From Fukuoka, Japan to Busan, Ulsan and Seoul, South Korea

Up early November 5 for a 8am flight to Seoul, we rose into clouds and descended into Seoul's milky smog a scant 40 minutes later. The several subway rides, with transfers, from Gimpo domestic airport into the city took at least twice that long. By 2:30pm we had hauled our luggage along urban streets, checked into the Ramada, had coffee and bought tickets to ride more subways, an intimidating process of first finding one's destination on the intricately complicated map of subway lines (most info in Korean script) and then inserting adequate money for the machine to spit out tickets. At the end of the trip, assuming you have survived the jaws of the turnstile trying to snag you captive, you feed your ticket into another machine and receive whatever change you are due as refund.

Jennifer and Mary on subway train

Finally getting to explore the market streets, we found beautiful handmade paper made into cards with appliqued doll figures, silk covered pencil boxes, pashmina scarves, huge stone carvings from Laos and Cambodia in an antiques shop. In the middle of the sidewalk some men in bright red garb rolled out sheets of something like rice crispy bars and then cut it with a cleaver against a straight edge. Mary and I stopped to watch candy makers take a glob of honey and dip it into cornstarch, then stretch it, dip it again into the cornstarch, double it and stretch it again. Every time they doubled it over they would double their count of strands - 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,...256. When Japanese visitors stopped to watch, the men began counting in Japanese also. After they had a multitude of small strands, they would break off a length of 4-5 inches, place a spoonful of almond paste in the center of one end, and wrap the strands into a roll. One of them beckoned me to a side and gave me one to taste - a strangely floury texture around the almond nugget.

Mary photographing at multi-storey mall

Mary and I ventured down numerous narrow, often crooked lanes off the main road - street vendors selling jewelery and souvenirs, tea houses, old houses with tile roofs and walls made with broken tiles embedded in mortar. One elegant Tea Museum had an entire wall of different types of tea - chrysanthemum, persimmon, rooibos - as well as beautiful, individual tea bowls, each with a glaze that invites you to turn it around and around in your hands, admiring the color variations of the glaze, the particularities of the shape, and the personality of the bowl.
After two more crowded subways during rush hour, and a welcome shower back at our hotel, I luxuriated in curling up on the sofa in the 14th floor lounge, having a beer with Mary, Miriam, Jenn and Dennis. Mary and I stayed when the others went out to dinner, making a supper of the hors d'oeuvres - soup, sushi, oysters, and a delicious, subtle-flavored steamed Chinese custard with mushrooms and other delicate vegetables embedded in it. Back in our room, we looked out on the city lights, especially a distant wall of irregular, ever-changing vertical neon colors in an always changing rainbow of hues.