Day 47 & 48: Miscommunications & Lotte Dept.

Day 47 (November 11)

So today I was supposed to meet some girls who I had met when I first saw BTS. We had all been messaging each other separately and the girl I was talking to said we were meeting at 11 to go to Haneul Park and another park by the water. I wasn't too excited about going back to the same place I had just been a few days ago but I figured it would be nice to go out for lunch after. I took the subway back over to Mapo-gu and waited... and waited.

Ends up we were supposed to be meeting at 1 pm and the one girl had gotten confused with what time the other girl said. Anyways it was confusing, I was in a bad mood from having to wait around, and I was starting to get a cold so I just decided to go back home and meet them another time.

On the way back I definitely felt like I was getting sick. The weather had been rainy and a lot colder than normal and I was stuffed up and sneezing. When I got home I decided to just lie down and sleep for a bit to see if it would go away. I lay in bed doing nothing until dinner time and then went out to the living room to have tea with Martin and Kate.

We ended up having a really long chat until 1 am about everything from feminism to my family to chat messaging apps. I found out that it is very uncommon to use the built in messaging apps in Korea (like iPhone's Messages). Instead they use an app called Kakao Talk for chatting between friends. It is considered more formal if people text through Messages. Other Asian countries nearby are similar. China has WeChat and Japan uses Line. Both Kate and Martin seemed shocked when I explained that Canada doesn’t have any kind of messaging app that is used more than Messages. They were really confused about what we use to send personal messages between friend or family and I told them that I just use the regular Messages app that comes with an iPhone. It was cool to learn that something as simple as the app we use to communicate with people could be so different in another country.

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Day 48 (November 12)

Today I set off to find Star Plaza at the head Lotte Department Store. Star Plaza is an area inside the Lotte Dept. Store that has a couple small things for fans of k-pop groups that are models for Lotte Duty Free (LDF). It's also close to Namdaemun market which I had been wanting to visit.

Star Plaza was a lot harder to find than I thought it would be. The department store is huge and there are no signs for it. I walked around what I thought was the whole first floor and then left the store thinking maybe it would be easier to find from outside. Still no luck. I had no idea where to look so I decided to head to Namdaemun market. I had messaged one of my friends on Instagram to ask where it was and I figured I should grab lunch and go somewhere else while I waited for her response.

Here's some fun stuff I passed on my walk to the department store:

I set off for the market, but ended up stopping along the way to eat some bibimbap from a small restaurant. While I was there I noticed a foreigner come in who looked super lost. He sat down and seemed confused about how to order. Then when he got his food he didn't know where to look for utensils. I tried to catch his eye to help but he was able to figure it out. That had been me a few months ago and I felt so cool knowing all this stuff now. A lot of Korean restaurants keep spoons and chopsticks at the side of the table underneath it in a little drawer. I found it really confusing when I first got to a restaurant and they gave me my food without utensils and then just disappeared. A nice guy beside me ended up laughing and then pointing to the drawer on the side of the table.

It didn't take long to walk from the restaurant to the market. I was incredibly overwhelmed when I got there. There were tons of people and stalls everywhere. There were multiple alleys I could go down as well as basements and staircases leading to even more shops. I walked down a couple streets and then went into one of the basement areas. It was filled with closely packed stalls that were piled with everything from packaged snacks to vitamins to spices. The stalls were so close together that it was almost hard to walk between the booths!

I went back upstairs and walked down a clothing street and into one of the floors that had jewelry. This was a dangerous place for me because I have very little restraint when it comes to buying earrings. The booths were super close together again so there were some aisles that I didn't even try to walk down. The majority of the booths had someone sitting on a small stool making more jewelry. I stopped at a few but managed to not buy anything. There was one booth that really tested me though. It was huge and had tons of tubs filled with sparkly cartilage earrings. They were so cool and like nothing I had ever seen before. I picked out a few and then put them back because I really didn't need any more. I quickly escaped out the first door I saw.

I found an older person sitting outside a clothes street with a small grill selling grilled rice cakes. I had had one while I was on Nami Island and really enjoyed it, plus it was only 1000 won for three so I bought some.

My friend had responded by this point so I started walking back to the department store to hopefully find Star Plaza. Along the way I passed an entrance to the Myeongdong underground shopping street and thought it would be cool to check it out. There were tons of streets underground that had all sorts of different stores on either side. There were also several really awesome stores that were filled with all sorts of random k-pop goods. I bought some BTS cards (actual cards for playing card games with), which I later found out were super overpriced! I paid 15000 won and found them for 7000 won at a different store a few days later... ugh. Good learning experience though.

There was an entrance to the department store underground so I walked upstairs.

There were lots of decorations for Christmas in the store

I ended up finding Star Plaza completely by accident. I had wandered around looking for it and I was finally about to give up and ask someone for help when I saw doors outside and BTS' beautiful faces on a huge screen.

It was different from what I expected but still cool! To the left of the mall doors was a huge screen playing BTS' LDF commercial so I had to stop, watch it, and take a few pictures. In the middle area there was a wish spot where people could buy a photocard of their favourite artist, write a wish on it, and then hang it up on the wall. There was also a display case with clothes that idols had worn that could be found at the department store. On the right was a large hallway that kept changing colours. The left of the hallway was filled with molds of idols handprints that people could take pictures of and on the right were these huge screens playing videos or showing pictures. There were tons of BTS things so I was super happy! The other groups that were there were Super Junior, Twice, EXO, and a bunch of actors/models. Of course I had to see how my hand measured up to all the BTS members. Hobi and Namjoon's were the only ones whose fingers were longer than mine. Jin, Yoongi, and Jimin all had smaller hands and Jungkook and Tae's were about the same size as mine.

After taking lots of pictures, watching all the BTS videos, and measuring my hand against all of BTS I set off for my next stop: Music Korea. Music Korea is this huge music store in Myeongdong (an area of Seoul) that is filled with k-pop albums and k-drama sound tracks (OSTs). It was one of the top things on my list of places I wanted to go to when I first began planning my trip.

To get there, I walked down a cool street that had all sorts of brand name stores and food stalls. I had been warned by Eun Bi and Hana not to buy anything at Myeongdong though so I stayed away from other stores and just looked for Music Korea. I did buy some red bean bread things though because I love red bean. Eun Bi and Hana are two girls from Korea that I lived with for a few months when I was working in North York one summer. They are super sweet and we have remained friends after moving out. They have both been really helpful with my trip planning and giving me tips.

Myeongdong is a tourist shopping street so they said all the prices are generally a lot more expensive than other areas. The only store I went into was VT Cosmetics. BTS are the brand models for their cosmetics so the store was filled with their pictures and products with them on it, including a super expensive toothpaste set.

I ended up struggling to find Music Korea because I thought it was on the first floor of a building but it was actually on the third floor of Nature Republic (a cosmetics store that had fake grass all over the building and no sign for Music Korea). The second I rounded the stairs for the third floor I knew this was not going to end well. It was an absolute dream come true. The walls were covered in hundreds of different albums and DVDs and there was even an entire wall dedicated to k-drama OSTs (soundtracks). I really wanted to buy the CD for Descendants of the Sun, which is one of my all-time favourite k-dramas, but ultimately decided not to. Then I found the BTS area. Every single album they had ever released was there including all their muster (anniversary) DVDs and other fun stuff. I just accepted that I would be walking away with a significantly lighter wallet and started to fill my basket. I ended up buying lots of money worth of DVDs and CDs and I am beyond excited to reorganize my shrine to fit in all my new additions when I get back to Canada. I immediately texted my roommates to inform them that they would be sitting through a BTS movie marathon when I returned. I think this may have made them miss me a little less haha.

Bye bye money...

Myeongdong Street: (the name makes me think of Mundungus Fletcher from Harry Potter... and now I really want to watch all the movies again)

I hopped on a subway back home with all my fun things. The second I got home I excitedly showed Martin all of my new purchases and freaked out about them. Then I took them to my room to unwrap and look through. This was about when I realized I had absolutely no room in my suitcase for all the stuff I had just bought. After a few moments of staring at it all and trying to figure out how on earth I was actually going to get it back to Canada I decided I would need to buy another suitcase... yikes. But then I went back to admiring the photo books and completely forgot about worrying about that!

I finished the night off with a few hours in a cafe that's on the first floor of the building I am staying at. It is a really cute place called BoMarket that is a cafe/convenience store. The people who work there are super nice but they unfortunately have a very loud dog that always tries to take my food, otherwise I would work there more often. I also found out that people can buy glasses of wine there.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

P.S another thing I found interesting in Korea is that cars rarely move for ambulances and they definitely don't pull over and stop at the side of the road for them.