Balentine's Day

(holding you a while and then I'm going to Japan)

My last week before my big-but-not-so-long Lunar New Year holiday was an eventful one. Weekends and punk shows and familiar holidays celebrated in half-familiar ways and conflict against machines and bureaucracy with ultimate success marked the week of hearts and airfare.

On Saturday me, Cahill, and his various coworkers convened around Hongdae nice and early to check out a place I've been meaning to see for a while here. It's called Skunk Hell, and it's just about the centre of Punk counterculture in Korea. All of the few dozen or so people in Korea who'd call themselves part of that subculture were there, and it was a helluvan interesting show.

Of the countless (if you can't count to nine, that is) bands that performed, there was a band from Japan called The Hat Trickers. What was most interesting about them was their shtick. See, they dress like Alex and his droogies from A Clockwork Orange.

While they weren't actually the best band of the bunch, (that honour goes to the name-forgotten predecessors who played a wild cover of MC5's Kick Out the Jams) they drew most of the crowd, and thus made said crowd peak in wildness during their performance. After their set, I picked up a shirt (click for picture), which is (obviously enough) a parody of the iconic image of Alex holding aloft a blade.


The punk show was an all-ages affair (albeit one that curiously allowed copious quantities of booze to be brought-in without question) so once it ended, we headed to Brixx for some nice calm-contrast as a bunch of hookah-smoking caterpillars.

After that cool-down, Robert and Co. headed the way of all-night DeeJays and me and Cahill went the way of wandering around Hongdae. However, shortly after we left Brixx, we realized we'd lost the braceleted key to our locker full of stored goods. After searching for the key, trying to pull the locker open with drunken brute force, and stealing a knife to try and jimmy the lock, we finally got the great idea to tell the guy guarding the lockers that we lost the key. Ten minutes and ten bucks later they opened the lock.

That would have been the dumbest we felt all night, if the key hadn't fallen out of Cahill's hood several hours later (I apparently placed it there as a joke).

Luckily, the horrible humiliation of was karmatically retributed when I bested all odds to finally win at one of those crooked claw machines. Mind you, I only won an ugly lighter that ran out of fluid several moments later. Also mind you that it took about 30 tries at about five different machines, and that each failed attempt was accompanied with an ever-escalating string of obscenities. All minding aside, I did finally win something from one of them.

Speaking of impossibly intimidating odds, I visited the immigration office this week to get a replacement Alien Registration Card. Then I found out that would take a week, which means I'd get the potentially necessary-for-travel card just about a week too late. Luckily, Ben suggested that night that perhaps the sofa we 'liberated' around the same time that I lost the card might be contain a clue. Much to my relief (and Sherlockian jealousy) the card was sitting safely under my sofa. All is well and good for my Japan trip.

Of course, that reminds me that Ben is back. Mike's going to be here in a few weeks. Adrian's coming around the same time. That's a strange and pleasant little time warp in my little Korean social network. March to June will be my swan song, and it'll be interesting and will fly the fuck by.

But this is Valentine's week, so surely I've got more Korean-heart-shaped things to discuss than what foreigners are coming when, right? This place is predictably chocolaty and hearty on that chocolate heart occasion.

However, there is a twist. See, Valentine's Day in Korea is basically a day on which girls give boys chocolate and gifts and the like. Then, a month later they've got White Day. On March 14th, boys return the favour, giving sweets and whatnots to their sweethearts and whonots. Hell, I've even been told that there's a corresponding Black Day (April 14th) on which it's taboo for anyone to give chocolate as a gift.

A number of my students gave me chocolate and presents. Some of the presents, however, might have been intended for Lunar New Year (the brief holiday I'm currently enjoying). In particular (particularly nice, that is to say) I got a nice wine kit from the mother of a Kindergarten student. The school also gave us these Hickory Farms-esque box of canned meats and oils and such. For some reason, Spam is an exceeding popular - almost luxurious - gift item in Korea.

But canned meat is hardly the best part of my holiday. In less than 10 hours, I'm leaving for Japan for four days. I arrive in Tokyo alone and with no plans. I'm meeting Cahill and Co. a week later, and that's as solid as any of my intentions go. Much like my trip to Thailand, I plan to keep a sketchbook journal, to be updated while I'm on the trip. I've even bought a new sketchbook for that very purpose. So, stay tuned for updates in the next week.

In the meantime, I should probably start packing. For a closer this week, enjoy a random assortment of sight and signs from Korea.


From right to left, I start with a sign post ripe with... kitsch, if nothing else. The clearly obvious sign in that lot is for the Cafe Hyper Maniac. Me and Cahill looked for the place, and it's not there anymore. Or at least not open in the middle of the night, which really seems like a pre-requisite for all hyper maniac cafes.

Foodwise, I've got a bag of garlic baguettes. These are packaged like potato chips, in a small-serving mylar snack bag. I also hear that they're heavily sweetened; you know, like all good garlic breads. Then I've got just some sign with some curious phrasing. Granted, the English is only slightly broken, but the wording is so awkward that drunk 2:00AM me obviously found it a little funny.

Finally, there's what may be a public service announcement, and may otherwise be a fun-loving ad on how socially-acceptable it is for Korean males to get really uncontrollably fucked up on soju after work. Regardless, they're acknowledging the prevalent phenomenon, which is funny enough for me.

By the way, the Korean language has no 'V'. That's the explanation behind my relatively unclever title this week.