Driving Through Seoul at Night

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Since we got our new camera, we feel artsy-fartsy every once in a while, like you can see in our Ajosshis video a little while back. Today's another one of those days that we feel artsy. We were inspired by the scene in Lost in Translation when Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson are driving through Tokyo at night, and you see the city through their eyes. So we made a Korea version of it. Martina and I took the taxi home from Seoul, and - hell - Seoul's so beautiful at night that we had to get it on film. So here it is, our little Homage to Taxi Drivers and Lost in Translation. Hope you like it!

For the original post on Driving Through Seoul check out our Life in Korea blog

Korean Custom Made Fashion

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Simon's sick of shopping for clothes in Korea. They never fit, EVER! Korea's got a great sense of fashion, but none of it fits him. To buy clothes, he'd wait until he went back to Canada over the summer and filled his suitcase there, but not anymore. We've discovered something much better. If you're a big guy and need to get some good looking, professional attire, something you can wear to school as a teacher and looked damned snazzy, then should your shirts made proper, and all for a really reasonable price. For the full run down on getting your shirts custom made, click on the picture above to learn How to Dress Like a Pro in Korea. By the way, the place Simon gets his shirts done is Dainty in Garosu-Gil. Here's their business card, and here are directions to their store. Also, if you know of any other tailors that you swear by, please let us know!

Korea is Still Awesome

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As of next week, we will have been in Korea for one year! Hooray! We signed on for another year, so eatyourkimchi is still going to be around as well! Anyhow, we decided to make a video of different cool things in Korea. Why? Because when we first came here, everything seemed awesome and amazing. We've been here for a year, and it is still awesome and amazing, and we've got the video clips to prove it.

Korea, you never fail to amaze us. Keep up the good work and we'll keep putting up the videos. Speaking of which, click on the picture above to see Why Korea is Still Awesome, or click on the sidebar for different formats.

Korean Toothbrushing

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How good is your dental hygiene? Carry floss with you in case of emergencies? Have a small bottle of mouthwash in your dashboard? If your friends think you are obsessive with the way you clean your teeth, then maybe you should move to Korea, where brushing your teeth isn't just a matter of hygiene, it's a lifestyle. Martina recorded the great extent to which her school cares about the state of its teeth. You'll be surprised. Click on the picture above to see our video on Korean Toothbrushing, or check the sidebar for different formats.

Korean Poke Machines

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If you saw our post on Korean Claw Machines (or the Lobster Machine), you'd know that Korea is full of little money-gobbling-difficult-to-win-but-addictive toy machines. You can win anything from gum, golden turtle statues, lighters, or women's underwear. Well, there is a new machine in town. The stick-poke-out-a-toy-machine. You can win a solar powered bobble head guy or an mp3 player that looks suspiciously like an iPod shuffle. When Simon sees these machines, he is determined to beat them. Luckily we have a huge box full of change that just grows bigger everyday, so we use our coins to fuel the toy machine industry in Korea. Unfortunately, these machines are rigged, as the stick used to poke the toy through the hole is too fat to fit into the hole itself. Honest! We have video proof of the stick going in, but getting jammed because of it's cheating-outer-ring. If you don't believe us, check it out: click on the picture above to see our Korean Poke Machines video, or check out the sidebar for other video formats.

Korean Robot Lockers

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Here's another one of those videos of things that amaze us about Korea. The locker system they have for their malls are computerized! Why they are computerized, we can't be too certain. The basic coin system we've known most of our lives seemed to have handled the job well enough, but, hey, computers make everything better! To use these lockers, you have to pump your cash into the computer, type in the number of the locker you want to lock with your stuff, and then turn the key. When you want to retrieve it, hit the retrieve button, type in your locker number, put in your key, and your stuff will still be there! For the life of us, we can't figure out why we need the computer as a middle man. All we know for sure is that this locker system is definitely much more appreciated by us than the sad dog locking system we noticed a while ago. Anyhow, we made a video to explain the locking and unlocking process for you, so click on the picture above for the video, or view our Korean Technologically Advanced Supercomputer Locker System Video in different formats on the sidebar.

Korean Car Greeters

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Customer service in Korea has its ups and downs. One major annoyance is that, everywhere you walk in a store, the employees shadow you like you're going to steal something. They're not being suspicious - not at all. Turn around and you'll find them smiling and waiting to help. It's just annoying to not have any personal space. One super awesome thing about Korean Customer service, though, is that it starts long before you get to the store. Drive up to any department store and you'll find a thwack of people, men and women, in matching suits and outfits, bowing to your car and greeting you through a microphone (but we can't understand what they're saying, because we don't speak Korean).

So here we have a video of these greetings in action. You'll see the greeters and the traffic directors in matching attire, but this time you won't see any Dancing Traffic Directors. If you're not from Korea you really need to see this. Click on the picture above to see our video on Korean Car Greeters, or go to the sidebar to view it in different formats.

Korean Crowded Subways

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We've made a few posts and videos about the subways here in Korea, be it a View of Korea through the Subway Windows, or our other post on How to Load a Subway Card, but we haven't captured this on tape yet. Before we came to Korea we were told that the subways would be ridiculously packed. The few times that we've taken the subway we noticed that, sure, you're lucky to get a seat, and the subways are pretty crammed, but it's not really as bad as we've been told. Of course, we only thought this because we never took the subway during rush hour. Yesterday we finally did take the subway during rush hour, and, well, let's just say we've never seen the subways this crowded before in our lives. We made a shoddy video of it, just so you could see how incredibly packed this thing can get. Click on the picture above for the video, or check out our Crowded Subways video in the sidebar.

Korean Toy Coin Machines

What can be better after a hard day of grocery shopping then buying more stuff? Look what we found at Bucheon's Emart: for a mere 1000 won (you have to use your 500 won coin x2)
These machines have it all! Just to name a few:
-Hello Kitty
-Winnie the Pooh
-Thomas the Tank Engine
-Cats, Cats, Cats
-Cars
-And so on...

Let's not ruin the video's surprise...click on the picture to see what else it has, or just click here to see our Grocery Store Toy Coin Machines in Korea video. For a less ridiculous title, view the video at YouTube here.

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.

Korean Mailboxes

Too many times have we heard that opening somebody else's mail is a federal offense, or a felony, or something serious, and it could land you in jail, and only very bad, bad people open other people's mail. This is why we were shocked when we saw how the mail system works here in Bucheon (and maybe the rest of Korea, for all we know). Simply put, anyone can take your mail any time they want. Your mail isn't stored in a metal box for which only you and the government have copies of keys. No way. Here, your mail is out in the open, right beside everyone else's mail which is also out in the open. You get a tiny slot half the length of a standard envelope, and the only way you know you have mail is if you see it dangling out of this slot. It makes you wonder why Canadian mail is so securely locked up while Korean mail isn't. Maybe because Korea has realized that nobody really cares about your mail, nor do they have any inclination to open it, or it could be that Korean Culture strictly forbids the opening of someone else's mail, and so they don't fear leaving it out in the open. Most of the mail we get, anyways, is spam mail. The great benefit of these mail slots, though is that if we ever get spam, we can theoretically stuff it into somebody else's mail slot and walk away. Not that we would ever do something like that, though. Anyhow, we made a video to show you what these mailboxes are like here in Bucheon, so click the picture above or watch our Korean Mailbox Video here.

Korean Traffic Directors

This is the kind of stuff we expected to see when we came to Bucheon. We thought that life would be normal here, but there would be little flare-ups of colorful and exuberant Asian culture, and that we would giggle to ourselves about how weird things are around here. It turns out that there isn't as much shock value as we expected, that everything isn't covered in stars and bright colors and anime; the women don't all wear schoolgirl uniforms and giggle incessantly and the men don't wear rocket packs. Life is just about normal here, contrary to what television has taught us. Only every once in a while do we see something silly, and its those moments that we cherish.

Last Saturday had one of those moments. We never mentioned this before, but in Korea (or Bucheon, at least) - in front of every major shopping center - traffic directors guide your car into the parking lot. What's weird about these traffic directors is that they are very well dressed, and that they bow at the cars that pass them by. There are teams of directors at times as well, with a man directing the traffic and bowing and a woman - also unusually well-dressed - in a glass booth and wearing a microphone piece. What she's saying to the now-directed cars we can't say, because we don't understand Korean yet, but we're guessing it has something to do with thanking you for coming to the store, that your service is well appreciated, and other such stuff.

Now, we can imagine that this job would become very boring very fast, and so it's understandable that these traffic directors have to find ways of keeping themselves entertained. One of these ways is by dancing out your directions. We happened to catch this on camera. Mind you that this dancing was at a very busy section, with everyone there to watch. Yet the traffic director feels no shame, and dances like no one is watching. To see the movie, click on the picture above, or just watch our Korean Traffic Directors movie here.

VolleySock

Many of you may have heard Simon talk of this awesome game. It’s volleyball meets soccer, hence the name VolleySock (we thought for a long time to come up with that name). Whenever Simon’s bored he watches it from his window, and wishes he could play it as well. It’s about time a video of it went up on the site, so click the picture above for the video or click here for the video on Volleysock instead. Be warned, though, that this isn’t the best rally ever. Some people seem to be camera shy, so they flub up a bit, but you’ll get the point of the game from watching the video anyway.

Korean Claw Machines!

Have you ever seen those coin-operated machines, in which you stick in a dollar, move a claw around via joystick, drop it down, and hope that the claw will pick up and bring you back the stuffed teddy bear? In Korea they’ve perfected these machines, and put Canadian claw machines to shame. What makes these machines so seductive is not the prizes that are nearly impossible to win, but the way the currency works around here. Cash is king around here, so people mostly pay in cash. unfortunately, this leads to copious amounts of change dangling in your pockets. Instead of gathering all this change, it's best to disburden yourself on these machines. Anyhow, we made a video of just what you can win in these awesome machines, so click on either the picture above for the video, or click here for our video on Korean Claw Machines.