new york, paris, jeju-do, tokyo

well, not the first two, but i've lately seen some pretty cool places.  i attended a conference in jeju island, just to the south of korea (it's the pink island above).  beautiful place.  known as the hawaii of korea.  enjoyed "hwey" (회, sashimi) and other delicious foods. relaxed pace on the island.  took a day to travel around after the conference and met quite a few fun people.  some captions below...

the lighthouses at the harbors help the ships to navigate in... i wonder if this "red on your right" system is standard world-wide...

i'm posing by "dragon rock" -- it used to have a head, but that got detached by a tsunami from a few years ago.

 there are some amazing lava tubes that carve the underworld of jeju.  this is a particularly impressive stalagmite (?) that formed from lava pouring through the ceiling.  walked down 1km of this >13 km long tunnel, ceiling height ranges from 2m-30m.  quite amazing.

 took a fun early morning hike with a lodgers at a korean hostel.  someone had me pose for this neat shot.

 cute korean girls on the hike who were so friendly.  "Smees-uh! peek-tcha!?"

 chang-won loving life.

 an epic hike around hallisan mountain.  it was quite foggy and some rain, but it was beautiful being so in touch with the elements.  fire created that rock, and the lush landscape surrounded by wind and rain made it quite a surreal experience.

hae-nya are the women of jeju who dive for food in the ocean.  sadly, the may be the last generation who does this, as many of the children have moved to cities in search of a more comfortable lifestyle.

東京 (Tokyo)

visited tokyo because my friend justin was the invited speaker at a conference out there.  we had a blast, saw some cool things, met some interesting folks...

 met a really amazing human being, nabe (pronounced "nah-bay").  he befriended me at narita airport train station, and we walked around tokyo for a few hours and enjoyed being alive.  it makes me happy to know that wonderful spirits like him inhabit this planet.

this was the view from justin's sweet hotel.  i know it is totally amateur, but, pretty cool huh?  we down-graded just a little after his conference was finished :)

i took a hike around kamakura while justin was at his conference.  i had a great time visiting temples and hiking. i even went swimming at the beach!

big buddha thing.  i had a little trouble feeling the spiritual energy at this place.  perhaps this feeling was connected to the korean temple there given as a "gift" in 1924 to one of the royalty (during period of japanese occupation of korea, 1913-1945). 

justin and i took a tour with chinami.  she was our guide friday.  she took us around to so many places and helped us to get some insight about her culture.  domo arigato chinami!!!

i met with katsu one evening.  he came all the way to my neighborhood to join me for dinner.  we met the week before in jeju.  what an awesome person.

partied all night with some fun people.  visited several different clubs, danced a lot!

 the trickiest part was staying up until the trains started running again at 6am.  here's "homeless" justin with thelma (phillipine woman).  she may look more fresh than him, but we were all exhausted from the long night...

bicycling along the river... happy!

at first, i thought this would be a horrible idea, but it ended up being pretty amazing:  impressed by how the subway system seems to handle tickets inserted in any orientation, justin folded his ticket in half and pushed it through.  error.  no surprise.  yet, what ensued was cool: the patrol guy proceeds to open up the ticket-processing machine, revealing a very complex system of belts and gears and stuff.  it's interesting to imagine how much energy goes into making the system of tokyo running smoothly.