Seoul Trip, Part Five (서울 여행, 파트 다섯)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Thursday, Aug. 8
We set out late after having breakfast at home of convenience store egg and toast, taking the bus to Gwangjang Market, where we roamed around looking at food stalls selling near-identical menus, primarily featuring 빈대떡/bindaeddeok (mung bean pancakes) and live octopus. One food stall was more popular than the others, but from what I could tell, that was because it’d been featured on some Netflix series. Otherwise, just like all the other times we’d encountered something similar, it seemed that every place sold the exact same thing. There were also vegetable stalls, seafood stalls, shops that sold Korean blankets and other bedding, stalls that sold prepared wares such as gift boxes of Korean rice crackers or little cookies or what have you, etc.
For lunch we went to the restaurant Adelagia and K had been to before for bindaeddeok, called 할머니 집/Halmeoni Jib (Grandma’s House); apparently K hadn’t much cared for the bindaeddeok, but Adelagia loved it and I did as well. It was also nice because the restaurant was an indoor one, so we were able to sit comfortably and enjoy a bit of a/c, rather than sit out in the sweltering heat trying to work up the appetite to eat (seriously, when I’m that hot and sweaty, my appetite seems to disappear). We also ordered a soondae (Korean blood sausage) and pig gopchang stir-fry dish that was realllllly good. The waitress told us it was for two people, which I assumed meant we had to pay double the price. That didn’t end up being the case, but then why did she tell us it was for two people?! Adelagia theorized it was because she had said, when ordering, “one (of that dish)” but they took it to mean one portion, or something. I don’t know, maybe it’s one of those things that’s unique to Korean language or culture. (I’d maybe equate it to like one order of sushi having two pieces.) We roamed a bit more after that, but it was soooooo hot... after buying two packages of things for my office peeps (a big box of Korean rice cracker things and a small box of Korean cookie type things, which cost a total of ₩11,000), we left.
In the saeujeot, which is supposed to be a shrimp sauce, I found this little guy. He was soooo cute! Almost too cute to be eaten, but as he was already gone, I didn’t want his death to be for nothing. And he was sooooo crunchy and delicious, omg. Now I’m like, how come eating tiny little crabs isn’t a thing???
We took a cab to Garosu-gil, which was known for being a shopping street (I guess like Rodeo Drive), and went to a very disappointing Line Friends store. It did have the Cooky umbrella I had to buy YET AGAIN, but otherwise was really small and limited. Because I needed to use the restroom, we ended up at a Beans Bins and I got mango juice while Adelagia got a coffee drink. You’ll notice that that was a common theme for us; I would usually get juice while Adelagia got tea or coffee. It’s not that I don’t like tea or coffee, but caffeinated drinks tend to make me need to pee a lot, which I did not need - and also I was trying to keep up my vitamin C intake. About a week before I arrived in Seoul, Adelagia had gotten sick, and she advised me to take some extra vitamin C before coming. Since I do tend to get sick in unfamiliar places (being around germs I’m not normally around), I ended up bringing almost an entire box of Emergen-C with me, which I took faithfully. However, at some point I ran out, so to try and keep up with the vitamin C intake since it seemed to be working so far (in that I hadn’t gotten sick), I hoped that ingesting juices would accomplish that and be refreshing at the same time. (Plus I do love fruit juices, and fresh watermelon and mango juice in the US are a lot harder to come by.) Anyway, there was a woman before me at the bathroom, which needed a code. She had the code, but didn't know what to do after inputting it. I pressed the asterisk for her and it did the trick, which she was very grateful for, lol. While at Beans Bins I somehow ended up spending over $200 on BT21 stuff by shopping online, thanks to Adelagia finding the Gotamochi site. She’s such an enabler. ｏ( >.<)o
We decided to walk down Garosu-gil since we were already there, but it wasn't that interesting, maybe because it had many brands that are familiar to us in the States. We passed by a makeup store and I took the opportunity to be talked into buying skincare stuff, as well as makeup stuff that nabbed me some BTS extras. We then went to a Monopoly store, which sells travel-related products. They had a collaboration going on with BT21, so Adelagia and I bought even more stuff, including planners (later we wished we’d gotten more of these, since they were kinda year agnostic, on sale, and even came with stickers, which we didn’t realize until we were back in the US) and badge holders and pens and a travel bag that could be attached to a suitcase, etc. It was funny, Adelagia bought things with various characters she liked on them, while as soon as I set my purchases down, the shopkeeper lady was like, “Oh, so you like Tata.” LOL! Guilty! Adelagia was more character agnostic because at the time she didn’t have any preference toward any particular member of BTS - now that she’s into Suga, her purchases at all the various Line Friends stores might have been a lot more Shooky heavy!
At this point we still weren't hungry since we had started the day pretty late, though I was looking forward to going back to Han6gam for dinner, which was our plan. Adelagia asked if she should get her nails done, as there was a sign on the street for a nail place, and I said yes! They were very uninviting at first, particularly the boss lady, but she quickly warmed up to us, even giving us watermelon juice (it was not very good, though - it was basically just poorly blended watermelon, seeds and all, and wasn’t sweet). Her English was decent because she had lived in the US at one point, but it wasn’t what I would call fluent.
The uncomfortable thing was that she was kind of rude about my manicure. She said she and her assistant were wondering if it was a home manicure, even, which I was like, uh... no. (Actually, everything she said she would include her assistant in, but the latter seemed like a sweet girl and I couldn’t actually understand their conversation, so I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that it all stemmed from this weird and rude boss lady.) Then she asked how much it was, and when I told her, she was like, that’s crazy, it should have cost no more than ₩70,000. And the thing is, I never know what to say in the face of blatant rudeness like this. Like… if you don’t like someone’s manicure, or their hair, or their clothing, or whatever it may be, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. I feel like “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all” is a fairly basic precept that people in general can and do follow, especially toward people who you don’t know and who have done absolutely nothing to you. I mean, if she didn’t care for my manicure, that’s fine, she’s entitled to their opinion. But I liked my manicure, and didn’t need her pitying looks or unending comments about how much I spent on them. I felt so impotently defensive, because I didn’t have the language skills to defend myself the way I wanted to (and the fact that I felt I needed to defend myself at all also made me mad, because it meant I was being attacked), since I couldn’t speak Korean well, and I didn’t think her English was advanced enough to understand what I wanted to say in that language. I mean, yes, my mani-pedi had been too pricey for sure. But I was enjoying having them, and I appreciated the work my nail technician did, and I was happy with them, so who was this lady to try and make me feel bad about it? Like that’s basically what she was doing, trying to make me feel bad about how much I’d paid for nails that she deemed were so simplistic they could have been a home manicure. (I wanted to point out that from her vantage point she couldn’t possibly see all the detail that went into them - she never once got a close-up look - all done meticulously, which took a person HOURS.) The closest I came was to say politely, “Well, I’m on vacation, so I just wanted to do something fun for myself” or something to that effect. She had an answer for that, too: “Oh, that’s what all those places are counting on.” OMG this lady. Anyway, it was an odd experience to feel welcomed and attacked at the same time, and yet I had to just let it roll off my back or turn the other cheek or whatever appropriate saying can be inserted here. Also, according to this lady, she’d been the one to start the whole manicure trend in Korea. ◔̯◔ She was definitely one of those types who liked to talk herself up (and others down).
It took awhile for Adelagia’s nails to be done, because in Seoul they really take their time with doing people's nails, and honor reservations very seriously, which I mention because they had taken her as a walk-in (which was partly why they’d been so unfriendly initially) and someone else came in later who had an appointment so work on Adelagia’s nails had to stop for awhile. The boss lady charged her a very reasonable price for gradient gel nails (₩33,000), but what was not so good was that she kept mentioning Adelagia’s small nails, prompting her to feel like she had to apologize! Seriously, this lady was weird. (Speaking of gradient nails, she already rubbed me the wrong way when we first spoke with her. Adelagia asked her for the price to do gradient nails, and the boss lady replied haughtily, “You mean gradation.” Uh, yeah, what the color does on the nail is a gradation, but the final nail effect is a gradient. You wanna correct native English speakers on our English? FIGHT ME, BITCH. Though granted at the time she probably thought we were from China or something, I don’t know. In any case from that very first moment I already kind of hated her, lol.)
There was also this moment, which I couldn’t find a good place for up above, so I’ll just slot it in now:
Boss lady: My assistant was wondering if you’re Korean?
Me: Oh, no. My parents are Chinese.
Boss lady: Yes, I know. I told her so.
Me: Okay...
Boss lady: But you look like you could be Korean. Sorry.
Me: Oh... no, that’s fine. (WTF it’s not an insult?)
Boss lady: She likes Chinese dramas, that’s why.
Me: Oh really? Well, I like Korean dramas!
I wish now that I’d asked the girl what Chinese dramas she liked to watch, because I’ve seen a few of those as well, though not a ton. I was intrigued by the fact that she liked them, though, since it’s a pretty well-established fact that Korean dramas are for the most part, far superior. However, my Korean was crap and her English wasn’t good at all, so it would have been quite difficult to talk about dramas, lol. We might have been able to try Chinese, I suppose, since according to Boss Lady the assistant girl had learned a lot of Chinese from watching those dramas. O.o Which, if that’s true, is amazing. The more I write about this whole thing, the sorrier I feel for the girl having to work with that insufferable lady.
By the time Adelagia’s nails were done it was late so we decided not to go to Han6gam and save it for the next day instead, so we could fully enjoy it without feeling rushed. We caught a cab to go back to Hongdae, specifically the Lotteria at the start of Murder Road, but the cabbie couldn't seem to find the address in his GPS. I didn’t note it down, but this might have been the cab driver who impatiently wanted Adelagia to talk to his GPS for him, but of course she didn’t know how it operated so it would mess up, and then he’d get all huffy about it, and just... ugh, some of these cab drivers were really such assholes. Also, I don’t know why, but every time we gave the Lotteria’s address - which should have been easy to find, given that it was a legitimate business address on a busy road - no cabs could find it, either from their own error or the GPS’s. This particular cabbie somehow got us to where we needed to go anyway from going off the address alone, so props to him on that. Since our plan at this point was to eat our bossam leftovers, I had the brilliant -- NOT -- idea to grab a burger from Lotteria to supplement. I somehow ended up paying ₩7800 won for a single cheeseburger. I still don't understand wtf happened. I ordered the sandwich only, but when it cost that much, I figured they had misunderstood that I wanted the set (at least according to the prices on their menu board). However, when it came time to give me my food, they did only give me the sandwich, despite, as far as I could see, charging me for the full meal. WTH??????? Obviously, if this had been an American establishment I would have asked what the heck was going on, but as I felt that trying to question them about it would only result in my being even more frustrated, I just left in disbelief with my extremely overpriced burger.
Next we went to Nice to CU for my free coffee, and this time there was a young guy there (not the girl as we had thought). I explained in my bad Korean about the 2+1, and he seemed to totally understand what was going on, and actually found my receipt. But when I went to get the bottle, THERE WAS NO MORE V. Maybe it was a culmination of the rude manicure lady, the Lotteria burger ripoff, and now this, but I was honestly SO MAD AND FRUSTRATED. I had to settle for Jin, and was so unhappy about it, given that they’d had V, the one I actually really wanted, just yesterday when I was there, if only that old man had managed to find my receipt. I was especially frustrated with that because why was the receipt suddenly there? Why had that old man not been able to find it yesterday? I seriously doubt the girl had come back at some point and suddenly remembered to put our receipt where they kept them, so it had to have been there all along. In the end I got a V, Jin, and RM! If I'd known that was gonna happen, I would've simply purchased the single V bottle and not bothered with the 2+1 at all (remember, at the time I had a Suga in hand and would have been OK with that, but had to put it back due to it being a latte), given how frustrating it ended up being to try and get the free one, only to end up with two that I didn’t even want. I considered telling the store clerk I would come back the next day to see if they had V or Jungkook in stock, but I didn’t want to further confuse matters, and anyway, at that point I didn’t want to have to keep going back to that damn convenience store.
The Lotteria burger was OK, and not very big. For ₩7800 it should’ve been one of the best burgers I’ve ever had, but it fell far short. (But really, every burger always comes up short when I think of how an In-N-Out Double Double only costs like $4.35.) We also ate most of our bossam leftovers while watching 1.5 episodes of Abyss on Netflix. The show was a bit too needlessly complicated and convoluted, but we were willing to go on with it due to liking the leads, and the cameos from Seo Inguk and Jung Somin were cute too.
Friday, Aug. 9
First thing we did was go to Namdaemun Market, but it was soooooo hot that we were sweating after just a bit of walking around. I had wanted to go there specifically for dried vegetable crisps, which my coworker M had brought back from his trip to Seoul. I’d particularly enjoyed the thin purple chips - which he’d told me was beets - but he raved about the mushroom ones as well. He said he’d gotten them at an underground market in Namdaemun, and to ask someone who worked there how to get underground. Um, okaaaay… Well, there was an information booth so I asked, and it turned out the underground market area was closed for the summer but was going open again on Monday - literally a few days later, wtf. What kind of luck is this?! However, at one of the stalls I did still manage to find the purple chips I’d liked so much, but it turned out to be purple sweet potato, not beets. I couldn’t find any mushroom crisps though.
There were a couple of stalls that were selling “Busan eomuk,” which was something I was familiar with from Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (her BFF brings a bunch of odeng back from Busan when she visits, and Bong Soon notes that it’s her twin brother’s favorite) and was interested in trying. However, on the show what they ate looked very soft and was the long, flat kind (I do not know how else to describe it, lol), but the ones in the stalls didn’t look like that, and as I was hot and therefore not that interested in eating anyway, I passed them up.
I went into a Burger King to use the restroom, then for lunch we decided to go back to Gwangjang Market for bindaeddeok, since we’d both enjoyed that and had no other ideas (I think we were hoping Namdaemun was going to be more interesting, and with more food stalls/restaurants like Gwangjang). We took a cab there, and our driver was a friendly halabeoji, though he used a lot of Korean we barely understood. On the way to Halmeoni Jib we passed by a stall that we must have passed by the day before, but this time we saw they sold the dried purple sweet potatoes!! Wtf? If I could have purchased them the day before, we probably wouldn’t even have gone to Namdaemun at all. We also passed a Busan eomuk place that had the long, flat kind of odeng, so I decided to give it a shot!! This odeng was better than the first one I’d had in Myeongdong near the beginning of the trip; it was softer than that one and only cost ₩1000, plus the little cup of soup they gave was delish. I don’t know how people can eat more than two of them, though - they’re so big!! The stall lady seemed a little put out that I was only going to eat the one stick, but honestly I was on the fence about even doing that, so at least she got something from me.
At Halmeoni Jib we ordered the bindaeddeok again, and I made the mistake of ordering jjajangmyeon, which wasn’t great. Since I was slightly full from the odeng, and the weather being so hot was off putting to my appetite, I didn’t want to get the (very filling) soondae/gopchang stir fry again (but later I’d wish we had). I only ordered the jjajangmyeon because the servers there are extremely pushy - when they come to your table to take your order, you have to be ready, or they just hover there until you decide on something. It made me anxious and wanting to choose something just so the server would stop hovering and waiting, so when she put an English-language menu in front of me I just chose the first thing I recognized, which was the jjajangmyeon. I regretted it as soon as she left; I was like, wtf, this isn’t a Chinese restaurant, why the hell would I order that? I had to hold on to the small hope that because we had enjoyed their other food, maybe the jjajangmyeon would be good too. It was not. It was extremely mediocre, with no meat in it. I couldn’t finish it and had no desire to take the leftovers, either. However, the one saving grace was that the bindaeddeok was even better this time, because they had crisped up the outside more. Adelagia ordered a plate of soondae and mixed organ meat.
After lunch we took a cab to the Hyundai City Outlets, which is more a regular mall and not outlet stores like we think of them in the US. I don’t know what “outlet” means to South Korea, if there’s anything special about them that we didn’t realize from going there, but it just seemed like a regular mall to me. One of the reasons we wanted to go was because they had an OST there, as by this point I’d realized the watch I’d purchased was too tight fitting. We found it, and the clerk there helpfully helped me readjust it. Next we went to Eblin, for more BT21 pajamas. I bought a Cooky summer PJ set as well as a Tata sleep shirt, and Adelagia got a packaged set of Koya shirts. We went to the top floor of the mall, where there were like three restaurants and a coffee shop; we were hoping for something more interesting but we were destined to be disappointed. We had uninspiring drinks and okay strawberry macarons while there. We also went into some kind of beauty shop (Sephora-esque), and there were two things of note: Products that had K-celebs (like Yook Sungjae and Park Hyungsik) recommending them… and they mysteriously also had a small BT21 section and a single roll of BT21 packing tape, which YES I BOUGHT IT.
Since it was walkable we then walked to Doota mall, which had a Line Friends. A very lame and small Line Friends, I might add. They had some cute decorations we hadn’t seen at other stores, but product wise it wasn’t anything new. We went through the mall for a bit, but really did not see anything much of interest, except an ad of Kim Soo Hyun selling some kind of facial(?) machine, more BTS sponsorships of various products, and some little girl dresses that Adelagia and I agreed our much, much younger selves would have LOVED and worn all the time. We left the boring mall (which was being shilled by Monsta X, much the same way as BTS shills for Lotte Duty Free) and sat outside for a bit… and yes, I came face to face with a freaking Shake Shack. Not gonna lie, though - I definitely would have preferred a Shake Shack burger to the Lotteria one I’d had the previous night. -.-
Outside on the street there was also some annoying lady droning on and on in some kind of demonstration/protest, except you couldn’t actually see anyone, and the message repeated itself over and over using the same intonation, so it was probably a recording. In any case there were police cars and security guards around, for what it’s hard to say since we couldn’t understand what was being demonstrated, and there was no crowd of people or really anyone showing any interest at all, lol. Quite uneventful as far as demonstrations go.
In an attempt to be cultural, we then walked across the street to find some kind of “park,” but it turned out to be more of another shopping area, lol. Perhaps it was designated a park, or was designed by a famous artist or something, I don’t know. Adelagia’s notes say that it was the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, so there you go. There was some sort of Disney exhibit, but the entry fee was more than we wanted to pay for something we were only marginally interested in. There was also an indoor area with a few shops and a convenience store, but also a small row of tables where artists sat to do drawings, like caricature artists on NYC streets or something. However, the art from these artists were a lot more interesting than caricatures, reflecting more the artist’s personal style. There was one girl whose art we liked in particular, and her prices were reasonable, but she had just started on a couple of girls so we decided to leave and come back later to see if she was available then, as it was the sort of thing we felt would make for a cool keepsake from our trip. We made our way to the nearby Kakao Friends store, but as I had zero interest in KT characters and was feeling hot and tired, I decided to go sit at one of the tables out in the plaza and made good use of Cooky (my handheld fan).
Out in the plaza was a huge screen showing various ads; whenever I saw it, it was either promoting the Disney exhibit or featuring some old white guy artist who I had no interest in. Adelagia, however, was lucky enough to catch part of a BTS ad for Lotte Duty Free when she came out of the Kakao Friends store, so of course I had to get a recording of it. I think we had to sit through three rounds of those ads before I had something I was happy with.
Unfortunately that was probably one round too many, because when we went back to see if the artist was free, she seemed to have just gotten started on another customer. Argh!! She was the most popular artist there by far, because both of the times we were there, none of the other artists were occupied. And while I appreciated one of the other artist’s styles, it was also far too edgy for the kind of keepsake we wanted. Also, small gripe from me and Adelagia about the artist we were interested in: GET SOME BUSINESS SENSE. The first time, we had been hovering quite obviously - she should have asked if we were interested in getting a portrait done, and maybe we could have worked out a time to come back or something. The second time, we had obviously come back, showing definite interest, and again, she could have/should have acknowledged our presence so that she could get another commission. Instead, because we couldn’t keep just waiting around with no guarantee of ever catching her at the right time, we had to just leave.
We went back to the main street in order to catch a cab; it just so happened that one pulled up to drop off some passengers. We saw that it was a cab for “foreigners only,” so when we got in I made sure to speak in English, lol. Because the cab driver didn’t know where we wanted to go and had to input it into his GPS, he was taking some time idling there. The car behind us wasn’t having it, and kept honking and being totally obnoxious, before pulling up alongside us. It was some young ahole guy (to no one’s surprise), and the two of them started cursing at one another. It was both amusing and alarming. Adelagia and I have both watched enough dramas to recognize the cursing that was happening back and forth, and after it was all over and done with and we were on our way, I sent a KT to Adelagia: “I should’ve joined in. ‘야!!! 미친새끼야?!?!’” (Translation: “Hey!!! Are you a crazy asshole?!?!” It sounds more natural in Korean, okay.) LOL. I don’t know if that would have made things infinitely worse, or if the shock of it would have gotten the two of them to shut up.
In any case, we really liked our driver, because his English was pretty good; I can’t remember if he’d spent any time in the States at all, but he enjoyed practicing his English so that was nice. Also, he’d only been driving a cab for like three months or something, and said that the neighborhood where we were asking to go was not one he’d been to before. He talked about how, as a local, he would always hear of things here and there that were great places to go, but he never actually went. Of course, I can totally relate to this, having lived in Seattle now for like 20 years and never having gone to the Space Needle in that time. He also talked about some kind of celebrity-owned nightclub or something and how people were up in arms due to the cost of getting a table there - his English faltered here and the price of the table could be anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 to $100,000; he said all three numbers and given how differently numbers are stated in Korean it’s impossible to know which one was what he really meant, lol.
Dinner was at Han6gam, highly anticipated given J’s rec and our own experience with lunch. We got the combo that cost ₩42,000 each, but only came with about 5oz of meat. They would tell us to grill the food ourselves, but then someone would always come back to check on it and turn the meat, then take it away to slice, so it was kind of pointless? Anyway it was OK, but lunch was infinitely more satisfying both taste wise and wallet wise. Maybe J got one of the super-expensive platters they had, which was why he called it one of the most unforgettable meals he’d had in Seoul. I can’t imagine him describing the meal we had that way.
Once we got home, we started “prepacking”... at least, I think this was the night that started, anyway. I had sooooooooooooo much stuff that, up until this point, eyeballing it I had not felt overly alarmed. But seeing it now, I was starting to get worried, lol. What prepacking meant for me was to start packing things into the Away Medium suitcase I’d used as a shell for my Bigger Carry On. The BCO had been pretty much full, so I would have to put all my new purchases, plus the DVDs and what not I’d ordered from that lady on eBay, into the Medium. The good news that night was everything fit. It was already almost full, but everything fit and I was able to zip it closed without sitting on it, lol. The bad news was that I still had a few days left in Seoul, and there was NO WAY I wasn’t going to buy more things.
HOW was all this going to magically come back with me???
Saturday, Aug. 10
데이식스 콘서트 일! (DAY6 concert day!)
The night before, Adelagia was struck by food poisoning or some kind of Seoul bug type thing, and was up until 2 a.m. dealing with that. :/ I’m not really sure that it was food poisoning, only because we ate pretty much the exact same thing the night before at Han6gam. If anything, I ate more and different things than she did, such as the white kimchi she didn’t even touch, or the salad with the fruity dressing she didn’t care for. We did have a different lunch, me with my uninspired jjajangmyeon and her with the soondae/organ meat, but if it were really food poisoning from that, surely it would have struck earlier in the day?
We began the day by walking up a long, steep hill to Seoul Escape Room’s Hongdae Branch 1 location. Even though we love escape rooms, for some reason we hadn’t been fired up about doing one in Seoul... me because I was still wary of how the English was going to pan out, and Adelagia because... I actually don’t know why. We just weren’t as eager to do it as we might have been anywhere else. However, I did think it would be one of those things we’d regret not doing if we spent 2½ weeks in Seoul, and reminisced about our trip later, so we booked a room. (Oh, I remember now too that part of my reticence came from the research I’d done on their rooms. It seemed they had one big storyline, with different seasons, and if we wanted to start from “episode 1” we’d have to go out of our way to do them in order. Thus, inertia took over. When we finally booked the room I just had to pretend like I didn’t know about the seasons/storyline thing so that my completist nature wouldn’t be too anxious about it.)
A nice young girl was our gamemaster. The cool thing about Seoul Escape Rooms is that you don’t have to pay ahead of time, but they do contact you to confirm you’re going. It was also very reasonable in price; for two people it cost ₩48,000, then if you pay in cash you get another discount, and if it’s your first time, you can add their KT group as a friend and get another coupon, so this first escape room ended up only costing ₩38,000 for both of us. (If you have more people, the price per person scales down.) It turned out that the room we were doing, “Chairman’s Office,” was like episode 3 of the first season. Luckily they give you a short story to read to catch you up on what all has happened before this point, so you understand your objective. I was relieved to see that the English in this short story was very good. Also, as we sat there waiting and reading, we noticed that Bomi/Apink had been there, along with other celebs we didn’t know or couldn’t read the writing (Korean handwriting is soooooooooooo hard to read omg).
It was actually a pretty good room - and the English wasn’t an issue at all; I can’t remember how much of it was English-related, but clearly it either felt natural, or wasn’t a big component, if it didn’t stand out. However, we didn’t escape because we got stuck for long moments in a few places, and even though we got on a roll at the end, the final thing was a remote-controlled car (there was a “maze” in the ceiling, which is also where the car was), and I was just TERRIBLE at controlling it. :/ I usually use inverse controls in video games (like many left handers), but it wasn’t possible with this manual controller (I tried turning it upside down to simulate the effect, but it didn’t quite work the way I wanted - it was just awkward in a different way), and I kept going in directions I wasn’t trying to go/that was against the logic of my brain. In the end it didn’t really matter, though, we wouldn’t have been able to figure it out anyway, because we only had like two minutes left, and we hadn’t even driven the car to the correct spots to light up the various symbols/numbers (and then we would have had to use the mirror to see the top of the car for the order of the numbers). However, that final solution was the code to the escape door, so we weren’t that far off from escaping (the whole, “get stuck for a long time in a couple of places, then pick it up at the end, only to lose in the last minute” thing seems to be a common theme of ours). Oh, also, I somehow got the car stuck in its little hiding spot in the wall, and our gamemaster had to retrieve a ladder to get it out. For our picture she had us draw on a whiteboard; initially I had drawn a car but had to erase it since it gave away an element of the game.
Top right; Apink. Bottom right; a Bomi. Possibly our Bomi, from Apink, or possibly a whole other Bomi entirely.
Next!!! We took a cab to Jamsil Stadium so Adelagia could get some DAY6 merch, as she didn’t want to risk that stuff being sold out by the time of the concert. Our cab driver favored a radio station that played “What I’ve Done” (Linkin Park), followed by “Your World” (Little Mermaid) then “Be Our Guest” (Beauty and the Beast). LOL so weird.
We were dropped off at the baseball stadium, but there were like, zero signs indicating we were in the right place. And there was hardly anyone around, which also did not seem right - there should be at least some fangirls around. We went into a museum type place to ask for directions, and the girl working there heard Adelagia’s question then immediately asked if she could respond to us in English, haha (we gladly said YES). It turned out the concert was at the basketball arena so we had to trudge there in the heat. I mean, it wasn’t that far away, but when in the kind of weather we were suffering in, it felt like miles. Along the way we finally saw some DAY6 banners and fangirls... near the stadium was also a little something for me, some kind of commemorating plaque for BTS that also had their handprints in bronze.
Once we got to the right place Adelagia went to the merch tent while I waited in the shade with other fangirls who were there early. I made Cooky work his little fan butt off. Adelagia was able to purchase all of the little stuffed animal representations of the members, but apparently it was already too late to get the limited free merchandise with purchase, and the t-shirt she’d wanted was gone, too. WTF? Learn how to fucking make money, JYP. I mean, honestly, it was only the second concert day and they were out of stuff??? And EARLY on the second day, too. Also, they didn’t have bags (not even to purchase), so where would people put all the shit they bought? OMG, I was so disgusted by this apparent incompetent merchandise strategy by supposedly a big, successful entertainment company.
Afterward, since it was hours before the concert actually started, we wanted to go back to Lotte World Mall and had to desperately get a cab in the heat, which several other people were trying to do as well. (For some reason cabs in this area were very few and far between.) We walked a little ways from the venue and were finally able to nab one, but the cab driver, while friendly, didn’t seem to know what he was doing. Once near Lotte World Mall he kept asking if he could stop at the current location and when we said yes, he just kept going. Like ?????? But also there was something wrong with his meter maybe, because the ride only cost ₩3800.
For what seemed like hours (but maybe was actually “only” a literal hour, maybe less), we trapped ourselves in Lotte World and Lotte World Adventure Theme Park and all the fucking Lotte malls that apparently kind of, sort of, maybe connected? until we somehow finally found our way to where we had been the last time. Seriously I don’t think either of us understood how we finally got there, but were just grateful that we had.
Part of the reason we’d wanted to return to Lotte World Mall where we’d been before was to go to the Line Friends store there that had a t-shirt Adelagia saw the last time and didn’t buy, but ended up regretting it. Alas, it was gone from the store by this point, but she did get a Chimmy bag for her DAY6 purchases.
We went back to the food court we’d found last time (with the bakery that had the stick-of-butter croissants), but it was crowded and unappealing so we went back out to try for a restaurant type place (high-class clowns like to be served, tyvm), but the “theme” restaurants on the top floor held no appeal, and we ended up in another food court situation where we at least found a seat almost immediately. It had a very interesting food court order and delivery system. Imagine a food court, the stalls forming a U-shape around the perimeter, with all the seats in the center. Only, you don’t order your food from the stalls. You order your food at a central place located at the entrance of the court, then depending on what you get, your food comes from different stalls. You are given a number, and you have to watch for your number on a central screen that displays the names of all the stalls. When your number shows up, you pick up that item from that particular stall or stalls, again depending on what you ordered. Also, I don’t know if they were out of real cups or what, but when we were there, there was a water station, but they only provided the smallest, flimsiest cups imaginable. You know how at doctor’s offices, they sometimes provide those cone-shaped “cups” at the water cooler? They were like that, but not cone-shaped, and were half the size and half the thickness. Some people literally had to bring their soup bowls to the water dispenser to get more than two gulps of water. I ordered a surprisingly delicious galbi (short rib beef) and rice platter (better, sadly, than what we’d had at Han6gam’s dinner), while Adelagia only had mandu (dumplings) but due to her still-sensitive stomach could only eat three of the five, so I ate the last two. Needless to say, I was stuffed after that meal.
We just wanted a nice, quiet spot to hang out by this point - there were sooooo many people at the mall, and just being around the weekend crowd was draining the energy out of us both - since we knew we’d be expending a lot of energy at the concert later. We happened to be given a flyer for Argo Tea, which we found fairly easily so decided to just go there. (When we were going up the escalators there was some kind of basketball exhibition happening in the center area. Supposedly Kpop groups sometimes also perform at these malls, and that might have been interesting. But noooooooo it had to be friggin’ basketball.) It wasn’t as quiet or comfortable as we wanted, but it seemed that there was nowhere in this raucous mall where we’d be happy, so we just sucked it up. I don’t remember what kind of tea I ordered (I remember I wanted something involving blackberry, but they were out of it), but Adelagia got a ginger green tea. It was supposedly the special of the day and we should’ve gotten a small discount on it, but the girl who rang me up didn’t input it, and at the time of ordering I had no idea. We also possibly should’ve gotten an Americano for free, not that either of us were up for drinking it, but still. Grrrr. We spent a bit of time there before we decided to head back to the concert venue, and as soon as we went down the escalator guess what we saw? An O’Sulloc! Double grrrr. It was so embittering to know we could’ve been drinking hojicha, though the ginger green tea was probably better for Adelagia’s stomach.
Before leaving we went back to Line Friends because I decided Adelagia’s Chimmy bag was so cute I wanted the Tata version. And they had a new white plastic bag design with BT21 characters on one side and their regular Line Friends characters on the other, so I bought that too.
One of the things we wanted to make happen was to catch a cab that would take us back to the correct part of Jamsil so that we would be dropped off by the basketball arena rather than the baseball stadium. Adelagia devised a plan as to what to say to try and make that happen, and luckily we managed to catch a with-it cabbie who knew where he was going so he dropped us off at exactly the right place. HALLELUJAH!! Avoiding a long, hot walk is always worth celebrating.
Everything about the concert felt less chaotic than the concerts I’d been to in the States, either because of the audience or because it was smaller or I don’t even know what. But there wasn’t a whole lot of anxiety about where to go, and when we did have a question, Adelagia just asked a security person and then we were on our way. They opened the venue in plenty of time, which was nice because it meant you could go inside, find your seat, and rest there if you wanted. I feel like the US concerts I’ve been to, they always open the doors much later than they should, and then there’s this mad rush to go inside, exacerbated by the fact that with a bigger arena and audience, more people build up during that time, and people get anxious. This is especially the case because in the US we have general admission type tickets, so you do have to be that way if you want a good spot. At this venue, for this concert (and I assume all or most concerts in Seoul), all seats are assigned, and doing shit like rushing the stage is strictly prohibited (and prevented), so everyone just calmly goes about finding their seats. IT’S SO MUCH BETTER. WHY CAN’T WE HAVE THIS CIVILIZED APPROACH TO CONCERTS IN THE US, HUH??? They even handed out little rules/guidelines that we were supposed to follow, which I thought was cute and helpful. I didn’t understand the tying hair back thing (and only maybe half the girls seemed to do it anyway, and those of us who did probably only did it because it was warm and not because it was in the rules lol), but all the rest of it, I totally agreed with!
What we have in the US I wish they had there, however, is an appropriate level of air conditioning when you have a space filled with that many people. I’m used to almost being cold in arenas because the a/c is on so high to account for all the hot bodies. Instead, we got just enough a/c for it to make things baseline tolerable, but I had to have Cooky on the whole time to truly cool down (so did many other people with their own handheld fans). And if I felt that way in the audience, I cannot imagine how the band must have felt, when they’re actually working hard and jumping around and performing. They did mention the heat a few times as well.
As for the concert, it was fun! I don’t know DAY6 that well but I was familiar with enough of their songs (from Adelagia doing them at noraebang, and my putting a bunch of them on my playlist before leaving the US) that it was enjoyable. It was also nice to see a “real” band perform, with their instruments and all, since it’s a rarity in Kpop. But I do have to say, toward the middle I would have enjoyed seeing some dance choreography. I think especially when you don’t know a group very well, the visual stimulation of a dance routine can really help keep you interested. I also thought it was super cool how the main stage lifted up and could be moved to be closer to the audience in the stadium seats (us) than the floor. It seems to me, after having been to several Kpop concerts now, that there are two choices if you want good seats. Either you’re on the floor, which means you get to be closest to the group when they’re on the main stage, which is most of the time, but then you see only their backs for maybe a quarter of the time, and never really are able to see them straight on... or you have center seating, which means you’re not going to be close to them when they’re on the main stage, but you get to see them dead on, and then when they move up to the focused stage you’re close to them and see them straight on. Personally I think I’d prefer the latter option, though floor seat people, especially those at the edge of the stage, have a shot at actually interacting with a group member (particularly if you’re in the US). Speaking of interaction with the members - it’s amazing that, due to concert etiquette in Seoul (and Japan), idols can actually run through the crowd with a single bodyguard and not be in danger of being touched/harassed (which DAY6 did). They can’t do that in the US because we are LAWLESS here… or rather, people here feel like their needs and wants supersede that of other people, including the very idol they like. -.-
Back when I was starting to get into BTS and Adelagia DAY6, she had mentioned that Jungkook kind of looked like Sungjin to her, and she didn’t have a great grasp on what Jungkook himself actually looked like (she kept saying he looked different in every pic she saw of him, so for example in the deck of cards I got it was like seeing Jungkook and 51 of his brothers lolol). Seeing pictures of Sungjin, I thought she was nuts, lol. But live action, I could definitely see it; despite not knowing who each member of the band was, I was able to pinpoint him as the guy who was Jungkook-esque, and she later confirmed that he had been the one she’d been talking about. Sungjin could be, like... Jungkook's older cousin or something. I would say Sungjin was the one who made the best impression on me - I don’t know if it’s because of the Jungkook factor or not, but I’d like to think it’s not just because of that - and then next I would say was Young K, who had also not appealed to me that much in pictures, but was charismatic in person. This is why people must be seen live action! Pictures only work when you already know what the person looks like! Jae, who I had liked from pictures, was actually too thin for me in real life. Dowoon I was ambivalent about (in fact, I had to look up what his name was just now). The one I liked the least - though I’m sure he’d be lovely if I got to know him, like Jimin - was Wonpil, who I found deeply unattractive, and this was even more off putting because one of the official slogans (they’re like fan banners; I still don’t know why they’re called slogans) I’d seen floating around made him look like V. BUT IN ACTUALITY HE LOOKS NOTHING LIKE TAE. This slogan also made the more attractive members look unattractive, so basically the slogan was terrible.
The one piece of merch I wish I’d gotten was the light band, which is similar to the GOT7 light stick, except the DAY6 one is smaller because it conveniently goes on your wrist. It’s also Bluetooth enabled so once you connect, you can set it to “concert mode” (or at least this is how the GOT7 light stick works), and if you’re at a concert the lights change color and flicker based on the group’s current song/activity (there’s probably someone whose sole job it is to control or program the fan light experience). Also, when I mentioned it to Adelagia, she said she wished she’d gotten it as well, since it only cost like ₩15,000! The GOT7 stick cost $60 or $80, can’t remember which, but either way it was too pricey for me (though I did make a mental note to myself to buy one off eBay before their next concert, if I go. But maybe by then they’ll have a new thing they’ll make people buy, sigh).
After the concert, we caught a cab to go home. The driver (yet another older ahjussi, which make up 99% of cab drivers in Seoul) was rude and impatient, and got short with Adelagia when he couldn’t find the Lotteria’s address to input (why was that address so problematic?!). He attempted anyway to guess at our location, but unlike the other cabbie we had who did the same thing, was nowhere close. He pulled us into a hilly neighborhood that I thought might be promising, but to be safe I pulled up Naver and mapped our apartment from the current location and we still a 23-minute walk away. Since he had pulled into a very narrow part of a hill, he needed to make, like, an 80-point turn to get us back out. Since he’d been such an impatient asshole earlier, and with the irritated sounds he was making when we kept saying we were not at our requested location, I dreaded the thought of him continuing to try to find the address we’d given. Since we weren’t experts in the area, we couldn’t be of much help, either. So once we were back on the main road we told him it was fine to just drop us off there, that it was close enough. And the weird thing was that he was totally friendly! WTF.
As soon as he’d driven away we hailed another cab, and instead of giving the Lotteria’s address we found and translated our apartment’s address and gave that instead (the reason we had always mapped to the Lotteria was because we needed to drop by one of the convenience stores anyway, or because we figured it was a close-by landmark that would be easy for cabs to figure out - OH THE IRONY - since we didn’t have our apartment’s address in Korean easily on hand. When we needed it, I would have to look up the address in Airbnb, which was in English, and then Adelagia had to painstakingly re-do into Korean, not just Korean language but the address order - reversed from how we do it in the US - which btw we only figured out was the way Naver recognized addresses only recently. You’d think we would have just done it once then saved the Korean version somewhere, but no, that’s not how we roll). This new cab driver was almost entirely silent from beginning to end, but at least he got us where we needed to go, with no fuss. It was the first time - not including the time Jason drove us on check-in day - that I didn’t have to walk up that goddamn hill. YAY.
Dinner was leftover pajeon and bindaeddeok while watching an episode of Abyss, which was mostly a hot mess but at this point still watchable for its leads.
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Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Thursday, Aug. 8
We set out late after having breakfast at home of convenience store egg and toast, taking the bus to Gwangjang Market, where we roamed around looking at food stalls selling near-identical menus, primarily featuring 빈대떡/bindaeddeok (mung bean pancakes) and live octopus. One food stall was more popular than the others, but from what I could tell, that was because it’d been featured on some Netflix series. Otherwise, just like all the other times we’d encountered something similar, it seemed that every place sold the exact same thing. There were also vegetable stalls, seafood stalls, shops that sold Korean blankets and other bedding, stalls that sold prepared wares such as gift boxes of Korean rice crackers or little cookies or what have you, etc.
For lunch we went to the restaurant Adelagia and K had been to before for bindaeddeok, called 할머니 집/Halmeoni Jib (Grandma’s House); apparently K hadn’t much cared for the bindaeddeok, but Adelagia loved it and I did as well. It was also nice because the restaurant was an indoor one, so we were able to sit comfortably and enjoy a bit of a/c, rather than sit out in the sweltering heat trying to work up the appetite to eat (seriously, when I’m that hot and sweaty, my appetite seems to disappear). We also ordered a soondae (Korean blood sausage) and pig gopchang stir-fry dish that was realllllly good. The waitress told us it was for two people, which I assumed meant we had to pay double the price. That didn’t end up being the case, but then why did she tell us it was for two people?! Adelagia theorized it was because she had said, when ordering, “one (of that dish)” but they took it to mean one portion, or something. I don’t know, maybe it’s one of those things that’s unique to Korean language or culture. (I’d maybe equate it to like one order of sushi having two pieces.) We roamed a bit more after that, but it was soooooo hot... after buying two packages of things for my office peeps (a big box of Korean rice cracker things and a small box of Korean cookie type things, which cost a total of ₩11,000), we left.
In the saeujeot, which is supposed to be a shrimp sauce, I found this little guy. He was soooo cute! Almost too cute to be eaten, but as he was already gone, I didn’t want his death to be for nothing. And he was sooooo crunchy and delicious, omg. Now I’m like, how come eating tiny little crabs isn’t a thing???
We took a cab to Garosu-gil, which was known for being a shopping street (I guess like Rodeo Drive), and went to a very disappointing Line Friends store. It did have the Cooky umbrella I had to buy YET AGAIN, but otherwise was really small and limited. Because I needed to use the restroom, we ended up at a Beans Bins and I got mango juice while Adelagia got a coffee drink. You’ll notice that that was a common theme for us; I would usually get juice while Adelagia got tea or coffee. It’s not that I don’t like tea or coffee, but caffeinated drinks tend to make me need to pee a lot, which I did not need - and also I was trying to keep up my vitamin C intake. About a week before I arrived in Seoul, Adelagia had gotten sick, and she advised me to take some extra vitamin C before coming. Since I do tend to get sick in unfamiliar places (being around germs I’m not normally around), I ended up bringing almost an entire box of Emergen-C with me, which I took faithfully. However, at some point I ran out, so to try and keep up with the vitamin C intake since it seemed to be working so far (in that I hadn’t gotten sick), I hoped that ingesting juices would accomplish that and be refreshing at the same time. (Plus I do love fruit juices, and fresh watermelon and mango juice in the US are a lot harder to come by.) Anyway, there was a woman before me at the bathroom, which needed a code. She had the code, but didn't know what to do after inputting it. I pressed the asterisk for her and it did the trick, which she was very grateful for, lol. While at Beans Bins I somehow ended up spending over $200 on BT21 stuff by shopping online, thanks to Adelagia finding the Gotamochi site. She’s such an enabler. ｏ( >.<)o
We decided to walk down Garosu-gil since we were already there, but it wasn't that interesting, maybe because it had many brands that are familiar to us in the States. We passed by a makeup store and I took the opportunity to be talked into buying skincare stuff, as well as makeup stuff that nabbed me some BTS extras. We then went to a Monopoly store, which sells travel-related products. They had a collaboration going on with BT21, so Adelagia and I bought even more stuff, including planners (later we wished we’d gotten more of these, since they were kinda year agnostic, on sale, and even came with stickers, which we didn’t realize until we were back in the US) and badge holders and pens and a travel bag that could be attached to a suitcase, etc. It was funny, Adelagia bought things with various characters she liked on them, while as soon as I set my purchases down, the shopkeeper lady was like, “Oh, so you like Tata.” LOL! Guilty! Adelagia was more character agnostic because at the time she didn’t have any preference toward any particular member of BTS - now that she’s into Suga, her purchases at all the various Line Friends stores might have been a lot more Shooky heavy!
At this point we still weren't hungry since we had started the day pretty late, though I was looking forward to going back to Han6gam for dinner, which was our plan. Adelagia asked if she should get her nails done, as there was a sign on the street for a nail place, and I said yes! They were very uninviting at first, particularly the boss lady, but she quickly warmed up to us, even giving us watermelon juice (it was not very good, though - it was basically just poorly blended watermelon, seeds and all, and wasn’t sweet). Her English was decent because she had lived in the US at one point, but it wasn’t what I would call fluent.
The uncomfortable thing was that she was kind of rude about my manicure. She said she and her assistant were wondering if it was a home manicure, even, which I was like, uh... no. (Actually, everything she said she would include her assistant in, but the latter seemed like a sweet girl and I couldn’t actually understand their conversation, so I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that it all stemmed from this weird and rude boss lady.) Then she asked how much it was, and when I told her, she was like, that’s crazy, it should have cost no more than ₩70,000. And the thing is, I never know what to say in the face of blatant rudeness like this. Like… if you don’t like someone’s manicure, or their hair, or their clothing, or whatever it may be, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. I feel like “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all” is a fairly basic precept that people in general can and do follow, especially toward people who you don’t know and who have done absolutely nothing to you. I mean, if she didn’t care for my manicure, that’s fine, she’s entitled to their opinion. But I liked my manicure, and didn’t need her pitying looks or unending comments about how much I spent on them. I felt so impotently defensive, because I didn’t have the language skills to defend myself the way I wanted to (and the fact that I felt I needed to defend myself at all also made me mad, because it meant I was being attacked), since I couldn’t speak Korean well, and I didn’t think her English was advanced enough to understand what I wanted to say in that language. I mean, yes, my mani-pedi had been too pricey for sure. But I was enjoying having them, and I appreciated the work my nail technician did, and I was happy with them, so who was this lady to try and make me feel bad about it? Like that’s basically what she was doing, trying to make me feel bad about how much I’d paid for nails that she deemed were so simplistic they could have been a home manicure. (I wanted to point out that from her vantage point she couldn’t possibly see all the detail that went into them - she never once got a close-up look - all done meticulously, which took a person HOURS.) The closest I came was to say politely, “Well, I’m on vacation, so I just wanted to do something fun for myself” or something to that effect. She had an answer for that, too: “Oh, that’s what all those places are counting on.” OMG this lady. Anyway, it was an odd experience to feel welcomed and attacked at the same time, and yet I had to just let it roll off my back or turn the other cheek or whatever appropriate saying can be inserted here. Also, according to this lady, she’d been the one to start the whole manicure trend in Korea. ◔̯◔ She was definitely one of those types who liked to talk herself up (and others down).
It took awhile for Adelagia’s nails to be done, because in Seoul they really take their time with doing people's nails, and honor reservations very seriously, which I mention because they had taken her as a walk-in (which was partly why they’d been so unfriendly initially) and someone else came in later who had an appointment so work on Adelagia’s nails had to stop for awhile. The boss lady charged her a very reasonable price for gradient gel nails (₩33,000), but what was not so good was that she kept mentioning Adelagia’s small nails, prompting her to feel like she had to apologize! Seriously, this lady was weird. (Speaking of gradient nails, she already rubbed me the wrong way when we first spoke with her. Adelagia asked her for the price to do gradient nails, and the boss lady replied haughtily, “You mean gradation.” Uh, yeah, what the color does on the nail is a gradation, but the final nail effect is a gradient. You wanna correct native English speakers on our English? FIGHT ME, BITCH. Though granted at the time she probably thought we were from China or something, I don’t know. In any case from that very first moment I already kind of hated her, lol.)
There was also this moment, which I couldn’t find a good place for up above, so I’ll just slot it in now:
Boss lady: My assistant was wondering if you’re Korean?
Me: Oh, no. My parents are Chinese.
Boss lady: Yes, I know. I told her so.
Me: Okay...
Boss lady: But you look like you could be Korean. Sorry.
Me: Oh... no, that’s fine. (WTF it’s not an insult?)
Boss lady: She likes Chinese dramas, that’s why.
Me: Oh really? Well, I like Korean dramas!
I wish now that I’d asked the girl what Chinese dramas she liked to watch, because I’ve seen a few of those as well, though not a ton. I was intrigued by the fact that she liked them, though, since it’s a pretty well-established fact that Korean dramas are for the most part, far superior. However, my Korean was crap and her English wasn’t good at all, so it would have been quite difficult to talk about dramas, lol. We might have been able to try Chinese, I suppose, since according to Boss Lady the assistant girl had learned a lot of Chinese from watching those dramas. O.o Which, if that’s true, is amazing. The more I write about this whole thing, the sorrier I feel for the girl having to work with that insufferable lady.
By the time Adelagia’s nails were done it was late so we decided not to go to Han6gam and save it for the next day instead, so we could fully enjoy it without feeling rushed. We caught a cab to go back to Hongdae, specifically the Lotteria at the start of Murder Road, but the cabbie couldn't seem to find the address in his GPS. I didn’t note it down, but this might have been the cab driver who impatiently wanted Adelagia to talk to his GPS for him, but of course she didn’t know how it operated so it would mess up, and then he’d get all huffy about it, and just... ugh, some of these cab drivers were really such assholes. Also, I don’t know why, but every time we gave the Lotteria’s address - which should have been easy to find, given that it was a legitimate business address on a busy road - no cabs could find it, either from their own error or the GPS’s. This particular cabbie somehow got us to where we needed to go anyway from going off the address alone, so props to him on that. Since our plan at this point was to eat our bossam leftovers, I had the brilliant -- NOT -- idea to grab a burger from Lotteria to supplement. I somehow ended up paying ₩7800 won for a single cheeseburger. I still don't understand wtf happened. I ordered the sandwich only, but when it cost that much, I figured they had misunderstood that I wanted the set (at least according to the prices on their menu board). However, when it came time to give me my food, they did only give me the sandwich, despite, as far as I could see, charging me for the full meal. WTH??????? Obviously, if this had been an American establishment I would have asked what the heck was going on, but as I felt that trying to question them about it would only result in my being even more frustrated, I just left in disbelief with my extremely overpriced burger.
Next we went to Nice to CU for my free coffee, and this time there was a young guy there (not the girl as we had thought). I explained in my bad Korean about the 2+1, and he seemed to totally understand what was going on, and actually found my receipt. But when I went to get the bottle, THERE WAS NO MORE V. Maybe it was a culmination of the rude manicure lady, the Lotteria burger ripoff, and now this, but I was honestly SO MAD AND FRUSTRATED. I had to settle for Jin, and was so unhappy about it, given that they’d had V, the one I actually really wanted, just yesterday when I was there, if only that old man had managed to find my receipt. I was especially frustrated with that because why was the receipt suddenly there? Why had that old man not been able to find it yesterday? I seriously doubt the girl had come back at some point and suddenly remembered to put our receipt where they kept them, so it had to have been there all along. In the end I got a V, Jin, and RM! If I'd known that was gonna happen, I would've simply purchased the single V bottle and not bothered with the 2+1 at all (remember, at the time I had a Suga in hand and would have been OK with that, but had to put it back due to it being a latte), given how frustrating it ended up being to try and get the free one, only to end up with two that I didn’t even want. I considered telling the store clerk I would come back the next day to see if they had V or Jungkook in stock, but I didn’t want to further confuse matters, and anyway, at that point I didn’t want to have to keep going back to that damn convenience store.
The Lotteria burger was OK, and not very big. For ₩7800 it should’ve been one of the best burgers I’ve ever had, but it fell far short. (But really, every burger always comes up short when I think of how an In-N-Out Double Double only costs like $4.35.) We also ate most of our bossam leftovers while watching 1.5 episodes of Abyss on Netflix. The show was a bit too needlessly complicated and convoluted, but we were willing to go on with it due to liking the leads, and the cameos from Seo Inguk and Jung Somin were cute too.
Friday, Aug. 9
First thing we did was go to Namdaemun Market, but it was soooooo hot that we were sweating after just a bit of walking around. I had wanted to go there specifically for dried vegetable crisps, which my coworker M had brought back from his trip to Seoul. I’d particularly enjoyed the thin purple chips - which he’d told me was beets - but he raved about the mushroom ones as well. He said he’d gotten them at an underground market in Namdaemun, and to ask someone who worked there how to get underground. Um, okaaaay… Well, there was an information booth so I asked, and it turned out the underground market area was closed for the summer but was going open again on Monday - literally a few days later, wtf. What kind of luck is this?! However, at one of the stalls I did still manage to find the purple chips I’d liked so much, but it turned out to be purple sweet potato, not beets. I couldn’t find any mushroom crisps though.
There were a couple of stalls that were selling “Busan eomuk,” which was something I was familiar with from Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (her BFF brings a bunch of odeng back from Busan when she visits, and Bong Soon notes that it’s her twin brother’s favorite) and was interested in trying. However, on the show what they ate looked very soft and was the long, flat kind (I do not know how else to describe it, lol), but the ones in the stalls didn’t look like that, and as I was hot and therefore not that interested in eating anyway, I passed them up.
I went into a Burger King to use the restroom, then for lunch we decided to go back to Gwangjang Market for bindaeddeok, since we’d both enjoyed that and had no other ideas (I think we were hoping Namdaemun was going to be more interesting, and with more food stalls/restaurants like Gwangjang). We took a cab there, and our driver was a friendly halabeoji, though he used a lot of Korean we barely understood. On the way to Halmeoni Jib we passed by a stall that we must have passed by the day before, but this time we saw they sold the dried purple sweet potatoes!! Wtf? If I could have purchased them the day before, we probably wouldn’t even have gone to Namdaemun at all. We also passed a Busan eomuk place that had the long, flat kind of odeng, so I decided to give it a shot!! This odeng was better than the first one I’d had in Myeongdong near the beginning of the trip; it was softer than that one and only cost ₩1000, plus the little cup of soup they gave was delish. I don’t know how people can eat more than two of them, though - they’re so big!! The stall lady seemed a little put out that I was only going to eat the one stick, but honestly I was on the fence about even doing that, so at least she got something from me.
At Halmeoni Jib we ordered the bindaeddeok again, and I made the mistake of ordering jjajangmyeon, which wasn’t great. Since I was slightly full from the odeng, and the weather being so hot was off putting to my appetite, I didn’t want to get the (very filling) soondae/gopchang stir fry again (but later I’d wish we had). I only ordered the jjajangmyeon because the servers there are extremely pushy - when they come to your table to take your order, you have to be ready, or they just hover there until you decide on something. It made me anxious and wanting to choose something just so the server would stop hovering and waiting, so when she put an English-language menu in front of me I just chose the first thing I recognized, which was the jjajangmyeon. I regretted it as soon as she left; I was like, wtf, this isn’t a Chinese restaurant, why the hell would I order that? I had to hold on to the small hope that because we had enjoyed their other food, maybe the jjajangmyeon would be good too. It was not. It was extremely mediocre, with no meat in it. I couldn’t finish it and had no desire to take the leftovers, either. However, the one saving grace was that the bindaeddeok was even better this time, because they had crisped up the outside more. Adelagia ordered a plate of soondae and mixed organ meat.
After lunch we took a cab to the Hyundai City Outlets, which is more a regular mall and not outlet stores like we think of them in the US. I don’t know what “outlet” means to South Korea, if there’s anything special about them that we didn’t realize from going there, but it just seemed like a regular mall to me. One of the reasons we wanted to go was because they had an OST there, as by this point I’d realized the watch I’d purchased was too tight fitting. We found it, and the clerk there helpfully helped me readjust it. Next we went to Eblin, for more BT21 pajamas. I bought a Cooky summer PJ set as well as a Tata sleep shirt, and Adelagia got a packaged set of Koya shirts. We went to the top floor of the mall, where there were like three restaurants and a coffee shop; we were hoping for something more interesting but we were destined to be disappointed. We had uninspiring drinks and okay strawberry macarons while there. We also went into some kind of beauty shop (Sephora-esque), and there were two things of note: Products that had K-celebs (like Yook Sungjae and Park Hyungsik) recommending them… and they mysteriously also had a small BT21 section and a single roll of BT21 packing tape, which YES I BOUGHT IT.
Since it was walkable we then walked to Doota mall, which had a Line Friends. A very lame and small Line Friends, I might add. They had some cute decorations we hadn’t seen at other stores, but product wise it wasn’t anything new. We went through the mall for a bit, but really did not see anything much of interest, except an ad of Kim Soo Hyun selling some kind of facial(?) machine, more BTS sponsorships of various products, and some little girl dresses that Adelagia and I agreed our much, much younger selves would have LOVED and worn all the time. We left the boring mall (which was being shilled by Monsta X, much the same way as BTS shills for Lotte Duty Free) and sat outside for a bit… and yes, I came face to face with a freaking Shake Shack. Not gonna lie, though - I definitely would have preferred a Shake Shack burger to the Lotteria one I’d had the previous night. -.-
Outside on the street there was also some annoying lady droning on and on in some kind of demonstration/protest, except you couldn’t actually see anyone, and the message repeated itself over and over using the same intonation, so it was probably a recording. In any case there were police cars and security guards around, for what it’s hard to say since we couldn’t understand what was being demonstrated, and there was no crowd of people or really anyone showing any interest at all, lol. Quite uneventful as far as demonstrations go.
In an attempt to be cultural, we then walked across the street to find some kind of “park,” but it turned out to be more of another shopping area, lol. Perhaps it was designated a park, or was designed by a famous artist or something, I don’t know. Adelagia’s notes say that it was the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, so there you go. There was some sort of Disney exhibit, but the entry fee was more than we wanted to pay for something we were only marginally interested in. There was also an indoor area with a few shops and a convenience store, but also a small row of tables where artists sat to do drawings, like caricature artists on NYC streets or something. However, the art from these artists were a lot more interesting than caricatures, reflecting more the artist’s personal style. There was one girl whose art we liked in particular, and her prices were reasonable, but she had just started on a couple of girls so we decided to leave and come back later to see if she was available then, as it was the sort of thing we felt would make for a cool keepsake from our trip. We made our way to the nearby Kakao Friends store, but as I had zero interest in KT characters and was feeling hot and tired, I decided to go sit at one of the tables out in the plaza and made good use of Cooky (my handheld fan).
Out in the plaza was a huge screen showing various ads; whenever I saw it, it was either promoting the Disney exhibit or featuring some old white guy artist who I had no interest in. Adelagia, however, was lucky enough to catch part of a BTS ad for Lotte Duty Free when she came out of the Kakao Friends store, so of course I had to get a recording of it. I think we had to sit through three rounds of those ads before I had something I was happy with.
Click to viewUnfortunately that was probably one round too many, because when we went back to see if the artist was free, she seemed to have just gotten started on another customer. Argh!! She was the most popular artist there by far, because both of the times we were there, none of the other artists were occupied. And while I appreciated one of the other artist’s styles, it was also far too edgy for the kind of keepsake we wanted. Also, small gripe from me and Adelagia about the artist we were interested in: GET SOME BUSINESS SENSE. The first time, we had been hovering quite obviously - she should have asked if we were interested in getting a portrait done, and maybe we could have worked out a time to come back or something. The second time, we had obviously come back, showing definite interest, and again, she could have/should have acknowledged our presence so that she could get another commission. Instead, because we couldn’t keep just waiting around with no guarantee of ever catching her at the right time, we had to just leave.
We went back to the main street in order to catch a cab; it just so happened that one pulled up to drop off some passengers. We saw that it was a cab for “foreigners only,” so when we got in I made sure to speak in English, lol. Because the cab driver didn’t know where we wanted to go and had to input it into his GPS, he was taking some time idling there. The car behind us wasn’t having it, and kept honking and being totally obnoxious, before pulling up alongside us. It was some young ahole guy (to no one’s surprise), and the two of them started cursing at one another. It was both amusing and alarming. Adelagia and I have both watched enough dramas to recognize the cursing that was happening back and forth, and after it was all over and done with and we were on our way, I sent a KT to Adelagia: “I should’ve joined in. ‘야!!! 미친새끼야?!?!’” (Translation: “Hey!!! Are you a crazy asshole?!?!” It sounds more natural in Korean, okay.) LOL. I don’t know if that would have made things infinitely worse, or if the shock of it would have gotten the two of them to shut up.
In any case, we really liked our driver, because his English was pretty good; I can’t remember if he’d spent any time in the States at all, but he enjoyed practicing his English so that was nice. Also, he’d only been driving a cab for like three months or something, and said that the neighborhood where we were asking to go was not one he’d been to before. He talked about how, as a local, he would always hear of things here and there that were great places to go, but he never actually went. Of course, I can totally relate to this, having lived in Seattle now for like 20 years and never having gone to the Space Needle in that time. He also talked about some kind of celebrity-owned nightclub or something and how people were up in arms due to the cost of getting a table there - his English faltered here and the price of the table could be anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 to $100,000; he said all three numbers and given how differently numbers are stated in Korean it’s impossible to know which one was what he really meant, lol.
Dinner was at Han6gam, highly anticipated given J’s rec and our own experience with lunch. We got the combo that cost ₩42,000 each, but only came with about 5oz of meat. They would tell us to grill the food ourselves, but then someone would always come back to check on it and turn the meat, then take it away to slice, so it was kind of pointless? Anyway it was OK, but lunch was infinitely more satisfying both taste wise and wallet wise. Maybe J got one of the super-expensive platters they had, which was why he called it one of the most unforgettable meals he’d had in Seoul. I can’t imagine him describing the meal we had that way.
Once we got home, we started “prepacking”... at least, I think this was the night that started, anyway. I had sooooooooooooo much stuff that, up until this point, eyeballing it I had not felt overly alarmed. But seeing it now, I was starting to get worried, lol. What prepacking meant for me was to start packing things into the Away Medium suitcase I’d used as a shell for my Bigger Carry On. The BCO had been pretty much full, so I would have to put all my new purchases, plus the DVDs and what not I’d ordered from that lady on eBay, into the Medium. The good news that night was everything fit. It was already almost full, but everything fit and I was able to zip it closed without sitting on it, lol. The bad news was that I still had a few days left in Seoul, and there was NO WAY I wasn’t going to buy more things.
HOW was all this going to magically come back with me???
Saturday, Aug. 10
데이식스 콘서트 일! (DAY6 concert day!)
The night before, Adelagia was struck by food poisoning or some kind of Seoul bug type thing, and was up until 2 a.m. dealing with that. :/ I’m not really sure that it was food poisoning, only because we ate pretty much the exact same thing the night before at Han6gam. If anything, I ate more and different things than she did, such as the white kimchi she didn’t even touch, or the salad with the fruity dressing she didn’t care for. We did have a different lunch, me with my uninspired jjajangmyeon and her with the soondae/organ meat, but if it were really food poisoning from that, surely it would have struck earlier in the day?
We began the day by walking up a long, steep hill to Seoul Escape Room’s Hongdae Branch 1 location. Even though we love escape rooms, for some reason we hadn’t been fired up about doing one in Seoul... me because I was still wary of how the English was going to pan out, and Adelagia because... I actually don’t know why. We just weren’t as eager to do it as we might have been anywhere else. However, I did think it would be one of those things we’d regret not doing if we spent 2½ weeks in Seoul, and reminisced about our trip later, so we booked a room. (Oh, I remember now too that part of my reticence came from the research I’d done on their rooms. It seemed they had one big storyline, with different seasons, and if we wanted to start from “episode 1” we’d have to go out of our way to do them in order. Thus, inertia took over. When we finally booked the room I just had to pretend like I didn’t know about the seasons/storyline thing so that my completist nature wouldn’t be too anxious about it.)
A nice young girl was our gamemaster. The cool thing about Seoul Escape Rooms is that you don’t have to pay ahead of time, but they do contact you to confirm you’re going. It was also very reasonable in price; for two people it cost ₩48,000, then if you pay in cash you get another discount, and if it’s your first time, you can add their KT group as a friend and get another coupon, so this first escape room ended up only costing ₩38,000 for both of us. (If you have more people, the price per person scales down.) It turned out that the room we were doing, “Chairman’s Office,” was like episode 3 of the first season. Luckily they give you a short story to read to catch you up on what all has happened before this point, so you understand your objective. I was relieved to see that the English in this short story was very good. Also, as we sat there waiting and reading, we noticed that Bomi/Apink had been there, along with other celebs we didn’t know or couldn’t read the writing (Korean handwriting is soooooooooooo hard to read omg).
It was actually a pretty good room - and the English wasn’t an issue at all; I can’t remember how much of it was English-related, but clearly it either felt natural, or wasn’t a big component, if it didn’t stand out. However, we didn’t escape because we got stuck for long moments in a few places, and even though we got on a roll at the end, the final thing was a remote-controlled car (there was a “maze” in the ceiling, which is also where the car was), and I was just TERRIBLE at controlling it. :/ I usually use inverse controls in video games (like many left handers), but it wasn’t possible with this manual controller (I tried turning it upside down to simulate the effect, but it didn’t quite work the way I wanted - it was just awkward in a different way), and I kept going in directions I wasn’t trying to go/that was against the logic of my brain. In the end it didn’t really matter, though, we wouldn’t have been able to figure it out anyway, because we only had like two minutes left, and we hadn’t even driven the car to the correct spots to light up the various symbols/numbers (and then we would have had to use the mirror to see the top of the car for the order of the numbers). However, that final solution was the code to the escape door, so we weren’t that far off from escaping (the whole, “get stuck for a long time in a couple of places, then pick it up at the end, only to lose in the last minute” thing seems to be a common theme of ours). Oh, also, I somehow got the car stuck in its little hiding spot in the wall, and our gamemaster had to retrieve a ladder to get it out. For our picture she had us draw on a whiteboard; initially I had drawn a car but had to erase it since it gave away an element of the game.
Top right; Apink. Bottom right; a Bomi. Possibly our Bomi, from Apink, or possibly a whole other Bomi entirely.
Next!!! We took a cab to Jamsil Stadium so Adelagia could get some DAY6 merch, as she didn’t want to risk that stuff being sold out by the time of the concert. Our cab driver favored a radio station that played “What I’ve Done” (Linkin Park), followed by “Your World” (Little Mermaid) then “Be Our Guest” (Beauty and the Beast). LOL so weird.
We were dropped off at the baseball stadium, but there were like, zero signs indicating we were in the right place. And there was hardly anyone around, which also did not seem right - there should be at least some fangirls around. We went into a museum type place to ask for directions, and the girl working there heard Adelagia’s question then immediately asked if she could respond to us in English, haha (we gladly said YES). It turned out the concert was at the basketball arena so we had to trudge there in the heat. I mean, it wasn’t that far away, but when in the kind of weather we were suffering in, it felt like miles. Along the way we finally saw some DAY6 banners and fangirls... near the stadium was also a little something for me, some kind of commemorating plaque for BTS that also had their handprints in bronze.
Once we got to the right place Adelagia went to the merch tent while I waited in the shade with other fangirls who were there early. I made Cooky work his little fan butt off. Adelagia was able to purchase all of the little stuffed animal representations of the members, but apparently it was already too late to get the limited free merchandise with purchase, and the t-shirt she’d wanted was gone, too. WTF? Learn how to fucking make money, JYP. I mean, honestly, it was only the second concert day and they were out of stuff??? And EARLY on the second day, too. Also, they didn’t have bags (not even to purchase), so where would people put all the shit they bought? OMG, I was so disgusted by this apparent incompetent merchandise strategy by supposedly a big, successful entertainment company.
Afterward, since it was hours before the concert actually started, we wanted to go back to Lotte World Mall and had to desperately get a cab in the heat, which several other people were trying to do as well. (For some reason cabs in this area were very few and far between.) We walked a little ways from the venue and were finally able to nab one, but the cab driver, while friendly, didn’t seem to know what he was doing. Once near Lotte World Mall he kept asking if he could stop at the current location and when we said yes, he just kept going. Like ?????? But also there was something wrong with his meter maybe, because the ride only cost ₩3800.
For what seemed like hours (but maybe was actually “only” a literal hour, maybe less), we trapped ourselves in Lotte World and Lotte World Adventure Theme Park and all the fucking Lotte malls that apparently kind of, sort of, maybe connected? until we somehow finally found our way to where we had been the last time. Seriously I don’t think either of us understood how we finally got there, but were just grateful that we had.
Part of the reason we’d wanted to return to Lotte World Mall where we’d been before was to go to the Line Friends store there that had a t-shirt Adelagia saw the last time and didn’t buy, but ended up regretting it. Alas, it was gone from the store by this point, but she did get a Chimmy bag for her DAY6 purchases.
We went back to the food court we’d found last time (with the bakery that had the stick-of-butter croissants), but it was crowded and unappealing so we went back out to try for a restaurant type place (high-class clowns like to be served, tyvm), but the “theme” restaurants on the top floor held no appeal, and we ended up in another food court situation where we at least found a seat almost immediately. It had a very interesting food court order and delivery system. Imagine a food court, the stalls forming a U-shape around the perimeter, with all the seats in the center. Only, you don’t order your food from the stalls. You order your food at a central place located at the entrance of the court, then depending on what you get, your food comes from different stalls. You are given a number, and you have to watch for your number on a central screen that displays the names of all the stalls. When your number shows up, you pick up that item from that particular stall or stalls, again depending on what you ordered. Also, I don’t know if they were out of real cups or what, but when we were there, there was a water station, but they only provided the smallest, flimsiest cups imaginable. You know how at doctor’s offices, they sometimes provide those cone-shaped “cups” at the water cooler? They were like that, but not cone-shaped, and were half the size and half the thickness. Some people literally had to bring their soup bowls to the water dispenser to get more than two gulps of water. I ordered a surprisingly delicious galbi (short rib beef) and rice platter (better, sadly, than what we’d had at Han6gam’s dinner), while Adelagia only had mandu (dumplings) but due to her still-sensitive stomach could only eat three of the five, so I ate the last two. Needless to say, I was stuffed after that meal.
We just wanted a nice, quiet spot to hang out by this point - there were sooooo many people at the mall, and just being around the weekend crowd was draining the energy out of us both - since we knew we’d be expending a lot of energy at the concert later. We happened to be given a flyer for Argo Tea, which we found fairly easily so decided to just go there. (When we were going up the escalators there was some kind of basketball exhibition happening in the center area. Supposedly Kpop groups sometimes also perform at these malls, and that might have been interesting. But noooooooo it had to be friggin’ basketball.) It wasn’t as quiet or comfortable as we wanted, but it seemed that there was nowhere in this raucous mall where we’d be happy, so we just sucked it up. I don’t remember what kind of tea I ordered (I remember I wanted something involving blackberry, but they were out of it), but Adelagia got a ginger green tea. It was supposedly the special of the day and we should’ve gotten a small discount on it, but the girl who rang me up didn’t input it, and at the time of ordering I had no idea. We also possibly should’ve gotten an Americano for free, not that either of us were up for drinking it, but still. Grrrr. We spent a bit of time there before we decided to head back to the concert venue, and as soon as we went down the escalator guess what we saw? An O’Sulloc! Double grrrr. It was so embittering to know we could’ve been drinking hojicha, though the ginger green tea was probably better for Adelagia’s stomach.
Before leaving we went back to Line Friends because I decided Adelagia’s Chimmy bag was so cute I wanted the Tata version. And they had a new white plastic bag design with BT21 characters on one side and their regular Line Friends characters on the other, so I bought that too.
One of the things we wanted to make happen was to catch a cab that would take us back to the correct part of Jamsil so that we would be dropped off by the basketball arena rather than the baseball stadium. Adelagia devised a plan as to what to say to try and make that happen, and luckily we managed to catch a with-it cabbie who knew where he was going so he dropped us off at exactly the right place. HALLELUJAH!! Avoiding a long, hot walk is always worth celebrating.
Everything about the concert felt less chaotic than the concerts I’d been to in the States, either because of the audience or because it was smaller or I don’t even know what. But there wasn’t a whole lot of anxiety about where to go, and when we did have a question, Adelagia just asked a security person and then we were on our way. They opened the venue in plenty of time, which was nice because it meant you could go inside, find your seat, and rest there if you wanted. I feel like the US concerts I’ve been to, they always open the doors much later than they should, and then there’s this mad rush to go inside, exacerbated by the fact that with a bigger arena and audience, more people build up during that time, and people get anxious. This is especially the case because in the US we have general admission type tickets, so you do have to be that way if you want a good spot. At this venue, for this concert (and I assume all or most concerts in Seoul), all seats are assigned, and doing shit like rushing the stage is strictly prohibited (and prevented), so everyone just calmly goes about finding their seats. IT’S SO MUCH BETTER. WHY CAN’T WE HAVE THIS CIVILIZED APPROACH TO CONCERTS IN THE US, HUH??? They even handed out little rules/guidelines that we were supposed to follow, which I thought was cute and helpful. I didn’t understand the tying hair back thing (and only maybe half the girls seemed to do it anyway, and those of us who did probably only did it because it was warm and not because it was in the rules lol), but all the rest of it, I totally agreed with!
What we have in the US I wish they had there, however, is an appropriate level of air conditioning when you have a space filled with that many people. I’m used to almost being cold in arenas because the a/c is on so high to account for all the hot bodies. Instead, we got just enough a/c for it to make things baseline tolerable, but I had to have Cooky on the whole time to truly cool down (so did many other people with their own handheld fans). And if I felt that way in the audience, I cannot imagine how the band must have felt, when they’re actually working hard and jumping around and performing. They did mention the heat a few times as well.
As for the concert, it was fun! I don’t know DAY6 that well but I was familiar with enough of their songs (from Adelagia doing them at noraebang, and my putting a bunch of them on my playlist before leaving the US) that it was enjoyable. It was also nice to see a “real” band perform, with their instruments and all, since it’s a rarity in Kpop. But I do have to say, toward the middle I would have enjoyed seeing some dance choreography. I think especially when you don’t know a group very well, the visual stimulation of a dance routine can really help keep you interested. I also thought it was super cool how the main stage lifted up and could be moved to be closer to the audience in the stadium seats (us) than the floor. It seems to me, after having been to several Kpop concerts now, that there are two choices if you want good seats. Either you’re on the floor, which means you get to be closest to the group when they’re on the main stage, which is most of the time, but then you see only their backs for maybe a quarter of the time, and never really are able to see them straight on... or you have center seating, which means you’re not going to be close to them when they’re on the main stage, but you get to see them dead on, and then when they move up to the focused stage you’re close to them and see them straight on. Personally I think I’d prefer the latter option, though floor seat people, especially those at the edge of the stage, have a shot at actually interacting with a group member (particularly if you’re in the US). Speaking of interaction with the members - it’s amazing that, due to concert etiquette in Seoul (and Japan), idols can actually run through the crowd with a single bodyguard and not be in danger of being touched/harassed (which DAY6 did). They can’t do that in the US because we are LAWLESS here… or rather, people here feel like their needs and wants supersede that of other people, including the very idol they like. -.-
Back when I was starting to get into BTS and Adelagia DAY6, she had mentioned that Jungkook kind of looked like Sungjin to her, and she didn’t have a great grasp on what Jungkook himself actually looked like (she kept saying he looked different in every pic she saw of him, so for example in the deck of cards I got it was like seeing Jungkook and 51 of his brothers lolol). Seeing pictures of Sungjin, I thought she was nuts, lol. But live action, I could definitely see it; despite not knowing who each member of the band was, I was able to pinpoint him as the guy who was Jungkook-esque, and she later confirmed that he had been the one she’d been talking about. Sungjin could be, like... Jungkook's older cousin or something. I would say Sungjin was the one who made the best impression on me - I don’t know if it’s because of the Jungkook factor or not, but I’d like to think it’s not just because of that - and then next I would say was Young K, who had also not appealed to me that much in pictures, but was charismatic in person. This is why people must be seen live action! Pictures only work when you already know what the person looks like! Jae, who I had liked from pictures, was actually too thin for me in real life. Dowoon I was ambivalent about (in fact, I had to look up what his name was just now). The one I liked the least - though I’m sure he’d be lovely if I got to know him, like Jimin - was Wonpil, who I found deeply unattractive, and this was even more off putting because one of the official slogans (they’re like fan banners; I still don’t know why they’re called slogans) I’d seen floating around made him look like V. BUT IN ACTUALITY HE LOOKS NOTHING LIKE TAE. This slogan also made the more attractive members look unattractive, so basically the slogan was terrible.
The one piece of merch I wish I’d gotten was the light band, which is similar to the GOT7 light stick, except the DAY6 one is smaller because it conveniently goes on your wrist. It’s also Bluetooth enabled so once you connect, you can set it to “concert mode” (or at least this is how the GOT7 light stick works), and if you’re at a concert the lights change color and flicker based on the group’s current song/activity (there’s probably someone whose sole job it is to control or program the fan light experience). Also, when I mentioned it to Adelagia, she said she wished she’d gotten it as well, since it only cost like ₩15,000! The GOT7 stick cost $60 or $80, can’t remember which, but either way it was too pricey for me (though I did make a mental note to myself to buy one off eBay before their next concert, if I go. But maybe by then they’ll have a new thing they’ll make people buy, sigh).
After the concert, we caught a cab to go home. The driver (yet another older ahjussi, which make up 99% of cab drivers in Seoul) was rude and impatient, and got short with Adelagia when he couldn’t find the Lotteria’s address to input (why was that address so problematic?!). He attempted anyway to guess at our location, but unlike the other cabbie we had who did the same thing, was nowhere close. He pulled us into a hilly neighborhood that I thought might be promising, but to be safe I pulled up Naver and mapped our apartment from the current location and we still a 23-minute walk away. Since he had pulled into a very narrow part of a hill, he needed to make, like, an 80-point turn to get us back out. Since he’d been such an impatient asshole earlier, and with the irritated sounds he was making when we kept saying we were not at our requested location, I dreaded the thought of him continuing to try to find the address we’d given. Since we weren’t experts in the area, we couldn’t be of much help, either. So once we were back on the main road we told him it was fine to just drop us off there, that it was close enough. And the weird thing was that he was totally friendly! WTF.
As soon as he’d driven away we hailed another cab, and instead of giving the Lotteria’s address we found and translated our apartment’s address and gave that instead (the reason we had always mapped to the Lotteria was because we needed to drop by one of the convenience stores anyway, or because we figured it was a close-by landmark that would be easy for cabs to figure out - OH THE IRONY - since we didn’t have our apartment’s address in Korean easily on hand. When we needed it, I would have to look up the address in Airbnb, which was in English, and then Adelagia had to painstakingly re-do into Korean, not just Korean language but the address order - reversed from how we do it in the US - which btw we only figured out was the way Naver recognized addresses only recently. You’d think we would have just done it once then saved the Korean version somewhere, but no, that’s not how we roll). This new cab driver was almost entirely silent from beginning to end, but at least he got us where we needed to go, with no fuss. It was the first time - not including the time Jason drove us on check-in day - that I didn’t have to walk up that goddamn hill. YAY.
Dinner was leftover pajeon and bindaeddeok while watching an episode of Abyss, which was mostly a hot mess but at this point still watchable for its leads.
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