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