Yamanote line station chimes

We've been slowly exploring Tokyo by subway and JR Line railways since we arrived. I noticed that each station seemed to play a different "chime" over the loud speaker after a train arrives. I had thought it would interesting to try and collect recordings of each tune but, not surprisingly, some one has got there before me.These are the chimes for all the Yamanote line stations. The station names are all in Kanji, but if you translate them though google it gets about three quarters of them correctly, (but then the links to the chimes don't work so use the first link). The correct station names are here.

My favourite is Ebisu (Translated as "The god of wealth" on the list). What's your favourite?

Thanks to Gaijin Girl, who wrote an interesting blog on her life in Japan but has just left the country, for the link.

Some Korean Links

I recently put together a list of the 30 top ranked Korean websites. At the time I thought it would be interesting to try and rank the Korean blogs but I couldn't figure out a quick way to do it, so well done to Gdog over at The Daily Kimchi for doing something similar for Korean Blogs.

He has produced a list of the top 46 Korean blogs ranked by their Blog Juice. Top of the list is of course The Marmot's Hole followed by Mike The Metropolitician. In third place, a blog I've not come across before, is Web 2.0 Asia. It's written by Chang-Won Kim who is the co-CEO of Korea's leading blog software company, TNC. It covers lots of new web related stuff coming out of Korea.

The list continues with lots of other well known Korean bloggers, Oh, including this one too! In fact there was only one blog that was new to me in that list Everyday seoul.

I was asked recently about going to teach English in Korea and I was able to point them at this excellent summary of 44 Tips for getting a job in Korea from Chris that I had just read.

If you need to get from Cheonan to Seoul Station on a rapid train Delta Eagle, has all the details.

Japanese Tee shirt slogans

It was about this time last year, after a month in Korea, that I posted an item about Korean Tee shirts, with a photo of my all time favourite: The Convex Magnum Opes.

The Japanese also go in for Tee shirts with English slogans. Most of them are slightly more intelligible than some I saw in Korea, but not much.

This one would have been very amusing on a young lady:



I didn't have the heart to ask the young man what he thought his Tee shirt might be about.

If he was wearing it in Peterborough, England he might have risked a fine, as this chap did for wearing a strongly worded Tee shirt.

Stephen Colbert laughs at the Japanese

Just so that the Koreans do not get the idea that Stephen Colbert only makes fun of them, here he is on a new restaurant in Tokyo :



It's not a place I will be visiting soon.

Link from Keeping Pace in Japan which is another blog on Japan I've recently added to the blogroll.

Update: Here a video from a blogger who actually tried it out: from An American In Japan

Eros Museum Seoul

I discovered the Eros Museum of Seoul when I was wandering around the city in the area near the Blue House.

It had just opened its doors to the public for the first time on Aug 21st 2007.
It is on three floors and has a small but interesting collection of artefacts relating to erotic art in Korea, China, Japan and other Asian countries.


As this is a family friendly blog I will not show you the full image..

but there are plenty of examples of Japanese 'Shunga' works on display.
You will have to go to the museum to see the rest of the picture.

The museum is open every day except Monday. Admission is 5,000 won. You may not want to the take the children, unless you want to do a lot of explaining. To get to the museum go to Seoul Selection bookshop and continue walking north towards the Blue House. The museum is on the right hand side of the road. The local bus (number 11) from Gwanghwamun stops fairly close by.
The museum printed the name of their website on the flyer, but while they are paying for the domain they do not seem to be running a website there yet.

When researching some links for this blog post I came across the Asia Eros Museum in Seoul which was opened in May 2003 and was mentioned by the BBC at the time as the first sex museum to open in Korea.

Seoul Fine Arts Competition

On my last day in Seoul I visited a number of museums and events.

The Seoul Fine Arts Competition was interesting. It was only 2,000 Won to get in and I was brusquely informed that it was "Only Korean, no English". So nothing new there. It was in two halls. The first had some modern art pieces which were quite good. In the second hall were hundreds of scrolls of hanguel and chinese characters. Here's a collage of the photos I took:



The exhibition started Aug 21st, but I'm not sure if it's still on or not. If it is still running, it's at the Seoul Museum Annex beside the Seoul Musem of History building.

I'm A Seoul Man, In Tokyo

We arrived safely in Tokyo last week and moved into our new house. Today J:COM installed our internet and telephone connection. It has taken a week from first contact. Not quite as fast and efficient as KT were when we arrived in Korea, but just as easy.

The commute to work is quite acceptable: 4 minutes walk to the local station, three stops to Shibuya, then one stop on the Yamanote line. I've barely got time to read more than a few pages of the Japan Times newspaper. I've observed that the total fare deducted from my Suica card for the two journeys is 240 Yen. In the morning both journeys are 120 Yen each, but in the evening the Yamanote trip is only 110 Yen, but the Inokashira line trip is 130 Yen. Strange.

The Koreans will be pleased with a letter to the editor in yesterdays paper from William Wetherall reminding the Japanese how much they owe to their friends across The sea that we still can't agree a name for.

Korean Adventurers

Various people are setting off on adventures of one sort or another in the next few weeks and months.

President Roh is off to North Korea in October. He can't use the expensive new train route, so rather than fly to Pyongyang, he has decided to take the limo and drive there. On the way, he will perhaps see the devastation the recent floods have caused. The summit meeting, will be only the second time leaders of the two countries have met since the end of the Korean war.

Two Kiwi gentlemen, Andrew Douch and Roger Shepherd, are planning to walk the Baekdu-daegan Mountain Range running down the middle of South Korea. They will be hiking from Jiri-san northwards to Seorak-san, over a period of about nine weeks starting in September. They are probably the first non Koreans to attempt this trek. Follow their progess on their expedition blog.

Daniel Martin, currently teaching English in Seoul, has planned a trip by bicycle from Korea to Cape Town, South Africa. Daniel has already cycled from London to Cape Town, and has now found a tougher challenge: "The Axis of Evil (by bike)". He plans to depart from Seoul and cycle to the border with North Korea. Unlike President Roh, he's not planning on trying to cross the DMZ, but will get the bus back to Incheon and fly to China and then on to North Korea. He would like to cycle to the border with China, but how much cycling they will let him do remains to be seen. After NK his route includes Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and on through Africa. He is setting off on Sep 1st and raising money for the charity Wild Day Out. I will be following his progress on his blog.

Kevin, The Big Hominid, is planning a walking trip in the US from the west coast to the east coast next year. Check out his blog for more details.

Joe is still trying to leave the country. Meanwhile, Chris Gelken has safely arrived in Tehran, Iran to start his new job.

And today marks the last day of our Korean Adventure. Tomorrow my wife and I fly to Tokyo and move into our new house. I will be starting work on Monday 27th.

Korea has been a fascinating country to live in. I have met a number of interesting people and learnt a great deal about this country and it's history. I hope that, through this blog, I have shown tourists and foreigners living here that there is plenty to see and do.

This blog will continue with posts about Korea; I've still got plenty of pictures and places to share with you. I will also be adding items of interest about Tokyo and beyond as I explore Japan and experience working there.

Top 30 ranked Korean Sites

I spotted a list of the top 20 Most popular Japanese websites on Ken's blog What Japan Thinks, which gave me the idea to do the same for Korean sites.

Following his methodology I downloaded the list of the top one million sites from Quantcast and searched for various Korean related words including Korea, Seoul, Kimchi, any domain ending in .kr and I included the English language sites that I am aware of. I filtered out the adult content sites and came up with this list of the thirty highest ranked sites on Korea.

Update : Thanks to Gdog for pointing out I forgot what is actually THE top ranking korean site : Cyworld!

Rank	URL	Description
14252	cyworld.com	Home of the mini-hompi
23405	naver.com	The two biggest Korean portals are popular in the US as well by the looks of it.
25652	daum.net
25986	chosun.com	Chosun Ilbo newspaper
36657	koreanwar.org	A huge site about the war
37930	koreanair.com	The airline
40836	eslcafe.com	Dave's ESL cafe. The hangout of a lot of teachers.
47295	kbs.co.kr	State Broadcasting company.
49606	donga.com	Dong-A Ilbo newspaper
55900	medicallaw.co.kr	A commercial site of some sort.
56209	knu.ac.kr	Kyungpook National university
56614	lifeinkorea.com	Popular site with a lot of tourist information
56819	korean-war.com	Another war site
57748	worldcupjapankorea.com	Hasn’t been updated since the 2002 Japan/Korea World Cup, but must have been heavily linked to when it was on.
60731	tour2korea.com	Korea National Tourism Organisation
73997	hankooki.com	Korean newspaper with English section on the website
77368	koreandrama.org	A blog in English with "Details, Synopsis, Cast and other info of all Korean Drama TV Series"
80311	kaist.ac.kr	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
80773	google.co.kr	Not very high in the rankings
81855	koreatimes.com	English language newspaper
83797	koreanfilm.org	Provides a wide-ranging introduction to Korean cinema.
84343	topsafe.co.kr	Very small commercial website
91736	sbs.co.kr	Korean broadcaster
92195	msn.co.kr	Microsoft's Korean presence
92289	koreadaily.com	English Language newspaper
102197	hankooktireusa.com	Hankook Tires
104207	koreanwar-educator.org	Another war site
107369	snu.ac.kr	Seoul National University
111793	auction.co.kr	Korean Auction site
123827	yahoo.co.kr	Yahoo trailing MSN
128346	theseoultimes.com	The Seoul Times

Interesting list. The newspapers do well, the war is popular and the only blog is one I've not heard of before! Are there any sites I've missed out?

Korean Clubs and Societies

This may be of interest: Teaching in Korea, Survey if you are interested in giving your opinion to a researcher in the US. There is very short summary of a research article and some questions on that and then about twenty questions asking about how you would rate certain facilities and services a teacher might be offered. She is offering a 1 in 25 chance of winning a 20,000 won gift token for Kyobo Books. I noticed it in the free adverts in the Korea Herald this week.

I was complaining last week that I'd not seen a copy of the magazine The Groove, so it was fortuitous that I should pick up a copy at The Wolfhound on Sunday. Their website had not mentioned that it was free. I initially dismissed it as not that interesting or relevant, but closer inspection revealed the short articles were not that bad. The interview with Peter R Brown, animator of the TV series who lives and works on the show here in Korea was interesting.

The small ads yielded a huge range of clubs I never knew existed here. I hope these will be of interest to some:

The Seoul Vegetarian club. They meet twice a month to check out veggie friendly restaurants. Non-vegetarians welcomed too!

MeetInSeoul "Come and hang out with a large free all volunteer social group. No membership fees, just pay for your own cost of the events (movies, dinners etc). "

Friendship club Their purpose is to meet at a bar on Saturdays and meet new people.

Conservatives Abroad. For supporters of David Cameron back home, they host social events, fundraisers and possibly public speakers from London.

American Women's Club They meet at the Hyatt hotel once a month.

The Australia and New Zealand Association They also meet at the Hyatt once a month.

Seoul International Women's Association They meet once a month at the Sofitel.

The British Association of Seoul They meet once a month at the Seoul Club.

Career Women in Korea They meet once a month at the New Seoul Hotel.

Suwon Scuba Club A dive club close to Osan Air base and Camp Humprehreys. They teach PADI courses and run regular tours for fun dives to the East Sea. The club also has a major social element.

Seoul Stich and Bitch They meet twice a month for a crafting get together in Haebangchon in Seoul.

Yongsan Kimchi Hash House Harriers Join them every Saturday at 10am if you like running walking and trekking through Seoul. There is also a SouthSide HHH group.

Korean Movie club They show Korean movies with English subtitles on a 120inch screen at a venue near sinchon station.

The Club Italia They host a lunch every Sunday for 15,000 Won. All welcome.

The International Hikers club meets every Saturday.

These groups also had adverts, but no webpages. For contact details see The Groove Website.

The Sinchon Toasmasters club are looking for members keen to improve their public speaking.
Fusion Art, seeks members involved involved in various arts for regular meetings.
Mostly over 40,This club meets once a month for lunch and consists of people mostly over 40.
Seoul Board Riders, for surfers keen to discover Korea's secret surfing spots.
The Canadian Women's Club meet several times a month.
There are also four different football clubs, two Rugby clubs and a Korean Cricket Association.

I hope you can find something you are interested in if you are short of things to do.

Free Furniture in Seoul

The Korea Bloggers meetup last night was a resounding success. I was delighted that so many people showed up. There was Jes, ExpatJane, Matt, Daeguowl, ZenKimchi; the bloggers; Derek, Suzanne, Joon, YoungDoo, Bill, Vicky, Stephanie, Isaac and David from flickr; and Kurt, Henny, Torento (sp?) and Joe who were friends of the aforementioned. I was delighted to meet you all. The photographers amongst us were very busy taking photos all evening, so if you check out some of the members photos you may recognize a few people.

In the excitement of so many people I completely forgot to mention the fact that we have some furniture to give away before we move out. We have offered it to several people, but no one has committed to taking it away yet.

Update: All the furniture has been found a home.

Various items of interest

Some things I found recently:

Brendon Carr, regular commenter at the Marmots Hole, has started Korea Law Blog including insights into getting a job, and setting up and running a company in Korea.

One of Stafford's co-workers, Grant, has just arrived in Seoul to teach ESL and started a well-written and interesting blog A Year in Seoul.

James Tunbull has started The Grand Narrative which looks interesting too, and not just for the pictures of Jang Sin-Yeong.

The creators of Galbijim have started a new blog called Korea Beat. They claim to be "The web’s only spot dedicated to Korean news articles translated into English!". I found them from a picture in the blog Asian Off Beat.

Danny Kim has just started Techno Kimchi. His goal is "To focus on the social dynamics, cultures, and economics behind the rise of Web 2.0". His Korean blog Taewoo's Log has about 5,000 RSS subscribers and 4,000 daily visitors, so he must be doing something right.

I mentioned tonight's K-bloggers meetup in the Korea Images group on flickr. That led to a comment about the 24hrs of flickr, Seoul meeting. 7pm Aug 23rd in Gangnam. It is being held to celebrate the launch of the book 24 hours of Flickr which I mentioned back in May. You can join members of the Flickr team for an evening of fun. They will have copies of the book and other "fine Flickr schwag" on hand.

News Update: Mike "I've battled a hoard of attacking ajummas for a pair of shoes" Hurt, of the Metropolitican maybe coming along tonight.

I've heard stumbleupon talked about a lot recently, mostly on problogger.net, so I signed up recently. It's another social bookmarking site. It's simple to use: sign up, select a couple of categories, and install the toolbar. It can get quite addictive to keep clicking the 'Stumble!' icon in the toolbar to find new sites that others have recommended. Almost all the sites it has linked to have been interesting and relevant.

This site may be of interest to ESL teachers and travellers looking for a place to stay and a chance to meet like minded people CouchSurfing. I discovered there are nearly 1,000 members in Korea so if you are travelling around the world and looking for a couch for the night with a friendly local, check out this site.

I tried to start a meme 'Going for a walk, somewhere new' last month. Thanks to Daeguowl for his walk. Other bloggers who've been for a walk include Robert, The Marmot, who has continued his theme of Churches of Korea with a trip to Jeondong Catherdral Jeonju. He has produced some excellent photos of all the churches he has visited, I hope he publishes them as a book, as several others have suggested.

Diamond Geezer blogged about a series of walks around East London documenting the landscape before the builders move in for construction of of the 2012 Olympics. [See his comments on their website for a good laugh.] It would be fascinating to see the equivalent photos for the area of Seoul before the facilities for the 1988 games were built.

Finding out what's on in Seoul

Finding out what's on Seoul has been a bit of struggle at times, so it's ironic that just as we are about to leave I find out about two events magazines that might have been useful. The item in the JoongAng daily brought to my attention two English language magazines ROKon and The Groove. Both have been running for several months now, but I've not seen them for sale anywhere. They both have websites: ROKon where you can download the latest issue and The Groove which has a calendar of some events but does not offer a download.

Seoul Selection, a monthly magazine edited by Robert Koehler of The Marmots Hole, provides 100 pages of reviews, articles and photos of cultural events and social activities. It also includes a calendar of what's on. A weekly email newsletter is available and they have recently added the ability to to download a PDF of the magazine. These three magazines and the three daily English language newspapers provide the mainstay of printed news of what's on in Korea.

SeoulStyle used to have a calendar of events but sadly it stopped being updated in Dec 2006 after the owner moved to Hong Kong. The site is still for sale, if anyone is interested in taking it on. Seoul Steves have started a similar events calendar but while it is not extensive yet, it shows great promise.

The Joong Ang often prints photos of events from the previous day. A good example was the picture of crowds queueing to buy railway tickets for the Chuseok holiday. Residents will know that this holiday date, which falls on 25th September this year, is when the whole of Korea is on the move visiting family members. To ensure you get a train ticket for travel during that period you have to book tickets as soon as they go on sale. It's a shame they did not think to mention it the day before. [And while we are on the subject of trains, what happened to the website english.barota.com? It used to be an English site where you could look up all Korean train times and book tickets. It's been replaced with a new version that looks very flashy, but only does Korean. I attempted to email them to ask what happened, but all the Email addresses listed on the contact us page bounce with the message Bad connection (io timeout)!]

The Korea National Tourist Office website has a good list of upcoming festivals and events and there is a emailed newsletter that highlights two or three forthcoming events that you can subscribe to. There is also a list of some of the cinemas in Seoul, but the majority of their websites are Korean only. The one notable exception is Dansungsa cinema in Jongno Seoul. The Korea Herald and Joong Ang daily write a weekly summary of the movies that are showing, but they do not print any showtimes. Mark of Korea Pop Wars pointed me in the direction of Cine21 (Korean) which has a list of all currently showing movies and where they are on.

Update: The Expat-Advisory website offers a regular newsletter of what's on in Seoul. Subscribe here.

Maybe one day TimeOut will come to town and cover everything to do with 'What's on in Seoul', but until that time you will have to hunt around, or learn Korean to figure it out from the local resources.

Korean Internet communities

The Ministry of Information and Communication introduced a new law to force Korean Internet users to identify themselves by their real names when posting comments on Korean electronic forums.

This rule was implemented at the two largest Korean portal websites on July 1st 2007 Naver and Daum and has, just this week, been applied to 21 more sites with more than 300,000 visitors per day. All users have to enter their names and resident registration numbers when using the service to post comments. The law was proposed to try to prevent the increasing spread of anti social and abusive comments being made by portal users.

However, as the Korea Times reported yesterday, it seems these measures have not been entirely successful. The hostage crisis in Afghanistan has given rise to a number of offensive postings by some Koreans. "Terrible postings continue to inundate our news pages or bulletin boards." Daum spokeswoman Jody Chung said to the Korea Times reporter.

Now, I don't know exactly how Naver and Daum work, but they are commercial enterprises out to make money. When one signs up to use their services I assume there are some 'Terms and Conditions' (T&C) that one agrees to. I have joined a number of similar forums in the past and in all cases there has been some sort of clause about undesirable behaviour on the forum that would cause the account to be closed by the forum moderators. For example I have belonged to the CIX conferencing system for many years and the 'Acceptable Use Policy' is quite clear that I could be thrown off for posting indecent, obscene, offensive, abusive, disruptive,libellous or defamatory comments.

So what is the situation with these undesirable postings on the Korean portals? It seems these users have not had their accounts closed and they continue to upset the rest of the portal users with their remarks. Are the portal T&Cs not specific enough? They need to rewrite them. Are these posts only offensive to some? In that case maybe the portals need to be enhanced to allow the functionality of a killfile whereby you can setup a list of users whose posts you do not wish to see.

With the requirement to enter one's registration number it would be straightforward for Daum and Naver to build up a blacklist of users that have been banned. These users can then move on to the other sites, that have not been forced to implement the requirement yet, and spread their undesirable opinions to a smaller crowd.

The pros and cons of the right to free speech and censorship are some of the biggest topics for discussion on the Internet where anyone can spout their opinions to the world from behind a keyboard. As the ministry has discovered, just trying to prevent anonymous postings does not really solve the problem.

Related reading : Nameless in Cyberspace. An 8 page paper from the Cato Institute on proposals by the Supreme Court to limit anonymous communications on the Internet.
Free Speech and the Internet Links to websites that concern themselves with the issue of the free flow of information on the Internet.
People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy. A Civil organization dedicated to promoting justice and human rights in Korean society through the participation of the people. They are strongly against the real-name validation scheme.

Another K-Bloggers Meet up Aug 5th

Due to popular demand I have arranged another Korean bloggers meet up.
Sunday August 5th
from 6pm onwards
at the Wolfhound, Irish Pub Itaewon.

Jes from Deeper Shade of Seoul, Expat Jane and Joe from ZenKimchi are coming so far.

Everyone is welcome, bloggers, commenters, lurkers and your friends and family. We'll have a drink or two and a laugh.

To get to the Wolfhound : go to Itaewon subway station on line 6. Come out at exit 4.



Turn 180 degrees (as the man is doing above) and walk round the corner of the crossroads.



Then turn immediately first right, going down the hill (avoiding the yound lad with the puppy).



The Wolfhound is on your right after about 50 meters. The pub is on 2F and 3F, we will be on 2F on the sofas to the right of the bar, I hope unless someone else bags them first.

I'm looking forward to meeting a few more of you.

Five things you did not know about me

A long, long time ago Gdog tagged me with one of those blogging memes. I hadn't forgotten, I've been saving up my response until I had an announcement to make. It's not quite as dramatic as Cat announcing she was pregnant, but read on down to number 1.

5. I'm a Sucrologist. It's not as painful as it sounds, it means I collect sugar sachets. Yes, those little paper packets that most people don't even notice. When I first went to the U.S. with my family, aged eleven, I noticed that each restaurant, diner and hotel we visited had their logo on the sugar packets. In some places they had themes like ships or presidents etc, so as we travelled around I started to collect them and I've been collecting ever since. I've amassed over 5,000 I'd guess. Sadly I have never got around to collating, labelling and presenting them so they remain in numerous sticky envelopes and shoe boxes in the attic. I have corresponded with several collectors over the years since my name was listed on another collectors website and I've exchanged sachets with some of them. These days I'm trying to kick the habit and no longer do exchanges, but if I see a sachet I don't have in my collection I still can't help myself.

4. I practice Iyengar Yoga. The Bat has been a keen practitioner since before I met her. She eventually persuaded me to try it, and after going to many classes and yoga holidays, I now find it has become a part of my life. I've not tried to find any classes locally in Seoul, because no one can match my guru John Shirbon back in Tooting.

3. I have a secret ambition to be an abstract impressionist artist. I can't paint or draw, but that does not seem to matter these days. Every time I see some of the stuff that goes by the name of art I think to myself "I could do that". I even have a "stage name" prepared. I plan one day to write a book about how an unknown artist, who hasn't actually been to art school, made a great living selling works that look as if they've been done by a child with one arm : based on a true story!

2. I'm a member of the London Underground Railway Society. When I moved to London I became fascinated by the history and operational details of the "Tube" network that I used to get to work every day. I bought books, visited the London Transport Museum and became a member of the LURS. This group of mostly elderly men gather for monthly meetings on topics such as the Jubilee Line upgrade, the Piccadilly line extension to terminal 5 and many other delights. I can't attend the meetings these days, but I still receive the monthly magazine Underground News.

1. I've got a new job in Japan. I've been job hunting for over five months and my resume went to all the investment banks in Tokyo. After many telephone and video conferencing interviews I got a job offer last month. It's for a permanent job, which is going to be a bit of change after being a contractor for the past 15 years.
For those of you reading my blog since my retirement email sorry I'm not coming back for a third time, though I did have several interviews there.

My "Gap Year" is almost over and I'll be going back to work soon, I am just waiting for the work visa. What this means for this blog I've not decided yet. I plan to continue blogging, but I may not have quite so much time.

In the spirit of the meme, I'll nominate Matt at Gusts of Popular feeling, Daeguowl at Kimchi For Breakfast, and Stafford at The Chosun Bimbo. If you'd like to tell us five things about yourself, consider yourselves tagged. No obligation, no hurry!

K-Bloggers Meeting up Sunday 22nd July

Thanks to Aaron for a logo:


Tomorrows get-together for drinks is confirmed. Sunday 22nd July 2007, Starting at 2pm.
I don't know how long it will last, but I don't have anything else to do tomorrow so it could go on till late evening.

I had a wander round yesterday and the "Western Bar", "Odyssey" (I'm not sure which part is the name and which is the description) looks like a suitable venue.
It's right outside Yeouido Subway (line 5) station Exit number 5. It's on the second floor above Dunkin Donuts.

So far confirmed are Gdog of The Daily Kimchi, Daeguowl of Kimchi for Breakfast, Stafford of The Chosun Bimbo, Aaron of Idiot's Collective, Joe of ZenKimchi and GI of Guano Island

If anyone else reading this would like to join us, please come along, the more the merrier.

K-Bloggers meet up

Gdog's announcing his last day in Korea has spurred me into suggesting something I've been considering for a while : The idea of a meetup for bloggers in Korea.

So here's my idea:

What : A casual get-together for drinks.
When : Sunday 22nd July 2007, Afternoon continuing until whenever.
Where : To Be Decided. I'm thinking of a Cafe / Bar / Restaurant type place in Itaewon , Seoul. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. [Unless everyone would like to come over to a bar in Yeouido?]
Who : Bloggers, Commenters, Lurkers, Friends, Family. All welcome.
Why : Get to meet the faces behind the names, and as a "Good Bye Korea" party for Gdog and Me.

So, Leave a comment or drop me an email if you are interested so I can estimate numbers and see if we need to book a place.

I mentioned it to Daeguowl and he too will be there.

I am off on a house hunting trip in a few minutes, so nor more blogging from me until I return on 19th July. More details on my return.

Korean Blogs round-up

I met for drinks with Daeguowl of Kimchi for Breakfast during the week. I got the 461 bus down to his neck of the woods and snapped a shot of the "Always Funny Chicken" shop, which I'll post later.

We selected a bar called "The Beatles", it had about as much atmosphere as a meeting of the local undertakers union, so we moved on to a branch of the Millers chain of bars which was much more popular with the locals. Unlike our friends back in England, where smoking in enclosed public spaces has just been banned, we were soon enveloped in the fug of cigarette smoke. Over here the Koreans have just announced the opposite: Smoking is to be banned at bus stops by September and in the Seoul parks by 2008. Anyway, we had a great evening discussing our careers, the Koreas, friends, families and, of course, blogs and bloggers, so I thought I mention a few that we discussed.

Last week I celebrated the first anniversary of this blog, which reminded Gdog that he had started blogging just a few days before I did last year. Expat Jane also celebrated her blog's first anniversary with a background colour change to pink.

ROK Drop revealed some very respectable statistics about his blog. My blog did not make it into his top 5 referring sites. So, if you could all "Do The Korean Thing" and click this link to his blog, say 4 or 5 times, perhaps I can make the list next month. [if I make it to the top 5, I won't be promising to appear naked on the blog like Mr Angry , but if you think of a suitable stunt you'd like me to perform, do please let me know.]

Phil at London Korean Links also had some stats to share. The number of spam comments is causing him problems in spite of introducing the requirement to register before being able to leave a comment. I got fed up with blogger.com's anti spam feature, so I turned off the 'word verification' option on the comments a few months ago and I have been very lucky and still not received any spam comments so far, touch wood.

My blog's stats took a huge leap from the usual average of 40-50 visitors per day to 400 on July 2nd, thanks to a one line posting by Robert at The Marmot's hole linking to my posting on The Ideal Korean Male. In that posting I also mentioned Rain's cancelled concert, more details and discussion over at PopSeoul.

Kevin, the Big Hominid, had some equally respectable statistics about sales of his book 'Water from a skull' and celebrated the fourth year of blogging. If you want a good laugh read his crisis at 40,000 feet post.

Feet Man Seoul has all the details on going for a pedicure, or 'padicure' as the sign at our local nail salon calls it.

Mike in Busan has an excellent shot of one of those crazy Korean motorbike drivers, this one was transporting a six foot tall potted plant on the back of his bike. His earlier shot of a lady with an iguana on her head still makes me smile.

Lost Nomad had some excellent shots of a life and death struggle between a snake and a toad he watched on one of his fishing trips. Richardson, meanwhile, had a photo of some attractively high kicking soldiers (North Korean I am assuming).

The Bat and I went to see the Transformers movie as did 75% of the cinema going public in Korea. We didn't join the Metropolitician's gang but, like Joe and Gdog, we both really enjoyed the movie.

The other Joe, of ZenKimchi fame, has some great news. The police have declared that he is not guilty of the libel charges raised against him by the hagwon owner from hell.

I'll end with that happy news, and I wish all the Canadian readers a belated Happy Canada day for 1st July, and all the American readers a belated Happy Independence Day for the the 4th.

A walk in Seoul, Onsu and Bucheon

Last week I was looking for somewhere new to go, so I decided to take a random bus to see where I ended up. Starting from the 'Yeouido Transportation Centre', which is a very grand name for the largest bus stop on Yeouido, I chose a bus I'd not been on before, that was heading south.

The number 261 took me south past Yeoungdeungpo, Mullae, Sindorim and Guro stations. Near Guil we crossed the Anyangcheon (The Anyang river that flows into the Han river) which looked interesting. I walked along the river bank and could hear the sound of drums and cymbals. The noise gradually got louder and louder as I approached a bridge over the river. Expecting to see a large troupe of drummers practising I was surprised to find just a family group of four with three drums and one of the children with the cymbal. They were sitting on a mat under the bridge happily making as much noise as they wanted!

Walking further I heard the sounds of a saxophone. I could not locate the source of the music, but it was another pleasant aural accompaniment. I crossed back across the river to Guil subway station and decided to head further out of town.

At Onsu station [photo] this church caught my eye and I decided to alight and investigate further.
It's certainly eye catching, but there was no information about it in English, so I cannot even tell you it's name.
Walking up the hill behind it I came to the Seoul city boundary [photo,photo]. Crossing the border, I entered Gyeonggi province which surrounds Seoul.

I walked passed the impressive Yuhan college buildings and through a residential area past many churches [church1, church2, church3, church4] . There was a mixture of low rise and high rise buildings and some small industrial units. I crossed the railway on a new bridge and observed the demolition of the old bridge underway [photo].

Walking up the hill the cityscape became much more industrial and the air was filled with the smell of hot plastics and the noise of metal being hammered from the many medium sized factories. I passed a learner driver centre [photo] and again the landscape changed very quickly to residential and again to horticultural [photo]. I followed a narrow lane, surrounded on either side with dense forest, and was surprised to come out into a green valley with just a few sheds and fields of vegetables.

The peace and quiet was unusual and it felt like a walk in the countryside. When a cockerel started crowing it really did complete the picture and I was beginning to wonder how I would get home again.

Of course it was not long before civilisation returned in the form of out of town restaurants of a variety of sizes and shapes [photo]. Two spirit posts, which traditionally mark the entrance to a town and ward off evil spirits, [photo] confirmed that I was coming back in town.

Coming around a corner I was greeted by sight of a large tower block complex[photo]. This pattern of development: rows and rows of tower blocks cut from the same cookie cutter mould is repeated all over the country. Is there not a single architect at the Korean National Housing Corporation with an ounce of originality? The good news for the future residents of this development is that subway construction is well underway here with an extension of subway line 7 from Onsu to join the Incheon subway at Bupyeong-gu office [map]. I explored the area a little more, taking in another church [photo] and admiring the Sang Rok school [photo] before jumping on a bus that looked like it was heading in the right direction.

The 23-5 bus took me past an interesting looking amusement park in front of the stadium.

It continued through Bucheon City, past City Hall, supermarkets, malls, department stores, shops, restaurants, tower blocks and churches before arriving at SongNae subway station on line 1. After photographing the urban landscape and adding another photo of the Statue of liberty on top a building to my collection, I took the subway back to Singil and a bus home.

You can view all the photos, along with a few others I took, as a slideshow here.

I thought this idea might make an interesting meme, I'm calling it 'Going for a walk, somewhere new'. So, where ever you are, if you'd like to pick up your camera, go somewhere you've not been to before and write a blog post on it then let me know by email or a comment. In two weeks time I'll gather all the links together in one posting to share with everyone.