  This was quite surprising, as the taxi driver assured us that it would not be any different than what we could find in Seoul.

The second and most satisfying surprise was that one order of makolri came complete with a spread of food.  Everything from stews to fresh fruit, boiled eggs to fried ones, clams to sweet potatoes, oysters to acorn jelly. This offset the price of the drink itself to practically free.

In the end, though neither the bibimbap nor the traditional village blew our minds, we counted the day a success.  We thoroughly enjoyed the new scenery, the adventure, and the company.

YeongPyeong Island

As usually happens whenever the North does something wonky, there's been a wave of concern from people stateside about the well being of people living in Seoul, namely myself, were war to break out on the Korean peninsula.

In case you've missed it, the North fired live artillery shells onto an island off the east coast of South Korean shores in what may be considered disputed waters.  The incident left four dead, including two civilians.

On our side of the DMZ, reaction has been mixed.  It's true that the civilian deaths have sparked some contained outrage here in the city, but the overall response has been to criticize President Lee MyeongBak's failure to act more swiftly and forcefully.  In my opinion, the Korean people would rip him to shreds no matter what reaction he had; he's not a very well liked president.  In any event, the administration sacked the Minister of Defense.  There has been little activity since the first bombing save some ramp up of defenses on the island and the typical squabbling over who provoked who.  Aside from that, everything has been business as usual, with the local media and civilian population going back about their lives as if nothing has happened.  If there's anything the nuclear tests in 2006 taught me, it's to worry when the locals do.  If that philosophy holds true, then all's well.

I'd like to recount a story I read in a local newspaper on Saturday.  According to the paper, the U.S. General in charge of forces in Korea visited the scene of the bombing to survey the damage.  Shortly after his departure, the North began firing artillery again, but this time into their own waters.  This behavior says two things to me about the North's mentality.  The first is that they know they've rattled some cages and they want to let the South (or perhaps even their own citizens) know that they're the ones in control.  The second is that they're too timid to stick their tongue out while the parents are watching.  That is to say, when the States are on the scene, they can behave themselves.  When we've got our backs turned, the North Koreans start teasing again.

Given that there's an evident fear to provoke the U.S., I highly doubt that we'll see another incident until the media turmoil tires of the uneventful.  If this is truly a solidification of strength to pass power to Kim JeongEun, then  we can be sure to see at least a few more hawkish moves on the part of the North, but contrary to popular belief there's nothing crazy about Kim JongIl.  He's calculating and he knows how to keep his power.  If he appears weak to his people, he loses the underpinning of his cult following: the deception that he could topple the U.S. at any time.  He must keep poking the tiger without ever waking it up, because then he knows he doesn't stand a chance.  So far, he and his father have gone almost 60 years without losing it all.  Kim JongIl's more than aware that there won't be anything for his son to take over if he oversteps the boundaries while trying to pass the torch.

My final word would be to not believe the hype about riots in the city, devastation on YeongPyeong island, or the brink of war for the region.  The panic stateside wasn't half as bad in March when the North allegedly sank the Cheonan, resulting in 46 casualties.  Sometimes the things American media chooses to run with can be as arbitrary as a slow news week.

To Taipei

In my swiftly becoming tradition of buying the cheapest plane ticket the night before a break, I recently made the snap decision to fly to Taiwan for 5 days. Hereafter is the chronicle of the sights and smells of the little island off the coast of China.

This is not the ticket,
but rather a subway token.

Day 1
With its airport well outside of the capital city of Taipei, it takes a little over an hour before I really feel like I am in a different country. The people are still short and sporting unanimously black hair, and the existence of Chinese on signs is not so abnormal in Korea. My first clue, however, has to be the weather. I hadn't realized just how close in latitude the island was to Hong Kong, but it has the same balmy sort of tropical thickness. Stepping out of the airport and waiting for the bus is like spending a half hour in the sauna. My recently shaved head is going to get so burnt!

Shortly after arriving in the city proper with my travel buddy from work Josh, we start to scour the streets for food. Suitcases in tow, we cram into a little place with a lot of business. There seems to be little more than one thing on the menu, so we order that. Already a marked difference between Taiwanese and Korean food. This particular dish is a noodle soup, the broth of which was as viscous as Double Dare slime, though admittedly more appetizing. The what-seemed-to-be-pork and oysters was definitely an odd surf and turf meat option that I hadn't expected, but over all a nice kick off to the week of food that is to come.

The hostel's common area,
which surprised us by
just being some guy's house

After our lunch, we wander around and survey the hostels available to us while slurping down one of the many bubble teas we would drink throughout the week. Finally, we settled on a quaint place sandwiched between a bakery and a cosmetics shop. The narrow staircase to W Hostel climber up into what was certainly this man's home. (We never determined with any certainty the name of the hostel owner, but for the sake of story telling let's call him Willie.) After dropping our bags and settling our bill, it was back out into the street for some exploring.

We wander around the area we are staying in, known as Zhongxiao Fuxing on account of it being the intersection of Zhongziao and Fuxing roads.  This eventually leads us all the way down to Longshan Temple, which was seconds from closing when we arrived, and the Ximen night market.  Unfortunately, all I can say is I stood outside of a stall that serves snake.  The story is a far cry less cool than it could be, but the sight of it was stomach turning.  I haven't wimped out on a food adventure yet this year, so I think you've gotta give me this one.


Day 2

That white outline you can barely make out amid the danger pink?  That's Taiwan.

Our day starts with live footage of a sink blowing down the street during what will turn out to be, in regions south and east of the capital, devastating typhoon Fanapi.  A ponchoed female reporter screams while huddled in the fetal position behind a concrete column.  A delivery truck is toppled.  Breakfast of toast and tea.  Death toll at 10 a.m.?  One elderly woman who was trying desperately to do some last minute vegetable harvesting and two middle school students: a girl who slipped down the muddy banks into a flooded river and the boy who jumped in after her.

Rattled but not to be dissuaded on the first day of our adventure, we headed over to the original Din Tai Fung, a phenomenal 6-story dumpling and dimsum extravaganza.  Rain is off and on throughout our walk there, which is down the "runway" of sorts that leads up to the 2nd tallest building in the world: the Taipei 101.  It doesn't appear to be shaken, though the city might be.  With streets empty and the newspaper headlines ominous, we felt quite intrepid about being on the move.  The restaurant was relaxingly crowded, though, and leaving meant parting the sea of eager diners-to-be.

On the way back from brunch, we circled back through the Da'an Forest Park, then wandered down to the base of the 101 (If you haven't picked up on it yet, wandering is to be a real theme of this excursion).  The wind is really picking up by this time.  Cue the video:

Gusty and intense, you could actually at times lean 45 degrees into the wind.

A typical casualty on the streets of Taipei for the next few days.

The meandering continues as we find ourselves at the "Living Mall," which seemed like a suitable enough refuge from the wind. "Lots of shoes" and "a very confusing structure" are the memories I take away from this building that resembles a space station from Star Wars. Our impromptu walking tour of the city continues down Tea Street, or what we assume is Tea Street. There are a few tea shops, though nothing to warrant the name.

Perhaps this is as good a moment as ever to mention the bubble tea. We each drank 1-2 glasses of this a day. It's a cup filled half way with tapioca balls, half with ice cubes, then finally topped up with (typically) sweetened milk tea. I'm no stranger to bubble tea, but this is a whole new ball game. The tapioca is fresh, plentiful, and addictive. Since this trip it has been a recurring craving of mine.

We finish the day off with a series of foods, starting with a deceptively simple bowl of rice with an egg. I don't know why it tasted so good. Maybe it was the sauce the soaked into the rice, maybe the veggies and nuts, or maybe the fish shavings even. One things for certain: that would be a staple of my diet were I a local. We moved on to a beef and onion calzone type dish, a plate of butter sauteed asparagus, and some spicy tofu dish. All expertly devoured. Don't drink the sweet black licorice jello beverage.

Day 3
We decide late the night before to get out of the city.  To the astonishment of our hostel owner, we inform him of our quest to take a train to the Taroko Gorge and back in one day.  Against his advice to stay Hualien, we head out to the train station.  The worst of the typhoon has passed, with nothing left but fallen branches and some light rain.  We're not quite sure where to get off the train or how to find transport from the station to the gorge, but the ride itself is quite pleasant.

It's nice to see some smaller towns and farm fields, but there's also a prominent industrial presence. We pass multiple large factories on our way. The small towns are also a good vantage point from which to notice how strongly the temples jump out of the scenery. While the majority of the landscape is grey and brown, the temples were stark, unnatural reds, yellows, and blues.

The gorge itself is a 30 minute uphill walk through a small town. There is much more evidence of Fanapi's passing on this side of the island. By now its almost noon, so we stop at a fruit stand shortly after getting off the train. Lunch is the most amazing mango and dragonfruit I've ever tasted. Vibrant color, huge flavor. Nothing will ever compare again.

Taroko Gorge is the most impressive experience of the trip. The pictures sort of do it justice, but it is absolutely breath-taking. Towering, tree-packed mountains, with fog snaking over and between them, stand like walls on either side of a typhoon-flooded river. Waterfalls drizzle out from imperceptible sources throughout the range.

It also is the site of one of our most authentic meals on the island. A small group of monks in this monastery in the foothills is preparing food for themselves. Before we know what happened, we are ushered into the silent "cafeteria" on the third floor of this temple and aimed at the dishes. Without explanation or instruction, we are observed in a hushed silence. We eat our absolutely delicious vegetarian rice mix, noodles, moon cakes, fruit, and soup in the same silence. There's a feeling of calm in the air that discourages words for fear of breaking the peace. Naturally, photographing the scene would have felt obscene. We leave the temple slack jawed and wide eyed at the hospitality we've just encountered.

We arrive, exhausted, back in the city after dark. We get a quick meal of beef noodles, pork blood soup, and pickled cabbage noodles. The bubble tea of the day is with Pu'er tea, plum juice, and lemon.

It is at this point, with 3 days left, that my camera breaks. The remaining time is captured on Josh's camera and the story will continue when I get the visuals necessary to do it up right.

The Kimchi Crisis

Being a member of the inner city and not of the sky scraping suburbs, I have not personally seen much effect of the recent outrageous prices of kimchi, the most integral food to every meal of Korean cuisine. The long story short is that something to do with the weather this year has left a shortage of radish, garlic, and (most severely) cabbage in Korea. This has led the prices to soar and, despite government subsidies, the production of the dish this harvest season to decrease. Being that it's a fermented food and usually takes months if not years to make properly, I hadn't predicted much effect on the consumer side of the market for at least half a year. However, last week I was refused kimchi for the first time in a restaurant, with "high prices of cabbage" cited as the excuse. Jaw-dropping.  I had hoped to take part in some kimchi making this year.  We'll see if the festival still takes place.

Top 4 Things that are Popular in Korea, but Never Could be in America (and Why)

Floor Sleeping:
Camping is great and all, but no one wants to do it everyday.  Sleeping on the floor is the norm here.  Just throw down a blanket and lay on it!  I can't see this ever catching on in America.  Even when they have a "bed," it's definitely fusion.  They will buy a mattress sized wooden box with a mini-headboard, then throw down a blanket and sleep on that.  I can't understand why they don't embrace the soft sleeping scenario, but perhaps it's a space thing.  Most of the Westernization happens through the younger generation, who either live with parents and therefore don't have a choice what they sleep on or live in a whole so small that the bed has to roll up to make the space work.

Octopus:
On a rare occasion, you can get a group of people together who can get stomach fried calamari from an Italian restaurant, provided it's thoroughly fried, devoid of texture or fish flavor, and accompanied with a bucket of sauce to douse it in.  In Korea, however, octopus and other seafoods are eaten far more often than chicken or even pork.  This culinary contradiction is a reflection of the nature of the two countries, in my opinion.  Whereas America is broad, with plenty of land for livestock, and a history of land-animal consumption, Korea can fit into America an almost even 98 times.  This combined with being a peninsula and a general Asian affinity towards foods from the sea, means octopus is the new beef.  I've eaten octopus steamed on a stick, dried, fried, grilled, sauced, over rice, in soup, and even alive.  It's gotten so bad that I walk through street food areas and have to convince myself that it doesn't smell good.  It doesn't, but that doesn't mean it can't be appetizing.  It took a long time to even reach this stage, where I not only don't notice but am sometimes in the mood for octopus, and it's another thing I don't see America embracing any time soon.

Wrist Grab:
I'm sitting in the office, preparing for class.  Suddenly, a hand comes from over my shoulder a grabs my wrist, with the clutch and unexpectedness of a zombie from the grave.  It's just my boss of course, but the wrist grab is just a way of getting attention in this culture, like a tap on the shoulder or a psst!  It doesn't stop at this one interaction, of course.  It is a move of endearment, friendship, even attraction.  It's not at all uncommon to see a boyfriend wrist grab his girl on the sidewalk, or watch it be used almost as a pick-up line.  To the Western wrist it feels extremely disrespectful in the office and aggressive in the bar, though I know it's not meant that way.  I'll stick to words, thanks.

Toilet Paper:
Obviously there's more to this.  Sure, we all use toilet paper for it's obvious function, but one way in which toilet paper will never be employed is as napkins.  Or paper towels.   Or on a restaurant table for customers.  There's just that bathroom connotation that, except for the odd bachelor pad, will never be socially acceptable in anything food-related.

Top 3 Things that are Popular in America, but Never Could be in Korea (and Why)

Tetris:
Though t may be mathematical and nerdy, Tetris can not reach a state of popularity in South Korea. The reason? The F word. That's right. You know how one of the Tetris pieces looks like an amputated medical cross?  Well, Koreans believe that looks strikingly similar to a representation of the middle finger, and have endearingly titled the gesture "f*** you."  Turn your back on a class full of rascals for 1 second and it is sure to happen: one student will shoot the bird at another, and that student will immediately shout, "Teacher!  He did f*** you to me." Of course, he will simultaneously demonstrate the offensive gesture in your direction while tattling, thereby compound the annoyance of the tattle with actually cursing and flicking off the teacher.  Back to tetris, this particular piece can be found scrawled all over the desks and walls of the schools.  A game based around it would be too much for them to handle.

Salsa:
A delicious condiment for chips, salad, or anything in a tortilla, we all know that salsa can range from sweet to extremely spicy.  While these are flavors that Koreans know and love, especially pepper based spice, I don't believe that this dip will ever find popularity without a name change.  This is because the word salsa is terribly close to the word sulsa, meaning diarrhea.  There is literally no way to pronounce salsa without garnering a cringe (or in the case of elementary students, an outburst of laughter), even if you enunciate with extreme precision.  If you walked into a foreign restaurant and there on the appetizer list was something dubbed "dee-a-ree-a," would you take the chance?

Drive Thru:
One of the qualifications of a true "fast-food" restaurant is the ability to purchase it without the extra hassle of parking and walking into the store.  The convention of the drive thru is so omnipresent that it may be hard to imagine a world without it, and yet it does not exist in Korea.  Yes, we have McDonald's and Burger King, KFC, Popeye's, even a Taco Bell now.  Not a single one of them offers drive thru pick up.  This is a combination of space problems and market needs.  For starters, the drive thru requires a wide swath of private road around the fast-food restaurant in question.  However, most of these establishments are on the first floor of a 12 story building that is crammed next to a whole row of 12 story buildings.  In a city that stacks everything from grocery stores to movie theaters, there just isn't the spatial luxury to pave a moat around your burger joint.  Of course, we also have to consider that the operative word in drive thru is drive.  In a city with a popular subway and bus system, not to mention a thriving pedestrian culture, a drive-up window would only be convenient to the smaller segment of the population that is actually driving their cars.  To counter act these space and market constrictions, fast-food joints have begun to offer walk-up window service or even delivery.