Today is “Setsubun.” In Japan, people believe that this is the last day of winter. For good luck in the coming year, you should open your door or window and throw beans outside while you say, “Demons out, fortune in!” You should also eat a big, long sushi roll while facing the lucky direction. This year the lucky direction is south-southeast. You shouldn’t cut the roll, and you should eat the whole roll without talking. The sushi roll is big, so you need to open your mouth wide. But don’t say that you need a “big mouth.” That has a different meaning in English. If you have a big mouth, you are talkative, and you can’t keep a secret.   (119 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

The main reason I went to Gunsan was to see birds. There is a duck called the Baikal teal that winters in the area. More than 100,000 teals gather, and when they fly up into the air, they look like a moving cloud. We saw a lot of teals on the river, but they didn’t move, and they were too far away to see clearly. I hired a taxi to take me around in the late afternoon. The driver took me to several places, but we couldn’t find any ducks. We found a lot of geese in the rice paddies instead. Finally, as we were driving back to Gunsan, we saw ducks and geese flying above the rice paddies. It was too dark to get a good picture, but I was happy! My wife says that I am just like a K-pop fan. I go everywhere to see my feathered idols!  (151 words)

When you are traveling in a foreign country, you sometimes find words that aren’t in your dictionary. After leaving Jeonju, we went to a port city called Gunsan. One of the local dishes is “champon,” like Nagasaki “champon.” Gunsan noodles are spicy and full of seafood like mussels, clams, and squid. The restaurant near our hotel had a tablet for ordering. There were two pictures that looked the same, but the prices were different. The names were the same in Korean, but there was one more word after the more expensive “champon.” I couldn’t find the word in my dictionary, so we switched to the Japanese menu. The Japanese names were almost the same, but one was written in katakana and the other was written in hiragana. Why were the hiragana noodles more expensive? We decided to order both and see. When we got them, we saw that the hiragana portion was bigger.

We stayed in the old part of Jeonju. It is called “hanok village” because most of the buildings are “hanok,” traditional Korean houses with nice wooden doors and tiled roofs. We stayed in one because it had a traditional heated floor. The “ondol” kept us warm at night even when the temperature went down to -10 degrees. Korea has been very cold, but the people have been warm and friendly. Our “hanok” manager spent a lot of time talking to us about everything from sightseeing and restaurants to life in Japan and Korea. When we had breakfast there, we talked to travelers from Indonesia and the Philippines. Even the taxi drivers in Jeonju were happy to talk. One gave us some candy after we gave him advice about traveling in Japan!    (126 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com