Korean Toilet Seat Packaging

This is something we found highly amusing. We were looking for a new toilet seat because our current one is broken. When you sit on it you have to be very careful, or it might slide and dump you in the toilet. Anyhow, we were in Emart looking for replacement seats and found some very amusing ones. You can get yourself a fancy sparkling seat, or a polka dotted seat, or a seat with something written on it if you'd like. We singled this one out, not because of the seat, but because of its packaging, which we found too hilarious not to capture on tape. Click the picture above for the movie, or click here for our video on Korean Toilet Seat Packaging. (And, due to popular demand, we're making our videos available on YouTube as well, so click here for the YouTube version)

Bucheon's Don Day Restaurant

From now on we are going to try to properly review some of the restaurants we eat at, so that - when you're here in Bucheon - you can have an idea of where's a good place to eat and what you can find there. We're also putting in a tab in our movie section for Restaurant Reviews, so you can check there for future reference. Today comes our first installment of "맛있은-Delicious", Eatyourkimchi.com's Restaurant Reviews!

The first restaurant we're going to review is Bucheon's Don Day Restaurant. It's a pretty good Sam Gyap Sal place with cheap prices and good food. The different flavors of Sam Gyap Sal is what really makes this place stand apart; the Go-Chu-Jang marinade gives the meat a sweet and spicy taste that we've never had before, but absolutely love. As well, the restaurant is constantly packed, so that makes us feel comfortable if we know that Koreans approve of their food, since our standards as non-Koreans might be much lower.

We broke down our review into three categories and rated them on a scale of 1-5:
1. Taste - Because that matters a lot, of course.
2. Side Dishes - We think this is important, because free side dishes to compliment your food is what makes Korean food distinctly Korean. Good luck getting free side dishes in a Canadian restaurant.
3. Bang for your Buck - Overall, how much are you getting for your money?

As for Don Day Restaurant, here's our final review:

1. Taste 4/5 - The marinades make this some of the tastiest Sam Gyap Sal we've ever had. It's fantastic!
2. Side Dishes 1/5 - We're a little disappointed in the lack of extras. There's one Sam Gyap Sal place we go to that gives us free soups. Here, you have to pay extra for them
3. Bang for your Buck 4/5 - This place is great because it's meant to fill you up for cheap, and that's just what it does. 9,000 won will feed two people, and that's a price point that's hard to beat.

Check out our video review for more details; you'll see what the restaurant looks like, where it's located by landmarks, and what the food looks like as well. So click on the picture above, or just click here for our video review of Bucheon's Don Day Restaurant. If you prefer using YouTube (as some of you have mentioned), check out our YouTube version instead. We'll start posting links for both High Quality and YouTube videos as soon as we figure out how to do so smoothly.

How to Get Korean Home Delivery

Korean Home Delivery is a thing of pure beauty. The food is the same price as it would be in the restaurant, the appetizers come for free, you don't have to tip the delivery person (or at least that's what we're told), and - here's the clincher - when you're finished eating you leave your dirty dishes outside your door and the delivery guy will come back to pick them up! We always wanted to try this home delivery service, but were too scared, because our Korean was so shoddy. We finally thought that we had enough Korean on us to try ordering, so two days ago we finally did. We made a video of the whole ordeal and, even though it didn't work as smoothly as expected, it still worked. You'll be amazed when you see what it looks like. Altogether, ordering food for the both of us cost only 9000 won altogether, which is roughly NINE BUCKS. There are many reasons to love Korea, and this is definitely one of them. If you want to know how to order home delivery here in Korea (especially in Bucheon), then click on the picture above to see the video, or click here to see our Korean Home Delivery video. It's not perfect, but you'll get the idea.

Oh, and by the way, the place we ordered from wasn't very good, so if you're in Bucheon don't order from "Ee Moo Noy" - or at least that's how we think it's pronounced. The food was pretty bland and disappointing, and we wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if we weren't as exhilarated from our success.

How to Use Your Korean Rice Cooker

When you move to your place in Korea, your school will set you up with a few things, like a television, bed, and - more than likely - a rice cooker. If it's a Cuckoo Rice Cooker, consider yourself lucky, because those are supposedly the best brand of rice cooker in all of Asia (or so a documentary on television told us). The Rice Cooker won't be in English, though, so unless you can read Korean you're not eating any rice. Fortunately, we have Korean friends who wrote out what every button means. Here's what you need to know:

- The top left button: Keep Warm
- The bottom left button: Reservation - If you want the rice cooker to start cooking in a few hours. Useful if you want rice ready when you come home.
- The top right button: Start
- The bottom right button: Cancel
- The bottom middle button: Menu - changes cooking settings in this order:
Normal -> Quick -> Special -> Slow Cooker. The Special section is for any specialty rice you may have (whatever that may be. We just use regular rice).

We made an instructional video as well, so click on the picture above to watch it and match up the Korean writing to our English explanations, or click here if you want to know How to Use Korean Rice Cookers

Korean Magic Perms

We're trying to get into Korean Fashion, as you saw with post on Korean Couple Shirts, but we know that fashion goes beyond clothes.
In Korea, they have something called "Magic Straight Perms" that are supposed to keep your hair dead straight for three months. Magic straight perm is a generic term for thermal reconditioning or ionic hair retexturing (IHR) that originated in South Korea. Martina got one for herself, but she didn't know what she was getting into at all:

If you plan on getting one of these perms yourself, here's what you'll need to know:
-For shoulder length hair, be ready to sit for four hours.
-After they perm and and wash your hair, they use a hot iron to lock it in...1 inch hair section at a time (it took one and a half hours with 2 people working on me)
-You can't wash, pin, or move your hair for 2 days
-It is super expensive:

- Here is what she had: a hair cut, 2 washes, 1 perm solution + heat, hot iron straightening, conditioning serum = $300 (with no tip needed)

Her Korean friends told her that she got a super great deal, as normally you're looking at spending $500 - $1300. CRAAAAZY! Anyhow, here's how she looks afterwards. Oh, and the glasses are new as well. Whole new Martina! Hooray! So, click this "after" picture to see her Modeling her New Look. Watch it flowing with the breeze, the way supermodels' hair always flow with the breeze everywhere they walk.

More Korean Ice Cream

A while ago we made a post about the awesomeness of Korean Ice Cream. Just when we were finally comfortable with it, we discovered another kind of ice cream that is so much more awesome than before. Talk about ingenuity! We wish we had ice cream like this back in Canada. We took this movie with our friend Chong-Won (spelling?) in the cafeteria of Bucheon's Aiins World, but you can find this ice cream at any GS25 or any other convenience store in Bucheon. Click the picture to see just how awesome the ice cream is, or click here for our video on Korean Ice Cream, Part II. Also, if you're having difficulty with QuickTime movies, check out our YouTube page instead.

Korean Shopping and Dogs

Every once in a while we find things that really shock us in Bucheon, Korea. Here's one of those moments. I - Simon - was in the washroom at Home Plus and really annoyed to hear a dog barking incessantly in the hallway. It was just wailing away, and I wondered who would bring a dog to HomePlus to begin with. Once I made it back out to the hallway I found the yapping dog, and understood why it was barking. I was no longer angry, but shocked. I've never seen anything like this in Canada. All I can say is that I'm happy it at least had holes to breathe through, and - sure - this is better than bringing your dog around the produce. I'd prefer it if you just left the dog at home. Click on the picture above to see why I was shocked, or click here to see our movie on Korean Shopping and Dogs

Bucheon's Aiins World

On Saturday we hung out with one of Martina's co-workers, Chong-Won (we're not sure how to spell his name) and his friend, to see some of Bucheon's attractions. We first went to Bucheon Fantastic Studios, which was the set for many Korean TV shows and music videos. Now it's a ghost town, and it was really quite boring to walk through. Thankfully, right beside it is Aiins World, and so we went there right afterwards.

Aiins World is a theme park with 100 of the World's most famous buildings and structures at a 1/25 scale. The World Trade Centre is around 35 meters high. The price of admission is 8500 won, and walking through the entire place and soaking everything in will take you at least half an hour to 45 minutes. It's very close to us in Bucheon, as well, as it's a couple minute drive away from the Home Plus. Taking the taxi there from our apartment cost us under 3000 won. It's really quite impressive, and we strongly recommend everyone in Bucheon to visit it at least once (we plan on going again at night). We have a viewer of this site who recommended it to us in an email, since he helped build it back in 2003-2004. So here's a video of it for him. Click on the picture above to see the video, or click here to see Bucheon's Aiins World. As well, we took pictures of both places, so click on either picture below to see the full photoset from our day's adventures in Bucheon.

How to Use Korean T-Money Cards

A little while ago we made a video about how to use the public transportation in Bucheon, Korea. In that video we showed you how to charge your card and how to swipe it. This video doesn't add much more to that, apart from showing you how absolutely cool these cards can be. Here's the story: while we were at the convenience store perusing through the replacements for our subway cards, we found some cell-phone charms in the same section. The one you see here is a glow-in-the-dark charm of a man with a huge afro and what looks like a chin-strap. Sure, it's not the most aesthetically pleasing cell phone charm, but it has an added bonus: it is an actual T-Money card. This means that, to get on the bus or subway, all we have to do is swipe our cellphone past the censor, and our fare is paid. Essentially, if you never leave home without your cellphone, you'll never have to worry about forgetting your busfare. How awesome is that! Click the picture above to see them in action, or click here to see our movie on Korean T-Money Cards.

Korean Fitness Tests

This Friday I - Martina - had no classes because it was Fitness Test Day in Bucheon All Girls' High School. I wasn't sure what this was, as the closest equivalent we have to this in Canada is track and field day where students compete in different sports, but I was told that in Korea they also have a track and field day. Fitness Day is different; the students are rigorously tested to see how healthy they are, and in the past, Fitness Day was part of a final mark. If you weren't in shape you could receive a failing grade, but one of our our Korean friends told us that some students in the past died trying to get high marks, so they got rid of the mark factor. Click on the picture above for the video, or click here to see our video on Korean Fitness Evaluation Day.

"Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger, more than ever, hour after, our work is never over...." - Daft Punk

Korean Kit Kat Bars

So here's a video that you're surely not going to benefit from, unless you're our brother-in-law Mark, and you ever plan on going to Bucheon, Korea. We were looking for candy at the supermarket and found a bag of what we thought were Kit Kat bars. We were sorely mistaken. What, in fact, we thought were Kit Kat bars were something that is surely an illegally copied version of Kit Kats, with the same layout and logo and colors and all. We know that this isn't just a Korean mistranslation of it, because right beside these bars we found an actual package of authentic Kit Kats. This is something that you have to see to believe. Sure this doesn't sound very interesting...yet...when we opened the package there was an entirely different logo printed on the bar itself. What was printed on it? Click on the picture here to see what we're talking about, or click here to see our video on Korean Kit Kat Bars.

Korean Cold Medicine

We mentioned in yesterday's post that Simon was beginning to show the signs of a cold on Saturday during Bucheon's High School Festival. By Wednesday the cold was full-blown, and he called in sick for the day. Ever the opportunists, we thought that this situation was perfect for a video. No, we're not going to show you Simon coughing and whimpering. What we decided to make a video about instead was for Korean Cold Medicine. Indeed, the medicine isn't the same in Bucheon as it is in Canada. In Canada, we'd be eating a warm bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup; in Bucheon, we have to order a big serving of the closest equivalent: Chicken and Ginseng Juk, which is - instead of a noodle soup - a rice soup. It's really quite delicious, and - from what we've seen here in Bucheon - there are many, many Juk restaurants for you to choose from. The one we went to was at the first floor of our building, so we didn't have to walk far at all to get it. And - just to let you know how many of these restaurants there are - if the one we went to was closed there's another Juk restaurant two minutes away. If you want Juk in Bucheon, you don't have to go far.

There's one more thing in this video worth mentioning; medicine in Korea here is pretty cheap. If you were worried about the cost of living in Korea from our previous post, then you might feel a little more at ease when you consider the price of medicine. Essentially, a pack of ten pills runs you 2000 won, which is roughly two bucks. Two bucks! Try buying 24 hour Claritin for two bucks in Canada! Ha! Of course, some of you may ask how we got the medicine to begin with, since we don't speak Korean. Simply enough, we wrote down the medical ingredients and showed it to the pharmacist, who had enough English on her to understand what we needed; antihistamines, antitussants, and pseudoephedrine. As well, we know that extra-strength Sudafed offered 120 mg per pill, and these pills offered 120 mg of whatever she interpreted as pseudoephedrine as well. Long story short, if you plan on moving to Bucheon or Korea and are worried about getting stuck without medicine come cold and flu season, simply remember (or write down) the medical ingredients of the medicine you're used to, and the pharmacists here should be able to read enough English to not only find the medicine but also sell it to you for dirt-cheap prices. Anyhow, click the picture above to see the video, or click here to see us Fight Our Colds in Bucheon.

Bucheon High School Festival

The day after we sang our hearts out in a Bucheon No-Rae-Bang was a Saturday, which, as you may recall, means fun times around Bucheon City Hall area. This week we were surprised to find another high-school event of sorts. Last week there was a high-school Karaoke festival, with a stage set on the street. This week there was an all out talent show, with a pretty big stage set up right at the steps of Bucheon City Hall. The talent show was for more than just singing, though. We saw some full-out bands playing, yeah, but we also saw two beatboxers, and a group of 20 people or so doing Taekwondo or some other martial art in a synchronized dance to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song. All around the place were concession stands set up, where you could buy food made by Bucheon high school students, or buy a polaroid picture of yourself acting goofy, or get your face painted, bid in a charity auction, or whatnot.

As well, in the center of City Hall's grass was a huge white mat with a bunch of paints and paintbrushes bundled to the side of it. People were encouraged to write a message on the mat, or leave hand or footprints. Martina was dead set on writing something as well, even though nothing was written in English. Thankfully, we know enough of the Korean alphabet to be able to spell out phonetically. And so, with green paint, Martina smeared on the mat "Ma-tee-na" [heart] "Sa-yee-mohn." That's as good as it gets when it comes to spelling out our names, by the way. For Martina's name, the R-T combination is impossible in Korean, so we just have to drop the R altogether. Anyhow, we're proud of being able to show off our skills in writing Korean; kids around us were staring at Martina with their mouths open, shocked to see that a foreigner knows the secrets of their script. Click on the picture here to see Martina's writing in all its glory.

Altogether, the event was loads of fun, and even though Simon's first Korean cold was just starting to gain strength (we'll write about Korean medicine soon), we both still had a good time. What makes the event even better is that Martina saw a bunch of her students there and some of them even served us food. We made a movie splicing all of our short clips from the event together, so click on this picture or click here for our movie on Bucheon's High School Festivities. Sure, it's nothing special, but you'll get a sense of what the day was like. We're just surprised that the city of Bucheon is so heavily involved in high school activities. For two consecutive weekends these streets were shut down for school festivities, and we can hardly ever recall anything like that happening in Canada. Kudos to Bucheon for being so involved.

Bucheon Bus Stops

It took us a couple of months for this to finally register, and now that it has we are quite impressed. By many of the regular, outdoor bus stops in Bucheon you will find signs like these above. We had no clue what they meant for a while, but we guessed that they had something to do with the bus arrivals. Today Simon showed one of his co-teachers a picture of this sign and she was kind enough to translate it for him. In this picture, Bus 12-1 will be here any second, while bus 50-1 is two bus stops away. How useful is that! What's interesting about these signs as well is that they're native to Bucheon - or, at least, this is what Simon's co-teacher has told him. Seoul has now begun to adopt these signs as well, but other major cities in Korea, like Incheon or Busan, for example, don't have these signs yet. Hooray for Bucheon! Anyhow, if you want to see these awesome Bucheon signs in action, click on the picture above, or click here for a brief glimpse at Bucheon Bus Stops.

Korean Karaoke (No-Rae-Bang)

So, you like Karaoke you say? Well you've got NOTHING on the love that Koreans have for Karaoke. Once you find yourself living in Bucheon or Korea you will find Karaoke - or 노래방 (no-rae-bong) as they call it in Korea - unavoidable, as these no-rae-bongs will be all over the place. They is popular amongst all ages, including your 50+ year old co-workers. Before you get excited, though, you should know that there are a few major differences between a North American karaoke bar and a Korean no-rae-bong. A noraebong translates to "singing room," and that's exactly what it is: a single room for you and your friends to wail away in, behind closed doors, where you don't have to worry about making a fool of yourself in front of total strangers. They have both Korean and English songs to choose from (along with some German songs, as you will soon find out), so don't worry about not being able to sing if you're being dragged out by your co-workers. Just be prepared for a night of potentially heavy drinking, as you can order alcohol straight to your room. From what we've heard, people tend to get really drunk while at noraebongs - probably to build up more confidence for singing, or it could be due to the terrible sounds escaping their friends' mouths. If you're looking for a noraebong in Bucheon, you have to learn to read 노래방 because we've only seen it written in Korean. Just don't mix up 노래방(no-rae-bahng) for 피시방 (pee-see-bang or PC bang). A 피시방, like we mentioned before in our Korean video gaming post, is a super popular gaming room where people go to play online games (like Starcraft or Warcraft) or to just use the internet.

This past Friday we went out with some friends here in Bucheon to our first Korean Karaoke room, and we knew that we had to make a video of it for the site, regardless of how embarrassing the video may be. The one we went to is right in what we consider the heart of Bucheon - close to Rhythm and Booze (which we went to again on Friday) and the Hyundai Department store. Click the picture above for the video, or click here to see a small tour of a no-rae-bong room in Bucheon. As well, if any of you know the song that Simon is singing, then you're part of a super-cool and elite club. If not, click here for the original version

Korean Meta-Claw Machines

A while ago we made a video about Korean Claw Machines here in Bucheon, Korea, where you could win teddy-bears for your girlfriend or Scotch Whisky for yourself. We were highly amused by this, and have always wanted to win something silly from these machines. Unfortunately, every time we try we come up empty handed, which - I know some of you will say - is how it's supposed to be. You're never meant to win anything from these machines anyway! The claw loosens its grip right before dropping the goods, so you're always a loser. We would have surrendered to this skepticism if we hadn't heard stories about how talented Korean people are at winning stuff from these machines. One friend of ours here in Bucheon knows a teacher at his school who would leave for lunch, get 10,000 worth of change, and come back with a bag full of coin-machine spoils. So we're always tempted to waste our loose change in these machines and win something, but we're always coming up empty handed.

Never has Simon been more tempted than he was on Sunday night. We were walking around Bucheon to get to Rhythm and Booze when we saw the mother of all claw machines; it was a meta-claw machine. Drop a claw and win a pair of claws. Ok I'll stop trying to be clever - in this claw machine you could win live lobster! They're swimming around at the bottom of the tank, and for one buck you can win one, if you're lucky. We made a video to show you these claw machines, because, well, they're just so cool. Click the picture above to see the video, or just click here to see Korean Meta-Claw Machines.

Bucheon's Best Bar: Rhythm and Booze

Last week our friend Chris introduced us to a really good foreigner bar called "Rhythm and Booze" and we've fallen in love with the place, especially since we're no longer interested in going to Canada Buddy. Here's why: a few weeks ago Chris agreed to go with us to Canada Buddy because he thought we haven't been, and he knew we had expressed interest in going. Once he found out that we had already visited it on our own he wanted to leave immediately. He had a bad experience with the place and didn't like it ever since. We just thought he was being silly and didn't think any worse of the place. Next week we went without him but took our friend Sasha instead. That night she was violently ill after eating their Tofu Burger, and stayed up most of the night throwing up. Martina's stomach didn't settle all too well, either. Simon's the only one who didn’t have a bad experience, but three other people did, and so it's safe to say that we're staying away from Canada Buddy from now on.

The whole point of this back-story is that we're really glad to have found Rhythm and Booze because we didn't have an alternative foreigner bar. Everything else we can say about it is a bonus: The location is much closer - just a short walk away while Canada Buddy cost us a taxi ride. The atmosphere is much nicer there as well; the bar is on the third floor, and it overlooks the park to Sopoong Station. And, hell, the food is absolutely great. We had their quesadillas there on Sunday and were blown away; they're just as good as any quesadilla we've ever eaten in Canada. As well, there's a beautiful new pool table that free to play, so we can brush up on our now long-forgotten pool-hustling skills. The place also holds a lot of events, so - from what we can remember so far - Wednesdays are trivia nights. Other days host poetry slams, pool tournaments, poker tournaments, and beer-pong tournaments. Finally, the music isn't awful, and some days movies are on the huge projector, so you can sit back with a drink and a meal and watch a good movie. It's a great place, and if you're anywhere close to it you should definitely, definitely check the place out. We'll be there often - you might run into us!

What's even more interesting is that Simon somewhat kinda sorta not really knows the owner of the place. One Saturday Simon went out to play basketball and found a bunch of foreigners playing on the court. One of the guys was the owner, and Simon remembers hearing him talking about opening a bar. A couple of month have passed, and here we are eating and playing pool at this very bar. Anyhow, we made a movie to introduce the bar so you could see what it's like. In this video we're walking from the intersection that holds Emart and the Hyundai Mall; Rhythm and Booze is at the very end of the alleyway, right before the park close to Sopoong Mall. If you've been around this site for a while, then you'll remember the video of us walking through the park and ending up at the squid. Rhythm and Booze is right above it. By the end of this video we realized that it would have been much better if we just drew a map instead of spending our time making a video, but it's too late to undo it now (actually, we just found a picture of the map. Click here for the Map to Rhythm and Booze). As well, we put up a picture of his business card, so if you want the proper address and phone number rather than a shoddy video directing you to the place, feel free to call that. Click on the card to make it bigger. Other than that, scroll back to the top of this post and click on the picture to see our long walk and short video intro to the bar, or just click here to see Bucheon's Best Foreigner Bar: Rhythm and Booze.

One last thing: if you do start going to this bar (and we strongly recommend you do) make sure you tell the owner that Simon and Martina sent you.

How to Use Korean Hand Gestures

The way you handle your, err, hands, coveys a lot of meaning in Korean Culture. The way you place your hands upon giving and receiving things can be viewed as either proper if you know what you're doing or disrespectful if you don't. For example, say you're in a convenience store here in Bucheon; when you give the cashier your money, you need to hold your cash or card one way, while the cashier takes it in another way. Your change is given back in similar fashion, and once the dance is done you can walk away with your purchase knowing that you have been respectful of the customs. As a general rule of thumb, just remember to use both hands. When you give something with one hand, make sure your other hand is touching your elbow, as if the weight of what you are giving is so heavy that you need both hands to support it. Do the same when you are receiving something, or accept it with two hands altogether.

When it comes to waving people and taxis over, a lot of significance is placed in your hand motions as well. Our North American way of doing it is supposedly very rude, because it is the way that Korean people call over their dogs. In North America, we have our palms up, and wave people towards us with a one-hand-clapping gesture. That, supposedly, is how Korean people call their dogs. When they asked me about it, they were surprised that we don't call our dogs the same way. Martina and I just slap our thighs rapidly and yell "Here Spudgy Pudgy! Come here you fat and smelly dog!" (Now if we called Korean people over THAT way I'm sure it would be extremely rude). Anyhow, if you're going to call over a taxi or a student in Bucheon, make sure your palm is facing down, not up, and wave them towards you as if you're swimming with one hand.

If this all sounds confusing, and you're worried about how to move your hands so that you don't treat Korean people like dogs, worry no more! We've made a Korean Cultural education video just for you! Click on the picture above for directions, or click here for our video on Korean Hand Gestures.