Videogames and bud have been rather fun for the past couple of days, not gonna lie. Jason’s been keeping tabs on me from Korea… as it turns out I was there long enough to get a full understanding of his whole woman situation, hahahahah.

Wow. Definitely am missing Korea.

The only dark cloud hanging over everything right now is that it seems like everyone is leaving San Francisco. Andrea left while I was in Korea for grad school in NYC, Helen is going to med school over in Wisconsin, and also another friend of ours up here, Dom, has taken up a job for a start-up in NYC.

What can I do?  :[ At least the weather is becoming gorgeous here. I went biking today and can just tell it's going to be an extremely relaxing summer in the bay. It always helps that great new music has been easy to come by as of late.

This song of Digitalism's new album, I Love You Dude sounds what I would expect a new Daft Punk album song to sound like... only because it is so smooth throughout.

Here’s a very chilled out version of my favorite song of Yeasayer‘s last album, Madder Red.

Trentemøller‘s last album was a bit weird because he switched everything up from some of the darkest, minimal tech house to a full band arrangement with guitars and he pretty much temporarily ditched the style that made him famous. I can’t blame him for doing it, because all the new album’s material was amazing at Coachella this year. In this track from the new album, he remixes himself down to the dark techno depths he’s known for. It’s just way  too insane.

Also through a tip from Kane I finally got around to checking out this Madeon guy… apparently a 17-year-old french electro house producer. His material is incredible and only makes one freak out more about their age. Damn prodigies of the world!

Lastly is a badass alternate version of Holy Ghost!‘s Wait & See remixed by the ever-reliable CFCF.

Seoul

• Gang-nam, the district of Seoul where I’m staying, is the newest development of mega-consumption. The main street is 10 lanes… so it’s kind of like if you just put a shitload of stores on each side of a freeway. Consequently, the traffic is nuts half of the day and relying on the subway is a must.
• The Seoul Metro subway system is excellent and modeled after New York’s subway. You can learn how to use it in like an hour; less if someone explains it to you. Cell phone’s have full bars in all subways.
• Aside the main streets (usually where the subway stops are) are always tons of snaking, crazy unmarked alleys. Each alley is typically filled with restaurants, cafe’s, Hof bars, and conveniece stores. If my Dad (a city planner) ever saw these alleys, he’d flip a shit trying to wrap his mind around how public services actually get done here.
• The weather right now (spring time) is extremely similar to San Francisco: high 60′s to low 70′s with mild winds. It’s very comfortable weather.
• Korea is absurdly safe. People and businesses leave their belongings outside in plain sight with no worry of theft. You can walk around in any area at night without worry of being mugged.
• It’s hilarious that it’s a rare and noteworthy moment when I run into another white person here. Passing by, we make eye contact almost every time in some weird, mutual understanding kind of way.

Koreans Here

• Everyone I’ve met here is incredibly nice. Service in stores and restaurants, big and small, is top-notch.
• English is understood decent by most younger Koreans, but they are often frightened to reply back… not so much by the older crowd. Still, expressing complex thoughts or using higher than gradeschool-level vocabulary is not possible. Walking around with Jason and his friends is much better, since I can ask them to translate a complex statement or question to Korean quickly.
• Taxi-drivers can and will rip you off if you’re obviously not from Seoul. Even Jason gets trolled sometimes. Luckily, you can bitch out the cab driver and get out to find another cab, as they are super easy to come by.

Entertainment

• Seoul turns people into degenerate alcoholics. I’ve never drank as much as I have here in my life. You can begin drinking at 9pm at home, goto a restaurant and have soju and beer, head to a club for bottle service, and then top off the night with food and beer at an Izakaya (Japanese food place / bar) or Korean restaurant in the morning hours around 5 or 6am.
• There are PC방’s (PC room/cafe), 노래방’s (Karaoke bar), and Billiards/Pool Halls everywhere… like seriously everywhere you look. There are only more convenience stores than these two types of businesses.
• At Pool Halls, all the men play Billiards. Apparently pocketball (pool) is a ladies game.
• You can’t play Starcraft II in Korea at PC방’s unless you have a Korean SSN and buy a Korean license of the game (shit).
• Movie theaters serve beer and have assigned seating that you can reserve in advance. (also: Fast Five was amazing).
• Prices for everything are pretty on-par with America.

Shopping & Food

• Korean food is (obviously) the best here. I’ve never had Korean BBQ similar to here, but surprisingly LA Korean food is more than competitive with it.
• Japanese food (other than sushi which is harder to find) is everywhere as well.
• American food is fairly easy to come by, if you don’t want anything higher end. There are 24hour McDonalds’, Burger King’s, and KFC’s all around Seoul.
• Italian food is also pretty easy to find, as asians are familiar with pasta as noodles and really like pizza.
• Most other types of food outside of those mentioned above are much, much harder to come by.
• Girls clothing stores outnumber mens ones probably 20:1
• There is a cellphone store on nearly every block.
• Guys my size will find it impossible to get clothing… I wear an XL in all types of shirts, jackets, etc. And forget about shoes, all retailers do not cary anything bigger than a size 9 US.
• Korean style is varied from obviously fobby to obviously American. I tried really fucking hard to find some cool shops in Korea, and was able to find only one so far… I subsequently have spent 600 bucks over my past two visits to Brown Breath. More on that below.

Above is Jason and I @ the Brown Breath store with the staff. The only store I’ve found in Korea that has really awesome product. They design and manufacture their own denim, clothing, backpacks, bags, and accessories together into a lifestyle brand. I tried to pinpoint some sort of classification for the type of clothing they sell or what kind of crowd they’re catering to, and the only bullshit description I could come up with is that the brand is for the “practical, utilitarian hipster with a mountaineering look”. I picked up a few pieces of clothing and a backpack. The guys who work there are real nice and kept throwing gifts at me, asking me if I’d come back to Korea to visit… they make you feel quite at home. Check out the bag I picked up:

Whew… so that was my longass 1-week update on Korea. Now that I’ve gotten the bulk out of the way I can post smaller updates as the days go on if anything interesting happens. Now for a few tunes because it’s been a while.

Yeasayer released a special 7″ vinyl for record store day with B-sides from their latest album. Get some good headphones on and play this jam loud. It has definitely been my favorite song to listen to on the subway here in korea.

Battles will release their new album Gloss Drop on Warp Records later this year. These guys really define the “math rock” genre if I could pinpoint it at all… don’t let the weirdness scare you, it’s a killer song.

Burial came out with his first new material in four years with his Street Halo EP. This is the 2nd and in my opinion best song on the release.

Impressions

• The studio is hilariously modest within a high school (and sort of out in the middle of nowhere)… but it makes sense, as most people who play Starcraft II in Korea, minus the professionals, are in high school or younger. The high school that the games are hosted in was no fancier than my high school back in California. Hell, I had to walk through a basketball court to get to the studio. Here are directions on how to get to the studio if you’re in Seoul.
• The public seating is free, and maxes out at about 40 people.
• Half the people there were foreigners (ie: not Korean).
• There are 4 booths total so that 2 players can play their matches while the other two setup, allowing match sets to be played back-to-back.
• The player’s booths and light setup is pretty epic given how modest the studio size is.
• They give you thunder sticks for free and you can make the silly signs there for free as well. If you make a sign, you WILL get camera time at some point during the broadcast.
• There’s always a window of opportunity to take photos with your favorite pro players if they’re nice enough to chill in the lobby for a bit after their match set.
• Tasteless & Artosis (the english casters) are really nice guys and you can tell they get a lot of foreign fans coming in each season. They’re willing to stick around after the matches and chat a bit with the nerds lurking around. I said hello, got a photo, and asked one favor of Artosis: to please never stop asking Tasteless what happens when he gets on the ladder… fucking hilarious every time.
• Unfortunately for foreigners who do not know Korean, actually watching the matches live kind of sucks. You cannot hear the english commentary by Tasteless & Artosis the entire time (I wish I could channel them into some headset or something)… you can only hear piercing screaming from the 3 Korean commentators that are projected onto loudspeaker in the studio. The two guys commentating will feverishly make observations and analysis of the game, while the female caster in the middle repeatedly exclaims 내! (“nae” = yes/ok) in acknowledgement. I much prefer just watching the matches online.

Front and center seat right before the match of IMLosira (on screen) vs. SlayerS_Alicia. Screen shows Losira’s (Zerg) win record vs. Protoss players.

Dual player booths on each side. Left Booth: sCfOu (playing). Right Booth: SlayerS_Alicia (preparing)

Photo (albeit blurry) with Artosis (left) and Tasteless (right).

Despite the laundry list of drawbacks, I’m really glad I went. If you’re in Seoul and a Starcraft II fan, you should definitely check out the GSL live.

General Tip: If you’re a North American or European account-holding Starcraft II player visiting Korea, you cannot goto the PC방’s (PC room/cafe) to play Starcraft II unless you either bring your own computer or do some gnarly region-lock circumvention mentioned around the teamliquid forums (and of course, you cannot LAN either because battle.net is required). In order to play on the Korean servers at all, you must have a valid Korean Social Security Number and also purchase another license for the game specific to Korea! I sadly learned this the first time I sat down in a PC망 here.

Grocery stores and family markets around here are much lower key.

A really sick house that I found in the hillside “suburbs” surrounding. Each of the sheds on opposing sides of the house are little green houses for cultivating plants. These dogs were just chillin’ in the window, watching traffic and people pass by.

Main university boardwalk full of restaurants, PC cafe’s, coffee shops, and boutiques.

Beautiful alleyway. I realized really quick that these look the coolest when there are no cars to be found. Unfortunately, they’re hard to come by.

You can get anything delivered in Korea, including McDonalds. This is just one of their (probably hundreds of) motorcades.