In Korea, it's very easy to find street food carts, selling various popular foods, such as ddukbokkee (rice cakes and eggs with spicy sauce). Around the street carts, students gather around and pick whatever they wish to eat and save a lot of their money at the same time. 
In Korea, Karaoke has been very popular and became part of their culture. Especially, students love to go with their group of friends and spend 1 to 2 hours of singing. In past, Karaoke was a place just for singing, however, nowadays, it has been advanced and there are more activities to do, such as taking sticker photos, which I will explain next. 
These are sticker photos that I took in Korea. They are usually $7, and there are various machines with different qualities. After taking pictures, you can decorate and add many quatities as much as you want.
Another thing that students in Korea love to do is going shopping. The picture on the left is Seoul downtown, Myungdong. It's the most crowded place in Seoul and where most students love to go to.
When I read your blog, I was surprised to see how similar the Korean students’ pastime is to the Japanese students’ pastime. In big cities like Tokyo or Osaka, there are lots of places where the students can go to just hang out and eat while strolling around a shotengai, which is basically a bunch of stores all on one street. The stores range from bookstores, dollar shops, to candy stores. So, although the food sold there is different, the whole let’s-eat-a-bunch-of-different-stuff-while-we-walk-around-the-city feel is the same. Also, karaoke is very popular to Japanese students, as well as the sticker photos. It’s fascinating how similar the two countries are, when looking from this aspect.
ReplyDeleteHaha, hey Shino, I had a Japanese friend named, Kazumi :) We were able to become close friends, because both Korea and Japan had a bunch of similarities. However, she's currently in Tokyo, Japan. After learning about Japan I wanted to visit there someday! Although, both countries are similar, I believe that there are more things that I'm not aware of yet. I really want to experience your culture and someday in my life, maybe even live there for awhile. Oh, you should visit Korea as well!! when you go there, go to Seoul downtown, Myung Dong. I went there last summer and all the sellers were biligual. Oh, and because of so many Japanese tourists, they thought I was one of them and kept spoke Japanese to me. haha it was an odd experience.
ReplyDeleteYe Jin,
ReplyDeleteYour blog was very interesting to read seeing as I knew little about the Korean culture before reading it. In Chicago they have hot dog stands on the streets, but it seems like nothing to the degree that they do in Korea. In Northbrook we would never see anything like this. It would be interesting for a town like Northbrook to adopt this custom. I think it would be really fun to have these carts on the streets around school. I love Karaoke and it is interesting to see as well how popular it is in other countries. Your sticker photos that you made are so cool! I have seen photo booth machines but they never come out as cool as the ones that you have. Shopping is a great past time that I know people of every cultural background love to do. It is interesting to see how American and Korean customs are so alike. However, it seems as if Korea has improved versions of some of the stuff we have in Northbrook such as the food carts on the streets and the cool sticker photos.