"Forgive Them Father" (by Lauryn Hill)

Ever since I (or my wife, to be precise) made a trip plan to visit Ise, Mie prefecture of Central Japan, I've been looking forward to visiting Ise-jingu (伊勢神宮), famous Shinto shrines, and buying "Akafuku (赤福)", rice cake with red bean jam. However, a week before our visit, Akafuku was reported to have violated food safety regulations and suspended its business.

Everybody's taking a photo at "Akafuku"

They say, sorry

Forgive them father for they know not what they do. (Lauryn Hill)

"Ring the Alarm" (by Beyonce)

Now cell phone subscribers are over 100 million out of 127 million in Japan, and over 2 billion out of 6 billion in the world. I'm not the only one who gave up installing a fixed line telephone at my home several years ago. At the same time, payphone has been disappeared from the streets. But, I haven't felt inconvenient until my last visit to Chicago in the early this month.

As always, I didn't rent a cell phone at the airport. Although I had to make several phone calls this time, I assumed I could find a payphone on the streets. But, the first problem was that I couldn't find one! Secondly, almost no Chicagoans knew where a public phone was!! What is worse, even when I found one at last, I didn't have quarters and couldn't find places for exchanges!!! Later, I bought a $2 phone card, but wasn't able to make local calls for long enough!!!!

So, when you travel overseas:

1. Get dozens of quarters,
2. Rent a cell phone,
3. Find a nice person you might be able to borrow his/her cell phone from (Thanks a lot to a girl, at a Dunkin' Doughnut store, who let me use her Razr for free.), OR
4. Just give up making a phone calls (I don't like making a phone call partly because I have traumatic work experiences at a call center.) and be free from digital connection.

말조심

When I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Chicago last week, there were Korean dad and daughter chatting next to my table. Dad was talking in Korean and the daughter in English, but both were mixing the other language as well. I was barely listening to their conversation, but was surprised to hear the daughter saying to her dad "뭐라고?" I believe she just meant "what did you say?" It's so rude in Korea but it might not be in Koreatown.

By the way, Chicago's Policemen are riding on horse (말), bike or segway. So, watch out horses and others.

여러분~ "말"조심 하세요!

good 2 B home

Here're photos from my first return to Chicago since May 2000. Ain't enough time (and places) to sightsee. Plus, was too exhausted to have Chicago's deep dish pizza. After all, I realized American cities are not for sightseeing but for living. Still, it was good to be home and to see the windy city hasn't changed a lot. The Millenium Park is the only exception.

Millenium Park in Oct 2007

http://www.millenniumpark.org/

BGM: Common's "Finding Forever", Rhymewest's "Blue Collar" and Kanye West's "Graduation" (all from Chicago)

PS. Thanks to Mayumi-san and Ben.