?

?

Updated list of the people from the hostel:

• Owner – owner of the hostel, 41yo guy. Originally from Cananda, he seemed (and acted) way younger. Fond of drinking and talking about being horny.
• C.H. – one of the staff members, 28yo guy. Bespectacled, served in the navy, intensely shy.
• Nacho – Korean-American female staff member in her early thirties, originally from L.A., in charge of the volunteers. Bespectacled, hilarious, and plump, with a BTS haircut and a crazy sleep routine.
• Chica – Spanish volunteer / actress from Madrid, 34yo girl. Short, perky, petite, with long, straight hair and freckles.
• Painter – Brazilian volunteer, guy in his late thirties. Been here for around five months. Half of the time, he painted the hostel instead of cleaning.
• Horizon – Israeli volunteer, 22yo girl. Half Turkish, half Indian, sensitive yet tough.
• Ryu – German volunteer, 22yo girl. Platinum-dyed hair, straight, black eyebrows. Fluent in Japanese, having spent senior year of high school in Osaka. Also, intermediate in Korean.
• Q – Spanish volunteer from Barcelona, 20yo girl. Thin glasses, curly hair like a poodle’s (her own description).
• Cosima – Romanian volunteer now living in the island of Sardinia, 27yo girl. With glasses, a bob cut, and a sharp nose, she possessed deep knowledge of Korea (and delicious ability of cooking Korean food). I picked Cosima, the feminine version of Cosmo, due to her cosmopolitan nature.
• Angel – 27yo French girl with long curly hair, black glasses, and an olive skin, staying at the hostel for a month, studying Korean in Busan. Her long term residency and bubbly personality made her an instant addition to the volunteer group.
• Twenty – Brazilian volunteer, girl in mid-twenties (no correlation with her alias). Round glasses, long, delicate hair, quite bookish, with a thick Portuguese accent, and good knowledge of Korean.
• Kaela – Argentinian volunteer, girl in mid-twenties. Extremely petite, extremely pleasant, with dark hair, sharp features, and thin glasses, she’d moved to Copenhagen during the pandemic.
• D’arc – French volunteer, girl in mid-twenties, Blonde, blue eyed, petite, with fair features and a fair voice, she’d been spending three months in Korea again and again for a few years now.
• Ray – French-German volunteer, 26yo girl. Yellow-black dyed BTS hair and old-school frames. An almost British accent, and insightful artistry that wasn’t apparent to me at first.
• B.V. and G.V. – French volunteer couple in their early thirties, both volunteered in in Busan in the past, and in Hiroshima for a year. The girl: dark-haired, tough, and plump, the type of French woman who’d seen some things in her life. The guy: long, curly hair, usually under a fedora. Both with a thick accent and a recent attempt to get into Japanese tourism.

22 June 2023

• 09:50-10:15 Seomyeon KEPCO stop to Busan bus terminal bus number 160, 11:00-12:00 Busan bus terminal to Miryang bus terminal bus
• Lunch: fish BBQ at a random restaurant
• Yeongnamnu Pavilion (~1h)
• 18:02-18:38 Miryang starion to Busan station ITX train, 18:50-18:58 Busan station to Boemnaegol station metro

Miryang

I woke at 8:00, disassembled the tent, and ate breakfast with Boy Scout. He had gotten up early just to say goodnight to his girlfriend.

Horizon, Q, Ryu, and Ray went on a road trip. They’d rented a car and taken the tent. I felt a bit jealous, because such a trip had been on my bucket list for ages.

Still, I had another friend to meet – Seonsaengnim. I missed to the train I was supposed to take, and ran to the bus stop, to take the intercity bus instead. I would be thirty minutes late.

The bus to Gyeongju departed every ten minutes, while to Miryang, every sixty minutes.

Seonsaengnim waited for me inside the intercity bus terminal. With the 50-minute bus from her rural area to central Miryang running only seven times a day, she’d waited for me the whole time.

I felt horrendous. But I’d come bearing gifts. The three handmade ceramic sauce bowls I’d bought in a tiny indie shop in Matsumoto.

We crossed the 5-day market. She was gentle and in good spirits.

“Qìxiān,” she continued to call me by my Chinese name, her soothing, precise pronunciation almost like recitative.

Miryang was a pretty nondescript city, with zero tourists. Seonsaengnim treated me to a fish BBQ, incidentally on my foodie bucket list for Korea.

The restaurant was full of local diners. A wall with shelves upon shelves of individual rice cookers. A side dish refill station. And a pan stand, where we fried eggs (“very unique,” according to her).

I recounted to her my time in Korea after our meeting in Pohang. The topic of my temple stay raised her thin eyebrows.

“You have an interest in Buddhism?”

“Yes,” I answered, “I stayed at a temple in Korea and Japan, and studied Buddhism in university.”

I explained that, as the only religion that was also a philosophy, I’d found it vastly different from western religions. She mentioned staying at a temple in Jiri-san, at an altitude of 800 meters, for several weeks in her thirties.

We discussed the little I remembered about Buddhism from university. Mainly the four dharmas, with attachment as the cause of suffering.

By now, our fish arrived. Japan did raw fish like no other country – yet grilling was Korea’s distinction.

“You look very thin,” Seonsaengnim remarked, when I fished out meat from our stew. “Do you have a low appetite? You need to eat more.”

“My mother always tells me that.”

We continued to talk about Buddhism. She’d lived in the US and the UK for a few years, where she taught it.

That explained her proficiency in English and thrill at my interest in Buddhism.

“When you lived in those countries,” I began, “did you miss anything about Korea?”

“I miss nothing about Korea when I’m abroad,” she said. “I avoid Koreans, and try to meet other people.”

“Just like me,” I confessed. “But I think I’ll miss kimchi. And ssiat hotteok. And pajeon.”

“I don’t miss anything about Korea. I have no attachment.”

She diverted the conversation back to my past encounters with Buddhism.

“Tell me your story,” she said. “Where were you born?”

I gave her the gist of it until my present, travelling for months in Korea and Japan, and volunteering at a hostel. How much I’d been enjoying meeting people, how I’d made friends from all over the world.

She really wanted to come to the hostel and spend a night there. Just like me, she savored cosmopolitan encounters. She checked booking.com for tomorrow night on her phone. The was full.

“Weekends are always busy,” I said, not surprised. “The last was at full capacity.”

She asked if I could check with my manager.

I texted Nacho, who replied that there was a free bed. But I didn’t tell Seonsaengnim this. Tomorrow night was the drinking game. It would be too awkward.

I felt bad, because she really wanted to come.

A Buddhist Lesson about Love

After lunch, we rested inside Yeongnamnu Pavilion, essentially the only tourist attraction in Miryang. A rare example of a large and old pavilion, it offered a beautiful view over mountains, and an inviting breeze.

As we lounged on the wooden floor, reclining against a pillar, the director of the company seeking to turn Yeongnamnu into a cultural heritage site interviewed us.

On the way down from the pavilion, I heard the same odd, mechanical cry of the black-and-white bird I’d seen in Seoul’s palaces.

“In Korea, there is a belief that hearing this bird in morning means you will see a friend today,” Seonsaengnim said. “This morning, I heard it outside my room, and thought: Qìxiān is coming.”

“No one has ever called me by my Chinese name,” I replied, “and I have to say, I really like it. The way you pronounce it makes it sound so beautiful.”

At a café overlooking the pavilion, she treated me to ice tea.

We were the only customers. The owner, a middle-aged Korean woman, was interested in my story, and, upon hearing my age, showed me a photo of her three sons, all in their mid-to-late twenties.

As Seonsaengnim translated to me, the owner said she was jealous of her ability to have a conversation with me. Frustrated again and again in the past few weeks over my lack of Korean, I envied her as well.

The owner served us peaches and potatoes from her farm.

“Oh, what is this?” Seonsaengnim asked. “Wow, I am so lucky. Everywhere I go I feel lucky.”

Minus fries at McDonald’s, it was my first potato in months. Seonsaengnim translated all this to the owner.

“I talk a lot, maybe too much,” she chuckled. “I love meeting people, saying hello…”

“Maybe that’s why you’re so lucky.”

She asked again about a bed in my hostel. She wanted to meet my friends.

I discovered she was born in Yokjido island, south of Tongyeong, and currently lived with someone who had stayed at the Jiri-san temple with her.

Then she inquired after my relationship history.

“I never married or had children,” she said.

“I guess that makes sense. Buddhists don’t have relationships, right?”

I realised that she might be a future version of me. Traveling the world and meeting people of cultures foreign to me, rather than missing my country of birth. That was what I dreamed of. Not marriage and kids.

“It is because I try to avoid affection,” she answered, “and only find love.”

From here on, she unleashed so many words of wisdom, that I requested her permission in writing them down.

“People don’t understand the difference between love and affection. Affection is attachment.”

“And love isn’t?” I asked, feverishly writing in my notepad.

“Love make you free. It’s a blessing. Love, in one word, is a blessing. I never force or demand it. Love is freedom. Love is very kind. Don’t you find that I’m kind to you today?”

“You are extremely kind to me.”

 She laughed.

“So love is just bless their future. The result.” (Meaning, being happy for people, regardless of the outcome.)

“Sometime love is angry, because it make you worry about their future. For example, parents worry about their children. So sometime love is cold. Not warm. It’s like plant, grow, harvest. Our life is like farming ourselves for good harvest. And the good harvest will move to next life. This is hope.”

She stared out of the floor-to-ceiling glass panels overlooking the pavilion, as I struggled to keep up.

“This world is in chaos now. People lost the way to live. Human beings is already slave of materials. We need money for our living – to eat, to wear – but for our soul, we need good behavior. To learn and practice love.”

She asked about my plans for Korea and Japan. I drew a map of my proposed itinerary, and added my email, since my Korean phone number would someday expire. She asked about a budget for Japan, and mentioned her desire to meet me there.

Before we left, the owner gave Seonsaengnim a bag full of peaches, and me a bag full of potatoes, from her farm. Both bite-sized and smaller than in the west.

“You have a lot of wisdom,” I told Seonsaengnim at the bus stop. “You are kind and generous and gentle.”

“You have a good ear. You know how to listen.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

She hopped on the bus back to her house. I waved goodbye and created a small heart with my thumb and index fingers. As the bus drove past me, she returned my gesture.

Instead of taking the bus, I walked for half an hour to the train station. Seonsaengnim had taken a photo of the train schedule, according to which, the train for Busan departed at 16:15, 17:15, and so forth.

At the train station, I discovered the next train was at 18:02. So I waited an hour, and wrote all this.

More Drama at the Hostel…

When the train arrived, I realized I’d accidentally bought a ticket to the ITX, Korea’s version of a limited express, rather than to a regular train (both departing at the same time). My seat was marked, and huge, and comfortable. The difference in cost was negligible. One third of the price in Japan.

Back at the hostel’s common area, I tried to get some urgent travel planning done, checking hostels in Sapporo to volunteer in, yet like every day here, I got around to talking to guests instead.

More and more people asked me for help with their itineraries, including Boy Scout. The two of us ate dinner together.

Then Horizon called me from the road trip with the girls.

“I have to tell you something, but you can’t tell anyone.”

I went to the luggage room on the same floor.

“Q and I went to sleep in the car,” Horizon began, “and a few minutes later, we saw Ryu and Ray kissing in the tent.”

“What?” I yelled. “WHAT?”

“I know, they were fully making out!”

“But they aren’t even gay!”

Surrounded by dozens of suitcases, I was in hysterics. So were Q and Horizon.

“Wait,” I said, “Ryu told me yesterday not to have sex in the tent. And now she’s gonna have sex in it?”

This made us break into hysterics.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Horizon said.

Shit. I was talking and laughing so loudly, that everyone was hearing me.

“I’m gonna tell them you got lost and freaked out, but now you’re fine,” I said.

So I did. Until, five minutes later, Horizon called again.

“Now what?”

“Please don’t be mad at us,” she said. “We had some drinks and decided to prank you…”

WHAT.

The girls apologized, but I couldn’t believe it, nor the fact that I’d actually bought it…

“FUCK YOU,” I screamed, and hung up.

The American guest from last night returned. He rightfully pointed out that, despite what Boy Scout and I’d thought, the Korean counting system added one year to your age. Thus, Boy Scout could go out after all.

Today being Thursday, I almost joined Boy Scout and the American for Thursday Party, but it was 23:00, and I needed to catch up on sleep before the weekend.

“I’m really going to miss this experience,” I told Nacho before going up to my dorm, “and I really want to do it again.”

I entered the shared bathroom in front of my dormitory. Then, something happened.

An English lad had vomited into the sink. The vomit included so much undigested food, that it clogged the drain, and filled the sink.

The bathroom reeked so badly, that I almost vomited as well.

The lad was waiting for the vomit to drip down. Blond, blue-eyed, bearded, pale as a sheet. He’d gone drinking with his friends, and drank too much soju.

“Where are your friends?”

“One is sleeping in our dorm,” he answered in the most delicate, British accent. “The other is…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Is he ok?”

“Yeah, he’s not drunk.”

He spoke so calmly and eloquently, almost like a Zen monk. A sound recording would’ve given the impression that he was sober at a royal feast.

Yet he could barely stand up.

I went down to bring him a glass of water. Some guests were drinking with Twenty in the common area. Nacho instructed me to open the drain from below the sink.

I handed the water to the lad, but wasn’t sure how to open the drain without causing further trouble. So I just waited in the hall, outside the bathroom, and kept an eye him. He apologized the entire time.

Seeing his nausea and lack of balance, I improvised a chair for him, and asked questions about his background.

Boy Scout, staying in the private room on the same floor, materialized out of nowhere and stood next to me, looking shaken.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I’m trying to avoid my bed and going to sleep,” he answered. “I just have a lot of thoughts.”

“Oh,” I said, “it happened to me a few nights ago.”

Being non-Korean, the guard at Thursday Party had regarded him as below 19, the Korean drinking age. But this wasn’t the thing nagging him. He didn’t go into it, at first.

“I used to drink a lot,” he said. “Then I didn’t have any friends, so I quit, and now I only do a little at home with my girlfriend, so she can watch over me.”

We sat on the floor and talked in low voices as I kept an eye on the lad, sitting with his head in his knees. I asked him every now and then if he was okay, if he was dizzy or nauseous, and ordered him to drink more water.

Vomit was dripping down the drain very, very, slowly.

A drunk guest in our dormitory, who I’d noticed drinking in the common area not too long ago, came wobbling with a towel in hand. He could barely walk straight.

I was about to take care of that, when a new, on-and-off Brazilian volunteer pitched in.

“We all have moments like this,” he said while helping to balance the drunk guy, after overhearing my conversation with Boy Scout. “You can hate me in those moments. Just don’t hate me all the time.”

The Brazilian guy was as solemn as he was sober.

I was a bit taken aback by his words, especially in-between all this chaos. Then again, I had been rejecting his advances for the past fortnight.

“I don’t hate you,” I said earnestly.

I hated myself for giving him that impression.

He escorted the drunk guy to the fifth-floor men’s bathroom. Boy Scout shared his anxiety toward his girlfriend going clubbing without him this weekend.

“It’s better if you find someone you trust who can watch over her,” I said. “Don’t be that guy who forbids his girlfriend to do stuff.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

The Essex lad couldn’t bear to drink water. His articulated speech gave the impression of sobriety, yet his head was still in his knees.

“Can you believe two hours ago I told my manager I would miss this?” I asked him.

“Would you miss this as well?”

“Honestly, yes. It’s part of the experience.”

“It’s probably the worst thing a guest has done here.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

Time continued to pass. Vomit dripping, Boy Scout and I talking. The drunk guy returned to our dorm and started snoring.

The lad seemed to be recuperating. Then he got up and vomited into the second sink.

I watched a copious amount of undigested fried chicken fall from his mouth and wrote on my phone:

“Why the fuck can’t he go to a toilet”

And showed it to Boy Scout.

The bathroom reeked even more. It got to the hallway, where Boy Scout and I were sitting. The only two sinks were now full of puke.

When the lad finished, he drank his water, and stood next to us. He was feeling better.

Now we had to wait for two pools of puke go down the drain.

“Are u also a volunteer?” he asked Boy Scout.

“No, I’m a guest.”

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t want to be alone in my room.”

The three of us talked for a bit. Then Boy Scout asked:

“Hey, is it wrong, if you want to check something, to go on the internet –”

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay, yeah, but I checked if drinking was bad for you, and someone obviously made a table on Reddit –”

“Do you really need to see that? Don’t you know the answer?”

“No, because drinking is good,” he said.

The two sinks were still full of fried chicken.

“Do the pros outweigh the cons?” I asked, bewildered.

“Sometimes, yes.”

My reasons for never having gotten drunk crossed my mind.

• Alcohol didn’t make me have fun. Nor did I need it to have fun.
• Drinking was bad for your health.
• I’d always been afraid of how I’d behave once no longer in control.

Deep down, I was probably too insecure to allow myself to act without inhibitions, the way drunk people did. Lately, more than ever, I was all about trying new things. Yet drinking to such an extent was something I might die without attempting.

“Well, you know my answer,” I told Boy Scout. “And I guess his as well.”

I jerked my head toward the lad. He’d grown pale again. I rushed downstairs for more water.

“Can I just have one night where nothing happens, and my life is boring, and I go to bed early?” I blurted to Nacho in reception, exasperated. “He’s just vomited fried chicken all over the second sink. But he said his friends were okay.”

“Oh, that’s me,” one of the guys drinking in the common area with Twenty said. “I was the one who went with him.”

I couldn’t understand why I was the one who’d been by the lad’s side for two hours, while his alleged friend had forsaken him, only to drink again.

Witnessing this exchange were B.V. and G.V. They were a French couple in their early thirties who had volunteered in this hostel in the past, and in Hiroshima for a year. This past fortnight, the volunteers and them had barely mingled. They’d been mostly doing bathrooms by themselves, away from the rest of us.

After attending Horizon’s birthday, however, this began to change.

By now, we’ve hung out here and then. G.V., hearing about my struggle with the vomit, went upstairs with me.

We grabbed cleaning supplies and got to work. As she told the lad, she’d seen much, much worse.

He didn’t believe us. So she narrated a rather memorable night in Hiroshima, when a group of guests had all gotten drunk.

It sounded worse, indeed.

We removed the pipes beneath the sinks. Everything the lad had eaten splashed on the floor. And he’d eaten a lot.

Two dinners full of meat.

We sprayed the leftovers with a hose and picked them up.

Gloves, toilet paper, cleaning spray, long brush. G.V. cleaned the sinks, hoses, and floor, emptied the trash, and sprayed the room with some air freshener. It was unforgettably gross. The lad had gone to bed at some point without us noticing.

He’d apologized again and again in the last two hours, and offered to clean after himself, but I reckoned he could’ve been a bit more thankful in the end, especially considering his baffling fondness of sinks. Picking up vomit at 2:00 was not among my responsibilities as a volunteer.

“Thank you,” I told G.V. “I’ll finish here. You go take a shower.”

“What? No, I’m going down to have a drink.”

“A drink?”

“Yes,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I worked hard, and this is my reward. Are you coming?”

“I’m gonna take a shower,” I said, feeling dirty and tired. “Drinking is the last thing I want to do.”

For a long time, I scrubbed myself all over. The lad hadn’t done so, and so our dorm reeked of vomit. He was fast asleep.

I stood under the stream of hot water and dissociated. Where was my dream? I wondered. When would I get to enjoy my golden years?

This was what my month in Busan had come down to. Friend zones, vomit, and vicarious thrills.

I felt torn between wanting to be seen, and wanting to disappear.

Back in my dorm, the stench made it impossible for me to fall asleep. I spewed everything that had happened on my phone until 3:30, when my eyes dropped, and I could write no more.

Today’s highlights: fish BBQ; learning about Buddhism from Seonsaengnim; the way she pronounced Qìxiān; and picking up vomit from the floor.

23 June 2023

• 13:15-14:20 sheets
• 16:20-16:45 Busan International Finance Center Busan Bank station to Jungdong station metro
• Busan green railway (~1h)
• Haundae beach (~1h)
• 19:10-19:35 Haeundae station to Seomyeon station metro
• Bar at night

Friend-zoned… Again

Today I woke up at 13:00, jumped out of bed, and rushed downstairs. I was late for my shift.

The new battery in my watch, which I’d bought two days ago, must’ve stopped working. When I’d checked it while half-sleeping, it’d pointed at 11:00.

I shoved two protein bars into my mouth and taught a new volunteer, an Italian girl from Milan, how to do sheets.

“You’re almost Italian,” she said at some point, surprised by all the Italian words I used around her.

“I want to do a year there someday,” I said.

We finished in a little over an hour. I had a late breakfast / lunch, when the manager texted that some beds were not made. I rushed to finish the job and then headed out. I’d planned to meet Chica at Haeundae.

As I headed out, I texted KN1, to ask if he’d come tonight. His answer confirmed one of my inklings.

He didn’t want to come to drink with the volunteers while Chica was in the hostel. He used quite a strong and violent word to describe what she might do to him, sexually, if they met.

Clearly, he was no longer interested in her, and had his eyes set on someone else in the hostel.

I headed to the metro with a smile on my face. The other volunteers were right about his intentions. He wanted to make a move during tonight’s drinking game.

As the train took me east, toward Chica, I felt a mixture of emotions. Betrayal toward her, for texting her guy and discovering he’d ditched her; and excitement toward tonight, for what might happen.

Then I found out who he wanted to grow close to.

“I cant meet other girl if she’s there,” he texted. “Dont tell her lol.”

Oh.

I stood outside the train station, a five-minute walk from where Chica and I were supposed to meet. At that moment, I wanted to go back to the hostel, lie in bed, and be alone.

Yet Chica was already there. She didn’t have emergency data, like me. I couldn’t keep her waiting.

I strode in her direction, my steps long and angry. Of course KN1 desired a member of the opposite sex. He was a typical guy. And I was living in a straight world.

The way Angel had reacted to his behavior, and the girls, and Nacho, and the way the American guest had spoken about all those “straight” Busan men…

It was my fault, for letting people get to me. I was stupid. I was stupid. I was delusional.

Then I noticed Chica from afar, and bottled my emotions.

“Chica!” I yelled, as this was my nickname for her.

She was waiting outside a famous ice cream mochi place I’d been dying to check out.

It was closed.

Instead, she was eating street food a vendor had given her for free. I did not tell her about the texts I’d gotten.

Busan Green Railway

We walked along the coast to the Green Railway. The small, colorful cars looked cute and attractive; the view of the ocean on this fine day added to their charm. We both agreed that walking the wooden bridge parallel to the railway was better than paying to ride it, because this way, we could see it from outside.

Rather than talking about me, I listened to Chica’s spa day. A minute after meeting me, she went into some very revealing details surrounding spa and sex during menstruation. It was funny (and unexpected) to hear that. She spared me no details.

At least I had something else to focus on.

She told me how, before coming to this country, she’d spent five magical days with a Chilean guy in Bali. Now, she’d changed her entire trip, just to reunite with him in Thailand.

I saw pictures and videos of them together. Listened to some of their adventures. It sounded like a fairytale of two people meeting abroad by chance and falling in love. My second cousin had met her partner of many years this way. Nowadays, they were married, and had twins.

“Chica, esto perfecto,” I said, looking at her photos. I couldn’t have been happier for her.

I was also happy to wear sunglasses. She didn’t seem to notice me blinking back tears.

She’d had so many stories, as evident from our “never have I ever” drinking game on Saturday. I could not bear another one like this.

Lately, it seemed that every day at the hostel had brought with it more memories for the hot volunteer girls, and wacky disappointments for me.

After hearing all this while walking parallel to the railway (the section I’d wanted to reach was closed due to renovations), we backtracked all the way to the beach. She took me to an ice cream stand, where we bought ice cream inside a charred marshmallow. We sat on the steps by the beach and ate. Longing to be by myself, I felt guilty for the information I’d withheld from her, and for wishing our hangout would end.

After alighting in Seomyeon, I helped her shop for some souvenirs. She said it would be okay for me to return to the hostel. But she enjoyed my company. And I didn’t want to leave her alone.

Then, she broke into another story, this time about Korean Number 2, Mr. Perfect, and some intimate details from their night together.

The video she’d made of him had gained more than a hundred thousand views. Still, she hadn’t been able to find him.

“Is okay,” she shrugged. “I have the Chilean guy.”

If she didn’t mind losing the perfect KN2, I figured she wouldn’t care about KN1. No reason to go into his texts.

Finally, she stayed in Seomyeon, to continue her souvenir shopping, while I walked back to the hostel. It occurred to me that perhaps I should stop listening to people’s stories.

I had instant noodles and the potatoes from yesterday for dinner. G.V., who’d cleaned the bathroom vomit with me, had cooked the potatoes for me, knowing I had run out of groceries.

“There’s not going to be a drinking game,” I informed the volunteers.

Unable to hide my misery, I made it clear that I did not wish to explain.

I ate alone in the basement. It was cold, and reeked off mold. I chewed slowly while staring into space.

But there was no time to brood on today’s disappointment. I had to reserve a mountain hut for Mt Fuji, if, two months from now, I wished to climb it.

Most were already fully booked. I texted my Tokyo friend. It took us a while to find a date that worked for us both.

Finally, we did. I booked the hut. I would climb Mt Fuji.

At the very least, this cheered me up.

Beomil

At 22:30, I shoved some rice into my mouth – a day full of carbs – changed into my going out outfit, and walked south to Beomil, the happy area.

The bar from last week was crowded. All middle aged.

I spoke to an American man who was living in Daegu. Fourth generation Air Force. Extremely religious Baptist family.

He’d grown up in Yokota Air Base in west Tokyo (“there’s a US military base in Tokyo?!” I exclaimed), but forgotten his Japanese since.

Near the end of our conversation, he went into something very grim that had happened to him recently, involving his coworker.

I grew quiet. As far as stories went, few sounded darker than this.

It was an incident I’d heard of twice in one week, in Tokyo, before leaving Japan. I couldn’t find the words to respond to it. It made me stop yawning.

How did I find myself again discussing such depressing topics with strangers, this time at a tiny bar, after an already emotional day?

We were both too tired to keep talking. The American expat left soon thereafter.

Angel and her Korean date wanted to join me. I invited them to the bar, but then left as well, on the verge of falling asleep.

Back at the hostel, the Colombian night shift volunteer, who I discovered was a Girl Scout, helped me pitch the tent on the roof. I had to sleep alone somewhere. I couldn’t hide my low spirits. But I didn’t tell anyone what had happened.

After telling the manager yesterday that I felt sad about leaving, it occurred to me that my departure came at the right time. I couldn’t handle more days like this.

I wish I were someone else, I thought, and went to sleep.

Today’s highlights: walking the green railway; that marshmallow filled with ice cream; making plans to climb Mt. Fuji.

Stray observations:

• If a Korean person feels bad, and it’s just a cold, they still go directly to the hospital to get examined, rather than to a clinic.
• Koreans are fond of Galaxy flip phones, while in Japan nearly everyone has an iPhone.