Miscelaineous: “I’m going to the army base for Thanksgiving. I hear it’s like America in the middle of Seoul.”
Lunamania: “Where they drive on the right side of the road.”
Miscelaineous: “They drive on the right side of the road in Korea. It’s not like Japan.”
Lunamania: “Really? I thought it was only the U.S. that drove on the right side of the road.”
The Chang: “No, Taiwan’s that way. Hong Kong too. Maybe it’s a colonial thing.”
Miscelaineous: “Maybe. But Japan was here when Korea was modernizing.”
The Chang: “That’s true.”
Lunamania: “What about China?”
Miscelaineous: “They don’t drive in China; they just ride bikes everywhere.”
The Chang: “Or when they do drive they don’t use any lanes.”
Lunamania: “In Japan it was about the swords.”
Miscelaineous & The Chang: “Swords?”
Lunamania: “Yeah. People walked on the left side of each other because of their swords. So they wouldn’t clank as they passed one another.”
Miscelaineous: “I could see how you wouldn’t want clanking swords. But Korea’s never been much of a sword country.”
Lunamania & The Chang: “Oh.”
Miscelaineous: “Well, anyway, have a happy Thanksgiving. Eat lots of turkey.”
Lunamania & The Chang: “You too.”
(slightly edited/fabricated due to my poor, poor memory)
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
November 23, 2007 at 1:47 am
I’m curious about the thanksgiving experience!
Wikipedia is so random…but check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_on_the_left_or_right#History
“In fact, some believe that ancient travellers on horseback generally rode on the left side of the road. As more people are right-handed, horsemen would thus be able to hold the reins with their left hands and keep their right hand free—to offer in friendship to passing riders or to defend themselves with swords, if necessary. This also explains why men’s jackets and shirts have the buttons on the right. It was important to be able to reach a weapon inside a cloak, so for a right-handed person, the cloak had the left flap over the right flap and the right hand could easily reach in and grab the weapon.”
November 27, 2007 at 11:39 pm
very interesting. what did we do with all that extra head space before the internet/google/wikipedia?
December 8, 2007 at 3:45 pm
omigod — this made me laugh so hard! i was totally misquoted (they drive on the left in HK, because they were a British colony), but the laughs were totally worth it!