Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 7 AM JST

The beginning of my journey starts at Itami Airport in Osaka, Japan. My flight was scheduled to depart at 8:25 am. I arrived in line around 7 but had to wait in the check-in line until about 8:10 ish as there were many people scheduled to take a connecting flight from Tokyo to abroad. When I finally got through check-in, I had to rush to my flight and wait for the JAL agent that checked me in to provide me an excess baggage receipt. They held the plane for me thankfully.

Friday, June 18th, 2010 at ~9:40 AM JST (Total Duration: 2hr 40min)

The Osaka to Tokyo flight went fairly unhitched. It left relatively on-time and arrived at around the time they said (this is what most people expect from airlines and is not true for my experience with AA). At this point I went through customs and told them I might come back to Japan so I held onto my residency card and filed a disembarkment card.

Friday, June 18th, 2010 at ~11:40 AM JST (Total Duration: 4hr 40 min)

The flight from Tokyo to Chicago also went fairly well. It left on-time and arrived at around the correct time as well. I met some interesting people on the plane and had a very pleasant conversation on the voyage. I have truly come to appreciate JAL and their level of service.

Friday, June 18th, 2010 at approx 9:35 AM CST
Friday, June 18th, 2010 at approx 11:35 PM JST (Total Duration: 16hr 35 min)

We arrived in Chicago on-time as expected. My scheduled departure towards Ottawa was schedule for 2:55 PM CST so I had a 5 hour wait ahead of me. Luckily, the U.S. was playing Slovenia where I watched the controversial game at an airport bar and grill.

Ok so here is where it starts to turn sour…

Friday, June 18th, 2010 prior to our 2:30 PM CST departure…

So, I and the other passengers are waiting outside the gate and the weather seems to be as good as it needs to be to fly. At this point, the snobby and irritable flight agent said that the flight was being delayed by 30 minutes due to the flight attendant not being on the ground. My grievance with this is why couldn’t they find someone who was on ground and route him/her to our flight? Is she the only one who can do this job? In situations like this, they could reroute a flight attendant and get someone else on board. Flight attendants are used to travelling and routing another flight attendant would have been the best solution here. Regardless, it was still the air carrier’s responsibility to have a working flight and flight attendant by the time we were scheduled to leave and both of which they failed to uphold (more on the “working flight” part later).

So when the flight attendant finally arrived, she arrived with an attitude you could measure in her tone. The time was close to 4-4:30 pm so obviously my fellow riders were irritated at how much she delayed our flight (and how many “it will be just a moment”s our failed agent uttered). Shortly after boarding the flight, one of the riders needed to go to the washroom and quickly returned complaining of the filth. I remember him saying “turbulence could not have done that”. The flight attendant went inside to check and she was also appalled and phoned in maintenance to come clean it up. Thirty minutes later: the maintenance crew showed up and finally cleaned up it. At this point we were ready to fly.

So it was about 5 pm… We were scheduled to leave at 2:30 but the air carrier let us down by not providing us a suitable air craft (no one checks the aircraft before we board?) or a flight attendant (no provisions to re route someone if the delay is… 2 hours long?)? Anyways, I am sure I will never take American Airlines at this point and will gladly pay first class airfare to never experience this again but unfortunately, it gets much worse.

So, just before we are about to embark, someone behind me says “I hate to say it but take a look out the window. We aren’t going anywhere.” I took a peek and saw a fog engulf the airport. Rain came quickly after with an onslaught of lighting and thunder. Soon after, an agent came in from the still-open exit to the gate saying we needed to disembark the aircraft as all flights were grounded. After waiting inside the aircraft for about an hour, this was painful to say the least.

So around 6 pm the storm subsides and planes start getting cleared to fly again. I see several gates with tickers saying “Scheduled: 5:40 pm, Departs: 6:45 PM”. For some ridiculous reason, our flight said “Scheduled: 2:45 pm, Departs: 8:30 PM”. The reason our obnoxious and irritable flight agent provided us was “the flight is undergoing maintenance”. It is American Airlines responsibility to have a flight ready for us by the time we are schedule to fly. It is now past 6 pm and we don’t have a plane that can fly? What is this? Certainly not good service.

So when 8:30 comes by, our flight gets delayed to 9:10 PM. We were able to board starting around 8:50 PM, which was a pleasant surprise at this point. Everyone got seated, we had our snappy flight attendant and obnoxious agent see us through to the point of disembarkation. This time, thankfully, we actually disembarked!  I was expecting that they would pull another fast one on us but they didn’t.  At this point, after spending hours in travel from Japan, I took a nap expecting us to be in the air by the time I wake up. The pilot said there was about a 45 min wait of planes ready to take off so we would be on the runway for a bit.

I wake up around 10:20 PM and we are still on the ground. Again, I see more lightning and showers and no planes taking off. We are on the runway. The pilot says we are getting re-routed and that we don’t have enough fuel to follow the intended route. So, we have to go back to the airport. Sighs echo throughout the aircraft. We get close to the airport and we are not allowed to disembark until a crew can get out and usher out those large ports/gates. We wait for 30-45 minutes in the aircraft in front of the airport until the crews can come out. The obnoxious and even more irritated agent from before comes inside and says the flight is now cancelled and that we would have to make bookings with an agent and that the flight is cancelled… get this… wait for it… wait for it… “due to weather”. I quickly reworded that to “cancelled due to a lack of a flight attendant, lack of a flyable aircraft, lack of service, lack of an ability to check weather forecasts, and finally a lack of competence”. Obviously, our obnoxious agent wouldn’t admit to any of those .

So, we were all expected to get out and make rebookings. No, they would not schedule this same plane full of ready-and-able passengers for the first takeoff in the morning. Instead, you have to go and schedule another flight with an agent. Unfortunately, there are only so many seats available and I was sitting near the front of the plane while my backpack was closer to the back (I gave up my seat so that a father, mother, and two children could sit together). Perhaps if I was with my backpack in my assigned seat, I could have got off the flight and get to an agent in time to schedule a flight the next morning. Too bad though, since by the time I got off the flight, the only flight from Chicago to Ottawa the next day as already full! Oh everyone, sing with me, “I hate American Airlines… I hate American Airlines…”.

So my choices were: take a flight on Sunday at ~8:30 AM CST (remember my first flight was on Thursday at 5 PM CST) or take a flight from Chicago to Toronto at ~11 AM and then find my own way of getting from Toronto to Ottawa. I would have liked this choice if it wasn’t 1 AM CST in the morning and I could call a few people in Toronto for a favour. But it was quite late and I was unable to make any international calls (I tried using the pay phones three times and all times they stole my money and said “we are unable to complete the call”. So, I decided on the flight on Sunday.

The agents were giving out hotel and taxi vouchers. But since the flight was cancelled due to weather and not any of the multitude of other acceptable answers, the vouchers were not 100%. The taxi voucher was 1-way (the hotel was 20 minutes away $30 USD one-way) and the hotel was $85 /day. Oh and even though I was staying for two nights in Chicago seemingly against my will, I would have to COME BACK to the airport to get another voucher as it was “the policy that we cannot print out vouchers for more than one night at a time”. This one agent had no soul.

The first night I was thinking of sleeping in the airport. They had cots in the K section of the airport. All the agents told you to go there and when you went to check and find there were no cots left, the agents had already left so you couldn’t ask them for a blanket and a pillow! Oh and all the blankets and pillows were gone too. I saw people sleeping on the cold floor, on hard benches, on 1 person-seats with arm rests on both sides (which looked terribly uncomfortable). Anyways, it was a dreadful sight and pathetic how little respect American Airlines has for it’s customers. I will tell this story to everyone with 100% confidence those who hear it will never fly them if given a choice.

After finding out that there were no cots left and no pillows or blankets, I went to the closest agent (and certainly not that obnoxious one from before). I asked him if there were any pillows or blankets left. Simple answer: no. I then asked him if he could give me a voucher for two-nights instead of one. He started typing something and printed something out. He gave it to me and said here are three new vouchers. 1 voucher was for 2 nights in a hotel all paid for. The other two vouchers were for taxi cab fare there and back. I had found the only reasonable and nice agent in the building. He made the other agent look even more obnoxious as his “policies” came under question. I left the secured section of the airport promptly and found even more people sleeping downstairs on the luggage tracks behind the check-in counters.

So it’s about 1:30 AM at this point… about 27 hours after starting my voyage in Japan.

After leaving the airport, I got in line for a cab. There were about 100 people in line waiting for cabs. I eventually got a cab that accepted the vouchers (very few of them did and I waited an additional 30 minutes after getting to the front of the line!) and made it the the hotel safely. Another interesting side point is that the bellstaff was all Japanese and they had a famous Japanese channel NHK on TV. I watched that for awhile to feel more relaxed.

Anyways, the hotel was awesome. If I had a change of clothes and some company, I would have enjoyed it more. There was a mall close by that I went to but was pretty much bored for my 1 unenjoyable day in Chicago. Guests are expected to pay for the Internet but when I called the front desk to ask about it they just gave me the password for free so that was nice too. I promptly emailed my family and skyped Chiaki letting them know where I was and what happened. Oh and another thing that annoyed me was the concierge at the hotel. He told me I should leave the hotel at 4:30 AM on Sunday to get to the airport for 6:30 AM for my flight at 8:30 AM. He said there was a lot of traffic at that time! I was like no f*ing way and asked the two hotel front-desks who told me my original estimate of 6:00 AM was fine. I hate bad advice and when people have such conviction in that advice.

When Sunday rolled around, the flight was delayed once again. This time, only by about 45 minutes to 9:15 AM. I was a little distraught and worried it would happen again as the city was suffering from isolated thunderstorms. However, I believe it was because of the strong winds that shut us down that Friday afternoon. Anyways, the Sunday flight took off like Friday had never happened and well like I said, I think it’s fair to judge a company by how bad the bad times get, and this was certainly one of the worst experiences of my life. Glad I can associate it with a brand and just tell others to never fly AA again. It’s like if you buy insurance for your car or home to protect you from certain terrible experiences. The only insurance in this case is to simply not fly them again.

Total Duration: 75 Hrs

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Christmas

Christmas isn’t much different in Japan than the North American version. You still get presents for your friends and family and they still get presents for you (or else would it really be Christmas?). Unfortunately for us, and I still don’t know if this is common, we didn’t have a Christmas tree. Instead, we used some makeshift plant as a tree and put presents around it. Hooray. The stores were their usual self playing Christmas music with Christmas decorations galore. It was interesting to see the local KFC with their statue of Colonel Sanders dressed up in a Santa outfit and to see at the local mall not Santa but guess who? Ultraman. Who needs jolly old saint Nick anyway? Why not a super hero sent from space to defend Earth from aliens? Way cooler.

New Years

The most interesting Japanese holiday traditions involve New Years. I was kind of surprised at how important it is here in Japan after experiencing how similar Christmas was. Firstly, Japanese people support the Chinese astrology and subsequently the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. The new year brings the tiger to replace the cow so likewise, you see images of tigers and stuffed fluffy tigers everywhere. Secondly, New Years brings the most fun and interesting concept to shops: fukubukoro! Fukubukoro is a Japanese New Years tradition at shops where shops include random goods into a sealed container and sell it for one flat price. They tempt you with what could be in the boxes like for example some electronic stores package $500 worth of stuff into a $250 fukubukoro and hide it randomly among other lower valued fukubukoro. I did end up buying one as I’ve looked forward to this all year long. I got a Police fukubukoro for $50 that contained a necklace, bracelet, and a hat. If you know Police, you know that’s a steal. Thank god more people don’t know Police here or that price would go through the roof.

Among other things, Japanese people tend to have a very specific diet on New Years. They generally start eating a prepared meal of raw fish and traditional Japanese foods in the morning. From there, I think it’s up to the family. Specifically, we had sushi for lunch and sukiyaki for dinner, which are both still very traditional Japanese meals. Also during this time, older people are expected to give money to younger people in the amount of generally more than $100. No it’s not an early birthday gift or late Christmas gift; it’s extra.

Another interesting tradition for New Years is one I took part in early New Year’s morning. Not all Japanese do this but many have done it at least once in their lifetime. The tradition is to climb the local highest mountain, visit the mountain’s temple before sunrise, and then view the sunrise with everyone on the summit. As it can be very cold during January and at 5 – 7 am, it’s understandable people don’t do this every year. However, it is a thrilling experience when you climb a mountain in the dark and see the sun break from the clouds in the freezing cold.

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2. Happy New Years!
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Perhaps the coolest thing in Taiwan is Taipei 101. Okay, it is just the world’s tallest building with brilliant art direction and very creative architecture. Taipei 101 also had the world’s fastest elevator, traveling at 60 km/hr straight up for a total duration of approximately 37 seconds. Anyway, here are some action shots.

Since it has been a long time, give me some time to come up with a discussion of their food, shopping, and tourism scene . Until then, enjoy this gallery:

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Fuji-Q Highland is one of the most popular amusement parks in the world. It has supposedly holds 2 records in the roller coaster category: 1) Highest roller coaster (Mount Fuji Ride), and 2) most number of inversions in a single ride at 14 rotations. Both of these rides we had to wait 2 hours for but let me just say they were well worth it. Here is a shot of the inversion ride. It was simply amazing. I think the Japanese must love their roller coasters.

Perhaps the biggest reason I went back was just to see Mount Fuji. Unfortunately, the previous time, we were clueless to the whereabouts of Mount Fuji. This time, we truly could not have missed it. Check out the gallery for more pictures.

After going on the two large roller coasters and some of the smaller rides, we headed back onto the bus back to Shinjuku. At Shinjuku, we went to a marvelous Spanish restaurant that has been in Shinjuku for 30 years. I really loved their paella

Anyways, sit back, relax, and take a look at the photos. They are very relaxing I think.

Check out the photos here

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Well, for about 4 years now, I have been pretty interested in cars. I have been to most of the limited motor shows in Ottawa and a couple in Toronto, but nothing I’ve seen can compare to the Tokyo Motor Show. Just to see the concept cars and all the incredible presentations and installations, well, in a word, was just wow.

I was most impressed with the Mazda Taiki. This beautiful car was designed in Japan and was inspired from Japanese art and culture. The word “Taiki” means “Atmosphere” in japanese. The design team’s goal was to create a concept that “visually expresses the flow of air”. This beautiful concept was inspired by the image of a pair of flowing “Hagoromo”. “Hagoromo” are the “flowing robes in Japanesee legend that enable a celestial maidan to fly”. These excerpts are from the Mazda Tokyo Motor Show hand-outs that were available at the Mazda Taiki stand.

Most of the reason why I went to the Tokyo Motor Show was because I wanted to see the new Nissan GT-R, that is scheduled to release next year. This hyped sequel to the incredibly popular Nissan Skyline of the 90′s is perhaps the most sought after car for next year.  At $80 000 for a supercar that can rival Porsche Carrera GT’s lap time at Nurburgring, that is an incredible deal and I look forward to see these driving around … Canada? Okay, probably not, but hopefully I will see at least a couple. (Source: EGM CarTech ). Luckily, I did get to see the Nissan GT-R as close as spectator-possible at the Tokyo Motor Show, mainly by pushing and shoving. Here is the best shot I could take:

Anyway, enjoy the gallery here:

View the Gallery!

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The show starts out with a selected number of male comedians that will get punk’d. These comedians are generally picked from either the most popular ones at the time or just a random selection from the thousands of comedians that are on primetime TV in Japan. The real interesting point about this show that makes it much more entertaining than the American Punk’d is that they fool these comedians with beautiful Japanese models. How you may ask? Well they pick a beautiful model, they set the comedian up with the model at an event like a photo shoot, give them a chance to talk, and get the model to pretend to be interested and ask them for their number. This is insanely cruel but really funny to see what the comedians are like in real life.

So now you know the basic story of what happens in the show. Let’s go with how the show is set up. When the model and the comedian exchange cellphone numbers, the model’s cellphone is given to the show. The show MCs then pretend to be the girl and everyone can see the comedian’s messages. Another group of beautiful models at the show judge whether or not the comedian is crazy and whether or not the girl should go on a date with them. If the date proceeds, they make a fake date scenario to do something to the comedian.

In case the date occurs, the scene is all set-up in advance with cameras everywhere the comedian and the girl will go. One of the simple story lines that I saw took place when the girl and the comedian would meet infront of her house. She would forget something and run back to her house. While going back, she would accidentally slip and fall and pretend to be hurt. The comedian would come to help her and then fall into a giant pit. A famous comedian (lately) started doing this dancing skit, and when he got punk’d on this show, a hundred guys came out of nowhere and surrounded the pit and started dancing. That was a good laugh.

Among all the punk’d comedians, my favorite would have to be the handsome comedian who actually got the girl to fall for him. It seemt like a perfect date and you could tell that she liked him because of her body language. Unfortunately, she was playing a role on the show, and it was time to get punk’d! They went back to her apartment (fake apartment), and she showed him her modelling outfits. She asked him to try one on and she would get into something nice too. Well he tried something on and it was a cheerleading outfit! He even danced too hahaha. Anyway, the skit ended with the “ex-boyfriend”, which was supposed to be a yakuza-type, jealous boyfriend, coming and asking to get back together with her. She told the comedian to go hide out on the balcony while she talks with the ex-boyfriend. Well, the ex-boyfriend came in and found him and she said that if the yakuza guy doesn’t hurt the comedian, she would get back together with him. Anyway, it was quite entertaining because at one point the comedian was hiding on the balcony, wearing rabbit ears and a cheerleading outfit, trying to hide from the yakuza. He was really scared, that’s for sure.

Anyway, here is a clip from the show. It is not the same episode I saw but it is still pretty funny. I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v301485bGEsrHDe

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Hospitals in Japan are generally kept in very good condition. The hospital that I went to had a ground floor emergency room and where I was required to go was the 2nd/3rd floor checkup facilities. There were at least 20 other people there that were getting check-ups so I am guessing that hospital is a hotspot for insurance companies to send the employees to.

Unfortunately I did not take any photos, so I will do my best to describe the location. The waiting room was huge! And I mean huge as in they had a giant TV with the World Series on. They also had at least 80 seats with 2 massage chairs. I wish Canadian hospitals had massage chairs in the waiting rooms! The waiting rooms downstairs at the emergency floor also had giant plasma TVs.Damn.

Well like you know, the reason why I went to the hospital was to get a routine physical examination. This health check wasn’t too hard. The only hard part about it was that they spoke Japanese only. That’s why I went with my company friend who spoke both English and Japanese. During the examination, you basically proceed from room to room until you reach level 5, errr room 5. Then after that you pay your fees and go home.

Room 1-3 involved checking your weight, height, eyes, ears, and blood pressure. The weight and height check was routine but the eye and ear examination was interesting. For the eye examination, they check to see if you are blind by having you read various sizes of a rotated letter “E”. You just need to say if the “E” is rotated up, down, left, or right. After that, they check if you can hear low and high frequency sounds. This was all pretty basic so far. After checking your blood pressure in room 2, you go and talk with a doctor who pretty much told me that from the results in room 1-3, I was healthy.

At room 4, they do blood work and check your heart. They do a blood drain from the elbow, which in my experience is usually taken from the forearm or bicep. For checking the heart, they check it’s pulse at different parts of your body by using suction cups. I assure you that they check it nowhere interesting =p.

Room 5 is definitely the hardest stage of them all. To check for cancer tumours, they use a medicine called Valium that allows them to see organs quite clearly (I think that’s it’s purpose). I got to see the X-Ray machine live while the doctor was checking my friend’s insides. It was quite interesting to be in the control panel and seeing the X-Ray machine live. The reason why this one was the hardest stage of them all is because they make you take Valium and for it to work to allow the doctor to check your organs, you have to follow detailed instructions given by the doctor. The hardest of these instructions involved rotating on the spot 2 times while you are lying down on your back. Valium makes your stomach full and mouth and neck thicken, so talking and moving seems funny. It was an interesting experience to say the least and at the end of the Valium check they pull out a little robotic arm that punches you in the stomach. What does this check? I still don’t know.

After taking the valium, I heard that if you do not drink enough water and did not follow the instructions the doctor gave you, it could solidify in your butt. This would be twice as bad for me because the doctor actually asked me to take 2 times the traditional dose because my stomach was too small. Luckily, they give you pills to make you have diarrhea so I didn’t have to face this potentially terrible ending, but the voyage was pretty stinky.

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Tour Bus System: In Seoul, they have tourism on their mind with their every 30 minutes daily tour bus that travels all around the city to all major tourist locations. There are 3 lines for this tour bus system and each comes with a different experience. We got the Palace and Seoul Tower package, which was roughly $10 CDN for the entire day and you can buy this ticket right on the bus from the tour guide. Amazingly, the tour guide also speaks 5 languages: Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, and French. Damn I wish I had the time to learn 5 languages.

Subway System: The subway system is a vast network of lines all owned and operated by the same company. When looking at Japan, you will notice that Japan has at least 3x as many stations and more companies that operate the subway system. However, Seoul is a relatively compact city and thus does not require such a massive subway system as Tokyo.  Korea also has the Korean equivalent to the Japanese bullet train called the Shinkansen. Although the Korean version of the Japanese Shinkansen is uglier and less comfy, it is still just as fast as the Shinkansen here in Japan. Also, the subway cars in Korea are much larger in comparison to the subway cars here in Japan. They are also more dirty and stinky >.<. Interestingly enough, some of the stations enclose the train line within a giant plastic box, which has doors that open when the train arrives. Apparently, there were a number of suicides and people falling on the lines that caused the government to respond by encasing the train in a giant box and only opening it when the train has stopped moving. Luckily, Tokyo does not have this problem.

Roads and Cars: The roads are relatively straight forward and are definitely not as complex as Tokyo’s road system, which was designed to confuse foreigners. About cars though, while on the tour bus, I counted the number of Hyundai cars out of 30 that I saw. It was about 70% (21) cars that I saw were Hyundai. Also, the drivers are often assholes. I was walking on the street in the photo below, and a car was coming into the crowd. While approaching us, the side mirror hit my arm. On another note, when I was waiting at a bus stop, some guy was transporting his house or something on a motorized scooter on the sidewalk. The side of his house or box or whatever hit me in the shoulder and that really hurt.

View the whole gallery by clicking this link!

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Korea has a very nice shopping scene. My favourite part of Seoul shopping is a nice little place called Dongdaemun, which is open until 5 am every day. This allows street shop owners to stay out all night in their shanties or near their tables and allows stores to pump up music both outside and inside as if they were some sort of club. It is fun walking around at 11 pm and start to see more people than there was at say 9 pm. There’s frequent stage performances near the more popular stores that draw large crowds and are fun to watch. Check out this video, it’s funny. You might need to let it load for a minute or two because that giant white spot below is for the video, not for “style”.

[VIDEO]/img/gallery/2007/08/korea/videos/01.flv[/VIDEO]

As for shopping malls, many of these stores are really just giant clothing stores of hundreds of small shops. It is very crowded because of the 6ft aisles and with hundreds of shops, there is a large selection of clothes to choose from. All shop owners will and successfully rip you off because they know you do not speak Korean and they know you do not know the real price of any of the clothes. I got suckered into buying a $30 100% Korean shirt by trading in a 500 yen coin and 20 000 Korean wan. I think I got a good deal in that trade by negotiating to pay in Japanese yen but perhaps not because he was too entertaining that I felt he deserved more just for the big commotion he made about Chiaki and I coming from Japan. A little weird, but it was a lot of fun. Everyone competes for your business in the shopping malls by screaming at you and yelling at you if you make eye contact with them or any of their clothes. Example: “HEY, THIS WOULD LOOK GOOD ON YOU!”. No photos of that deal, sorry -> gomenasai! We also got Chiaki’s brother a nice 500 yen Nike shirt that looked seriously good.

Electronics in Korea can range from normal price to dirt cheap. My friend Nadia told me that if she wanted to, she could go over to Yongsan Electronics Market, a popular electronics area, and get me a cellphone for $40 Canadian dollars. I have no idea how good it would be, but that’s a risk that I should have taken if I had more time. Needless to say, there is a large amount of fake electronics in Korea outside and even inside the stores. I got myself a nice pair of fake Sennheiser Open Dynamic Headphones (CX300) ($100 CDN) for just under $20 CDN. I find it difficult to tell if they are fake or not because the quality is so high. I’m guessing LCD TVS must be cheap too because at the train station in the photo below, there’s an unsed LCD TV that was just hanging on the wall. It wasn’t even in a popular area. Damn I wish Samsung was Canadian.

Finally, the weirdest thing about Korea is the weird dancing traffic guards infront of the parking lots of malls. I only saw them when we were travelling in our tour bus around the city, but these weirdos were moving their hands around like butterflies and waving people into the parking lot. They seemt more like mimes, unaware of their surroundings, and just dancing weirdly in the street rather than actually doing any job at all. Perhaps you can find something about it and post up a comment. I briefly tried with google them but found no media on the subject. This is the most interesting thing I have seen since Shaolin Soccer.

View the whole gallery by clicking this link!

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In Canada, we have many Korean barbeque places and I thought Korea should have the best Korean barbeque in the world. Well, in fact, barbeque is just barbeque. The thing is, due to this hype, many places charge ridiculous rates for Korean barbeque. Luckily, on Day 3, I went with an old friend who is Korean that helped us find a good place to eat (and affordable!). Most of these places are located near City hall (if you plan on going). And sorry, there’s no Korean dessert that I know of.

Also, an interesting thing happened on the day we went to Korean BBQ with Nadia. Some Japanese tourists were looking for a restaurant that they had reserved and they didn’t speak any English or any Korean. So my girlfriend translated into English for them and Nadia took them to the restaurant. Moral of the story: knowing multiple languages is definitely useful .

Finally, on the first day, we went to a 100% authentic Korean restaurant. It was located in the busy nightlife of Dongmyo (I can’t remember if this is the right name but it seems right >.<). This restaurant was family owned and had fusion Korean and Italian food. The Italian fusion was really just an Italian name with a Korean name and the food came with more cheese lol. I didn’t take a photo of the food because I was starving, but here is a photo of the restaurant:

View the whole gallery by clicking this link!

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