#101 Maybe do visit Seoul in the winter

Transcript

Alright, I don't know how easy it will be to podcast because I'm on a mountain trail, but it's a Sunday afternoon and it's really nice weather. So it's pretty busy. There's quite a bit of people. But I think I can work around them. So my first episode about Seoul, as it stands, obviously I record these ahead of time and I'm releasing them slower than I expected.

I'm in real time, so I'm quite sure the plan is for it to be titled Don't Visit Seoul in the Winter. But originally I was going to call it Never Visit Seoul in the Winter. You know, and I softened a bit. I'm like, okay, maybe it's not as terrible as I first thought. I'll decorate that to a don't.

At this point, it is late February, and it is such a beautiful day today. It's fucking stupid. It's like, if anything, it's a little too warm. My coats are a little much for mountain hiking. But there's snow everywhere. I'm hiking one of the mountain trails at Buchansen National Park, which is fucking enormous and huge. Where did I get off? Let me see.

And there's a person behind me, so perfect time to let them go by while I look this up. I started at Seoul Seyum Station, S-O-L-S-A-E-M, where I scoped out a bit of a hiking course at the end of that train line way up further north. But it seems pretty severe. It's like a valley or something that goes right through the mountain. So it seems like pretty for real. Like, if you do that, you're stuck. You got to go all the way to the other side. And I don't think there's really any subways and stuff on the other side. And I've been having trouble getting going early lately. I'll talk about that later.

But yeah, I didn't get going till, I don't know, left the house at like 1 p.m. And the days are definitely getting longer. But I don't want to try to do that course till I have more time. So I saw this one, just one of these little hiking markings. You can start hiking here. And, you know, I can still see the city right there. This one seems maybe not easy to bail out of. I don't think there's any way out of here. Probably just got to go straight back if I don't just continue forward to wherever it goes. But that's no big deal. It's just one very distinct course with like guideline ropes, like little rope, little rope walls, little rope barriers along the whole thing. Very easy. No chance of getting lost here.

And actually what time is it now? Is that record?

It's like 315, but it is still super bright outside.

But basically once some snow and some rain hit, it's amazing how fast it clears up the terrible pollution. I'm kind of surprised by it. I don't know. Apparently there's no, you know, you always hear about acid rain back in the 80s and the 90s. I haven't heard that term in a long time. But that apparently is not what's going on around here because the rain just cleans things right up for like the last five days. The weather has been just green. On the air quality index, green for good. It dipped into very slight yellow moderate one time. I'm not wearing a mask. I haven't worn a mask all week. It's like, man, it makes such a difference. It's so nice to just leave the house and to not have to think about it. It's just like, oh, this is fine.

And this particular pass that I'm on, like there's a ton of really good mountain hiking around here. Just tons and it's all so accessible and so easy to get through the subway.

So in Wonson with the wall, that was kind of my main mountain. I think I've done every possible way up and down at this point.

And then there's one across from that toward Hangek University, where the artificial waterfall was that I mentioned my first episode in Seoul. That one's not as interesting, but it's still not bad. And I've gone all over that mountain. And then near in Wonson, that area of Buchansen, I've also explored pretty extensively. But as you get deeper into Buchansen, it is serious shit. It's like these huge peaks. Well, like I said last episode, they're just too scary. That's not the only peak I've approached and just not continued. It's like, okay, I'm high enough up. I don't like this anymore. I'm going back down. I don't care about getting to the peak. 5:00 But this place is enormous. Buchansen National Park, tons of options, tons of places to go.

And this one is particularly excellent because a lot of the mountain hiking around here, it's super developed and really easy to hike on. But there are a lot of places where most places I'd say it's not natural in the way Japan is natural.

If it's too hard to get past and the terrain gets too tricky, they literally just build stairs and ramps for long stretches. You can walk for like half a kilometer around the side of a mountain just on wooden walkway because they're like, I don't know how I was supposed to get down, so just walk on this thing. So it's really cool. I like it.

But just a natural, fully natural hike is much more rare. Where this one, this is insane.

It still steps, but there are like ancient stone steps, which I got to look up the history of this thing later. Who made this? Where does it go to? What's the deal with this? It is so beautiful. And this snow, it's not like heavy snow. It's just like all the snow has melted down in the city. This is just what's remaining on the mountain, even though it's warm as fuck today. I'm sweating to death. But there's still a lot of snow on the mountain, and it's so perfect. It's like a story book. It's like King's Quest.

I always think that way. I like conflate video games with reality of like if I can combine the two in my mind, it makes me extra feel cool about a place. Like if I see a place that looks like a level from the last of us, I'm like, oh fucking cool. Or, I mean, this is the feeling I used to get playing King's Quest games when I was a kid.

The feeling of going up a mountain, going on an adventure.

I don't know what I'm specifically thinking of, because what I played the most when I was a kid were like the really old ones, King's Quest 1, 2, and 3. But this is reminding me of 5 and 6. I didn't play them as much, but they had much better graphics. And just like winding up the side of a mountain as it gets snowy. It's exactly what this is like.

And I don't really play a lot of video games anymore. They were a huge part of my life, but that exploration feeling of getting to the next screen. I've seen the next thing.

Now I get that in real life from doing stuff like this. I can up the mountain.

And I like it so much that it's just a huge problem if a city doesn't have any mountains. It's a big problem. It's like, I don't know what to do with myself here. But if you got mountains, I'm happy.

I wish it was less hot though. That's one thing that's adding to the King's Quest feeling, I guess, is I'm wearing my two coats like a cloak. Around my shoulders because I just can't wear these things. It's too hot. I'll sweat to death.

I met some Korean ladies yesterday here. I'll look it up. The mountain I was saying that is between Inguansen and my Airbnb. It's called Anson, ANSAN mountain. So I was on Anson and up at the top at the Cool Observation Deck. There was this group of like 5 or 6 Korean ladies who I didn't hear them at first because I was playing had my headphones in. Listening to KMFDM music at an obnoxious volume. So I didn't hear them calling over to me to help them take a picture. But then I noticed and rectified my horrible impoliteness. But I helped them take a group photo and one of them apologized to me about the weather, about the snow. And I was not obnoxious enough to say like, I don't worry, I'm from Canada. I like the snow. But I was thinking it. And I'm thinking it today. It could stand to be more cold. But I guess wearing my clothes like a cloak makes me feel extra like King Graham. I guess I am thinking of King's Quest V.

Because King's Quest VI is of course Prince Alexander.

But what I'm rambling toward is, you know, I still have time to change any of these episode titles should I want to. And I'm like, oh man. Should I really put out an episode called Don't visit Seoul in the winter?

Because this week has been amazing. This is like perfect.

You know, I do think the city parts of Seoul I don't like as much as a place like Tokyo.

But I'm getting used to them and they certainly are relaxed and convenient, you know. Relaxed in a good way and a bad way, relaxed in the sense that it's like, yeah, you know whatever. I'm just wandering around, got my little money card, taken the subway. Everything is very easy. But also relaxed in the sense that there are just, you know, it's just still got garbage and stuff. That didn't change any. But you just get used to it. And it's like, okay, well it's not so big of a deal. And all of these mountains and the hiking are so good.

So how can I say don't come here in the winter when this week has been so awesome?

But I think I gotta still call it that. Like I still, because I just still feel like this has been one good week out of like the previous month that really, you know. I know it sounds dramatic, but it was still felt like being in a nightmare. The level of pollution was just so crazy some days.

And it's just so random. So I mean, I just don't know. I don't know. It's like, yeah, sometimes it's gonna be like this and it's gonna be awesome. And like I wouldn't want a person to miss this experience. This is great. But what if it's the other thing? The other thing is just so bad. It's a prickly pair, so I don't know. It's just very hard to say what to say. It's like, I don't know. Maybe I should change that title to maybe don't visit Seoul in the winter. But now I think I just gotta keep it. Don't visit Seoul in the winter. But then if you've stuck through and you're listening now, it's like, okay, well maybe do though. I don't know. It's just so hard to have a hard and fast opinion or a recommendation about anything really.

But I don't know. I at least want to bring that up that when the sun shines on this city. By which I mean when the rain washes away the pollution, which again, it's so crazy how fast and how completely it does. It just goes away. It's like, man, that's, I mean, that's heartening in a way. That's nice. It's not like this is just like such awful pollution that it will last for generations to come. You know, people will have to exit the earth before it goes away. It just goes away right away. And then it's just fine. And you see the big beautiful views and you can see into the distance for once. It's not just like the horrible haze. It's not just the greatness. You can see across the city and you can see all the proper colors. And it's just beautiful and awesome. And in that sense, like this place is insane. I took a subway ride here. I grabbed a couple of those cool little 50 cent coffees that I love so much. I got one at each transfer station. And now I'm on this hike that is just fucking beautiful. And yeah, most of the people are older. They're all my age or older mostly. It's not a hard hike and it's beautiful.

So things are going better. Ultimately, I am glad that I hung around so long enough to be able to experience this. And I got three more weeks or something. Here we go. Here's some of these steps. The aforementioned just building steps into the mountain. So I mean, I've been hiking for like a solid hour on these stone steps. I'm pretty high up. Looks like we've reached the end now. It's a government approved wooden steps. But that's fine. I get nothing against those. I really think it's cool that they're everywhere. I just thought this particular hike was extra cool because it's the only time I've seen such extensive ancient steps. But I'll take either one.

And yeah, I got boots because my shoes, I mean, I noticed that my shoes were missing treads way back in Japan when it rained and it got all slippery.

But then as long as it wasn't raining, I didn't notice they were fine. But then these insane peaks of bouquets and that I have failed to climb. You know, that's why I started noticing that they were slippery even just on dirt once you get to a steep enough incline. That's my kind of gauge. When I get to the point that I'm literally climbing, you know, that I'm literally on all fours going up. Like I need my hands as well as my feet. That's when it's too steep. That's when I've gone too far.

But I especially couldn't because of my shoes. So now I got proper boots.

Oh, and also, I guess, yeah, my shoes also had them so long. I mean, I had bought them in Canada. I took them to Montreal. I took them to Japan. I took them to Seoul. They were used shoes to begin with. So they served me well.

But a hole developed somewhere. One of those weird invisible holes that just your socks get wet when you're outside and I was like, well, I can't. I can't have that.

So I got some proper boots and I got a dumb little story about buying boots.

But I think I'll save that because yeah, I'm still hiking up up up up up. I've been keeping up my cardio pretty well with all this mountain hiking. But it's still mildly silly to do a podcast while you're going up. Maybe I'll wait till I'm coming down.

Well, I'm getting higher and higher up. There's definitely distinctly fewer people now, and I was just thinking how, like, oh, this is nice, like I'm just going up and up. Those wooden stairs, it was only for that one section, and then it got back back to the natural rock stairs. I should have taken a note of, I did see a sign for where I'm going. It's a something gate that starts with a B, but I'll figure it out. But yeah, it's going up, but it's that, that nice, homey hiking course style, just going across, across the edge of the city. I can still see the city to my right. There's no peaks, because it is just those steep peaks, like I was just saying, when you've got to use all fours, I especially don't like that. But, maybe thinking about it was my undoing, that I was like, ah, yeah, I mean, I'm very high up. But because it's not steep like that, it's not a problem. But then I started thinking about it, and it's like, yeah, I am though. I am stupid high up. I am really high up. I'm like airplane high up. Not, you know, full flight airplane. Airplane taken off, though. I mean, it doesn't feel like I'm on earth. It feels like I'm in the air. So I'm starting to feel a little freaked out. I'm really high up, even though, you know, I'm on a pretty flat, relatively wide mountain ridge. The classic falling test, if I fell down the edge of this right now, that'd be fine. Again, you know, I'd break an ankle, I'd probably dislocate my shoulder while I grabbed onto some trees to stop my fall. But I wouldn't die. But it's still so high up, that it's like ye, and over to my left are more mountain peaks even higher up.

Yep, definitely getting a little jelly-legged.

And there were a couple of other paths down, but they were very small and shitty. It's like, I don't think so. I think we're just heading forward or backward.

So let me hammer briefly about these boots. So there's like an area that's like all boots or shoes, the shoe area. So if you go to city hall station, go north a little, too, it's tough for me to find this on a map, but I just managed to find it.

Geez, not as few people as I thought, actually. Quite a few people go and buy me. So you go from city hall up to Chiangji Plaza, C-H-E-O-N-G-G-Y-E. And then if you go east from there, you can walk along a river, which I believe is the Chiangji River, I guess.

Anyway, 20 minutes or so from there is this neighborhood that's all shoe stores, just tons of them. The whole block is shoe stores. So I knew I needed to replace my sucky hole in the bottom shoes, which yeah, now that I'm higher up in this mountain, there's quite a bit more snow.

I guess it'd be a fucking nightmare if I still had those shoes. Wet socks are not cool, but it was like a bit overwhelming. It was just like all these different stores everywhere, and it's like, I don't know what's going on here. Maybe I'll just go to a foot locker. You know, I know it's lame, but I thought, oh, that'll be easier to navigate. But then a weird thing happened, day or two later, when I finally got around to go into a foot locker, is I actually found the foot locker worse to navigate, harder to navigate, because I very rarely buy new stuff.

I always wore hand-me-down clothes when I grew up, because I have like, my mom has 11 brothers and sisters. My dad had a few of his own. I have like, you know, cousins in the hundreds, probably, I don't know, so many. So I always just wore hand-me-down clothes that people would just send our way. That last pair of shoes I had, I bought at Value Village, you know, I just get you shit all the time, I rarely buy new stuff. So I actually, I'm not really comfortable with all of that either, you know, I went into a foot locker, and everyone was so attentive, and could definitely speak English, and was ready to help me. And I like, didn't like it. I did a quick little once around the store, and I was like, okay, cool, now I'm just looking, I'll be back later, maybe, whatever, see ya. But like, that I even had to talk to them. It's like, leave me alone. 20:00 You know, they were too attentive, they were too helpful. It's like, I just want to browse. I just want to put headphones in, I want to listen to my stupid old-man KMFDM music, and I just want to look at stuff and figure it out. Like, being helpful is unhelpful to me.

Because I know this is going to sound weird and silly, probably, but I just don't know anything about shoes. I don't even know what to ask them for. I never quite remember what my shoe size is. I don't want to have to, like, ask people to go get me shoes of a certain size, and then have them stay in there while I try them on. Like, that whole process, ugh, it all sounds just awful. I hate all of that. And I don't even know what to ask for, because, you know, I still wear little spacers on my big toes.

Oh, somebody with a radio. It's like, what does that sound? I thought I was the only one making sound up here.

It appears in the brief research I did that bears will not be a problem, so much so that they're trying to reintroduce bears. There's so few bears around here, but there are the wild. The classic wild boar signs.

But yeah, I still wear spacers on my toes to keep them from developing bunions they hurt otherwise. And I wear little things at night to keep my toes straight. So I need a wide toe box. I need wide space for my toes. And I guess there's certain brands that kind of work with this, but I really don't quite know what I'm asking for. I don't know what I'm looking for. I just want to look by myself and figure this out and then ask somebody if I need help.

And that is just not the footlocker way. They are too helpful. They are too attentive. They're just on you. And I just like, ugh, I just left them like, no, okay, good, I'm leaving. I don't want to fucking bring you along in the whole storybook of my feet. When I don't even know what I'm looking for, what I need.

So I did a little more research on my own about how sizes work here. And it's actually way better. Because sizes are so weird in North America. You know, I thought I was a 10 and a half, but actually I'm not sure. Maybe I've been pinching my toes too much because I'm getting shoes that are too small.

But then the sizes are weird and they don't always seem to correlate. Here, it's just by millimeter. How many millimeters long do you want this thing to be? Nice and metric. And I also realized I didn't really pay attention when I bought them, but these shoes that I bought back in Canada, they were not a 10 and a half, they were not an 11, they were in fact a 12. And they seemed fine. Maybe a touch big, but that seemed like a good thing. If you need space for your toes, what a good trick, just get bigger shoes. Because they're always wide at the edges of your feet. They only taper in at the toes. So just give yourself some mixture room and you don't have room for your toes.

But then I realized maybe a size 12 is not even that outlandish. Maybe I've just been buying shoes that are too small in general.

And I'm trying to take a little picture for, you know, the episode image. But it's actually pretty tough. None of these views are clear. There's trees always in the way. Hmm, well anyway, take my word for it. It's fucking pretty beautiful up here. Man, I'm high up. What the fuck?

Yeah, I'm looking at the peaks ahead of me and they are higher. Well, I guess some of them are actually quite a bit higher. But I'm still really high up. This is a neat though. Again, it's like tricking me. It's like I'm sneakily going up high in a way that is not especially freaking me out. You know, it's the only moderate. It's cool. But anyway, I decided to go back to the shoe district. And I figured out that a size 12 would be 295 millimeters. And I just kind of walked through till I just, just this one random shop. I just picked one. That just had an older lady and an older guy just in there. No other customers.

And I just went in and started looking at their stuff and they couldn't speak English. And I can't speak Korean. So I got my wish. I just got to, I just got to browse. And I couldn't find any 295s just to 290. So I did just show them the number. 25:00 It's kind of nice out. So it's like, how much do you really need to communicate? I just showed them the 295 and they pointed me to like their top shelf. Basically, they just said on the top, top is, you know, the biggest we got. So the biggest it got was 290, which would be like 11 and a half. And I was like, that's fine. Try it on a pair of boots. They seemed fine. Then they just held up a number on a calculator. 60,000, so about $60 Canadian for some nice big cool boots of some random brand I never heard of. So I'm like, all right, here you go. Bigity bam, all done.

That's a view. That's a nice view. It is freaking me out. But I mean, literally an old lady just passed me. This is no big deal.

Just keep going, keep marching.

And yeah, I have no idea what this brand is. But so far, they seem fine.

And yeah, just how unexpected. I don't know that I find, yeah, just going to some weird little mom and pop place with a couple of people who not only didn't help, couldn't really help because they can't even speak my language. It turned out that that was better for me. Like that was more comfortable. Going to the foot locker where it was like the extra pampered experience. I really found that worse. I found that so uncomfortable. I did not like it at all. So I mean, I don't know what that says besides that I'm a fucking weirdo.

Bam, really realizing more and more. I do not mind not being able to read stuff, not being able to talk to people.

It's no fucking problem.

All right, here's a signpost. There's somebody chilling right ahead of me. It seems to be some kind of a peak.

Mun Pillbong Peak. M-U-N-P-I-L-B-O-N-G-P. So that's not the gate that I noticed, but that's something. Some kind of peak. Could be a good excuse to stop.

And then Kalbawi, if I go down from here.

Should I go down? I gotta get out of here sometime. This sun is on its way down. I don't know. Do things go beyond that peak? I don't know. I guess I'll just go up to the peak and bother the guy at the peak. See what's the story up there, but it might be time to either go down or go back. But this has been a pretty fucking decent for just again, just a random see-a-thing, a subway station that appears to start near a hiking path.

And then you get here and it does. It's like, fuck yeah.

Not fucking bad. Not bad at all.

All right, I found a little map and it does seem like I found a pretty good bailout point, which is a bit unfortunate because I kind of want to push forward, but it's quarter after four now. You know, I'm definitely done with the days of getting dark at five o'clock. It gets dark. I don't know. It's the problem. I'm not sure when. Much later, but I'm not quite sure when. So I really shouldn't risk it today. Well, here comes someone down the path that I was thinking of going up.

I just had to wait for a moment for that guy to go by. That's a good example, though, if I was in North America, I would have asked, like, hey, what's a, what do I, what can I expect if I go up there? What's the plan? But I met a little, a little map. And forward, Bogunman Gate is the one I saw before. I don't, I don't know what a gate is. There is some, um, it looks like a wall on the map ahead of me. So I guess maybe a gate is an opening in, in the wall, in like the stone wall. I presume.

But it's, uh, point eight kilometers to Bogunman, B-O-G-U-N-G-M-U-N. And then a little further, one kilometer is Daydong-Mun, D-A-E-D-O-N-G-M-U-N. And it looks like, if I push forward, I could go to Sidden-Bong Peak and then from there funneled down back to the city. And it doesn't seem like that would be much further.

I guess not actually to the peak. I could not go to the peak, which is even better. Skirt past the peak.

And it doesn't seem like that would be much different from my other option, which is the Geon-Noong Information Center, J-E-O-N-G-N-E-U-N-G, 30:00 which I believe will take me roughly back to where I started, but not along the ridge, like I did the first time. There's another path down through a valley. And I think that's what I'm going to do, because the sun is still high up in the sky and stuff, but it just, uh, I started going up, because it just looks so enticing. It looks so cool, but it is very steep up there. And I just don't know for sure. I got a map here, but I mean, I don't know. Again, I just wish I had started earlier in the day. I just need to do this earlier in the day. But that's fine. You know, I can put this in my back pocket. Here's the thing I can do some other time if I do manage to get going. If I magically manage to get going earlier in the day, this is always here, not only for this trip, but I think I've made enough peace with Seoul that I will certainly be back. You know, Japan will always be my, uh, my reason for coming to this side of the world. But once I'm here, and after Japan kicks me out, I can't imagine not coming back to Seoul at this point, you know? I mean, the pollution thing, it's, uh, it's troubled, but I'm, you know, at least I'm aware of it now. And there's a lot of other great stuff that it's, it's worth the juggling act. Actually, I should translate this sign. What does this say?

Kalbawi Bypass Closure Guide. Kalbawi Ridge Bypass is frequent falling rocks during thawing, due to high risk of occurrence in the risk of falling in winter. It is closed, so please use the regular trail.

Well, that certainly doesn't sound good, but I'm actually not quite clear which route they're referring to. Is that the ahead of me thing that I started going up and decided it was too rough, looking, or just that I didn't want to get into the dark, but I mean a guy did just come down from there. A pass, does a pass mean down? This thing that I was planning on going down, is that the goddammit that didn't help? Well anyway, there's footsteps going down. It's like well-trotten, definitely many people in the recent past, likely today, have been down this path to the information center. I presume it's fine. In fact, Kalbawi, it's pointing back toward the way that I came. Maybe it's telling me not to go that way. I don't know. I mean that could kind of make sense because it was quite steep coming down that way. And that is the one thing other people have that I don't have. I've got my big cool boots now, but I don't have hiking poles. Everybody else pretty much has those. I did have some in New Brunswick that one of my friends bought me some for Christmas. And even just in in Frederickton, they were really handy in the winter when I'd be hiking through the park there. And especially if the rain would put like an icy layer over the snow, it was very easy to fall down. So even just to hike around Odel Park, it was really nice to have, but obviously I didn't want to travel with those. And in the summertime, there's an argument not to use them because they kind of tear up the ground. And around here, I just I didn't buy any. They wouldn't hurt, but also because I have a bad shoulder, they kind of would hurt. Using hiking poles all day really makes my shoulder hurt. And on the way up, it's really no problem. Any of the places that I've been, I say as I fucking stumble, or I guess if it did become too steep, I just stopped because I didn't want to do that anyway.

As I've said many times, going down often seems worse than going up. So like that part I just came down earlier that I was saying was a bit steep. One thing I've noticed when it's steep on the way down, when having poles would be handy, one nice work around is just to go crab mode, which I did a bit in Japan. Because man, I mean, I don't know, it's really hard for something to be too steep for crab mode. Like what's scary and dangerous about going down something when you're standing up is that your head is so high up off the ground. If you took a tumble forward, it would be a significant fall. If you go crab mode where you're just on, you know, you get your feet ahead of you, your hands behind you, and you're just crawling down on all fours, your flat, your head is really close to the ground, and you're a flat object, you know, you're very sturdy. Even if your grip gives way and you start to slide, I mean, I literally slid down that whole fucking mountain pretty much toward the end of Japan, when I was in Ome, when those guys from the construction site helped me out and gave me a ride to on my station. I like to just slid down that mountain. It's really no big deal.

So even here, I did, you know, I had a couple little slidey moments where I slid down, and it's like, it's like fun. Yeah, I'm sliding. It's not scary. You know, it's fine. Crab mode, man. Crab mode, if you're even remotely concerned, if you start feeling that feeling of like, oh, hope I don't fall down. If you ever think I wish I had hiking poles, either A gets a hiking poles, but if you're stupid like me, 35:00 just do the crab block. It's so good. You could just crab block your way right down a mountain. And this is fucking pretty. Again, this is just so king's quest, man. It's perfect. Just going down this nice rocky trail down into the valley now. Sun's still quite high in the sky. Beautiful mountains in the distance. That comforting feeling of going down, you know, even though down is trickier, terrain-wise, usually feels good to go down because I was really high up there. Some of that shit was quite fucking high. I'm going to look up that peak later and see how high up it was.

But yeah, the reason I have had an extra hard time getting started early, I mean, I wasn't getting started crazy early to begin with, but I was waking up generally. I've just kind of set my little internal clock was set to wake me up at around 11 o'clock. And again, with the longer days and that everything is so accessible and close, very short subway rides. I'm right by a subway. Very short rides to get to these places. I had all the time in the world.

And I was liking my little super cheap softhouse Airbnb so much, you know, just a little room with a little desk in a bed. Nothing else really there. But because it's this like softhouse concept that they have here where it's like there are university students or old men and just people that live here kind of constantly. More and more, I'm realizing how much stuff they have set up for you. There's bread and milk and cereal all in the fridge every day that gets restocked. I didn't realize there's instant coffee. There's noodles like instant noodles that are really good. There's a rice cooker. There's rice. There's all this stuff. I don't use it that often. I still just kind of go out and eat usually. But it's all just there. If you just want to, if you just want to live, you just want a place to live and a place to not starve for very cheap. Again, I don't know if they have co-ed ones. This one is meant only, but if you're a man and you're in soul, these places are fucking really cool. But what I didn't realize is that I actually booked two different stays at the same place without realizing because I booked them kind of apart from each other. And they were just cheap places to stay in soul. I didn't realize actually that I was just booking a different room in the same place till I got here. But the first room, importantly, it had a window. Not a window you could like open to the air, but it was like a two-pained window so you could open one pane and just regulate temperature. If it got too hot, opening that pane just cooled down the room. And I didn't realize how crucial that was. That's kind of a maker break. It's a deal breaker. I will definitely go back to that first room with the window. For sure, it had a great time. Anytime I'm in soul, I like this place a lot. I'm going to stay here again. But now I'm in an internal room for these last three weeks with no window. And it's weird the way it's set up is the hot water pipes go underneath the floor, which I guess is kind of a cool idea. Double duty. If you got hot water running through pipes, why not use it to heat the place? You know, fuck it, I guess. And it's always a little too hot at the best of times. Again, I just like it to be cold. I sleep better when it's cold. I'd rather be cold and put on a blanket than here, even if things are kind of okay. I just have to sleep with no blanket on and it's just not comfortable to me. I find it hard to follow sleep that way. Doesn't feel natural. I don't feel safe and secure to go to bed if I don't have a blanket on, but I can't put anything on because it's too hot. And that's under normal circumstances. Just, I guess what what they consider a normal temperature here is very, very fucking hot, which incidentally I did see a bunch of people saying never come here in the summer. You know, I was saying don't come in the winter because of the pollution. But I saw many things on trip advisor advising not to come here in the summer because it's just so insanely hot that it's just not worth it. Unless you just want to stay inside air-conditioned malls all the time. Don't, don't do it. So it makes it tricky. It's like, I don't know what to do. Don't come in the summer, don't come in the winter. I mean, I did find fall in Japan to be quite amazing. Maybe fall is just the best everywhere all the time. I don't know. Man, this is nice. This is fucking, this is so sweet.

God damn, if it just wasn't for the pollution, this place is really growing on me so much. But just the fact that the apocalypse can descend upon it at any time and it's like an actual nightmare is just so fucked up. Anyway, the thing with the the heating going under the floor is that when somebody wants to take a shower they got to turn on the properly hot water, not just like kind of warmed water but like super hot because unfortunately they don't do 40:00 the Japanese method where you pick the perfect temperature. You pick 42, 43, 44 degrees and it comes out as that. They do it North America style where the hot water is like 70 or 80 degrees, just you will scald you and you got to just awkwardly mix it with the cold water. You know, that awkward shower thing, it's too hot, it's too cold. You have like one millimeter of fucking of the tap that matters. So to get the water that hot, the pipes under the floor go insane. So hot that you can't stand on them, it will burn, literally will burn the souls of your feet if you try to stand on the floor. You got to use the the house slippers. It's so insanely hot.

And there's a sign that says, hey, turn off the hot water after you're done your shower. Great big sign on the door of the bathroom but since it's different people coming through here all the time, I don't know that they realize how important that is. I think I may have forgotten once or twice because when I was in the room with the window, it didn't seem to matter that much. You know, some days I would open the window, some days something weird was going on and the heat was off and I would just wear extra layers to bed. You know, things were definitely random and weird but it could easily deal with it in the first room. In this one, the little internal room with no windows, there's nothing I can do. And it's never cold. The cold part is never the problem. It's always the hot thing where I'm just like literally in an oven. I'm just baking. And during the day, it's not that bad because more people are using the showers and even if someone forgets to turn one off, more traffic is passing by. Someone will notice and turn it off. The real problem is at night. You're not supposed to take showers after 11 but who's going to stop them? People do it all night. And if somebody takes a shower at 2 a.m. and leaves the fucking thing on, then I'm in an oven. So I just have to wake up and monitor the fucking thermostat and go turn it off myself all night. Like I end up waking up like three, four, five times a night. And it's just miserable. Instead of waking up at 11 and feeling okay, now I wake up at one p.m. and feel like shit. Like I'm like I have to get up. I cannot sleep in longer than this, but I should because I feel like garbage. Like my whole sleep schedule has turned upside down because of the temperature.

It's fucking horrible. Man, this walk is so great. This is fucking great. Yeah, I'm like in between the two mountains now. God, this is cool. This is just a nice little natural path. The one steep part up at the top probably is what they were warning about on that sign because it was a little rough. This has all been, I haven't even had to crab block. This is just easy, perfect. I don't know that I'd want to come up this path. I think coming up the path with all the people is a better idea, but this is a real good way down. This has worked out swimmingly. This is nice. God, it's fucking beautiful. Holy fuck. Damn, man. On a good day, soul is really good.

So anyway, I'm in a heat nightmare now and it's just awful. It's just awful being at the mercy of dozens of other people who may or may not know what the fuck's going on. Maybe they're in one of the side rooms where they don't, it's not affecting them like this. They don't realize that the people in the middle are fucking baking. And I noticed some of the older guys who are like the permanent residents that just seem to live here. A lot of them just have their door cracked all the time. And now I know why. It's because it just regulates the temperature better. But the other thing that was nice about my first room is it was at the end of a hallway. Way deep at the end of the hallway. Nobody ever went down there. Nice and quiet and you know, just out of the way. Where the one I met now, it's like the worst possible spot. It's right by the bathroom and the kitchen. Everybody has to walk by me all the time to do anything. So I can always hear people come and buy all the time and it's just extra uncomfortable. Even if I was to do that thing of just because you know, probably if I just left my door unlocked and open, probably no one's going to give a shit. You know, but it still is just an uncomfortable feeling. Who knows what somebody's going to do it three in the morning? I don't know. I certainly wouldn't, it wouldn't make it easier to fall asleep. That's for sure. But if I was way down at the obscure end of one of the hallways, I probably would do that because nobody ever goes down there. You can just tell auditorily when I was down there, nobody ever went down there. Where in this case, like it's just laid out so perfectly that if my door was open, every single person who walks to the kitchen or the bathroom at any point during the day would buy just like automatically. They wouldn't be able not to look in my door and see me trying to sleep and it's just that's a too uncomfortable. That's too weird. So I can't, I just can't have the door open. So I just got to wake up all night and pay attention 45:00 to the thermostat. And again, even at the best of times, it's still just hottest. Fuck, it's uncomfortably hot even if even if I don't get put in the oven and the oven, it's absolutely insane. You know, I'll film notice that I'm like really sweating bad and then I'll put my foot down on the floor to test and it's like, yep, the floor is just hot. Like downright hot could burn you hot. What a weird fucking setup. It's so weird. But again, if I was just in the room with the window, everything that is never was a problem, that would be fine. So I'm really fighting to try to bring my sleep schedule back to some kind of sanity. Like today I woke up at noon rather than one and I still had that feeling of just like, fuck. God damn, I don't want to get up but I made myself get up because I got to start pulling it back. You know, again, it doesn't have to be that crazy. I don't have to get up at fucking 7 a.m. Getting up at 11 would be fine. That would buy me, you know, an extra two hours out here doing this shit. That would make a big difference. But getting going, I mean waking up at 1 p.m. Forget it. Getting going by 1 p.m. Still not not good enough. But not terrible. Like again, that's like today. I still, this has been a pretty epic hike. Still not bad. Yesterday I did the Anson Mountain a couple of days before that. I did being once in Rock Wall Walk. You know, I can still do pretty decent amounts of stuff.