Winding

I've been out and about nonstop for the past week, but it's going to come to an end once Bern leaves on Monday -- also because I have a bunch of projects, presentations, and quizzes to prepare for.

What's new with me

Tiffany and I are going to Japan for a weekend (leaving Friday, coming back Monday night) in a couple weeks. I just booked our flight. She got a hold of a couple concert tickets for DBSK's Japanese (Tohoshinki) concert in Fukuoka! I'm estatic to finally see a full DBSK (THSK) concert =)

Misarang ------ Restaurant in Ilsan
A few of us DBSK fans went to Ilsan, a young and happening city outside of Seoul (around 1.25 hours away from where I live), to eat at this Korean pizza and pasta restaurant owned by the father of one of the members (who happens to be my favourite) -- Xiah Junsu.
Apparently most of the customers are fans of DBSK and Junsu... and they definitely showed their love on the walls leading up to the 2nd floor restaurant.
It was really nice! The food was great and his dad was very friendly. He came around to talk to us and then suggested that we take a picture in front of the cardboard cutout of Junsu lol...
I told him that I'm going to Fukuoka and he said he would also be there =) Then, at the end, just as we were leaving, he gave us pamphlets and business cards for their skincare line called Crebeau-belle owned by Junsu's mother. The office was nearby but by the time we got there, it was closed for the night. We will come again since there's quite a bit of shopping to do around there, too.

Subzero ------ Ice bar in Hongdae
I went there to "chill out" (kkkk get it?) with a bunch of international students. Beforehand, the girls I went with to Jeju treated the guy who helped us plan our trip for dinner and drinks.
Subzero was really neat. It was a bit difficult to find 'cause it's a small room in the basement of some building on a semi-inconspicuous street. All the furniture, art, and sculptures inside are carved from ice blocks!
It's 15,000won to enter and you are able to pick a drink. You're given a hooded silver tent (poncho/parka) to wear, black fleece gloves, and even Ugg-type booties with pom poms if you're underdressed. I suggest that you wear socks! The clothes have a funky smell to them, but you quickly forget once you walk inside the refridgerator. The ice bar is kept at a constant -15 degrees celcius. I felt as though I was in a giant ice box!

haha cute looking eskimo hoods...
If you get your tongue stuck on an ice block, they have equipment to help get it unstuck real fast.
Next to the sculpture of the thinking man haha
They have mini benches made out of ice (of course) and they are covered with fur.
All the drinks come in these ice blocks! My drink was excellent - the guy forgot (I think) to put alcohol in mine lolWe didn't stay in there too long -- only around half an hour, but it was a really interesting experience + fun ^^

Everland -
A lot of people say that Everland is better than Lotte World because it's bigger and the rides are bigger. Unfortunately, we didn't stay at Everland for long because a couple of us only had 4 hours of sleep and it was sprinkling and the line ups were 1.5 hours long!
We did highly enjoy this roller coaster, though. It's called T Express and that drop you see was amazing.
Long roller coaster, too!Everland is similar to Lotte World in that they have parades and theatre shows, but Everland has more - zoos, botanical garden, animal rides, fireworks...
Don't have to go to Egypt to ride a camel!
@ the gift shop
This is the biggest pirate ship I've been on, but we all got sort of sick afterward (even though it wasn't heart dropping at all and actually moved slower than most pirate ships) that we couldn't ride anymore rides!
So I think I'll have to come to Everland another time!

Yesterday, B and I went on a tour to the DMZ and I took a few steps into North Korea! I've got to do some homework before I leave so I'll tell you my experience tomorrow!

Lights, Camera, Action

After school today, I ventured to Dongdaemun (yea yea... 3rd day in a row lol) but this time by myself because I needed a bathing suit for this weekend. Talk about last minute! I did get one and bargained hard. I got a set for 35,000 which, I think, is pretty good from 50,000! It's a bit hard to find swimsuits in Korea, but I found mine on the basement floor of Goodmorning City. Anyway, my cell phone died while I was on the phone so I went to a convenience store to charge it - he said it would take han shi (1 hour) so I went outside and saw a bunch of people standing in front of a stage that had "2009 Dongdaemun Live Seoul Power Music Concert" or something like that flashing across. It was in front of Cerestar Department Store which is near Migliore. I stood on the side of a pole base along with a bunch of girls and asked them what was happening and they said "2PM!" really excitedly. 2PM is a pretty new boy group with their catchy song, Again & Again. I decided to hang around while I waited for my cell phone to charge.. 10 minutes later, it turned out to be a full fledged fashion show which was exciting ^^

Then there was the concert! This whole thing lasted 2.5 hours. I was really surprised at who performed -- they were the same artists I see every week on the hit music channels on TV!

There were probably 12 different artists/bands -- I recognized around 80% of the songs but only knew about a quarter of the artists' names. Out of the ones I knew, there was Younha, Bae Seul Gi (performed Tiresome), Evan, U Kiss (I really enjoyed their performance - they hosted, too), and 2PM.
U Kiss! Great energy and cute! Some of them can speak English fluently, too.
Younha - wow she can belt it! She sounds even better than her recorded songs. She's a really talented girl - she can play multiple instruments and she writes her own songs. For her first song (I think it's called 1,2,3), she played the piano.
This girl... I don't know her name (can you tell me?) but she was very pretty and could definitely dance sexy haha... and she has a great voice too - she did a balladrap with Evan.
The last (but blurry) picture I took as I squeezed the life out of my battery (it died 99% around halfway through the concert)... 2PM!! Really good performance - got the audience all hyped up and fangirly haha. Jaebeom! Junsu!! I can see how they're so popular..... ^^
Vids to come in a few days -- I'm going to Jeju Island for the weekend!! A vacation within a vacation #1 babyyy!!!!

Lotte Family Concert

Lotte Duty Free hosted the 7th Stage Family Concert yesterday!

ARTISTS:
Super Junior
Shin Hye Sung
Big Bang
Rain

There were 3 ways to get tickets:
1) You could buy 500USD worth from Lotte Duty Free to get 2 A seats (the worst seats), 700USD for 2 S seats (middle), or 1,300USD for 2 R seats. It's supposed to be a free concert for those who could afford to spend that amount at Lotte Duty Free.
2) You could look online on Naver (all in Korean) and buy off of people. (They usually sell tix in pairs)
3) You could arrive early and buy tickets from a scalper.
Or, you could stand around a cash register @ Lotte Duty Free, waiting for people with big purchases to give you their receipt...... (I did not do this, but I know of some who did).
It was difficult, but luckily Tiffany found some online. I transferred the seller the money (25,000 each for S seats) and the next day, we received our tickets!
We thought we were being smart by getting there early at 3 since they didn't have assigned seating - the earlier you came, the better seats you could choose and the concert started at 7PM, but there was already quite an extensive line! At 5, we were let in. Bich wanted tickets for her and her friend so I ended up finding some last minute tickets for her from a scalper (2 high school girls) in the R section (best seats) at a very reasonable price.
We bought light sticks to wave around. Each artist has its own colour. We chose Rain's (white) since he was the main event of the concert!
Since we were early, we were lucky enough to listen to the Lotte Duty Free commercial (a compilation of the stars endorsing Duty Free singing their theme song) around 10 times.... it's been stuck in my head all day. There was a good turnout - much more packed than the Sparkling concerts.
We also received a creatively nice program. I was so disappointed I didn't see the one song I was looking forward to seeing for both Super Junior and Rain on the program! But at the end, both artists surprised the audience with those songs =)
Super Junior (SuJu) opened the show! I was blown away by some of their voices. They sang Why I Like You, Reset, Let's Not..., and Rokuko... and then the song I wanted to hear: Sorry Sorry!! LOVED their last 2 performances.
Since SuJu has so many members (13), they have broken into mini groups for side projects. SuJu T (trot music) sang the energetic Rokuko and SuJu's K.R.Y (consists of the 3 best singers), sang Let's Not which was beautifully sung. KiBum was not present as he's currently concentrating on acting. Heechul... gotta love that guy haha Heechul + Yesung caught my eye.
The song I wanted them to sing was Sorry Sorry ~ shawty shawty micho micho hehe
Lots of blue sticks (their fan colour) in the audience.
Then wasssssss Shin Hye Sung who we had the pleasure of seeing last week. He sang the same songs.
It was cute when he was talking -- being a solo artist, he wasn't as popular as the other 3 performers that night and didn't receive as many fan screams... but you know audiences - any mention of an artist they like, they'll scream their heads off.
So SHS built it up.
He mentioned "Super Junior" and everyone screamed.
"Big BANG!" --- SCREAM!
"RAIN!!" ----- SCREAAAMMMM!!!
"Shin Hye Sung!!!" ------ superloudSSSCCCCCREAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM!!!!
Big Banggggg next! I can never get tired of seeing or listening to these guys -- such catchy stuff and you know that no two performances are ever the same.
The guy in the cap is TaeYang. He's so smooth at dancing! He also put a little of his own R&Bness in his solos which was wow...They performed Last Farewell, How Gee, Together Forever, Heaven, Haru Haru, and Red Sky + then Sorry But I Love You as an encore.THEN... the biggest male artist in Korea (or was it Asia?) -- RAIN! I had high expectations from him. He totally met them and gave me much more. To be honest, all he really needed to do was stand there and move a bit and the audience (especially the ajummas!) would go wild, screaming, cheering, frantically waving their lightsticks and silver pom poms. He just has an incredible stage presence... and he always seems so relaxed, confident and comfortable.
Fresh Woman, How to avoid the sun, Touch Ya, Love Story (yay!!), September 12th, I Do, ...I hope to upload some videos soon! Here's a snippit of Rain's "I Do". It's very mellow in the beginning...
I wanted him to sing Rainism (not on the program) so he did!! Bad boyyyyy~ hehehe

After acting like groupies at the concert we ate dinner @ Olympic park and took the cab to Apgujeong where we attended some intimate party @ Hedone (I forgot who the connections were), the basement of an upscale Italian restaurant called Peppermint Dream.
It was the first time I've seen so many Westerners mingling together since I've arrived. There were no more than 50 people. It was kind of refreshing not having to speak in broken English, hoping they got what you meant. It reminded me of Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong.

We met some cool people. The gorgeous girl on the left is Deborah. She has a British accent (attended British school in Korea) but is from New York and is wearing an amazing D&G dress I wish was mine. The girl on the right was one of the few guests who hardly spoke any English, but she wore a pair of these awesome ($300USD) splatter-dyed slim-fit ankle jeans. They quickly became Bich's chingu (friend)... as did everyone else she happened to bump into that night (it was 30,000won entrance fee all you can drink wine bar so she made the most of it).
OH and at the beginning, I also met this girl whose blog I've read a couple times. She's a regular contributor on Soompi (an extensive forum I use to update myself on Korean entertainment culture). Her Soompi alias is Ginger (an adopted Korean from W. Virginia teaching English in Seoul). Quite the unique beauty - it was neat meeting her.
This DJ really reminded me of Onew or Key from SHINee -- the hair and the shape of the face but my goodness.. the width of his legs could not have been bigger than my ankle!

Me, Bich, Tiff

Interesting night indeed. I need to hang out around Apgujeong more often... I love the atmosphere, fashion, and people.

Oh yea while we were leaving, trying to catch a taxi, I saw this huge van with tinted windows -- the type celebrities get around in. I told Bich and she walked in front of the van, threw her arms up in the air and exclaimed, "MINWOO!" haha I glanced -- it was him! We tapped his window and said hi but he didn't roll down his window. 5 inches away from Minwoo. Wonder if his dancers were in the car too...

Sparkling Concert 2009

Last Saturday and Sunday, I attended a 2-day Kpop concert at the Olympic Park Stadium!

It was pretty amazing being able to see so many of my favourite Korean artists (some of them, again!)

My concert buddy was Tiffany -- she was the one who got the tickets, too ^^
We were actually a bit worried we wouldn't be let in because we were foreigners. In short, although this concert was sponsored by the Korean tourism department to promote Korean hallyu (AKA the love for Korean pop culture), we heard that foreigners were not allowed to buy the tickets off of Gmarket (sort of a Korean auction site for everything you can imagine). Tiffany had ordered the tickets under her Korean roommate's name. In fact, foreigners had to pay double the price local Koreans had to pay and buy it from one of the sponsors in Myeong Dong (who were quite adamant foreigners would be stopped at the door if they did not buy a ticket from them) where they would sit in specific, sectioned off seats. Quite a few exchange students from KUwho wanted to go and were unable to buy off of Gmarket so they bought tickets in MyeongDong. We thought that was ridiculous! At the end, we didn't encounter any problems with our Gmarket tickets - noone checked for our ID (they don't even check inside your bags!) + we got to stand pretty darn close to the stage! We chose to stand in the blue area:
Some cheap concert goods -- flags, bandanas, balloons, name tags, and light sticks with your favourite artist's name.

**Youtube has banned people in Korea from uploading videos so Tiffany's friend helped upload them for me -- but now, Youtube has suspended her for violating uploading rules. All linked videos below are filmed by me unless stated otherwise. You will probably need to sign in your Facebook account to view the video. Sorry for the terrible sound quality and shakiness and please turn down the volume because fans do scream!**

DAY 1

At 6PM on the dot, the lights dimmed, the fans started screaming and waving their light sticks... everyone turned to face the screen. The Sparkling Concert artists flashed before our eyes in a collage. When Big Bang's picture appeared, the fans roared!
Shin Hye Sung (from Shinhwa) started off with my favourite song of his. He's a very mellow guy!
FT Island came out! It's made of 5 pretty boys but only 1 main singer (Hongki -- in the pink pants). They were great too! He has a powerful voice for his size haha -- because of their performance, I'm going to buy their mini album!
This Japanese girl I've never heard of before came out -- Sachi Tainaka. She was great! She played the piano and sang a well known Korean song I believe. She also sang another song -- nice!!
SG Wannabe - 3 not so good looking guys (in my opinion), but they sing very well. I'm not too into their voices, though, but that's just me. They're super super popular.
B to the I to the G BIG BANG!
They're so charismatic it's amazing. Super fun performance with fire and everything. JiYoung = Gdragon (guy w/ white shirt, pink pants) sent some love to a fan and sat on the stage 2 meters away from me (Facebook clip) which was a highlight. I love his new hair! They came out to do an encore with Sorry But I Love You. I couldn't help but smile real big when they performed!

DAY 2

We put our names into the draw (by artist) for a chance to win autographed CDs.
Lee Ji Hoon - this famous actor/singer guy opened up with a ballad. Pleasant voice -- he was the MC!
Theeen SHINee (said Shiny) came out! They're a relatively new boyband from SM entertainment and I really really enjoyed their performance! They're extremely charismatic and in sync... and damn skinny + tall too my goodness.
MINWOO! This guy is also a member of Shinhwa except now he does more solo activities and produces music. He's such a super performer -- so much energy and really pumped up the audience. I saw him perform @ the Hollywood Bowl concert last summer in LA.. he ripped off his shirt. Enough said.
He has a bunch of good looking dancers too!
My favourite clip --- HERE

This girl named Yuri sang a duet with the MC and also sang her own cover of Beyonce's song, Listen. Strong voice! She was pretty impressive.

The most anticipated performance of the night (or.. of the whole 2-day concert) -- Dong Bang Shin Ki (aka DBSK/TVXQ/Tohoshinki/TVfXQ)!! They're my absolute favourite Korean pop singers/dancers. They have made the Guinness World Records twice. One for having the largest fan club/fan base in the world and just a few weeks ago, they got 'The World's Only Artist With Most Photographs Taken'. They sang 4 songs: Purple Line, Love In The Ice, and Wrong Number.. and then for the encore + finale, they sang Mirotic -- LOVE!! (In thie Facebook clip, you can see them perform Mirotic from behind which is just as good ;)).

I got to witness the first time DBSK sang Mirotic with its original lyrics after its ban. The lyrics were accused for having 'harmful lyrics' that were inappropriate for youth (but gee.. can't all songs be analyzed to have these connotations?). SM won the lawsuit case.
Love In The Ice is one of my absolutely favourite DBSK song. It was amazing to hear it live -- especially Junsu's solo. Their whole performance was perfect.

Sunday's concert was much shorter than the first!
Apparently, it was a competition between Big Bang and DBSK -- see who could sell the most tickets. It was fairly empty in the Big Bang concert in the back and I had a lot of standing room, but for the DBSK concert, I felt like a sardine -- we even went early and I was still totally squished... some of the shorter girls looked like they were about to faint from the heat! Luckily, I rememebered to bring my heels which gave me some decent height to enjoy the performance without having to tip toe and look over heads. I heard that some Big Bang fans bought some of the tickets to the 2nd day's concert and didn't show up -- just so that DBSK's audience would look a bit sparse compared to Big Bang's ahha.. how immature.

This Saturday, I will be going to another concert in Olympic Park Stadium =) This one will have Shin Hye Sung (again), Big Bang (again), Super Junior (I had their Sorry Sorry music video up on the side last month), and Korea's biggest solo star, Rain. I'm very excited and am highly anticipating Rain's performance! I will then be able to cross off one of my 'must-do-before-I-die': See Rain perform in concert.
Oh and another Kpop fact is that this girl who sat with us at Hollywood Bowl last year played some sort of game and won a date with a very popular Korean artist who is currently trying to dominate the American market, Se7en! She'll have a great time for sure *