Sometimes I still regret not being in Korea, but there is a lot of beautiful and interesting places in Oregon too. This page will show pics from the now-fading autumn in Klamath County, Oregon. The next will feature springtime in the area around my old home in Mungyeong-shi. I passed some days around Chiloquin in October, visiting several places in the vicinity.

Aspens turning gold in the Sprague River canyon. And these “rocks” in the bottom of the pond at Mares Egg Spring are colonial algae, similar to the marimo of Akan-ko in Hokkaido.

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The country is pretty wide-open in this area – there is a small subdivision just to the east of here, but the views in the Wood River Refuge look over marsh and ranchland and mountains. The snowberries in the second photo are abundant and juicy but not very tasty. They are edible however.

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Above Chiloquin the Sprague River runs mostly slow and quiet. Trees and clouds reflected in the water.



Go upstream a mile or so from Collier State Park and drive a network of sandy tracks. At the end you’ll find the Williamson Gorge. A trail goes up the canyon for a while, finally disappearing into willows and marsh grasses.

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Went up to Crater Lake one day – climbed to a mountain viewpoint on the west side of the loop road. A couple days later the first snow of the season fell, closing the loop road till next June. The snow-covered mountains surrounding Crater Lake are visible in the distance.









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In the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento, California I came across this creature in the dark. The raccoon tried to hide from me, but I got a couple reasonable photos using flash.

He hid behind the tree for a while, now he's climbing the trunk....



Peering out from among the oak leaves...



And, back in Oregon, here's an artificial one - useable, perhaps, for wiping mud off shoes?

Though the majority of Koreans are not English-speaking, one can find English signs everywhere. They don't always mean the same to a Korean as they would to a native English-speaker.

Now, as an aside, here's another anomaly.... In Korea the phrase "native English-speaker" (the category of people sought as teachers of English in Korean schools and hagwons) is sometimes shortened to "native." So, Korea is the only place in the world where natives are all foreigners! Perhaps comparable to Jews being called "gentiles" in Utah...

Anyway, the use of English by Koreans is known as Konglish. This should not be considered as an attempt to communicate facts; rather it is more like calligraphy - an art expressed in writing. Writing that exists outside the Confucian system of relationships and expectations, thereby freeing the writer to express - well, just about anything. Below are some examples used on signs. Konglish used on t-shirts is often racier and more explicit, but I have no photos to offer....

A chain of lingerie stores has this on the walls of their stores.




Gertrude Stein might want to buy one of these for Oakland....




Make what you will of these...

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A couple signs in Daegu.

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A barber shop in Yeongju - the characters to the left of the boy mean "cut specialist" and those beneath it say, in the new roman orthography for Korean - deo maen, or... "The Man."

The package defined it as "rice-cake," but there's no rice in Warabi Mochi. Instead this Japanese product contains tapioca starch, sugar, potato starch, corn starch, and bracken powder. Don’t think the warabi (or bracken fern) contributes much to it. I couldn't taste the fern - couldn't actually taste much of anything in the starchy substance.

The mochi in its package next to a ''kabocha'' squash.



The wrapper taken off..... and the mochi looks like ice cubes close up! It was cold - it had been in the refrigerator since I brought it home. It had an unpleasant texture like that of paper-maché, neither chewy nor crisp...

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In the first photo the sauce has been added - a thick sweet soy-sauce. In the second the mochi has been topped with the packet of toasted soybean flour.

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I popped this mochi into the microwave for a few seconds and it changed its texture entirely. Now it was soft, chewy in a delicate sort of way. Still, the flavor came mainly from the add-ons. It wouldn't be something I'd buy often....