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  6 - A little bit in Korean at Montmartre

  While searching for a hotel on the Internet, I came upon a two-star one in Montmartre. The hotel had a garden with flowers in bloom and accommodations good enough for me. I felt inclined to decide on this hotel. I like plants and flowers and the place, Montmartre, reputed for a variety of artists now and from the days gone by, was very much attractive as well.

  Through e-mail exchanges with the hotel management, it soon became clear that it was run by Korean poeple, which was decisive for me.  In the past, having struggled for some five years after made redundant from a shipping line that plied between Japan and Europe, I was a miserable 55 year-old man bound for decrepitude when a stroke of luck smiled on me. Thanks largely to my introduction to a Korean shipping company by one of my former subordinates named M. Saito, whose kind effort for my sake I can never ever forget, they decided to employ me for their Korean/Japan/Korean trade. 

  Employed, or rather saved, by the Korean shipping company,  I heaved a big sigh of relief. The pay was roughly half as much as I used to get from the line on the European sea lane, but I felt I'd finally landed a real job after so many an odd job - I worked breifly as a laborer at Narita airport, sold fishes imported from overseas or exported abroad medical appliances and so forth ad nauseam just to earn a living.

  Looking back I still feel thankful to the company and Korean people, who invited me to thier homeland and I set foot on the Korean peninsula for the first time. Back at the time, I remember feeling ashamed of myself having been so ignorant of their culture and language especially. Come to think of it, it's funny that we've paid far more attention  to the languages spoken in the West than to our neighbours'. To my chagrin, I couldn't speak a word of Korean nor read their letters at all.

  Back in Japan, I started learing Korean and was surprised to see that their language is so akin to ours. Apart from theirs much richer in pronunciation and different in vocabulary, the basic sentense make-up is the same.

  I worked with them for about five years until I reached the retirement age of 60, when I had to start all over again to find a job.

  More than 10 years had passed, when I was hired as a Japanese teacher of English by a privately owned school operating on a small scale. Out of sight, out of mind, as the proverb goes, my Korean lapsed into disuse and rapidly deteriorated. Somehow, still, some words and expressions lingered in my mind.