I just came back from a brief trip to Korea! I was pretty busy most of the time, as I wasn’t there on vacation, but I ate lots of meat, lots of kimchi, and got by on the only two Korean phrases I know!

I taught myself to read Hangul in preparation for someday taking a trip to Korea, but never got to the ‘vocabulary’ phase… so I can read everything, I just have no idea what it means! Helpful with loanwords from Japanese or English but not so much with native words. Japanese seemed to work better overall but sometimes some people spoke English better, so it was interesting changing it up like that.

I firmly believe that almost all big cities have their own distinct personality… San Francisco and Los Angeles, for example, though both in the US, feel like completely different places once you’ve been there long enough. However, at the same time, in this modern world, cities sort of start to look the same, with the same stores (or the same kinds of stores), same bright lights, same gaudy advertising — the only thing that is readily and apparently different from the start are the letters on the signs.

That said, at first Seoul didn’t feel very much different from Tokyo… but soon I grew to feel that things seemed just a little bit wider, streets seemed to make a little more sense, advertisement usage and placement somehow seemed so much more tasteful than Japan. I was pretty impressed with that.

The food was pretty awesome too, but though I can eat anything and do enjoy spicy food, I grew a little tired of full-blown spiciness at every meal. 😛

Another thing that was really cool was that department stores are open until 4 or 5 in the morning! It was perfect, since I was on business for most of the day and didn’t finished until pretty late, so it was nice to be able to try a little bit of shopping. Prices are pretty cheap too!

Though the stores and markets are open late, the subways and trains stop at 12-ish, just like Japan! What’s the point?! 😛

I was there for two days for work and I only got a brief glimpse of the city. Next time I’ll hopefully be able to speak enough Korean to get around on my own! 🙂

By the way, if you’re thinking of traveling while in Japan, a ticket to Korea was cheaper than a ticket to Hokkaido!! Keep things like that in mind. 😉