One Day in Seoul

A minty lady with a fake purse is laughing at the trees with me. The curves of the natural world come through here and the bushes extend beyond their visual limit. Back home in Tokyo they would have snipped these off and angled them into humorless planes. The land of sour plums and mild monotone teas won't stand for boundary crossing. But Seoul is full of cookies and biscuits to match a more aromatic and novel assortment of brews. They let birds fly sweetly about your head and the branches grow long against the evening sky, red with garlic. Where Tokyo tucks its shirt in and spit shines its manhole covers, Seoul drops papers in the street, robustly. The men have a casual thickness and height where Tokyo's convex young men practice the art of skin and nail care at full price. It was only one day, but a first impression left me wanting more. While Tokyo's beauty unfolds with time, Seoul's reached up and kissed me on the hand.