survey of scenes

Just got back from spending the day cruising through a big market in town (think tailors' shops, knickknacks, cages of chickens, and all sorts of strange-looking meats/sea things out collecting flies) and then to the major upscale department store downtown (nine-plus floors of overwhelmingness) and then to a more everyday department store on a mission to find blank CDs to record a class project. Everything seems so complicated at first when you move to a foreign country - move anywhere, to some extent. The simple act of taking an elevator can be a whole different system: At the upscale department store, it appears that you watch all the banks to see where each elevator is and which direction it's going, then place your bets by pressing the button next to the one you think will arrive soonest, then crowd around that doorway.

It was interesting seeing what I assume to be the evolution of shopping, all in one day - first the traditional open-air market - and part of that has become an enclosed, air-conditioned structure. Then the ritzy place where everything comes together with pristine pizazz for a whopping price, then something closer (but not near the same as) your Target or Wal-Mart, for example - value and convenience driven by the rise of the middle-class dollar (or won). It was also interesting to see the differences in how commerce is structured here from the States: For example, department stores here are also kind of like malls in themselves - they usually seem to feature a food court and perhaps some other restaurants, a photo studio, a hair salon, even a movie theater, but they're standalone stores.

Last night was also a tour of scenes - but entertainment venues this time. Started at a noraebang, or karaoke room: Karaoke isn't done at bars here, but instead you get a group of people and rent a room by the hour and pay for drinks. It's quite the setup - disco lights, strange electronic-sounding music (which I guess makes it easier to modify by tempo and key - all at the click of a button), microphones, a fairly decent selection of American tunes amid the Korean music, and a big screen with the words popping up erratically and often hilariously wrong (Lennon and McCartney are credited with these fine lyrics: "I'm not half the moon I used to be, there's a shadow hanging over me ..."), plastered over pictures of Korean landscapes. The only way to do it is to embrace the cheese factor, fill up your soju (rice wine) glass, pick up that tambourine sitting on the table, and just go with it. It was quite the experience. Then we moved downtown, first to a low-key expat bar (notably sans expats at the time), then to a GI club where the American hip-hop spirit was alive and well, and finally to a typical Korean club, where wannabe B-boys greeted us at the door and the dance floor was filled with stiff-shouldered swaying.

Oh, and I've now eaten some sort of larvae often served at soju joints here - half-dried worm-type things with soft shells. Not so good.

Hope you all are well!