I gave away my Frisbee to a prostitute in Busan, South Korea. I arrived at our budget hotel with a group of three American friends, just off a rocky ferry ride from Fukuoka, Japan. Jim and I went out to the spacious, gravel parking lot to blow off some steam after the confining, overnight boat trip. As we tossed long Frisbee throws to each other, I noticed a few people watching us, including two young women with a white toy poodle in front of one of the small shops surrounding the parking lot.

One of Jim’s throws floated over my head toward a tobacco shop. I reached up, just missing the catch and watched the disc continue toward the shop window on which the owner had painted the word “Tobacco” in English, a lot of Korean words, and a picture of a burning cigarette casting smoke into the air. The Frisbee floated softly into the window and the glass shattered into colorful shards.

Jim caught up with me as we raced to the store, arriving just as the owner stepped out. We bowed deeply, repeating nervous apologies in English. The owner moved his eyes from us to the glass-covered gravel and back to us. Then he looked to a group of men who had been watching and called them over. All I could think of were fights between American GIs and locals at the seedy bars around military bases that sometimes ended up in newspaper reports of injuries and death.

One of the men, however, offered to translate our apologies and we negotiated payment to replace the glass. With everything settled, I looked around for the Frisbee and found it in the hands of the woman with the poodle, which was now sitting inside the upside-down disc. The tobacco-shop owner laughed as Jim and I walked over and I put my hand out for the Frisbee. The girl shook her head “no.” I combined hand motions and basic English to assert my ownership. Again, “no.” Then she added, “Short time, I keep.” Jim and I finally realized their profession, and we shook our heads “no.” I pointed to Jim and back to me, trying to indicate that we wanted to continue our game. Her response, “Okay, okay, two,” and she motioned us both into their shop. We declined, reclaimed the Frisbee, and returned to the hotel.

A couple weeks later, while waiting for the boat to take us back to Japan, I returned to the parking lot with the Frisbee, planning to give it to the girl with the dog. The tobacco shop had a clean, new window. The girl wasn’t there. I thought about asking the shop owner her whereabouts, but worried that he would think that I was interested in using the Frisbee for currency in a transaction with the girl. I left it on her doorstep.

Publisher’s Note:

The Frisbee® brand of recreational disc is manufactured by the Wham-O toy company. The name was inspired by the pie tins of the Frisbie Pie Company in Connecticut (founded in 1871). After buying the rights to Walter Frederick Morrison’s 1957 “Pluto Platter” design for a flying plastic disc, Wham-O renamed it “Frisbee” in homage to the pie tins, and then registered the name as a trademark in 1959. Which the company actively defends against genericizing. This is why terms like “flying disc” and “sport disc” are used to refer to the generic product, especially in professional sports such as Disc Dog and USA Ultimate. (Sources include That’s a Trademark?! and Wikipedia.)

Gary DeCoker,

a retired college professor, lived in Japan for seven years where he studied Japanese arts. During his career, while publishing his academic research on Japanese traditional arts and culture, he enjoyed writing personal essays, first as a student in the Bennington College MFA program. Since retirement he has been reworking some of these essays and writing new ones. His personal essays have been published or are forthcoming in Allium, Calendula Review, Glen Arbor Sun, Pictura Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.