7,257 Miles: A Kat in South Korea

The Skytree was closed due to high winds but we got the view from the metropolitan building so, I mean, eh. We only made it to Odaiba at night and were too tired to find the life size Gundam.  

The Government Building with free observatories you can go to was beautiful. It was designed to look like a mix between a gothic cathedral and a microchip. We found some graffiti around Shibuya and I asked to take a picture of a woman's adorable dogs. 

I missed the most exciting part of a shintoist festival at Asukasa Bashi (thanks to my travel partner hating culture and not believing how cool stuff I said was) but it was an irrefutably beautiful shrine that I was glad to see nonetheless. 

You know, I left home with really high prospects about how often I would write. I would write for ISA and myself on a weekly basis *at least.* Fast forward to now and I'm barely writing anything at all. I'm animating and I'm getting a bunch of different art projects started and finished but writing? Nope. Really low on that front. 

Wasted opportunities to write #517: Waiting on lunch to be served, playing mindlessly with chopsticks. It's scary, actually: the less I write, the worse I think I'm becoming. It's probably the fact that I'm poisoning my brain with alcohol but Hemingway and countless other writers were far more frequent in their alcoholic binges and still managed to write well. 

Then again, I'm not Hemingway: I'm an idiot.

Anyway: yeah, been doing a lot since I last jumped on Tumblr to update you. 

Posing sensuously beneath waterfalls, for instance.

I've been places.

Posing sensuously in group pictures.

Done things.

Imitating the least sensuous statue in the park.

And I'm sorry to have let you fall out of the loop.

By the way, here's a picture taken of me while giving the German beau a unicorn tattoo. He is helping me push myself when I work out. Look at those arms: those are the arms of a bratty, overgrown child. They are also the arms of a man I am dating. ~Life is pretty good~

Since my last text post I climbed a goddamn mountain in gym shoes.

(Before)

(At the top)

(After)

I went to Gyeonju where it got cold and rainy and my decision to just wear an autumn dress went horribly awry.

(I forgot to wash my leggings. See how my legs are the only ones not covered. This is a spectacularly bad decision made visible to the outside world.)

(A Korean mother and daughter pointed at me and laughed. This is a barbaric country we should have let fall to communism.)

On the international day out, a museum exhibit had a familiar last name attached. 

(Don't call me "kun" I'm LeeHong-chan)

Went out drinking with more international students. Had international good times with cream makkoli.

Two Koreans, an American, and a German: this photo taken by a guy from Denmark whose artwork I really admire (http://j-hasle.dk/about.html). When will life be this globalized and good again?

Then I saw cherry blossoms with the beau. 

(I had to drag this asshole here. What a cute.) 

After helping out at a dog shelter and completing our midterms, we went to Jeju Island. Let's let the series of photos to follow basically attempt to convince you of how cool I am because I went there.

(Oh yeah)

(Uh huh)

(Wicked cool)

(Cooler than you)

(Ok, not really)

(The point is I had a great time. 혹돼지 (black pork) is fucking delicious.)

Then when I came home I went to see the lanterns that were on display post lantern festival (which I had to miss to see Jeju Island: you win some, you lose some. I lost out on the chance to go to Lotte World and a baseball game with my boyfriend and missed the lantern festival. I don't like to think about it that way but that was the opportunity cost in this case.)

(I wouldn't be so sore about it if it weren't for the fact that it was awesome and the lanterns on display are a fraction of what was at the event.)

(It was rainy that night and so I couldn't really get a good picture of myself in front of these.)

(A really sweet Korean woman tried her best to help me. I show this picture to you in her honor. Blinking and all.)

(Ok, I take it back. I'm glad that my grandpa helped defend this country, even when people laugh at me for my poor dressing decisions.)

And that was all a week ago (as I write this it is May 6th, 2014.) Just this past weekend I went to Gangneung with manfriend, Alexander, and Katie.

(Accidental couples trip, eyyy yoooooo. Long-exposure photography!)

(Also, I got really drunk on accident on Cinco de Mayo. I think my body's internal calendar was just telling me it was time to get crazy. Poor Maffe.)

(There's a lot of shame in this picture related to video I took while totally schwasted.)

Hey, we had a good time. Whatever.

Today we bought our tickets to Japan, by the way.  Well, I bought both of ours. He'll be paying me back in cash and now owes me 237.35 USD (or more exactly...24212.10 Yen, heyyyyy oooooh). So that's my update. Don't expect anything too fancy or exciting between now and the 15th, when we fly out to Japan because I haven't got anything planned. Also, The Amazing Spiderman 2 was really good. You should see it. Is it out in the states yet?  Man it feels good to see movies before you people. 

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea suffered its second serious transport accident in just over two weeks on Friday when a subway train in the capital, Seoul, crashed into a train at a station, injuring 200