Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ippy]

id love to tell you who it was, but i dont want too much public info out there jinxing it before the deed is done (and im in my placement being loved by my principal) It wasnt heart though.

[HagwonKanobi77]

Watch out for radiation--in the air and in the meat, food, water. And of course Godzilla.

[PastorYoon]

Korean men carry purses. Many of the men wear leggings, too. Many times, I have also seen Korean men wearing eyeliner when they go out to clubs. It's so weird.

[FDNY]

I don't know why you "guys" are talking about ladyboys for. I would miss waaay skinny and HAWT K-Girls wearing way too short miniskirts.

[PastorYoon]

OMG. You must be retarded.

[ippy]

The reason we're talking about ladyboys is because i said id miss jo kwon. An invariable discussion broke out about girly men. Im also going to miss korean grannies and family outing, but people obviously want to talk about ladyboys, so who am i to stop them running away with their unconscious desires

Another thing ill miss

#4: Cheap public transport.

I love korean public transport. Not only are the trains on a par with japan (though it is still bizarre that theres no link from the south west to the south east without going all the way up to daejeon), but the buses are WAY better.

And all of this for a pittance! A two and half hour to three hour shink ride (tokyo to osaka) would cost around 14,000 yen. To nagoya would be 10,000 yen. A similar journey on the KTX to osaka (gwangju to seoul) is around 39,000 won. That's LESS than it would cost me to go from Hamamatsu to tokyo using the LOCAL train.
Pretty cheap if you ask me.

I also remember living in hamamatsu and using the buses to get around. My apartment (a ten minute bus ride from the station) was 270yen, to get to school - a thirty minute bus ride was over 440 yen. This was a central town trip, so it stopped a LOT. A 30km trip from my house into gwangju costs me a mere 1400 won.

Thats the cheapest fare hamamatsu busses were running. That would get you about 3 minutes from the station.

And then theres the intercity busses. Cheap as chips, hugely relaxing, and massive amounts of room. On japanese intercity busses its pretty much your standard bus but a bit more swish looking. Nothing horrible, but nothing special and still way pricier.

Basically korean public transport is awesome. The price is crazy. Using the seoul metro to go from yongsan station all the way into incheon and dropping 2000 won WITH a 500won deposit, is frankly mental.

How they keep the prices so low i have no idea, but if they doubled or even trebled them, id still consider i was robbing them.

So yeah, im definitely gona miss public transport.

[WadRUG'naDoo]

Kimchie chigae. Kimchi chigae is best.

[ippy]

#5 PC Bang and Motels.

I'll miss these both for the same reason, so i might as well throw them in together.

What im going to miss (aside the dirt cheap price of course - being a hardy scotsman), is their proliferation.

No matter where i am in korea, i know theres a dirt cheap motel somewhere nearby. I live semi bakabeyond, and theres at least 5 or 6 HUGE motels within easy walking distance. Theres also lots of tiny ones. I honestly wonder how these things stay open with the competition, but why question it?

Sure, i understand you can get cheap hotels in japan, but its just not the same thing. Not only are they going to be more expensive, but more often than not theyll require a reservation (or you run the risk of them being full) as well as being few and far between (if youre outside a major city).

So many times after a late one in japan ive been stuck trying to find a place to crash (hello manga cafe!), never once have i failed to find a place in korea. Never once. And always under 40,000 (usually 25-35).

PC Bang is the same story. No matter where i am in korea, i know there's a net cafe somewhere nearby. In japan its very much a big city thing. Go rural and finding a net cafe is definitely a mission.

There are three i can think of right now all within spitting distance of this countryside school.

So yeah, net cafes and motels. Definitely going to miss how easy it is to find either of them.

[myenglishisno]

[ippy]

im trying to avoid throwing out the big and obvious stuff till later, so the next thing im gonna miss is this:

#6 Not Mukade (Aka korean bugs).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41365123@N00/13525967/sizes/m/in/photostream/

The second i arrive in my new japanese apartment i will go immediately to the nearest supermarket and there, i will buy a white powder which you put outside your house at all the vents and holes. The single function of this powder is to stop those blasted mukade from entering your house.

Some fun things to know about mukade.

1. They can kill you.
2. Their face and tail are the same so you dont know which ends the bit with the venom.
3. They hunt in pairs.
4. They can climb walls and hang upside down on ceilings.
5. (and most importantly of all)... they are attracted by carbon dioxide.

This leads to the terrifying mukade air drop onto your face in the middle of the night and then the inevitable bite because well, mukade are jerks.

Most likely it'll be a two or three day lump of misery, but the venom can of course kill you, so thats just lovely.

So as i say, the first thing i'll do upon arrival at my new place is not only drop that powder outside, but probably dump it on the edge of every room with special attention given to the area around my futon (just in case its one of those nonchalant mukade that will just stroll up to your bed and try eating you).

So yeah, korean bugs. The worst ive seen is a slightly fat spider...

Actually that reminds me:

The Japanese Huntsman spider.

http://homepage2.nifty.com/invitro-kaika/mushi/kumo/ashidaka/spider.jpg

These things are as big as your face and move not entirely unlike their cousins in sci-fi, the facehugger. I have NEVER (praise the gods!) seen one of these in person, but my best friend did. Her entire house was riddled with them. She told me of the day where she woke up to find one of them crawling across her face, then later got freaked out by 3 or 4 of them scuttling out of her laundry basket when she was about to put a wash on. And then just as she was about to leave the house as a final screw you, one of them landed on her head.

She spent the year fighting those things, but it eventually became too much for her and she had to move out (around the time she discovered the millions of spider babies under her sink).

Apparently its considered good luck to have them, and theyre seen as being quite nice undomesticated pets since they dont particularly hate us (in fact they like our houses and the fact we attract cockroaches and other bugs), but man, theyre nippy, AND they jump. Oh! And they dont care if you see them or not. Maybe thats because they think theres a nice symbiotic relationship between us and if we see them, then we know theyre doing their job?

If they ate mukade, id happily have hundreds of them in my house. But i dont fancy their chances much. And i also kind of like cockroaches because they dont muck about: if they see you, theyre gone! Theres none of this pretending to be dead or a stone... just whoosh! GONE!

So yeah, worst ive seen in korea is some tubby spiders and some ants, and given that im in a not too dissimilar climate to kyushu (a climate mukade thrive in), then all things considered thats pretty decent. I'll miss that.

[brento1138]

Back in Canada, I missed a whole lot about Korea. Then I came back. Now I miss the things in Canada.

I can never be happy.

[Konglishman]

I find it absolutely stunning that not even a single mention has been made about the jimjilbang.

[ippy]

#7 TESCO!!!!

Im british. Having homeplus owned by tesco makes my life fabulous. Sure, its all the crappy tesco own brand things, and often the selection is about 1/100th of what youd like, but still... 1/100th of what id like is about 1/100th more than 0/100th (which youll find in japan) so im pretty chuffed.

I might as well throw in some other easy to access stuff.

Twix

I love twixii (or is it twixes, or is it already pluralized?) Either way, they aint in japan. Nor will you find galaxy stuff... but its out here and in your local combini!

Oh, as is tobelerones. And awesome delicious hawaiian pizzas. Pineapple on a pizza isnt everyones cup of tea, but i love it. And i aint getting it in japan. Well, not easily. Oh and chilli. Chilli is great, but fresh chilli in japan is pretty hard to come by too. Basically theres a shopping list of stuff im going to miss from korea, and all that stuff are creature comforts from home. None of this (aside maybe the chilli), is korean food. Thats to come in a different day

[ippy]

oops, forgot about this:

#8: invasiveness.

An odd (and potentially controversial) one, ill grant you, but its something im going to miss, so why the hell not?

In japan youre left to your own devices. People dont gawp, they dont whisper about you, and when their kids scream "okaasan! okaasan! gaijin da!" their mums look at you utterly mortified because you now know they failed to raise their kids to be polite and well mannered.
Oh the shame of a two year old who points at the foreigner!

In korea its a bit of a different story. Im public property here. far from explaining to their kid that the foreigner is just another dude and you shouldnt be talking to random strangers, moms are hurling their children at me. I can be out shopping with a basket full of goods (actually this is usually when it happens), and ill have some mother pushing her kids onto me telling them to speak english. Its cute. I dont really mind it at all, and it makes the kids stoked, and who on earth wants to be a jerk to little kids?

It has its ugly side of course but nevertheless its nice. people weigh you up more in korea than in japan, but a smile or a hello seems to melt people much faster. Its kind of a nice way to break the spell in many ways. Often people dont realise theyre gawping, you suddenly addressing them kind of shocks them out of it and theyre incredibly friendly thereafter Its a nice way to start a quick interaction.

Invasiveness never bothered me. in fact it helped me feel kind of acknowledged in korea a little more than you might feel in japan. You never feel too lonely in korea just because random people want to come up and talk to you. And even if theyre treating you as an object for their own ends or curiosities we nevertheless get to take things away from our conversation about them :p I take away that korean people are friendly and curious by nature, not out of politeness or a kind of social duty (not to say that japanese people are of course), and im going to miss quite how invasive that friendly curiosity can be