james new brain

SOUTH KOREA – 2007.08.31 – DAY 04

But first some ice cream.

You don’t tip in Korea. Even better, restaurants and bars give YOU “service” which can be anything from free drinks and random other foods. This noodle place gave us a free ice cream cone. THANKS, exactly what I wanted.

NOW, about shopping.

So apparently I did this wrong, and you’re supposed to go shopping here only between like midnight and 4 AM. We went during broad daylight, just to check it out. Huge outdoor and underground markets, coupled with huge shopping centers / department stores.

The exterior of Doota, the department store we checked out.

Inside. Every floor is themed and stocking exclusively for a single sex, and made up of countless smaller private owned stores all packed together so that you can’t tell where one ends and another begins. It’s impossible to even pick something to buy because there’s so much in your face power overwhelming.

Outside every shopping center in the city there are music stages where pop acts are filmed for TV broadcast. We passed this pop group pretending to play instruments that weren’t even hooked in to loud dancy K-Pop music, and also saw a Korean nu-metal band with cheesy instruments but awesome iron maiden like vocals at another shopping center down the street.