A Korean 女子会

   An interesting thing happened after Josh and I got married. Everyone everywhere decided that all I ever wanted to do was stare at his face all day and not do anything else with anybody. And while like, 95% of the time, I really do want to stare at him (Come on, who doesn't?) I didn't sign away my ability to hang out with others sans Josh from time to time when I signed my marriage license.
Sometimes you just need a good 女子会 (joshikai), or girls day, with your friends.

   Last December, I got to take a weekend long trip to Seoul Korea with a few friends. The Osaka area is really lucky to have the LCC Peach Airlines based out of Kansai International. If it wasn't for them, we probably couldn't afford half of what we do. So when I saw a sale for tickets at 4,000 yen each way to Seoul, it seemed almost a crime to let it go. Josh really wasn't as keen to get back to Seoul as I was, so I quickly enlisted my friends to make a gigantic girls shopping trip. It was an indulgent, extravagant break and exactly what I needed. I think Seoul is a girls wonderland. Everything is cheap, there are so many make-up and skin care stores, and the food is great. We packed in so much in just three days it almost felt like a week. There was so much shopping, drinking, eating, and talking.

Subways are also bomb shelters.

A few highlights were:

Finally getting into Seoul at around 11pm and being completely disoriented about the location of our hostel. It was raining and we all had bags, and not a single taxi driver would help us out. A nice Korean man finally bullied a taxi driver into taking us. The old taxi driver proceeded to scream at us in angry Korean every two minutes and we would crack up every single time from the absurdity of it. He kicked us out of his taxi after about 10 minutes in the total opposite direction of where we needed to be. We finally found some police officers who helped us find a taxi that would take us to the right place. Our bad luck with taxi drivers was a continuous theme throughout the trip. It all worked out though. We got a late start at a local yakiniku restaurant and met some really great Koreans that showed us the wonders of shoju bombs and how to correctly eat our food.

Korean Purikura

Following a slightly famous 6'5 pink haired girl through Hongdae trying to find a bar.

Vinyl in Hongdae

Best Bar

Discovering how Korean politicians campaign. We arrived in Seoul a few days before election season and I have to say I much prefer it over the Japanese style of driving vans with loudspeakers up and down the road during the early hours of the morning. Our first encounter was stepping out of a shop and into a group of people wearing costumes and green shirts. There were people singing, playing instruments, and dancing. There were tambourines and ukuleles and guitars. There was a dancing cow and everyone was singing Christmas music. We watched and laughed for a while at the strangeness of it all, and left. Later that evening during a subway ride, a group of people wearing yellow clothing and headphones came in dancing. They were wearing wigs, sequins, teletubby and power rangers costumes. This was too much. We went up to them for pictures, and they told us it was a "Silent party" which explained the headphones. A guy with pretty good English explained it was for the political campaigns.

Green Group

Silent Party

   Our trip was over too soon and we went home tired, but relaxed, and with our luggage bursting. I came back refreshed, broke, ready to stare at my husband again, and with a constant craving for Korean food.

I'll love you forever bibimbap