Thursday, November 22, 2007

북경을 통해 인천에 간다

Tomorrow night, I shall be taking Air China to Incheon. It will be a 10.5 hours trip with a transit stop at the Beijing Capital International Airport. Compare to a direct flight, it will take me 4 hours more to get to Incheon. Probably by the time I settle down in Seoul, it will be late Saturday afternoon. I just love Saturday afternoon - a time to feel lazy and catch up on all the sleep I lost during the weekdays.

After confirming my flight, I wonder why I have never even thought of flying to Incheon via Narita and on my return flight make a stop-over at Tokyo. Anyway, I have been to Beijing but not Japan. Wouldn't I want to experience something new? It seems to me that familiarity breeds affinity. I do not understand Japanese language and have never been to Japan. Unlike China and Korea, I have never developed a desire to visit Japan and perhaps it has something to do with unfamiliarity and lack of affinity.

In the course of my Korean study, I figure out that probably about 7 out of 10 people studying Korean in Singapore are also studying or have studied Japanese before. And while I was studying in Korea, most of my classmates were Japanese. Naturally, I got to learn a bit of Japanese from them. For example, during one of my lunch with them, I was taught that "Itadakimasu" in Japanese is similar to "잘 먹겠습니다" in Korean. Just to make sure that I got her, my Japanese classmate even wrote down "이타다기마스" on a serviette to show me. They also taught me that Bae Yong Jun is known as "Yong-sama" in Japan.

Many people started off learning Japanese before taking on Korean. I am experiencing a "reverse influence". Studying Korean is bringing me closer to Japanese. My familiarity with Japan is growing. Perhaps not too long into future I may visit Japan. However, for this trip, there is no turning back - it's Incheon via Beijing. Got to pack my baggage now.

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