Lost in multiple translations

In two hours I am supposed to wake up, take a shower, get dressed, and leave my apartment. My destination is Japan.

The trials in Korea are almost all relatively small. You learn how to order food, because you can affect an accent, and because practicing your order a lot means you're eventually going to be understood -- and that's the whole point. You're hungry, dammit.

Transportation is so easy in these parts of Korea that it's almost laughable to consider bus and railway systems back in the States. The Seoul Metropolitan Subway has something like 700 stops, spread across 9 lines. Buses run every few minutes to and from Seoul, with local buses just as plentiful and busy. Taxis are everywhere, too. More importantly, they're very cheap, and fast, and nice.

While Korea may not have quite stumbled upon the idea of 24 hour diners, they do have convenience stores. And while they may not have figured out that gas stations and convenience really do belong together, at least they have not skimped on the latter: Buy the Way, GS 25, Intro Mart, Family Mart, Mini Stop, etc., etc., etc. Need batteries? Walk 5 minutes or less to the nearest convenience store. Need Kleenex? Walk 5 minutes or less to the nearest convenience store. Need coffee? Noodles? Bleach? How 'bout canned fruit, or cooking oil? Walk 5 minutes blah blah blah.

Do you get the idea? Life is so consistently easy here in Korea that being sent to Japan to get a new visa seems to me a hassle. True, it will cost me some money for food and miscillaneous expenses (fortunately my flight is paid for). But I am essentially getting a free trip to Japan, for 4 days. My trip to China was also for 4 days. There is almost no way to describe this without invoking some happy-sounding predicate nominative, with an adjective form of the F word preceding it.

So as I sit in my orange overstuffed leather chair, in my new apartment in Bundang, and stare alternately at this computer screen and my mostly-full backpack at the end of my bed, I have to say that even when the bureacracy throws me a curveball, and under some ridiculously complicated wording of an arcane law I am to be sent out of the country, at least I can stop and consider the serendipity that even the big trials here have their rewards.