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.