What the Book!

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We're both English majors, so we love books. Love em! Unfortunately, it's not all too easy to find a good selection of English books here in Korea; the bookstores will have a few, but a big part of those few are the original books of popular Hollywood movies. If you want to read something with a little more depth, those bookstores may not be your first option. What you should be checking out instead is our new favorite bookshop, What the Book in Itaewon. It's a bookstore full of books written in English, used and new, as well as magazines. What's better is that they have a really useful website if Itaewon is too far for you, or you're just too lazy to go there. So, we've made a new video tour of What the Book, so that you won't have to be without good reading ever again! Click on the picture above or check it out in the sidebar.

Korean White Day + Secret Surprise for Martina

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If you remember Valentine's Day from last month, we made a post about how it differs here in Korea than what we're used to from back home. Long story short: if a girl gives a guy chocolate on Valentine's Day then he's supposed to give her more in return one month later for White Day, on March 14th. Alas, now it's White Day, so it's my turn (Simon) to do something for Martina. This post is a part of that present.

See, I made a video for Martina and for everybody else. Now what's important about this video is that Martina does not know about it yet. She's going to wake up tomorrow on White Day and, after she opens her gifts, I'll have her watch the video. How sweet is that?! Anyhow, the video isn't just for Martina. It's educational for everybody else as well. In it, I explain what White Day's all about, including the stuff that you could/should buy for your girl. Some of the stuff on the list includes white chocolate, white mints, stuffed toys, underwear, and a more expensive gift. As well, it would be nice to plan something romantic for just the two of you. So, I've got all bases covered. Finally, I try to say something romantic in Korean, but my Korean is awful and I'm not sure about the legitimacy of Yahoo's Babelfish. Please don't laugh too hard over my bad pronunciation and grammar. Korean is hard!

So, that's all for the video. As always, click on either the picture or the sidebar for our Intro to Korea's White Day. And, finally, Happy White Day to you all! P.S. Make sure to leave lots of comments telling Martina how sweet I am and how she owes me big time for this!

How to Pay Your Bills in Korea

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If you're new to Korea, then this video's for you. We didn't know that we could pay our bills (internet, cell-phone, and gas) at the machines for a very long time. For the first few months or so, we've been waiting in long lines at the bank, which always seem to be much longer than they naturally should be. And so, to save you the time you would waste in line to pay these bills, we bring you a new video, explaining how you should pay your bills.

A couple of words first: we cannot pay our apartment fees (re: electricity) through these machines; the only bills this machine will accept are the uniformly sized bills that say "OCR" on them. We think the OCR stands for "Optical Character Recognition," since the machine scans your bills and pops up its info on the screen. Oh, and one more thing: supposedly you can pay your bills online, or do your banking online through KB Bank, but I heard that you have to have a Windows computer to do so. We're Mac users, and - as such - have been ostracized from the Korean internets (they don't like Macintosh around here)

Anyhow, without further ado, here is our How-To Pay Your Bills in Korea video, also available in the sidebar, as always.

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 4

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Moving on to the last part of this miniseries, we review Korean Convenience Store drinks. Now, a while ago we made a similar movie when we tried Unique Korean Drinks. Unfortunately, we weren't sensitive enough in our reactions to the drinks, and that offended some people (which is why this series began with a big disclaimer that maintained our right to express our opinions). This time, when we review more Korean Convenience Store Drinks, we try to be more eloquent in our responses.

In this video, we review Banana Milk, Milkis, Dream of Tea, May-Wuan, and Soju.

The Banana Milk deserves a word here: surely, lots of people like this stuff. Unfortunately for us, it distinctly tastes like the medicine we had as children, so instead of enjoying the banana milk we were too busy remembering hospital visits. Uggh! And a word of caution, though: do not drink the Soju the way Simon drank the Soju. With that being said, we bring you our Korean Convenience Store Raid Part 4 - More Unique Drinks. Again, different formats are available in the sidebar.

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 3

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On with the show! Today we finally move on to the sweet stuff, now that we're finished all of our savory foods. We had some - well - interesting things to eat today.

Orion Cookies, Crunky Bars, Market Brownies, and something we transcribe as Yawn Yang Neng.

A lot of these have their Western Counterparts. If you remember our Korean Kic Ker Bar post from a long time ago, you'll know exactly what we mean: Kic Ker bars are really Kit Kat bars. In today's video, we've got Orion Cookies as Oreo Cookies and Crunky Bars as Crunch bars. The Yawn Yang Neng bar is something completely new to us, and it's - errrr - interesting. Anyhow, click on the picture above to see Part III of our Korean Convenience Store Raid: Sweet Desserts, or check it out in the sidebar. Also, if any of you know what these Yawn Yang Neng bars are supposed to be, then please tell us! They're so confusing!

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 2

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Now on to Part 2 of our Korean Convenience Store Raid: Lunch-y Foods. We were a little more bold this time, and we tried some of the heartier fare. In this video we sampled:

Kim Bap Triangles, Cold Cheeseburgers, Hard Boiled Mini Eggs, and Sausage Rolls of Lord Knows What.

Supposedly the sausage rolls are made of a pressed fish - or so we have been told - but it doesn't really seem like fish. We thought they were cheese sticks at first, but we were terribly mistaken. All we know for sure is that Korean people around us have called it "Sausage," so we'll take that for what it's worth. They're a big hit around here, and you can sample them at any major grocery store among the plethora of food samples. Anyhow, we'll stop rambling about these sausages while we still can: click the picture above to see Part II of our Korean Convenience Store Raid: Lunch Foods. Or just check the sidebar instead.

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 1

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We remember our first few days in Korea: we were confused, cold, alone. The wolves were howling at us, we were scared and hungry. We didn't know what to eat or where to go. So - for the first few days - we ate convenience store food.

If you too find yourself in this situation, fear no more, for we at Eatyourkimchi.com put together a mini-taste test of the good, the bad, and the weird foods you can find at your local corner store. We went to a GS 25, the omnipresent convenience store in Korea, and raided it for all its worth. We grabbed anything and everything new to us, came home, ate it or drank it, and recorded our reactions.

The result is this four-course video special. We'd post it all as one video, but it's just too huge. OMG!

Part 1:
We review some of the bagged goods, including chips and other snacks. Some things come in odd boxes rather than bags, but are located in the same section of the store.

Part 2:
We'll review the more lunch-foody stuff. What? Lunch-foody is totally a word. This will include food that's heartier than bagged stuff.

Part 3:
The deserts. You'll need to balance out all that salt.

Part 4:
We'll wrap up with a (sometimes) refreshing drink review.

For today's special, we reviewed six bagged snacks:
Jollypong, Egg Cookies, Goguma Gang, Homerun Ball, Corn Cho, and some generic Dried Squid.

If there's one thing we learned it's that you can't judge a food by its packaging. What we expected to be delicious was disappointing, and what we expected to be awful was amazing.

Please be warned: we have opinions! If we happen to have a negative reaction to something this does not mean - as some people seem to believe - that we are insulting Korea altogether and should be deported for our hatred. We tried to be as politically correct as possible, but - for the love of freedom - we have the right to not like some foods! Check out our reactions in our Convenience Store Raid: Bagged Snacks video, or find it in the sidebar instead.

Korean Valentine's Day

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It's Valentine's Day in Korea! Just when we thought we knew a holiday inside and out, we discovered we were wrong.

February 14th in Korea is also known as Valentine's Day but it is specifically for a girl to give her guy chocolate or candy. It is supposed to be handmade chocolate but most people just buy something from the many, many places offering beautifully wrapped boxes. Even the local bakeries add boxed chocolates to their normal cake and pastry repertoire! So guys, you can just sit back and relax...for now...

March 14th is White Day in Korea, and that means if your girl gave you chocolate or candy, you too have to get some for her, but you also must get her a gift. Sorry guys, guess you have more work than the ladies. Anyhow, we made a video for those of you who don't like reading this, so - as you probably know by now - click the picture above for our Korean Valentine's Day movie, or check out the sidebar for it instead. And Happy Valentine's Day!

A Foreigner's Mini-Guide to Korean Ramen

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Our experiences with ramen in Canada began in elementary school with good ol' Mr. Noodle, who pretty much runs the show for Canadian ramen. From there, we developed a deep love for those salty, spicy, delicious, and easy to make noodles, and craved something more. Surely there had to be more to the world of Ramen than plain ole' Mr. Noodle...

We found later on in life that if we wanted to try something imported (in this case, Ramen) we'd hit K-town (Korea Town: Christie Pitts/North York) or J-town (Japan Town: Markham). We thought that this would be an accurate representation of the Ramen scene in Korea. When we arrived in Korea, though, we were floored. We're serious when we say that there is an entire gigantic aisle dedicated to all types of ramen in the grocery store, enough ramen to fill our apartment. Oh the joy! Image us spinning in a meadow holding a ramen bowl happily. Yeah.

Anyhow, since we've always wanted to make a cheesy infomercial like video, we decided to do it with ramen as the star. We picked out 8 random noodle bowls that we had never tried, and called up our friends to do a taste test. The candidates:

-Jajang Bokki
-Ramen Bokki
-95 Cal
-Salee Gomtang
-"Well-Being" Ramen (aka Sudden Attack)
-Spaghetti Ramen
-Cheese Ramen
-Udung (which is different than ramen, but still hot water added to dry noodles)

What we had in the end is what we hope to be the Foreigners' Mini-Guide to Korean Ramen. Seven foreigners tasted, rated, and ranked the ramen, so that, hopefully, other foreigners here in Korea will have an idea of what's good and what's bad in their ramen aisle. Sure, our tastes are different than a Korean's tastes, which is why we made this video, SO PLEASE DON'T CONSIDER US INSULTING AND INFIDELS FOR NOT LIKING THE SAME RAMEN AS YOU. With that in mind, click on the picture above for our Foreigners' Guide to Korean Ramen, or click on the sidebar for different formats.

Our Adventure at Seoul Tower

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We're currently enjoying vacation time, so we thought maybe it was time to visit all the touristy things. Yes, "touristy" is a word (it's not).

We decided to visit N Seoul Tower. Seoul Tower is located on the peak of Mt. Namsan in Seoul, a city of 10 million people. There you'll find a revolving restaurant, cafés, and an observatory deck, but if you're afraid of heights and don't want to go up the tower, you can still get a nice view of the city from the top of the mountain for free.

You have two ways to get to the tower:

A) For 7,000₩ you can take a 7 minute cable car to the top of the mountain (which is the base of the tower).

B) For free you can walk up a huge, huge, huge, windy stone staircase. It has benches along the way and its lush forest-like surroundings are nice for pictures.

We chose the cable cars, but be warned, unless you take a taxi or tour bus to the cable cars, they are a mini-adventure to find via subway. If you want to take the subway there (which we did) it will be a 10-15 minute walk.

Here are the directions:

1. Get to Myeongdong Station (line 4).
2. Take exit 3 and look left. You'll see a really wide road with a convenience store on the corner in front of you. Walk down this street.
3. You'll see Pacific Hotel. The road splits in two around the hotel so stick to the right side.
4. Eventually the road runs into a flight of stairs. Take those stairs up and you'll see the cable car building on your right. Can't miss it.

While you're at Myeongdong Station, make sure you check out the huge shopping area across the street. You have to use the underground subway path to cross and the signs will lead you. It's very funky. Anyhow, the whole day was such an epic adventure day for us. The cable car ride was well worth the wait, and the view from the top of the tower was fantastic. Make sure you bring your cameras when you're there. We sure did. Click on the picture above to see our Adventures at Seoul Tower, or check the sidebar for different formats.