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55 presence (or shadow) of the Yokohama Beer Festival, one of many traveling festivals, but especially cool for its Japanese beers and other lovely German and local craft brews. And other Japanese stuff: tasty fried things and no spit or trash. Vending machines, schoolgirls and the like. Yokohama is one step further down the Semi-Express line from Kawasaki and is entirely the city of the future, the closest thing to a perfect place I’d ever seen. Large, beautifully designed yet innocuously soulful modern buildings permeate the majority of the city. Piled next to grandiose red-brick warehouses, between which were the beer festival tents, and back- ing onto a harbor buttressed by parks, they had some appealing architectural design. I loved the beauty of Japan (and really enjoyed seeing some old friends), but not its effects. The rules and regulations kept everything beautiful, but also kept people separate, encouraged child pornography and produced apologist foreigners who were working hard to duly fit in. When I was in- formed that I shouldn’t wear a tank top out of the house on a 30-degree day for fear of intimidating people, I thought how ridiculous that would seem in Korea, a country where I feel pretty much free to do whatever I want because everyone else does. So now, when I see an old man hacking up spit in the street while he discards his litter with wanton aban- don — something that would not happen in Japan — I feel entitled to carry my own per- sonal idiosyncrasies with me. When I got back to Korea I breathed a sigh of relief and found myself for the weeks fol- lowing enjoying the oddness that Korea ex- udes — finally out from under the thumb of the bullies. Like the fat kid who starts work- ing out and gets a beautiful girlfriend, Korea doesn’t quite know how to deal with it. A country with a kind of downtrodden, gleeful pride in its recent success, but still unsure — that’s Korea. Japanese pride seems sullen and selfish in comparison. While the country is beautiful and impeccably micromanaged, it’s for that reason that I’m perfectly happy to call Korea my home. Long live chaos.