Day 62: J-Hope's Bridge

When I got my tattoo a few weeks ago the artist told me I could come back in a week or so to get it touched up. I have been in Japan for the last week and a bit so I figured I should go and get it done today. However, when I arrived at the tattoo place it was closed. I checked their page online and found out that they are closed every Monday... oops. At least the tattoo place was super close to my room though so it wasn't that big of a deal.

The weather was really nice so I decided to go to a BTS place that I could walk to. I chose the bridge J-Hope walked along in the music video for "I Need U". The bridge is called Dongho and it is near Apgujeong so it only took about 40 minutes to walk there. It was sunny and beautiful out and I was super excited to be going to BTS places so my mood was really great!

I ended up taking a way longer route but here's an idea of where the bridge was relative to the place I am staying.

I passed a street market along the way and was briefly distracted by rice cakes and cool hoodies. The market was called Gangnam Youngdong Market and I had stumbled upon it by accident. It was smaller than Namdaemun or Dongdaemun market but it still had a decent number of stores.

I stopped by a restaurant called Savour for lunch since it was on the way. It is near the first place I stayed in Gangnam and I came here a lot to eat gimbap when I was living there. I also tried to find a cafe called Midnight in Seoul that is owned by a member of 2AM named Jo Kwon. Unfortunately it looks like it has moved or closed down because the building was empty, except for a man inside repainting the walls.

I started to get really excited when I got to the bridge and I couldn't stop smiling. I walked near the middle of the bridge and took a few photos before I tried to re-create J-Hope's walk from the music video. He was super serious in the music video and I was smiling too much since the weather was nice and I was happy so it totally didn't look the same but that's ok. The cars passing by must have been wondering what the heck I was doing haha!

After I took a few pictures I hung out on the bridge for a few minutes just looking at the city and water. There are so many bridges that go across the Han River and each one looks different. It's a really relaxing feeling to stand on any of them and look out over the water.

I walked back down the bridge and over to a spot under the bridge. J-Hope took a picture near the bridge and I tried my best to re-create it. I had to keep walking across the bike path to check the photos and start the timer again, but there weren't too many people out biking so it was ok.

Once I was done taking all my pictures I decided to go back to The Min's cafe because it was fairly close by and I really love the drinks there.

I ordered my the BTS drink and sat down to figure out where I wanted to go next. It is getting close to Christmas and I have been trying to find things to buy as gifts. My brother really likes brand name items and there is a BAPE store in Apgujeong (BAPE has hoodies with a lot of strange camo monster designs on them). I walked to the store and found a really cool light wall outside of it. The store itself was all silver with tons of display cases and mirrors. It looked really fancy and I would've taken pictures but people aren't allowed to unless they're buying stuff. I didn't find anything that I liked so I left and wandered back home.

I made sure to walk by the Big Hit entertainment building on the way back.

I was meeting Alysha for dinner and needed to get ready for that. I had face timed my sister the day before and she had asked if I had been braiding my hair at all since I got here. Both my mom and sister were quite persistent that I learn to braid my hair before I went to Korea because I typically get pretty lazy when it comes to doing anything with it. I tried to learn, but it's so much easier to just ask my sister to do it for me! I decided to listen to Sarah today though and I tried to braid my own hair. It took almost an hour but I finally got it to a state that I was happy with. I felt so proud of myself even though it took forever so here is a picture of the braids + a screenshot of the route and what the directions look like.

I met Alysha at the subway stop and she drove us to a really yummy restaurant. We had what I think was pork neck soup (I'm pretty sure I am remembering correctly). The soup was pretty spicy and difficult to eat but so yummy and perfect for the colder weather. It was also the first restaurant I went to where I had to take my shoes off and sit on the ground. This is a common style for traditional Korean restaurants, but I hadn't gone to any before tonight.

After dinner we went to karaoke. I had never been to karaoke before because I had no idea how it worked so I was hesitant to go alone and spend the entire time fumbling around trying to start it. We went into this small underground place that was lined with bright lights and karaoke rooms. Inside each room was a TV with two mics and a wireless keyboard to use when searching for songs. People can search by artist, country, or song name and there are so many options. We went to a coin karaoke so all we had to do was insert coins or cash in the karaoke machine and we could play. 1000 won (approximately $1) got us 4 songs!

We sang for over an hour and it was such a fun experience. We sang a lot of BTS songs, but also a few pop and other K-pop ones. The only problem was that the lyrics came on the screen in Hangul. I have improved at reading Hangul, but I am still very slow. I can't read the lyrics fast enough and try to sing along properly so I ended up singing from memory and probably saying words that weren't even real words, but that's ok because it was still fun. Every time it came to a rap part I completely gave up and Alysha had to rap all of it. I'm so glad she dragged me to karaoke and I definitely look forward to doing it again! It isn't as terrifying as I thought it would be and its such a good way to let loose and just have fun. Are there things like this in Canada? It's not something I would have ever considered doing so I didn't look for it when I was in Canada.

Alysha is an English teacher for younger students and she had mentioned that her class wanted to meet me so we made plans to meet again in a few days for dinner.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

P.S Today marks 2 months since I landed in Korea!

(November 26, 2018)

Distance walked: 16.2 km