Annyeong Franceska

One of the latest Korean drama series I watched is “Annyeong Franceska” (which translates either to Hello or Goodbye Franceska, although people tend to favor the first one). It’s a sitcom – although there are lots of scenes outside – and ran from January 2005 to February 2006 on MBC in South Korea.

The series is about one of the last vampire families who are sent by their leader (“The Great Andre”) to one of the safehouses in Japan. But they take the wrong ship and arrive in Seoul where the titular character bites the quite average, but overweight Du-il by accident and makes him a vampire. The six then try to make a living in Seoul. Spoilers follow next…

This sounds more serious, than it actually is. The vampires don’t have any particular weaknesses, nor do they have special powers. The family consists of Franceska, who is obsessed with gambling, can make a meal out of almost everything living and is most scary when she is wielding her axe. The only guy in the original vampire family, Kyeon, is dumb, his sister Elizabeth is a fashionista and the oldest of the group, Sophia, looks like 16.

Tønder

Our stay at Tønder came quite unexpected. Tønder is a Danish border town and also the place where we had to change trains. Unfortunately, the ticket was only valid until Tønder and trains leave every two hours to Esbjerg. Once I finally managed to buy the required tickets, we had already missed the train, so we were “forced” to do a little sightseeing trip in Tønder.

Since it was once an important city for trade, there is at least a small old town and some restaurants. Enough to pass 1,5 hours and then continue to Esbjerg.

Somewhere in between: Neumünster

If you travel from Hamburg to Kiel by regional express, the train will surely stop in Neumunster. This is definitely not a tourist destination, but since I passed the city so many times I wondered how it looked like – plus I wanted another pin on my “Cities you’ve visited” map. I had bought a Schleswig-Holstein ticket, so I made a stop-over on my way back from Kiel.

I did stay for approximately forty minutes which is enough I guess when leaving out museums and just walking down the main street. Neumunster has it’s share of shops although I guess the city is suffering from its proximity to both Hamburg and Kiel.

Anyway, the weather was fine so I enjoyed a short walk in the park. “Short”, because, well, it was a small park.

If you are looking for good shots, you can find them anywhere, like this crow munching some fast food. Fast food may be not correct in this case however, because the crow had some difficulties eating the burger.

Kiel – Not quite a leisure trip

Time for another trip to Kiel! Okay, this is not exactly one of my favourite cities nor is it one of the cities I dislike most. Although this wasn’t a leisure trip everything went well. The weather was also great so I took a few pictures. They are still working on the “other side”, i.e. the one where the concert hall Halle 400 is situated.

Although I pretty much dislike “modern” glass architecture, this building was amazing:

Stealth office! Other than that, the redesigned area is quite boring and could have used more green.

After a stop-over in Neumunster, I briefly left Elmshorn station to find this forbidden affair between an old and new style display:

Flight movies

Today, during the flight from Tokyo to London, I didn’t beat my previous record (six films watched during one flight). I managed to watch Max Payne, Burn after Reading, Madagascar 2 and War of the Worlds.

Max Payne was ok for a computer game adaption, although that compared to Jason Bourne in the Bourne trilogy, Max was never threatened very much by the fact that he was a wanted suspect. Still, I expected a worse movie.

I love the Coens, but Burn after Reading was one of their less good works. Too much star power, not enough quirky characters.

Talking about “not enough”: Not enough penguins! The four gang of penguins in Madagascar 2 had all the good scenes or at least the one which were not predictable from A-Z. The main story felt like it was copied from a million other movies from the past. Of course the friends separate, then discover the meaning of friendship blablabla.

Less blabla, more kaboom in War of the Worlds the only movie that was not on the “recent films” listing in the entertainment system. I must say that I liked this adaption. Focussing on a family is a clever idea and while they mentioned that the aliens are destroying things everywhere the movie kept showing other places and militaristic heroism to a minimum. Note that the army only managed to shoot one of the tripods down, when they were starting to die anyway.

Next class trip:Kawagoe

Again? That’s what I thought when the majority of my class mates decided on Kawagoe. I’ve been there already two times, first on my own and then with another class (at my suggestion!). Kawagoe is also known as 小江戸 (little Edo) and is a good place to see traditional houses of wealthy merchants. One can also find lots of candy shops Japanese candy which is not neccessarily sweet.

Korean Films Rundown (1)

I’ve seen many Korean films in Germany but they were usually about a few martial artists from an ancient kingdom flying through an abundance of special effects and eliminating each plot hole with a fire ball. I guess the only Korean film which has some popularity without featuring martial artists or a horror theme is Oldboy.

So it was time for a Korean movie marathon, since the videos were already piling up. I sometimes buy a DVD and then watch it for the first time after a year or so…

First was Attack the Gas Station (1999) which is, um, about four social outcasts attacking a gas station. After demolishing and robbing the station, they are already bored on the next day and decide to attack the same station again. This time they don’t get as much money but they have an idea and start running the station by themselves. Of course with their short-tempered behaviour and their general lack of respect for any authority (police, elders) they quickly make some new enemies and hostages. I don’t want to spoil more of the content but there are some great comedic scenes in it as well.

Bi-mong (Dream) is more of an arthouse movie, directed by KIM Ki-duk and starring ODAGIRI Jo who is also known for his roles in Mushishi and Azumi. Besides the story (Japanese guy having hyper-realistic dreams which are acted out by a sleepwalking woman in reality) the interesting bit was the language. I understood (without looking at the subtitles) exactly half of it. Odagiri is talking only in Japanese throughout the whole movie while the rest of the cast is only talking in Korean. But they all talk like they perfectly understand each other and him being Japanese is never a topic.

Last one (for now) is Yeongeo wanjeonjeongbok or Please teach me English.

Almost Korea

Class started again and after a seemingly endless time at the middle level, I mastered the Unit Test and got my ticket for the advanced level. What’s special about the advanced level? Well, for starters, they teach a lot more words and introduce newspaper articles. You should be able to talk about various subjects freely such as economy problems, society etc. .

The only person I know from the previous class are the teachers. The class is a quite big one: 14 students. Although Koreans are the majority at Naganuma, 9 out of 14 is quite rare. Of the remaining five, two come from Taiwan, one from the U.S. and two from Europe.

Between classes my Korean classmates talk in Korean of course. Although my Korean vocab has quadrupled since my trip to Seoul, it is not enough to understand most of the talking. It’s a pleasant sound, but it kind of sticks into your ear. Since I often stay in the class room to learn some Kanji, I get the full dosis of Hangul. Sometimes when I close my eyes or sleep I can hear my class mates talking in Korean. This is quite disturbing because I want to know what I’m dreaming about

Surprise parties

Today is the 31st of December which is like an obligation to do something. Unlike western countries, there is no loud noise when the year ends and no fireworks. You will hear just the bells signaling the new year.

My original plan was to find a Mixi group for a karaoke meet-up and just sing five, six hours. There is a big karaoke meet-up on Mixi every month with approx. 250 people meeting in real life! Still, they didn’t have one for today.

So I went to the party at Mickey House instead. Mickey House is a conversation cafe, mainly for English but also for French, German and Spanish. Their location in Takadanobaba has also the added bonus that I can get there without changing trains.

The party was ok – they had snacks, alcohol and a clock (very important today, because otherwise you might miss the next year!). I talked with a couple of Japanese, Chinese and other people. One Japanese studied the differences between British and US English, using a language book (written for Japanese). Now he talked to an American woman and told her “The American’s say it like that…”. Usually it was about omitting a character. So he wanted a confirmation from her – but instead got a “I don’t know anybody who talks like that” back. The examples also seemed strange to me

Water Walk #1 Oji

One of the interesting new meet-up groups is the water walk meet-up. It follows the places presented in the book “Water Walks: In the Suburbs of Tokyo”. That’s the reason why I joined: To see some places I would usually not visit.

We started at Oji station and I already new four people from previous meet-up and one called me by my Mixi nickname. As with many places in Tokyo, you wouldn’t think that there is something that qualifies as a park nearby when you exit the station. First we walked into the wrong direction which led us to this temple which wasn’t on the list:

So we had to walk to the station and then walk the other way, reaching an almost dried-out river and later some other temples. After that we went to a tall building with a free observation deck, getting a view of Tokyo.