Korea

So I arrived in Korea almost two weeks ago, and I thought it was worth writing about my experiences so far.

Let me start by saying that Korea is very very different from Japan. The biggest difference is the drivers. In Japan, everyone follows every traffic law, in Korea, I cannot tell you how many times I've seen people go through red lights. The police don't stop them, it's a minor offense here in South Korea.

The people are very nice in Korea, but a different kind of nice than in Japan. The Japanese were far more polite and Koreans are more generous. Japanese are very quiet, and don't want to disturb you unless you are visibly in need of help while the Koreans are very verbose and will talk to you if they suspect they can help you.

The cost of living is much cheaper in Korea. I can go into a restaurant and have the biggest meal ever, and it will never cost more than 10 dollars. I can get a good size meal that will fill you up for $3.50. The subway system in Seoul is much cheaper, it's less than 3 dollars to get from Suwon (where I live) to Seoul which is any hour away. In Osaka, it use to cost 3 dollars for a subway trip that was 4 to 6 stops away. Taxi cabs are also very cheap in Korea, but I'll give you more concrete examples later.

Seoul's a fun city. I've had some good meals and seen some cool shops. I'll explore it all more and write about it.

Korea bound

I'm leaving for Korea on the 14th. I will not have the internet between now and my arrival in Seoul.

So here's one of my last posts from Japan, if not my last.

So I will write about a few things that I have found to love in Japan. The first is J-pop. J-pop rocks.

The Japanese people are lots of fun. The guys will drink with you, and it's awesome, because most Japanese are light weights.

A lot of Japanese women are naive, and extremely sweet. I won't talk about my successes or failure with Japanese women, but I must say that I was, and still am, quite surprised by how awesome they are. I didn't kick myself for not knowing Japanese until I started talking to Japanese women.

Japanese ancient culture is really beautiful. The temples are always a great sight, even if they're not well known.

The food's good here. Very different, but good.

The Cherry Blossom (Sakura) is beautiful. I saw my first one today that only had a few flowers on it, but I still couldn't help but appreciate the beauty of the few flowers it had on its branches.

I have been dreading leaving the country, and it's near. I'm going to take the next few days to explore.

I'll start writing to you guys from Korea. See you in a bit.

Halloween in Osaka

In Japan, Halloween is usually celebrated the Saturday before Halloween. They don't hand out candy to people, but I did get a piece of candy when I bought beer at a convenience store.

So Saturday was someone's Sayonora party. My friend Kate was heading back to Toronto on the following Monday. We started off drinking at the docks, and didn't realize that tonight was the big Halloween thing. We then started going to a park in American Town (ame-mura), and on our way, realized a lot of Japanese people were dressed up. It was awesome, because they go all out here. My favorite costumes included princess Garnett from FF9, two girls dressed up as white mage and black mage from FF, and a girl in a panda suit, because Panda suits kick ass.

It was absolutely hilarious, I met some Japanese guys (mentioned in the last post) and we were just having fun drinking in the park, enjoying life.

Last night, Halloween, I had a costume. If you don't know, it was Pikachu. Most people don't wear their costumes on Halloween night. On my way to meet friends, I had so many Japanese women wave, watch me walking around, and some would even say "Kawaii" (cute). The younger men would usually smile, or start yelling out "Pikachu!". The funniest reaction by far were the business men and the older women. They would look at me, and look away, but you could tell they were laughing inside. They then kept on walking as if nothing was wrong, that seeing someone dressed up as a popular icon from their culture on any given night was entirely normal. It would be rude to make a deal out of it.

Drinking was pretty uneventful, except that it was the Sayonora party for my housemate, Hugh, and another friend, Dan. Dan drank with us until 5 am, then we had to go home, catch the bus and get on his flight back to the UK. It's really sad seeing everyone leave, even though I've only known them for a short period of time.

You'll all be glad to know however that I got McDonald's breakfast at 5 am, which is probably the after drinking food in the world.