Everything in Korea is totally BOHN TO LUN

[GilloD]

My breakfast sandwich came with mustrad and pickles.

The slogan for this internet cafe is "What the heart is being? said the boy to the phlamaist"

Dunkin Donuts has like 75 kinds of donuts and DO NOT PICK THEM UP WITH YOUR HANDS that is what the tongs hidden behind the counter are for.

My bathroom and the shower are literally the same place.

In case of fire, I am supposed to strap on a harness and rapel dwon the building using the "Deselnding Life Line". I start work in 15 minutes!

[Mr. Gundam]

We noticed that about the shower and bathroom in Japan. Crazy stuff, man.

Don't die before even getting out of your place!

[Cormacaroni]

not a single thing on that list strikes me as even remotely strange. oh boy.

[Barry Egan]

GilloD is going to get himself killed :-|

[Mr. Gundam]

not a single thing on that list strikes me as even remotely strange. oh boy.

The only one that I even blinked at was the evacuation harness. Everything else was like "yeah, it's Asia."

[muckhole]

Holy shit, I would use that harness every day.

[Madrun Badrun]

I would start fires just so I could race Muck down.

[muckhole]

Man, Korea would burnnnnnnnn

[Mr. Gundam]

We should petition the IOC to make Drunken Evacuation Harness Racing an official medal sport.

[Cormacaroni]

not a single thing on that list strikes me as even remotely strange. oh boy.

The only one that I even blinked at was the evacuation harness. Everything else was like "yeah, it's Asia."

We have a steel trapdoor with an extensible ladder on our 2nd floor balcony! We'd burn to death before we got it all set up of course but you have to admit they tried.

[Mr. Gundam]

not a single thing on that list strikes me as even remotely strange. oh boy.

The only one that I even blinked at was the evacuation harness. Everything else was like "yeah, it's Asia."

We have a steel trapdoor with an extensible ladder on our 2nd floor balcony! We'd burn to death before we got it all set up of course but you have to admit they tried.

They have similar setups on a lot of high rises here in Seattle. The whole harness thing just makes me laugh.

[muckhole]

If I lived in anything higher than five stories, my place would be laden with grappling hooks.

[Mr. Gundam]

Asia

Have fun in a new world!

This. AND SEND ME LOTS OF KOREAN GUNDAM STUFF!!!

[bork]

You got a tiny apartment, Gillo?  My place had the toilet (by itself) and the bath/shower in two separate rooms.  That struck me as strange.  Also I've been to houses that had public toilet-style urinals and stalls, with tiled floors/walls.  My in-laws' house is like this-- one urinal, one western toilet, and one squat toilet.  I never used the latter one time during my time in Japan.

not a single thing on that list strikes me as even remotely strange. oh boy.

   I felt the same way.  Business as usual!

[Yeti]

I'm not understanding the bathroom/shower being the same place thing. Are you saying the toilet is in the shower?

[Barry Egan]

Before I learned how to squat properly I had such a hard time using the bathroom in India.

[Himu]

What the heart is being?

[Tristam]

All I know is that Korea's driving etiquette is on its own level. Chicago, L.A., Dublin, London, whatever--I've NEVER seen any driving like this. People look before they change lanes, but it's a totally pointless glance because they change lanes whether there's a car occupying that lane or not. Cars run red lights as if they aren't there and do not enter signs are ignored entirely.

But yeah, the absence of division between toilet/sink and shower was pretty new to me. And I still can't get used to EVERYONE staring at me. Maybe it wouldn't happen in Seoul or Busan or anywhere where Westerners aren't mythical creatures, but I'm in Gwangju. Still, I can't complain. I'm finally starting to get settled in better and I actually enjoy most of the kids that I teach.

[GilloD]

I'm not understanding the bathroom/shower being the same place thing. Are you saying the toilet is in the shower?

Yes. Imagine you're in your whitebread, American devil bathroom. You have a shower stall! Or a bathtub! Now remove that space, but keep the showerhead. Okay? Attach the showerhead to the sink. WELCOME TO ASIA.

Anyway, nothing really bothers me. It's just completely fun and weird and funny. Pocari Sweat ois so fucking good.

[Cormacaroni]

This is a pretty typical japanese one. the idea is that you shower first, then get in the bath (so as not to dirty the water with your scummy soap etc). It makes perfect sense to me! (now)

The only reason the toilet is in there is to save space. Larger apartments usually have the toilet in a separate room. In studio-type apartments, toilet/sink/shower/bath is all bunged together.

[GilloD]

(Image removed from quote.)

This is a pretty typical japanese one. the idea is that you shower first, then get in the bath (so as not to dirty the water with your scummy soap etc). It makes perfect sense to me! (now)

The only reason the toilet is in there is to save space. Larger apartments usually have the toilet in a separate room. In studio-type apartments, toilet/sink/shower/bath is all bunged together.

See, I don't even have the basin. It's just a bathroom, you hook a showerhead up to and turn the water on. We have to store everything inside the medicine chest so it doesn't get wet

[Cormacaroni]

we all know all GilloD needs is a tub

[BlackMage]

(Image removed from quote.)

This is a pretty typical japanese one. the idea is that you shower first, then get in the bath (so as not to dirty the water with your scummy soap etc). It makes perfect sense to me! (now)

The only reason the toilet is in there is to save space. Larger apartments usually have the toilet in a separate room. In studio-type apartments, toilet/sink/shower/bath is all bunged together.

i see no bath.

[ch1nchilla]

(Image removed from quote.)

This is a pretty typical japanese one. the idea is that you shower first, then get in the bath (so as not to dirty the water with your scummy soap etc). It makes perfect sense to me! (now)

The only reason the toilet is in there is to save space. Larger apartments usually have the toilet in a separate room. In studio-type apartments, toilet/sink/shower/bath is all bunged together.

The bathroom we had in our hotel the first time I went to Tokyo had that exact setup, and I just used the tub as if it were a shower the whole time. Messy as fuck. I get it now. My apartment needs to not have this business.

[BlackMage]

the only thing that tub is good for is drowning kittens. i mean wtf you can't even sit in it.

[brawndolicious]

I've been in one where the drain for the shower water went into the squatting toilet hole.  It was efficient I guess.

(Image removed from quote.)
This is a pretty typical japanese one. the idea is that you shower first, then get in the bath (so as not to dirty the water with your scummy soap etc). It makes perfect sense to me! (now)
The only reason the toilet is in there is to save space. Larger apartments usually have the toilet in a separate room. In studio-type apartments, toilet/sink/shower/bath is all bunged together.

But this one in the pic has no toilet right?

[Flannel Boy]

What, you don't see the drain?

[Cormacaroni]

I've been in one where the drain for the shower water went into the squatting toilet hole.  It was efficient I guess.

(Image removed from quote.)
This is a pretty typical japanese one. the idea is that you shower first, then get in the bath (so as not to dirty the water with your scummy soap etc). It makes perfect sense to me! (now)
The only reason the toilet is in there is to save space. Larger apartments usually have the toilet in a separate room. In studio-type apartments, toilet/sink/shower/bath is all bunged together.

But this one in the pic has no toilet right?

no, but GilloD's place has one. Which is what I was referring to. The pic is a random search result from flickr.

[Yeti]

wow very strange

[chronovore]

not a single thing on that list strikes me as even remotely strange. oh boy.

me too. what hath asia wrought on our brains?

[Tristam]

Wait, how did I not mention the parking here? At my girlfriend's apartment complex, the parking lot is so packed that a whole row of cars parks perpendicularly to the demarcated parking spots, thus leaving the people in ACTUAL parking places completely trapped in. This totally boggled my mind--in any other country I've been to, the offending vehicles would all have their windows busted out. I wondered what the hell the blocked-in people did when they needed to use their cars, and I soon saw the solution: They band together to physically push the blocking vehicles out of the way.

[chronovore]

With sledgehammers?

[Tristam]

The aisle-blockers topic reminded me of another crazy thing here: the supermarket. A traditional (i.e., not HomePlus) Korean supermarket is FUCKING CHAOS.

First, the shopping carts here suck balls. Maneuvering them is like steering a vehicle with bald tires on a sheet of ice. This would be OK, I guess, if not for two things: One, Koreans are extremely impatient and are always in a rush even if they have no impending obligations; two, common courtesy is a totally foreign concept to them. The result is that a bunch of Korean people are running into, bumping, and pushing each other with no apologies or excuse-mes. The crazy thing is that no one gets offended by any of this; it's all just accepted as natural.

Oh, and the swine flu paranoia is still a palpable force here. Some people still wear surgical masks whenever going outside. Thanks to the Korean media--which no Korean EVER questions--they believe that tens of thousands of people have died of swine flu in the U.S. and Mexico. At the public school I teach at, one of the Korean kids got sick with swine flu. School was canceled for the rest of the week and I was forced to get tested at a hospital (because obviously I, a dirty foreigner, infected their poor Korean kids; it's inconceivable that another Korean kid could have passed swine flu on). The test involved two long tubes being painfully shoved up my nostrils. Of course I tested negative--perhaps the fact that I exhibited zero symptoms would have been a dead giveaway, but I guess not.

The impression I get here is that Koreans are generally great people once they know you, but as strangers they're some of the least friendly and most rude people I've met.

[demi]

Tristram's posts are more entertaining than GilloD's entire thread. Where are GilloD's wacky stories of xenophobia?

[chronovore]

I was in Pusan in 1993, and it seemed like no-one was able to fathom the concept of waiting in a line. Queuing up. NOBODY. The closest anybody came to being "polite" about waiting was someone asking if they could go in front of me. Instead of just shoving past each other person, like everyone seemed to be, they asked first. That was at the US Embassy.

I was in line at a 7-11 to buy drinks; I tried to line up there as well, but some 80 year old lady shoved in front of me, turned to face me, and growled at me. No joke.

[Akala]

I was in Pusan in 1993, and it seemed like no-one was able to fathom the concept of waiting in a line. Queuing up. NOBODY. The closest anybody came to being "polite" about waiting was someone asking if they could go in front of me. Instead of just shoving past each other person, like everyone seemed to be, they asked first. That was at the US Embassy.

I was in line at a 7-11 to buy drinks; I tried to line up there as well, but some 80 year old lady shoved in front of me, turned to face me, and growled at me. No joke.

A few years back, I was offered a trip to Pusan, but I took the money instead.  :'(

[Cormacaroni]

I was in Pusan in 1993, and it seemed like no-one was able to fathom the concept of waiting in a line. Queuing up. NOBODY. The closest anybody came to being "polite" about waiting was someone asking if they could go in front of me. Instead of just shoving past each other person, like everyone seemed to be, they asked first. That was at the US Embassy.

I was in line at a 7-11 to buy drinks; I tried to line up there as well, but some 80 year old lady shoved in front of me, turned to face me, and growled at me. No joke.

This is funny because I know that you look like you could rip the arms off a grizzly bear and beat him to death with it. What do these grannies think?! That we're all just going to take shit from them forever? One day we will rise up.

[chronovore]

I think she could read minds, and was aware of my grandmaphobia.

[Tristam]

I was in Pusan in 1993, and it seemed like no-one was able to fathom the concept of waiting in a line. Queuing up. NOBODY. The closest anybody came to being "polite" about waiting was someone asking if they could go in front of me. Instead of just shoving past each other person, like everyone seemed to be, they asked first. That was at the US Embassy.

I was in line at a 7-11 to buy drinks; I tried to line up there as well, but some 80 year old lady shoved in front of me, turned to face me, and growled at me. No joke.

This is funny because I know that you look like you could rip the arms off a grizzly bear and beat him to death with it. What do these grannies think?! That we're all just going to take shit from them forever? One day we will rise up.

In Korea, the older you are, the more license you have to do whatever the fuck you want.

I'm 22, which puts me in a piss-poor position. When I drink with elders, I can't make a toast; only they can initiate. Also, I have to avert my face from elders while drinking (seriously) and I have to hold my liquor cup with two hands while drinking (one on the handle and the other gingerly cupped around the bottom) so that I look like a damned sissy. When sitting on the floor with elders, I can't extend my legs toward them, so I have to sit Indian-style which becomes really fucking uncomfortable after 10 minutes. When eating, I cannot sit until the elder has sat, and I cannot eat until the elder has taken a bite.

I'm sure you since you're in Japan that you're familiar with some of these things due to some cultural similarities.

[Human Snorenado]

You should explain to them that in America, we pull the plug on our elders! 

[Madrun Badrun]

You should explain to them that in America, we pull the plug on our elders! 

 

[GilloD]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillod I went to crazy rip-off Disney World!

[GilloD]

The best part was the crazy Tornado ride. It was just a haunted house with a bunch of fans in it  Which would be fine except the outside is like COME BE A PART OF A VIRTUAL REALITY TORNADO

[OptimoPeach]

It was just a haunted house with a bunch of fans in it

Pretty scary if you're actually Korean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

[Tristam]

Another funny thing I remembered: Motorcycles and motor scooters are very common here. What's funny is that young guys often blast music as loud as they can from their bikes. It's never hard rock or rap, though, which is what you typically hear blasted from American vehicles; instead, you'll see a guy on a dinky little 1980s Honda (designed for one person, but carrying two as the girl on back demurely--but hilariously--sits side-straddle) blaring ABBA or a shitty K-pop song at 110 db and dangerously weaving in and out of traffic.

[brawndolicious]

Another funny thing I remembered: Motorcycles and motor scooters are very common here. What's funny is that young guys often blast music as loud as they can from their bikes. It's never hard rock or rap, though, which is what you typically hear blasted from American vehicles; instead, you'll see a guy on a dinky little 1980s Honda (designed for one person, but carrying two as the girl on back demurely--but hilariously--sits side-straddle) blaring ABBA or a shitty K-pop song at 110 db and dangerously weaving in and out of traffic.

In Iran I saw a family of four (toddler on the gas tank) on a single bike.  Freaked me out considering it was in my first hour in the country.

[Tristam]

I like your impressions Tristam 

I think GilloD is still to overwhelmed with Asia to write anything coherent.

Probably. I was able to acclimate myself very quickly to the new surroundings, but no credit on my part--it's because I have a bilingual girlfriend.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

This seems like an appropriate place to ask. How is Busan? I wanted to go to Seoul but I might be able to get a job in a Busan public school, which is difficult this late.

[Hollywood]

You should goto the DMZ and run across it, I hear thats hilarious and the guards get a kick out of it. Good times.

[chronovore]

I'm sure you since you're in Japan that you're familiar with some of these things due to some cultural similarities.

Kind of. One thing I've heard said before is that it's great to be a foreigner in Japan. We get to benefit from a lot of the manners, restraint, consideration, and thoughtfulness without being forced into similar constraint. Sure, I give it my best effort to try and behave similarly respectfully, but if I don't know the rules for a given situation, usually a Japanese person is understanding about it. They'll usually try and come up with a face-saving explanation for all parties involved such as, "Oh, my goodness -- I didn't explain this properly to begin with! I'm so sorry."

There are lots of similarly oblique rules of etiquette in Japan: don't pass food from chopstick to your dinner partner's chopsticks, but pass them a plate instead. Never stick chopsticks point down in a rice. When seated on a mat, don't stretch your legs out in front and lean back on your hands. Don't blow your nose in public. Don't eat while walking. Never pour for your drinking partner with a single, backhand rotation. Those are off the top of my head, and in descending order of importance. You can probably get away with anything except the first two, which will cause locals to stare at you if you screw up.

[Cormacaroni]

but you forgot:
The place to practice your golf swing is on the train platform
The place to piss in the alleyway
The place to read porn is on the subway

....and many others.

btw, i came home last night to find a pair of chopsticks sticking straight up in the remains of a bowl of rice and natto. I almost took a pic for flickr but the shame upon our house would have been too dreadful and I pussied out at the last minute.

[bork]

It was just a haunted house with a bunch of fans in it

Pretty scary if you're actually Korean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

This has carried over to Japan.  My wife's parents actually believe this nonsense.  I got this horrified expression when I told them I wanted to have a fan blowing on my face at night.     They used to only have fans with timers on them, and it was pure hell sleeping at their house in the summer, in a tiny room with no windows to open and a fan that fucking cut off after an hour max.  When we went to live with them temporarily, the first thing I did was buy a nice, new, timer-less fan, which went with me into every room I was in. 

I think this shit has affected my wife, too.  She never wants to use fans, and it has been a miracle getting her to finally accept having the ceiling fan on at night.  She's not used to central heating and air, so when the A/C is on, she is the only person I know wrapped up in a heavy winter blanket-- in the summer!

[chronovore]

That is crazy.

Then again, a lot of westerners assume we catch colds because of being in a cold temperature. :-/

[OptimoPeach]

Hey GilloD, do you get any of the Starcraft channels?

It was just a haunted house with a bunch of fans in it

Pretty scary if you're actually Korean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

This has carried over to Japan.  My wife's parents actually believe this nonsense.  I got this horrified expression when I told them I wanted to have a fan blowing on my face at night.     They used to only have fans with timers on them, and it was pure hell sleeping at their house in the summer, in a tiny room with no windows to open and a fan that fucking cut off after an hour max.  When we went to live with them temporarily, the first thing I did was buy a nice, new, timer-less fan, which went with me into every room I was in. 

I think this shit has affected my wife, too.  She never wants to use fans, and it has been a miracle getting her to finally accept having the ceiling fan on at night.  She's not used to central heating and air, so when the A/C is on, she is the only person I know wrapped up in a heavy winter blanket-- in the summer!

It's crazy that the myth is propagated by their own government. I, having lived in California my whole life, can't even imagine having to put up with that. These days I can't even fall asleep without the noise of a fan

[Barry Egan]

That is crazy.

Then again, a lot of westerners assume we catch colds because of being in a cold temperature. :-/

this isn't true? huh.

[Human Snorenado]

I don't understand how you guys can fetishize a culture with such stoopit "rules."

[Tauntaun]

I don't understand how you guys can fetishize a culture with such stoopit "rules."

yellow fever.   

[drew]

I don't understand how you guys can fetishize a culture with such stoopit "rules."

weeaboos have no shame

NONE

[Cormacaroni]

Who is fetishizing these cultures? I just live here, as does Chronovore. GilloD has never struck me as an anime/j-game enthusiast but I suppose I could be wrong.

[chronovore]

drew is edging ever closer to the prized Ignore User position; it's like "pole position" except that it's for internet louts who can't appropriately filter their own responses.