Korea House

Korea House is an interesting place in that it houses – pun completely intended – a cultural showcase as well as a high-end restaurant. It is listed in pretty much all “tourist maps” but there are a few different names for the same place so it can get a bit tricky to locate (even though it is literally a 5 minute walk from the closest train station which is a very important thing if you are visiting in winter time). The architecture of the place is very distinct and beautiful. This view is from the inner courtyard – from outside getting a view is a bit more difficult because there seems to be a construction.

The food part is pretty decent, served buffet style and there is a wide variety to choose from.  The price is a bit steep though and it seems during the week there is not a lot of takers for the buffet (to be fair I took this picture right before the cultural show thingie was starting so people were all gone.)  It is still recommended, and may be even required, to make a reservation though and the easiest way to do that is through the concierge. I am thinking this place being so, touristy (no one there was Korean when I was there), they should be able to handle phone reservations in English as well.

The food was nice and all but I think the highlight was easily the cultural part of the experience. Korea House hosts a stage where various cultural aspects of Korea is on display for guests to enjoy after dinner. This place requires its own reservation by the way and like a theater the seats are numbered, with each reservation tied to seat numbers. As performances are displayed, the TV on the right, displays information in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English. The show I watched was pretty nice including things like a fan dance, moon dance by a couple, and various musical performances. Even though it is not allowed to take pictures during the show, after the show some performers come outside so you can take pictures with them as a souvenir.

Send your mail from a vending machine?

I saw this red guy at a subway station in Seoul. It caught me by surprise I must say – after all I have never seen anything like this in Japan yet. This vending machine type of deal lets you mail letters and even packages by buying postage right then and there. This is different than one of those stamp dispensing machines by the way – you don’t need to get a set of stamps and then lick/stick a stamp yourself. You use this handy touch screen menu to choose what you are sending and the machine tells you how much you need to put in. As you can see below it even has an English menu – convenient? I would like to think so. Of course one can argue that such a contraption is unnecessary in Japan where there is a post office ever few hundred meters (at least it seems that way in Tokyo.)

The English is pretty good too save for the title which seems to be a little… mixed up… Ah, scratch that – it looks like they wanted to keep the acronym “PASS” though it is a bit forced, no?

Seoul Subway System

In many ways Seoul Subway reminds one of the Tokyo's own underground transportation mechanism. The stations are clean, you can use an IC card to get in and out, and it is by far the easiest way to get around in the city. There are just as many differences however: Among other things, all of the subway system seems to belong to a single entity with each line being denoted by a number as well as a color instead of names, all subway lines seem to be local, the IC system works slightly differently, the stations seem to be more poorly lit, the overall grid is much smaller and less complex (but then this is not a surprise, right? Tokyo has one of the most complex subway/train systems in the world.).

I guess a few words of wisdom for anyone who is going to be navigating Seoul's underground train wonderland: Make sure you get a map beforehand. Most stations have maps but not always in English. The trains themselves and the stations do have station names written in English as well as Korean (and Japanese on board the trains) but the numerical ordering of lines and the whole color system can get a bit frustrating without a map to keep track of which stations to use for transferring to another line. One good map is the one over at the official web site - here. The IC cards are very useful and makes it easier for travelers who don't want to deal with figuring out which ticket to buy. The particular one I bought was called T-Money and it was usable on board the bus from Seoul Tower as well. The IC card is sold at the stations and there are machines for recharging (though not for the initial sale). 

Finally I want to mention one weird thing that happened on the trains a few times (which is a lot if you consider the fact that I was there only for 3 days). There seem to be people asking for money who go from car to car. One time it was a blind lady with a cup of sorts, playing music from a little radio type thing and walking slowly so as to allow people to put money in her cup. Another time it was a guy who gave letter type thing to everyone in the car including me (though the content of the letter is completely lost on me since it was completely in Korean) and then came back and collected them, some people giving him money with the letter. It was one of the weirdest experiences I had in Seoul. Come to think of it, I guess there is a law against asking for money directly so people came up with these indirect, creative ways to do so...

Seoul Tower

It grabbed my attention the minute I walked into my hotel room, towering on top of a hill, situated right in the middle of the window (how that window never fogged over I have no idea with the temperature outside practically reducing anyone careless or unfortunate enough to stay outside for more than 3 minutes to a block of ice). This tall chunk of steel had its share of history in this city which has seen many wars and it has apparently been around for a relatively long time. After hearing that the view was amazing I knew I had to go check it out for myself. I asked the concierge at the hotel for the easiest way to get there and within the hour I was on the bus there.

The tower is even more impressive from close-up but beware if you are planning on going there - the bus drops you off about a 100 meters or so from the foot of the tower. Now, you might say "100 meters - that's not much"... Well, you would be right in terms of absolute distance but if you take that 100 meters and tilt it at about 50 degrees, then you get a better idea about the challenge of climbing up to the tower.  Add in the cold temperature and you can see how this might present a challenge. Getting into the tower requires a ticket which comes in various flavors - one offering a discount for a restaurant in the tower.  Oh and there are a few of those inside the tower and they seem to be on the expensive side - no clue about the quality of food.

The view from the top is pretty good and I snapped a few pictures but it is a pretty difficult thing to do at night because of reflections and the foggy windows. I still recommend the place if you happen to be in Seoul. The observatory was filled with Japanese and American tourists when I went there so it does seem to be pretty popular even though it was not as crowded as Tokyo Tower.

Lotte World

Well, of course I could not spend my whole holiday in Seoul engaged in matters of exchanging clothing items for cash now could I? So, I switched gears and decided to indulge myself in a little bit of R&R by the means of an amusement park, aka the biggest indoors amusement park in Asia, aka Lotte World.

 Now, the place is fun and all but it is no Disneyland so let me get that out of the way before diving in a bit. Not that you don't get that  impression as soon as you get off the train. The station which is connected to Lotte World has no signs as to how one might manage to get to the park. Contrast that with Disneyland directions all the way in Tokyo Station which is more than 30 minutes away by train and you can get a good idea about the difference in approaches. Even when one is literally 2 minutes walking distance in the underground maze of stores leading to the park one does not see directions to the park. I guess they may prefer having some sort of elimination mechanism to weed out the guests who are not resilient enough to get through the maze...

OK, I guess that was a bit more than I thought I would mention about, you know, just getting there but I think it was relevant. The place itself is nice with many rides but since the place is covered, even though it is the largest covered theme park, is small compared to the usual fare of theme parks which tend to be huge outdoorsy deals. There are a couple of roller coasters, a stage where they do live shows (which I found pretty strange since the dancing people seemed like with their costumes they would feel much more at home at Las Vegas than at a place like this filled with little kids), bunch of restaurants including a Turkish one , an ice skating rink, and a lot of other relatively small rides.

Connected to the "Lotte World - Great Adventure" is the "Folk Museum". This is basically a national history museum for Korea. It starts talking about Korea and cavemen if you can believe it and goes all the way up to the Japanese occupation. It is a pretty interesting place and I think it is a great idea - you take the kids to the amusement park and they also get to visit a museum. Not a bad way to squeeze some education into the  amusement park visit. My favorite here was hands down the miniature cities complete with miniature soldiers, townspeople, and all.

The park is also connected to another, more traditional, outside park. In the temperature-wise challenged months of winter this park is still open but it is completely painful to walk around in. There is a castle here which seems so.... Disney... In fact they use the silhouette of the same castle as the logo for Lotte World and I half expected Tinkerbell to come out with her wand. I felt pretty bad for food vendors in this park who had to stick around and work in the cold. There was even a yakitori vendor which I thought was pretty cool.

If you are in Seoul, by all means, go and pay this place a visit. It is not so expensive and you can get a day-pass for less than $30 which lets you visit all three big attractions - two parks and the museum - I mentioned. Now, I doubt you would want to visit the place twice but it is definitely worth it to see it once.

Shopping in Seoul

As the Korean currency, the Wong, has been on a downward spiral of sorts against the Yen recently, shopping in Seoul has become very attractive for the Japanese. Couple that with the generally low prices of Seoul and you get a good explanation for the recent influx of the shoppers, taking the short trip over to Seoul.

The biggest shopping center in Seoul, at least the biggest one that is underground - an attribute which is crucial in the frigid Seoul winter, is COEX. COEX is an underground maze of big and little stores selling pretty much anything and everything you can think of, as well as restaurants. The place is so huge it is basically made up of individual malls and streets of shops connected together. It is definitely a good place to check out but unfortunately it is quite a ways far away from central Seoul - about half an hour to forty minutes by the Seoul subway. If  you can brave the travel though, I am sure you can find what you are looking for here (assuming you are not looking for the infamous pirated/fake stuff - those are hard(er) to spot in big shopping centers).

The most popular shopping location is much closer to the city center - albeit it is a smaller, more traditional, and outside - Myungdong Shopping Street. What you have here is basically a longish street flanked on the left and right by stylish shops with a decided bias for clothing items. This place is the place to shop if you are even remotely interested in clothing stuff. The prices are, at worst, competitive with Tokyo in higher end stores and at best less than half of what one would pay for similar items here in Japan. I was able to pick up a corduroy jacket, shirt, and sweater for less than $100.

Another underground/covered mall is the Lotte Mall connected to Lotte World (which I will talk about in the next post). Lotte Mall is similar to COEX though of course smaller. If you happen to go to Lotte World you can easily step into the the mall.

Seoul impressions soon...

After spending 3 days in Seoul I came back to Tokyo yesterday night but it took me all of today to sort through the pictures I took and you know what that means - no post today. I will start writing about my quick impressions on Seoul (and Korea) starting tomorrow hopefully. I promise it will be interesting ;)