Seoul

View of Seoul from the peak of Namsan:

Buddhists leave winter solstice services at Jogyesa, Seoul's largest temple:

One of dozens of structures at Changdeokgung, a World Heritage palace constructed in the first decade of the 15th century. Seoul's center of power in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries:

Gyeongbokgung, the 15th and 16th century center of power until it was destroyed in the 1592 Japanese invasions. It was subsequently destroyed in the early 20th century by the Japanese colonial authority, but rebuilt after the war.

Roof detail depicting the mythological seven evolutionary stages of humanity:

Interior detail of a Gyeongbokgung building:

Statue of King Sejong the Great, inventor of the phonetic hangeul alphabet in 1443. Strangely, hanguel wasn't adopted by the state until 1945. Kim Il-Sung substituted the 24 letters for Chinese characters, bringing literacy to uneducated industrial laborers in the DPRK; the US-installed ROK dictator Syngman Rhee followed suit shortly after.

View of the city across the Hangang River:

Leah comes to Hiroshima

Views from my roof of RERF and the Inland Sea:


In Shukkei-en Garden:

Yoshinogari

Located in north central Kyushu (in Saga Prefecture) about halfway between Nagasaki and Fukuoka is the third century BC town of Yoshinogari, discovered by contractors surveying for a housing development in 1986. It is reported to be one of the oldest cities surrounded by a moat and includes hundreds of burial pots containing decapitated and arrow-pierced skeletons. It was allegedly tied to the Chinese mainland, and interestingly it is mentioned in the sixth century Chinese chronicle "Account of the Wa People."

Huis ten Bosch

Just northeast of Nagasaki along the Kyushu coast is Huis ten Bosch--Dutch for "House in the Forest" after Queen Beatrix's Netherlands palace--a bizarre and extravagant theme park. The "theme" here is the Netherlands...in general. Twice mired by bankruptcy, this lame but hysterical attraction was opened in 1992 by a Japanese entrepeneur (reportedly at a cost of 250 billion yen, or about 2.5 billion dollars at the time) and today reportedly draws visitors from all over East Asia who desire a sampling of the crassest Occidentalism. Among the greatest features are a "Dutch" restaurant street without a single Dutch (or even non-Asian, save for an Italian) restaurant, a Dutch cheese house with overpriced American cheese marketed as gouda, and a brilliant 3D film called "Mysterious Escher." Apparently MC Escher is Dutch, but the film doesn't pertain to his life; rather it details the exploits of a Dutch girl whose dog "Foofy" is sick as the film opens, and she must find a magic waterfall to save him (the contingency escapes me). It was filmed in Dutch and is dubbed in Japanese (with Chinese and Korean headset options, of course). Finally, one can relive the Great Dutch Floods by sitting in a chair and watching 800 tons (seriously) of water pour onto a windmill. No historical background is given, and so I have no idea when/if these floods even occurred.

Nagasaki

View of the city from the top of Inasa-yama mountain:

The Peace Park:


Bombed out ruins of Urakami Cathedral in the Peace Park:

Photo taken near the Cathedral in August 1945: