Day 78 & 79: MAMA

Day 78

Today is day 2 of the Mnet Asian Music Awards, one of the biggest South Korea music award shows. Day 1 was held in Seoul, Day 2 in Japan, and Day 3 in Hong Kong. BTS were performing tonight so Ella and I thought it would be fun to watch it together at a cafe.

I wanted more places to explore so I spent yesterday and a bit of this morning looking around BTS' twitter to see if there were anymore spots that looked like they would be interesting to visit. I came across Taehyung's photo shoot from the Love Yourself series that was taken on a bridge and decided that would be an easy thing to do today. I love the bridge's here and I hadn't been to Dongjak bridge before!

Ella and I met at the bridge around 5 and walked onto it to take photos and look around. The view was amazing! The sun was just starting to set and the city looked so beautiful in this lighting. There was also a glass observatory near on each side that had a cafe and I think a book store/library. There were chairs on the top of the observatory and it looked out over forest, city, and the river. It's definitely a place I want to visit in warmer weather. It would be so nice to bring a book and sit at the top of the observatory to relax and read.

We took a few photos at the top and then went back to the station. I wish I could've stayed longer to watch the sunset and check out the library, maybe next time.

Ella and I took the subway to Sinsa (in Gangnam) and found a Twosome Place cafe to set up in. We watched the red carpet and then I ran outside to quickly grab some kimbap for us to snack on.

The performances were very fun to watch! Stray Kids preformed near the beginning and they did Hellevator and District 9, which they haven't done in forever. I love both of the songs and I was so excited to watch them. BTS performed Fake Love and Anpanman (which was surprising, but awesome). Their Fake Love performance had a special dance break performance in the middle and it was amazing! My favourite award show performance that they have ever done (that I have seen at least, I definitely haven't seen them all) is Spring Day at the 2017 Melon Music Awards. However, this performance is definitely up there as one of my favourites after seeing the dance break.

Their performance for Anpanman totally felt like a concert and the outfits were awesome. It was surprising, but nice to see them performing this song at an award show since it isn't one of the ones they typically do.

The first daesang of MAMA (Worldwide Icon of the Year) was given out tonight and BTS won. The other three daesangs will be given out on day three of the award show. They also won three more awards: Worldwide Fans’ Choice Top 10, Favourite Male Dance Artist, and Favourite Music Video award for “IDOL". When they won Favourite Music Video Taehyung came on stage and made a comment that Spring Day was his favourite music video, which was absolutely hilarious but also accurate (Spring Day is a beautiful music video).

The award show ended late in the evening so both Ella and I went straight home after we finished watching.

(December 12, 2018)

Day 79

Ella and I were supposed to do our own things today, but her date ended up getting moved to a later time that evening. We made last minute plans to meet up in Itaewon and go the Line Friends store and then explore the market and shop area nearby.

We met a little after 4 and walked to the Line Friends store where Ella purchased a pair of gloves. I hadn't tried any of the drinks at the cafe upstairs yet so we also stopped there to grab a snack and a drink. I tried the blue soda Koya drink and a pork bun thing that was surprisingly yummy.

After eating, we wandered to the west end of Itaewon street and walked along the streets. There are lots of cool restaurants and vintage clothing stores in the alleys beyond the main street. There was also tons of graffiti along the walls and it was fun to wander around the alleys and just look around. There were also lots of cool vintage clothing stores including this one that we found in the basement of a restaurant.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(December 13, 2018)