xtine.net

after four days in seoul, south korea, there were some things that stood out to me

• streets are clean, people are orderly, kind of like japan
• the city people are impeccable in look. clean faces (probably both the men and women alike wear makeup), stylish hair styles, great layered fashion sense
• ktown stereotypes are correct: lots of beer (lots of cass that i don't see in the states, but a lot of familiar hite love) and soju in the familiar green bottles. fried chicken and beer are popular late night snacks. nice to see a lot of like for the hoegaarden as well
• there are few trash cans, yet the city isn't filled with trash. seriously, there were moments in which i could not spot trash cans for a long time. yet to counterbalance this, there are clean accessible bathrooms everywhere
• lots of iphone usage spotted, but i didn't see any ipads. all the tablets in the wild were samsung tabs, and i even saw a few people make calls with them.
• all the taxi cab drivers i experienced were rude, and none of them knew english. either they don't know how to read even simple maps, they hate non-korean speaking asians, or a combination of both.
• like a friend had mentioned, it was very easy getting around in english. the ones that did understand english tended to have a very good command of the language, as opposed to japan. most all the restaurants also had person on staff that was fluent in mandarin chinese and japanese.
• late night fashion malls are open until 4:30am and open 10:30am. they take their clothes shopping very, very seriously.
• they also take their cabbage really seriously as well
• kbbq is different than in ktown, but the meat and vegetable quality is much, much better
• lotte is like the megalomart conglomerate++ of the country
• it's super easy to get around using the subway, but the busses are all korean only
• they are super fashionable, but dress conservatively skin wise. i didn't see any cleavage and only the occasional short skirt/dress despite the weather hovering around the 60~70s. versus socal, where most dress sloppily yet many show as much skin as they can get away with
• there was a complete aisle dedicated to different kinds of seaweed in the supermarket
• there was also one building i saw with like 3~4 different plastic/dental surgery offices, and subway spaces advertising various plastic services. they def have a body image problem
• spotted countless number of beer pubs and pc bangs, but disappointed i didn't see any allusion to starcraft anywhere