2004 korean trip.
I needed to get out of tokyo, and visit the countryside. but it's such a huge city, (how huge is it?) ....it's faster to fly to a whole other country than to try to find the edge of tokyo.
so i went to korea.
DATE; Monday
January 5
on the plane flight over, there are easily a dozen off-duty stewardesses sitting ahead of me. I can recognize them by their little bun hairstyles and awesome cheekbones. also across from me, some 8 seats away is the most beautiful woman on the planet. at Seoul the customs line is insanely long but I'm not mad, because I know she has to wait in it with the rest of us mere mortals.
bad news is: even though I took the earliest flight, I won't get to my hotel before 2 pm. fucking society , man!! both cities are so huge and congested, taking busses to / from the airports takes WAY LONGER than the international airplane flight!! I'm all stressed because the whole point of taking an early ass flight instead of lying around in bed all day .. . . was that I could see some sights on Monday. but at this rate I'll only have 2 hours to see shit.
drop my bags off at the hotel and jump into a taxi. the traffic is fucked . up. I'm like, dude, I can walk faster than this. here's money, give me change. he pretends not to understand. I'm like, dude, what part of money do you not understand??? asshole! I wind up giving him like five bucks in Japanese money, and just walking to the palace, the sidewalks here are way more insane than I remember them being. all full of guys lugging pallets of merchandise around, pissed off spitting on the street type proletarian guys, and fucking lunatic motorcycle guys who drive ON THE SIDEWALK. you'd think I would remember SIDEWALK MOTORCYCLES if I saw them last year. . . anyway, I'm totally overwhelmed. When I finally see the park, I'm so impatient that I jaywalk across this EIGHT LANE STREET to get to it. I'm like, 'fuck you people!! I'm going to do the biggest jaywalk in history and get away with it because.
a: you have no laws obviously,
b: this damn street is such a traffic jam no one will be able to run me over.
the park is so cool I instantly calm down!! tons of old dudes playing some kind of Korean chess,, which my people call "Maize." Wait, no, it's called jhang gi . The homeys are all spitting phlegm and kibitzing. Remember that Simpsons episode where the Russian guys playing chess scare Lisa with their loud language, even though they are not mad? It's like that. Korean people speak loud and sound angry all the time. even the comedies on TV, they are all yelling at the top of their lungs. After living in super-quiet Japan for 6 months it's especially shocking. Anyway, it's all the grandpas and me, the blue hair guy with the leather jacket.
then I hit park #1 and park #2 and because it's winter, it's kind of lame. the trees are dead and there's no little kids running around in adorable uniforms. so basically i was in a hurry for nothing.
so far, Seoul blows: dangerous, traffic jammed, smoggy, noisy, run down, spitting, hollering, taxicabs just parking in the middle of intersections for no reason, the slowest subway trains. . . even dumber is, I came here specifically to escape the congestion of Tokyo. har de har har. Also, Koreans (despite being way coarser and more blue-collar than most Japanese or Americans) have this total omnipresent addiction to the worst kind of sentimental shitty sub kenny g ballads.
this is not a cool culture.
In a way, I think Korea is a victim of its own success. And my ignorant preconceptions, but mostly its own success. For instance: in the last 50 years they've come so far so fast it's easy to forget that they used to be totally third world. Now instead of seeing a totally advanced third world nation, I look and see a kind of shoddy first world nation.
***skip this part it's boring****
However, there is one area where Seoul totally is light-years ahead of Tokyo: there IS insanely large amounts of good Engrish. but the Engrish is hell of spread out and i only see it when i'm in a taxi. so i didn't take pictures. whatever, that gag is getting old anyway. but HOLYCOW the engrish was soooo good. . .. anyway, to get good photos, you'd really need a bike to get around and find it. a bike I do not have, and would not ride because I would die instantly.
end boring ****
my hotel is in myong dong.which means it's time for
SEOUL FASHION REPORT
It turns out, Myongdong is like the shopping district for all the college women. In Japan SCHOOL , my Korean classmate wore clothes like this : chuck Taylor All-star lowtops with baggy, really new jeans with huge cuffs. or low-heeled pumps with very thick textured tights. The whole time we were in class I was thinking, "man, what an original style. Totally unique!"
but as soon as I set foot in myongdong, I realize that her style wasn't a personal statement. EVERY SINGLE GIRL here is dressed just like that. . . I get the eerie feeling that she has been cloned in some kind of experiment, and I'm walking through a sea of her replicants!!
The women of Myong Dong are more feminine than American women. . . but in a totally different way than the Japanese, whose feminity tends to the drag-queen and /or kawaii extremes. Instead Korean women are just super quiet and conservative . and they LOVE THEM SOME SENSIBLE HEELS.
any description of myongdong would be incomplete without mentioning the street vendors, who, right next to stores full of Gucci and Armani, are selling yard long dried stiff tentacles. if I was traveling with a pal, we could have a three musketeers style swordfight right in the street. but I'm not so we don't.
next time.
TUESDAY; January 6
start the day 0ff right: cereal with chopsticks. long story.
then go tour Piwon, the Secret Garden. there's hella Japanese folks on the tour, so I try to translate. I take the guide's bad English and turn it into even worse Japanese. Here's how it works. . .she talks for 30 seconds, and I turn to my new pal and say something like, 'the king lived here.' then she talks for another 30 seconds, and I say, 'he lived here too.'
Altogether, on this tour I'll eventually meet no less than 7 Japanese people. What's weird is that ALL OF THEM live within 10 miles of my house. No one from Oosaka or Nagoya comes to Korea? Weird.
Also weird: I happen to run into one of the students at my Japanese school, right here in the palace. He's also on vacation in Korea. He's all, "hey!!! Schultz-san!!"
then go to a PUNG MUL concert again. the ticket lady recognizes me from last year. "Didn't you used to have pink hair?" total rock star moment. the concert is weird--- by total accident I'm sitting right behind the lady I was translating for at Piwon! The Pungmul guys wear these hats with huge ribbons on top, which inscribe loops and figure-eights in the air as they dance. One of the pungmul guys' hat-tails fell out right during his solo which was pretty awesome. actually the whole concept of Hat Solo is pretty awesome.
afterwards, the performers have Picture Time, and I watch some Japanese tourist girls go totally nuts posing with the buffed out pung mul drummer dudes. They're all making peace signs and laughing hysterically, as if they were meeting Aerosmith. on the way out they ask me if they can take my picture too
anyway I would love to stay and have crazy sex orgies with the Japanese coeds, but I have to bail to meet my 3 Korean coeds. These are the problems I must contend with.
ok, so here is why it took like 34 hours for me to meet my pal Pianogal and her friends:
right on time I arrive at exit 4 where I am supposed to meet Pianogal in front of the 'whoau' store.
it takes several minutes to discover that there is no such store there.
several more minutes to find a phone to ask her what's up.
she says, 'oh, I meant exit 2'!
several more minutes to run to exit 2.
several more minutes to ascertain that there is no WHOAU around there either. then waste more time looking for a phone. then she says, 'what? I didn't say exit 2. I said exit (word that, with her Korean accent, sounds indistinguishable from '2') then I say, 'what?? what number? What the hell number can possibly sound like '2'???? let's start counting from one, and stop me when I get at the number you're trying to say'.
then the phone runs out of money.
then i realize that I have no change.
several more minutes to get change.
then run back to the phone. ask her what number? she says, "fuck it, we'll meet you at 2."
several more minutes to wait for her.
jesus!!! what should be the happiest moment of my trip is turning into a stress-hole from hell.
but she shows up and brings her friends with her too.
my god, it's so fun . . . they totally treat me like ... not just like I'm a rock star . . .but like I'm a good person, the kind of person who somehow deserves to be hanging out with hot young Asian coeds that the Internet is always talking about. we go to dinner. Pianogal's sister is saying she saw my website's s/m photos and wants to know what's up with that, and then Quiet Girl is asking me about s.f.'s gay culture. and we haven't even had appetizers yet. Jesus, these Christian girls are like waay too scandalous.
for my part, I am trying to be the perfect guest: noticing their new hairstyles and complimenting them on their wardrobe, English, and interesting hobbies.
Sister surprises me again, just like last year. . . . first she says that cosplay is very big here.
then she says she loves Julie London. have I ever heard of her?
I almost jump out of my seat. DUDE!!! I have been searching for her song for 6 years and just finally heard itfor the first time ever like last week, and suddenly you bring her up. how awesome is that??
we sit around doing drawings for each other (my idea because I rock). I draw Pianogal. they ask me to autograph it.
afterwards we go to nore bang (Korean for 'karaoke'), at a place where they have like every judas priest song ever made, for no reason. it's Pianogal's first time, which makes it even more special.
WHAT THE HELL IS IT ABOUT NORE BANG ????
it is fucking out of control here.
they have it on the tour bus
they have it in tiny little booths in the video arcades.
it can take a straight-a Christian student who normally just plays Rachmannanof concertos on the grand piano, and make her start busting out with Korn lyrics in Hangul. Or at least some Korean VERSION of korn. Which is just as ridiculous.
But still, what the hell?
I do holy diver. then we all do 'da doo ron ron.'
I take them to dessert later, and i turn into The Gelato Pimp: Walking in the joint with 3 20 year old broads, being like, 'you get anything you want, it's on me.Sprinkles, whatever. I'm big time. ' We sit around and talk about who is the cutest celebrity. 'da doo ron ron' comes on the TV and we all clap. Then i start walking back to my hotel, and . . .they all are following me. this seems so totally unnecessary. The closer we get the more I start wondering exactly what is their fiendish plan??
3
.
.
Tokyo Damage Report current page. Weird Japanese subcultures.
Tokyo Damage Report archive: underground, punk, cosplay, hentai show reviews
Tokyo live show schedule: Japan punk, rockabilly, gothic, visual, and noise
Tokyo Underground travel guide. punk, hentai, otaku, Shibuya, Kouenji, Shinjuku, and Akihabara.
Hello Damage - the main site. mp3s, photos, travel reports, rants, satire, humor, Japan...
