South Korea Trip

I went to South Korea for a long weekend right before summer vacation started. It had been a goal of mine to try to travel a lot while I’m doing the JET Programme. So far, I’ve been able to travel a lot within the country of Japan, but this was my first time to travel abroad (except when I returned to America for Christmas vacation). It was actually very affordable for two reasons. First, Peach Airlines (the airline I also used to travel to Okinawa (fun fact: Okinawa is further away from Osaka than Seoul, Korea)) is a very affordable discount airline. If you want to read more details about that, check out my Okinawa post. It cost me about 25,000 yen (about $250) for a round trip. Sometimes Peach Airlines runs sales where you can get super cheap tickets for like 2,500 yen ($25)! Second, my friend from college, Tasha, was living in Seoul at the time and let me stay with her for free (if you are reading this Tasha, thank you again)! So basically after the plane ticket, I only had to pay for transportation, food, and fun! Did I mention that South Korea is super cheap? Trains and food were dirt cheap! In fact, I didn’t even spend all the money I brought with me. So anyway, I was there for about four days, and I stayed only in Seoul. This is only the fourth county I’ve been to (including America and Japan haha)! The only other place I’ve been to is Mexico. I’m hoping to visit at least a couple more places before my time in JET is up.

Here is the day by day breakdown:

Day 1) I left work early on a Friday. It just so happened that another JET I’m friends with was flying to South Korea at the same time as me! So, we went to the airport together and waited in the airport. I exchanged my yen for won at the airport. Won was kind of confusing for me because the numbers are so big! I finally have gotten used to cutting two zeros off for yen, but with won, you have to cut off three! So, 1000 won is about $1. Doesn’t seem so bad until something costs like 123,542 won, and you’re like, “What is this?!” We (my friend and I) landed at Incheon International Airport in Seoul around 8pm I believe. The flight was super short! From there we went to the trains. My friend and I accompanied each other until we got off at separate train stops. I didn’t see him again until we took the same flight home haha! A note about Korean subways: They are great! Much cleaner and high-tech compared to Japanese ones. First of all, when you buy a ticket, it’s all on a really nice touch screen. Japan has touch screens too, but they are all worn down looking and often under repair. When you purchase just a regular ticket (compared to getting like a reloadable charge card), it’s like an IC chip thing, so you don’t actually have to slide it into a ticket slot or anything. You just have to scan it when you go through the gates. Also, when you reach your destination, you can deposit it into a machine and get some money back! Lastly, the trains themselves are cleaner, newer, and wider than the ones in Japan. I was so surprised!

Won.

It's so nice inside the subway!

Just from my first train ride (there were about three transfers), I began to soak in Korean culture. Of course, in my case, I was basically comparing everything to Japan. How are they different? How are they alike? Seeing as I’ve lived in Japan for a year, I couldn’t help it. Plus, due to history, there’s a lot of Japanese influence (and American…which I also compared) in Korea. Not to mention they are neighboring Asian countries. I’ve heard that Koreans don’t like their country to be compared to Japan (for good reasons), so I’m sorry if you are Korean and you are reading this…I honestly mean nothing by it. In any case, here are some of the first things I noticed on my train ride (and other places): First, riding on a train in Korea is like a whole different universe compared to riding on a train in Japan. I saw people talking on phones, eating, having loud conversations, making out (like really kissing!), sitting Indian style, not wearing shoes, and generally just sitting/standing closer together even when there was ample room to spread out. My first thought was that, “Wow, people are a lot ruder here…,” and then I remembered… I’ve been living in Japan for a year, a country known for being overly polite, almost to an uncomfortable point. I’ve become very used to living here. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Korean attitudes are a lot more similar to American! The second I realized that, I got very excited and felt so relaxed! A couple other things I saw on the trains during my trip were 1) a man preaching about Christianity on the train. He was wearing a suit. As soon as the train started moving, he stood at the front of the train and addressed everyone very formally with a loud voice. When he was finished, he turned to me and Tasha and tried to say his spiel in English…it was awkward. 2) People sold stuff informally on the trains. There was one older man who had like a little cart with junk on it. He was calling out and advertising his products. One of which was a spy belt thing. Basically it was a belt that you wear under your shirt that has a pouch for hiding things like your wallet or phone. I guess it’s so you don’t get robbed.  Another time, a really old woman was walking up and down the train with packs of gum, asking each individual person if they’d like to buy a pack. I was so surprised! The last thing I’d like to mention about the trains is that when I was transferring at Bupyeong-gu Office Station, I saw just a random pile of barf on the ground…It was like 9 pm. I thought it was a little early for people to be that drunk, but according to Tasha, people get really wasted really early in Korea.

The guy standing with the blue cart was
the one selling the "spy belts."

Secondly, from riding the trains the first night (and again, in other places as well), I learned a little bit about Korean people in general. First, they are, on average, bigger than Japanese people, height and girth. It was a huge relief for me because I’m a bit heavier than the average Japanese girl haha! It was nice to see some people around the same size as me looking happy and normal with no one judging them. Next, I learned about Korean fashion. Those thick-framed, black, nerd glasses are more popular in Korea than I ever imagined! I just thought it was a coincidence that most Koreans I’ve met have those glasses, but really, there were tons of people wearing them. It was like everyone who needed glasses was wearing that style, and I’d say that like almost 50% of people needed glasses (although I saw people wearing them without lenses in them too lol). According to Tasha, most people in Korea need glasses or contacts because they read so much for school. The school system in Korea is really rigorous, and they are always reading, so their eyes get strained. Next, PDA (public display of affection) is totally ok! I couldn’t believe how many couples were all over the place!!!! It was like Seoul was a love city, and everyone was paired off! So many people were holding hands, and I saw many people hug and kiss on train, streets, restaurants, etc. For me, this was the biggest shock! In America, people do these things too, but it has been so long since I’ve been in the U.S. that I forgot what it was like to see people showing affection. The only reason I reacted so strongly was because in Japan it is a serious taboo! You rarely see people holding hands, and you NEVER see couples hug or kiss in public unless you are in like a dance club, and people are drunk. When Travis came to visit, I was so conscious about PDA, and it was very constraining. Again, in this matter, I felt Korea was more similar to America. Except for one thing; on several occasions, I saw couples wearing straight up matching outfits, which I thought was hilarious! They are really in to being lovey-dovey in Korea, I think. Other fashion trends (unrelated to couples) that I noticed were men wearing tight, above the knee shorts (as an American, this drew my attention because men in America always wear their shorts loose and below the knee). Also, whether you are male or female, collared shirts were very popular. Maybe you could consider this a fashion trend, but one thing I noticed right away was the size of peoples’ smart phones. They were HUGE! Like double the size of an iPhone. I asked Tasha about this, and she told me something really interesting. First, you need to know that in South Korea, many people are very concerned with fashion and appearance. Nowadays, plastic surgery is super common there, and many people have had it done. Apparently, surgery on the face is pretty popular. For example,  men get their jaw lines reshaped (which I hear is very dangerous), and women get double-eyelid surgery. In any case, about the phones…having a small head/face in Korea (and Japan) is considered ideal. The reason (at least one of the reasons) the phones are so big is supposedly because when held up to your ear, they make your face appear smaller. It’s like deception or something. I was like wtf?! Haha! Anyway, those are some cultural things I learned.

PDA. :)

Now I will actually get into what I did. I got to Tasha’s station kind of late. Maybe around 11 pm. Her station was called Cheolsan Station. It was rainy season in Korea, so it was raining kind of hard when I got there, and it was drizzly the whole time I was there. I don’t know if I ever saw the sun. It was a bit cooler temperature-wise than Japan, but the humidity was pretty high, so regrettably, I was pretty sweaty the whole time I was there as well. My first impression about the way Korea looked on the streets was that it looked pretty much exactly like Japan, except things were written in Korean, not Japanese. They even had the same things on the sidewalk for blind people as they do in Japan. The crosswalks make noise as well. One small difference that I didn’t notice at first was that people were driving on the right side of the road like in America! I guess that’s one of the things that rubbed off, besides Christianity, when America occupied South Korea. We went to a food stand for dinner because it was late, and we were hungry. I got something called dopokki which is like little rice cakes in a sweet and spicy sauce. Wow, was it spicy! In a good way, though. I love spicy food, but it had been a long time since I ate anything truly spicy seeing as they really don’t have much spicy cuisine in Japan. We ate it in Tasha’s apartment. She had a studio in a high rise building. It had a cool view. After eating, we showered, talked, and went to bed. It was pretty late.

Cheolsan area. So cool!

Dopokki.

The view from her window.

Day 2) We got a pretty early start. The first thing we did was go to probably the most famous sight in Seoul, Gyeongbokgung. It’s the king’s palace. The grounds are extensive! It was a bit different from places I’ve seen in Japan. It was super wide and open in the middle with a lot of little areas to see around the edges. One of the stunning parts was that there was a solitary mountain in the backdrop. I thought it was a beautiful place! After the palace we were starving because we hadn’t eaten anything yet. We walked over to Insadong, the historical district of Seoul also known for tea. There were lots of tea shops and houses in this area. A little background information: I met my friend Tasha at my college because we were both in Japanese tea ceremony class. We both LOVE tea! I think that because of this, we kind of centered our day around tea, which I was completely happy about! It’s rare for me to find someone who is as interested in tea as I am. Before getting lunch, we thought it’d be nice to stop at a tea house first for kind of like “pre-lunch.” We went to this darling little place called Cheontong Chatchip. I learned that chatchip means café in Korean. Actually, we were searching for this one place Tasha researched on the internet, but we couldn’t find it. We happened to stumble upon Cheontong Chatchip, and I am so glad we did! It was a privately owned place. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the café was actually the residence of the woman running it. It was very eclectic and cute inside, and let me say, I had some of the most delicious and interesting tea there…if you could call it that. Basically I got tea made of crushed fresh mulberries! We also got these little tea treats with our drinks that reminded me of a rice krispie treats but not as sweet and made of some other type of krispie material.  The tea was incredibly delicious and the portion was large. There were even pine nuts in it! What?! I got to hear Tasha speak in Korean for the first time with the owner. I learned some phrases before going to Korea like “hello” and “thank you,” but Korean to me is more or less a mystery. I can’t seem to wrap my brain around the pronunciation of it. Anyway, it was interesting for me to hear an American speak it. She had been living in Korea for a year, plus she studied it a bit in school, so she was decent.

Gyeongbokgung.

Cheontong Chatchip

My mulberry tea.

 After the tea house, we searched for a restaurant. We didn’t really have anything specific in mind, and I didn’t really know anything about Korean food. We actually went to a place right down the street from the tea house called Sarangche because one of the workers came outside when she saw us looking at the building and coaxed us in. It was totally cool though! They had the one Korean dish I was familiar with, bibimbap. Let me just say, I paid about $7 for one of the biggest meals I’ve ever had! I couldn’t eat it all! The bibimbap is big enough itself, but in Korean cuisine, you usually get a plethora of side dishes to be shared with whoever you are eating with. I love the little side dishes…especially the kimchi. By the way for those who don’t know, bibimbap is a staple Korean rice dish with egg and vegetables in it. It usually comes out in a super hot stone bowl. You put the desired amount of hot red paste sauce in it and stir it up really good before the stone begins to cool. Along with the main course and side dishes, you also get soup and chijimi (this is the Japanese romanization of the word…I’m not sure how to romanize it correctly in Korean). A note about dining in Korea: usually you always get like a pitcher of water for the table which is nice. Often the dining ware is made of metal. This includes the cups and chopsticks! It was hard for me to use metal chopsticks because they were heavy and thin. Maybe this is another example of wear America rubbed off on Korea, maybe not. Anyway, the lunch was delicious and extremely filling. It was a wonderful first dining experience!

Metal utensils.

Bibimbap.

After lunch, we wondered around the Insadong area. We went in to several stores and I bought a few souvenirs. We also went to “The Beautiful Tea Museum.” I bought some persimmon leaf tea for my parents there and learned a little about Korean tea. Apparently, tea made from flowers is a staple of Korean. I thought it was interesting. After meandering a couple hours, we decided to hit up another tea house for some afternoon tea. We went to a place called Mokhyang. It was a lot more tourist-y than the other one we went to. It was super nice and a little more on the pricier side. We got chrysanthemum tea. It was so beautiful and refreshing! It was in a darling, clear, glass pot. You could see the flower blossoms open up in the hot water. It was great! The place had a very distinct tea house feel to it.

At Mokhyang. This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Chrysanthemum tea. 

After our second tea break, we headed to Myeongdong, the shopping/nightlife district of Seoul. Basically all I can say about that is that we did a lot of shopping and walking around. This area really reminded me a lot of Tokyo. I was surprised to find some America food chains that aren’t in Japan though like California Pizza Kitchen! In this area, I also got a good look at Seoul Tower, and I also saw a huge Catholic church. I was a strange feeling to be in a country again where Christianity is so popular. After shopping around a while, we got dinner at a chain, I believe, called Yoogane. It was a place with big skillet things built into the tables. It’s family style so you had to order one thing and share it. We got chicken galbi fried rice. It came with salad, soup, and pickles. I thought the food was good, but the service was horrible. The waiters were extremely rude to us. I couldn’t tell if it was because we were foreign or not. Basically, one guy came to the table, asked what we wanted, Tasha ordered in Korean which didn’t seem to change his attitude towards us at all, and as soon as we said what food we wanted, he quickly turned around and walked away without saying anything before we could even tell him what we wanted to drink. He came back only to throw our bill on the table before the food came and before we could ask for our drinks. A different person came to our table to prepare the food since it’s prepared at the table. She didn’t make eye contact with us or say anything. I thought it was weird, but whatever. After dinner, we continued to peruse the stores in Myeongdong before getting dessert (Korea is all about eating, right?? Haha!). We went to this chain called Caffe Bene. We got patbingsu. It’s a common Korean dessert made mostly from ice. It’s usually meant to be shared. We got green tea flavored (of course!), and it was so good! We just chilled out in the café and talked. It was a relaxing way to end the night.

This is a guy making this cool honey candy stuff.

Myeongdong area.

Seoul Tower.

Chicken galbi fried rice at Yoogane

Patbingsu.

Day 3) The third day, I kind of broke away from trying all things Korean and decided to take advantage of all the American things I’ve been missing in Japan, but I’ll get to that soon. We started off the day by heading to Dongdaemun which is an area known for having lots of markets. However, since it was Sunday, most of the markets were closed unfortunately. We however stumbled upon an archeological museum. It was a museum of artifacts that were discovered right where we were standing after they decided to tear down an old baseball stadium. It was pretty cool to be standing right where the items were found. After that, we headed to Gangnam. Yes, it is the Gangnam from PSY’s “Gangnam Style.” There were two reasons I was very excited to go here. First, because it’s Gangnam from “Gangnam Style” haha, and second, THERE WAS A TACO BELL!!!!!!! I swear that Taco Bell is my drug. We headed straight to Taco Bell (after taking a couple pictures with signs that said “Gangnam” on them haha!). I was happy to find that the menu had the things I wanted…a chicken crunchwrap supreme and a crispy potato soft taco. No Baha Blast Mountain Dew, though. I didn’t mind that much. It was sooooo incredibly satisfying!!! God, was it satisfying! So, anyway….. After we ate the food of kings, Tasha went to meet some people for a board game convention. In the mean time, I shopped and walked around Gangnam a bit, and I also went a few train stops away to Samseong to check out the Coex Mall. The mall was a little different than I expected. There weren’t actually very many stores inside. I didn’t really get it. I actually did most of my shopping within the train stations. Like Japan, you can often find good deals.  Before I met back up with Tasha, I strolled around Gangnam some more. I got Jamba Juice for a snack, something that I also had been missing. Orange Dream Machine <3 I think Gangnam was my favorite district. It too reminded me of Tokyo.

Aw yeah!

I couldn't believe they had this!

The best thing I've ever seen.

Scratch that...THIS is the best thing I've ever seen!

Gangnam area.

Jamba Juice.

After Tasha and I met up, we took a bus to Noksapyong which is on the outskirts of Itaewon. Itaewon is the foreigner district of Seoul. On the bus, this old woman talked to me in English. I was fixing my hair with a little brush that I keep in my purse, and she got excited because of how small the brush was…yep. She kept telling me it was so cute haha! The reason we were heading to Noksapyong was because while Tasha was at her board game convention, she met a guy who works at a restaurant there. He invited her to come and have a beer, his treat! The place was called Craftworks. They brew their own craft beer there. It’s also an American style restaurant. I was excited to order gourmet nachos for my entrée haha! I decided that I would enjoy drinking this night. Tasha doesn’t really like to drink that much and clubs aren’t really her thing, so I gave up on the idea of going out and really partying hard at bars and clubs. However, since she was having a few beers, I decided that I would indulge a bit. I had wine and a cocktail, but then I did something I never thought I would do…EVER! I drank beer. I don’t like beer. I never drink beer. However, after we finished our meal, we decided to sit at the bar in the restaurant and chat with the guy who invited us. Since the place brews their own beer, they have a sampler platter of all their beers. There were people around us trying the platter, and it looked kind of fun. The bartender, the one who invited us, is from Ireland. I enjoyed his accent. Since Tasha was interested in the platter, and I knew that if I didn’t like it, then she could just drink them, AND because the Irishman was peer pressuring us into trying it (and the Irish in me wanted to give in and honor my heritage), we decided to get it. It actually was really fun! I can’t say that I loved the beer, but some of it wasn’t bad…not that I would start regularly ordering beers from then on. By this time, I was pretty buzzed, and the Irishman asked me which my favorite was. There was one that tasted kind of like bananas (on purpose). He peer pressured me into getting a huge glass of it!! I drank it. It was alright haha. We left there feeling good. I distinctly remember us searching for the subway entrance because we were having trouble finding it and Tasha saying, “We are gophers, we should know about tunnels,” which I thought was hilarious! We both went to the University of Minnesota together. Our mascot was a gopher, and underneath the whole campus was a tunnel system used by students so we didn’t have to go out in the harsh Minnesota cold in the winter.

The Irishman.

Beer sample platter.

What am I doing?!

The next, and final, stop on the itinerary was Hongdae. This is near a college campus, I believe. Basically it was kind of a collection of small clubs and bars. However, because it was still Sunday, it was hardly hopping. It seemed like kind of a cool hipster area though. Since I had heard that Korea was known for having awesome bars, clubs, and nightlife, I really wanted to go to at least one club while I was there. Tasha was nice enough to oblige. We went to a place called Katakomb. Now let me just say, if it weren’t for the fact that it was like completely dead (as in the only people there were the workers and a few DJ’s taking turns spinning), it would’ve been to one of the coolest clubs I’ve been too. It was kind of fancy. The drinks were pretty expensive. I got a really high quality margarita which was nice and strong. There were two things I really liked about it. First, as the name Katakomb suggests, the décor was skulls. Seeing as I love all things metal and hardcore, I was pleased. Second, the DJ’s were playing really awesome house music. It was right up my alley. Tasha made me feel better about it being dead by saying that it was like we were at our very own VIP party haha! So after chilling there a little, we headed back to her apartment.

It was super cool inside! ...and dead.

Skulls!

A nice margarita.

Day 4) I had woken up in the night with a stomachache. I’m pretty sure it had to do with the beer I drank. My body was definitely not used to that. I didn’t feel much better in the morning. I had to get up really early because my flight back to Osaka was at like 10 am. Tasha and I said our goodbyes, and I thanked her for letting me stay with her and guiding me around. It was really nice to see her! By the time I made it to the airport, I was feeling almost better. I met my friend that flew in with me because, again, we were taking the same flight home. I had one more Jamba Juice for breakfast. Oh Jamba Juice…how I will miss you! I’m not one to get that freaked out on flights, but the flight home was the most turbulent flight I think I’ve ever been on. I was gripping the armrests for dear life haha! Other than that, I made it home just fine only to immediately go to Gion Matsuri as soon as I got back.

There’re just a couple last things I want to mention. First, wifi is seriously like everywhere in Seoul! I had no problem using my phone. All the subways have wifi as do most restaurants and stores…and it’s free! When you think of Japan, often you imagine it being technologically advanced. However, you can hardly ever find free wifi anywhere whereas it was the complete opposite in Seoul. I was impressed! Next, about Korean public restrooms…first, western toilets are more common. I saw a squat toilet once, I think, and I was excited because the handle to flush was actually on the ground and meant to be pressed with you foot! In Japan, many people press the handle with their foot even though there are signs that say not to. It was just nice not to be breaking a rule haha! Second, some bathrooms had signs that said not to flush your toilet paper. There were garbage cans in the stall for throwing away your toilet paper. I thought that was disgusting, but apparently some older buildings in Seoul have weak plumbing and aren’t equip to handle the public really. Last, one of the weirdest things I saw in a bathroom which is supposedly pretty common was the soap. Basically, there is like a metal rod sticking out by the faucet at each sink. On each rod, a whole bar of soap is skewered. You just like rub your hands on it. I don’t know why it was that weird, but I’ve never seen bars of soap just hovering there like that… and it was all wet because everyone rubs their hands on it. It kind of gave me a bad feeling haha! The last random thing I want to mention is this: The whole time I was in Seoul I was wondering about something. There are tons of famous idols in South Korea. Companies pump out boy/girl bands like it’s nobodies’ business, and they are extremely popular. South Korea isn’t that big of a country, and there are only like two main cities, Busan and Seoul. Seoul is definitely the more popular of the two. Sure, it’s a very big city, but considering how probably almost all the celebrities live in the city, I couldn’t help but wonder how they go out without being mobbed. Also, I wondered if they were just disguised and I was walking past famous people all the time (like Daesung from Big Bang <3) haha! It just seems like it would be hard to be a celebrity living in Seoul because there isn’t really anywhere to hide!

I was happy about this.

I really enjoyed Seoul. I hope I can go back to eat more Korean food and experience the night life more. Korean culture is definitely something I’m becoming more and more interested in!

Korean purikura.

Some souvenirs.