Sakura of DOOM

Still coughing and get winded fairly easily, though I think it's getting better.

I told my friend J. that I would visit every large bookstore in Seoul by the time I left, and I am working on it! I think J. half thought I was kidding, but after two weeks, five bookstores, six volumes of manhwa and one book later, she has caught on to my dead seriousness. For those curious, the book loot is Carla Kelly's Libby's London Merchant and Miss Chartley's Guided Tour; Kim Yeon Ju's Nabi the Prototype, so I can compare it with my English translation at home; Nabi 1, 2, and 4; a collection of her short stories titled Fly; a totally random manhwa called Annyeong, Pi, which I thought would be a fairly easy read before of the cute fluffy chick on the front but turns out to have a cute fluffy chick that is the reincarnation of the main character's past life's servant (of course a random manhwa I pick up will have reincarnation!); and the Korean translation of Yotsuba 9, on the grounds that the vocabulary Yotsuba uses shouldn't be too hard. Unlike, say, ALL of the Kim Yeon Ju. But her art is so pretty! I could not resist!

If anyone has information about the following manhwa, I would be extremely grateful!

( Random manhwa with pretty art )

I feel vaguely guilty about going to Book Off even in Korea, but they have used manhwa!

I think class has been improving my pronunciation and listening immensely; I still find speaking incredibly difficult and am terrible at it, and we haven't learned any grammar that's new to me. Still, getting a refresher course in grammar is never bad, and I'm hopefully picking up more casual Korean. It's also very confusing because sometimes I stare at writing and it takes me a while to figure out if it's in Korean or in Japanese because I can read both now. Sadly, I was reading katakana in Book Off and thought I was reading Korean because that's what I'm used to and it's a much blockier script, but no...

Also, I still try to put Japanese in when I can't figure out Korean. But when I try to consciously speak Japanese, all that comes out is Korean. I realized this after trying to help two Japanese tourists in the subway and it took me 30 seconds to figure out how to say "It's okay" in Japanese instead of saying "괜잖아요." And then what ended up coming out of my mouth was "大丈夫요 (Daijoubu yo)." >_<;;;

On the plus side, knowing Chinese is invaluable. It also means a lot of my vocab sounds strangely formal, because the more formal vocabulary tends to be the Sino-Korean vocabulary, which I find easier to remember. I also was very startled to find quotes from various Chinese historical sources about Korean history in the National Museum of Korea.

By the way, one thing I love about Korea? The National Museum of Korea? FREE. Awesomesauce, especially since I only made it through the Three Kingdoms period this trip.

And I haven't even gotten around to describing Seoul, which I adore. Or how there is 팥빙수/shaved ice everywhere here and how J. showed me an awesome little bakery and how cheap and tasty the food here is and how Busan made me homesick and how I am still not an adventurous eater for an Asian person (did not try the live octopus or the fried silkworms, did try the raw sea cucumber and am still really not feeling it) and how there is all this street food that I haven't been eating because I am so full from other meals. But I had 호떡, this round flatbread with melted sugar and some nuts I think on the inside, and I suspect it was not the best 호떡 (I should have lined up in Busan at that stand, but we had to catch a train), but OMG I must get more when I go to Insadong on Wed.

Oh! And we made 다식/tea snacks in class and learned a teeny weeny bit of 택견/taekkyeon and walked around a 한옥/hanok (traditional style Korean houses) village. Someone had a brand-new beautiful shiny hanok, and they parked a brand-new beautiful shiny orange Porsche under it. It looked a bit out of place, to say the least.

And now I must go, even though I still haven't gotten to Busan and Shanghai and the World Expo and Seoul proper, because Coffee House is starting, and even though I can't understand a thing going on, I'm watching just for Kang Ji-Hwan in glasses. He is adorkable!

And after that is the new horror sageuk Gumiho, which is sadly much easier to follow than Coffee House, since it's much more action oriented. Also, yellow contacts + fangs + women turning into foxes = entertaining even when you can't understand!

This is a collection of interrelated short stories that the manhwaga used as a sort of prologue to her current series Nabi. Alas, I've heard sales of this volume weren't great, so TokyoPop isn't planning on releasing the series. That's too bad, because the art in this is simply gorgeous, and though some of the stories are confusing, her characters are charming and intriguing and I want to see more of them and the world.

The first two stories don't seem to be connected at all. The first is on a young girl who's a political hostage; she's been temporarily blinded to prevent her from ever seeing her captives. The second is on a somewhat tomboyish girl being married off for a political alliance; both have a nicely bittersweet feeling, not much resolution, and a sense of a wider world going on around the heroines. The next few stories are about two orphans at different ages. We first meet them when they're kids—incredibly adorable kids! So cute!—and then we watch as their relationship doesn't quite develop as expected, thanks to a vase.

On a side note, I wish TokyoPop put blank pages or dividers or something between the stories instead of an easily-missed title; I had to flip back several times before I realized that I was in a new story.

Really lovely art and atmosphere, and I pout to think we might not get more in English.