Halloween in Korea

Man, last night was Halloween and it went on forever. We kept drinking until past 7am... I probably won't be doing that again...

I spent most of the yesterday at Alex's pad just chilling. We had some cigarettes for breakfast and soon dubu for lunch. Later in the evening, I made my way back to Jina's on the subway and made a few stops along the way to do some sightseeing. Didn't really see much tho. Jina and I ate some bomb ass korean bbq for dinner.




The bibimbap was delicious.



We met up with some of Jina's friends after dinner to celebrate someone's bday. Just a side note, but I would not want my bday to fall on any widely celebrated date, including Halloween. After a few drinks and interesting conversations, we met up with Alex and some other people at Club Air. Then after a few more drinks... the sun came up =P








Oh yeah, the cab driver that took us to Club Air was tripping me out. He was in such a rush... it was hilarious. He would be honking at cars that were stopping for red lights and get sooo angry. Korean drivers are crazy... like no one follows traffic laws. I actually saw a bus driver go into incoming traffic lanes to cut people off. And I thought LA was bad...

Seoul... or K-town?

I was pretty shocked when I first got to Japan. But here in Korea, I feel almost like I'm back in K-town. The weather is surprising cold and dry, but that's the way I like it. My first dilemma of the day was trying to communicate where I was to my homie Alex. I don't read or write Korean, so I had no idea how to tell him the address. After pacing around a bit, I went downstairs and started raiding the mailboxes to take a picture of the address. It felt pretty silly, and it didn't do the job. After wasting a couple of hours trying to figure it out, we finally called Jina and she gave us directions... haha.

View from my room.

Triangle Kimbap.


Alex is one of the close homies I grew up with and I haven't seen him for over 8 years, so I was pretty excited. I think he was pretty excited too... haha... cuz when he saw me waiting on the street, he stuck his head out and busted a super quick illegal u-turn right in front of a cop. When we realized what happened, the cop was already next to the car. Luckily, they just let it slide. Alex took me to get some traditional Korean food with a million panch'an dishes. Then he introduced me to a couple of producers/artists. One of the producers has actually worked with DNA, the executive producer for 3SK's upcoming full-length album (planned June 2009 release date). It doesn't seem like I have to put in too much work in Korea, since homies here already got the local scene pretty locked. We ate some san gyup sal for dinner and ended up drinking at some bar. We took the party back to Alex's pad and I crashed there for the night.

On to Korea

My day started real early. I pretty much stayed up all night packing and only slept a few hours before catching a ride to the airport. It so happened that DJ Hokuto was flying out to Taiwan today for a gig and our departure times were about the same. He had some beats to show me and I wanted to talk to him about some collabos, so we tried to meet up at the airport. Unfortunately, our flights were in different terminals and we weren't able to meet up. Hopefully we can catch up when I get back to the states.


Categorized recycling bins.

Last image from Japan.



It was a short ~2.5hr flight to Korea. I'm crashing with my homegirl Jina, so I waited at Cafe Piore for her to get off work. She picked me up around 7:30pm. It was good seeing her after almost a year. I dropped off my luggage and we went to eat some "3-year-old" kimchi jigae... I'm sad I forgot to take pictures. We then walked around Hondae/Shinchon and spent the rest of the night catching up at Zen, a local pub.


Here's a park in the center of Hondae where a lot of live performances take place.

Some cafe that was featured in a famous Korean Drama.

Dayaaaam Jina!

Last Day in Tokyo

By now, I've hit up most of the major hip hop spots in Tokyo and got a good amount of reference materials to help me with research when I get back to the states. I also found a couple of candidates to do 3SK remixes for release in Japan, but nothing solid yet. Hopefully something comes together *fingers crossed*

Today was my day to be a tourist. First, I went back to the Meiji Shrine. Before you enter the temple, you're suppose to purify yourself by rinsing your hands and mouth with water.







I had brunch in Harajuku before walking around Omotesando Hills. Even American food tastes better in Japan =P


Doesn't quite live to up the expectations set by the picture, but still good.




The ultimate G-Shock watch. Too bad I couldn't get my camera to auto-focus right.


Next stop was Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Unfortunately, it was closed and I couldn't get in to see the actual palace. Just seeing the exterior garden and moat right smack in downtown Tokyo was quite interesting though. The Imperial Palace is said to occupy the most expensive square kilometer in the world.













I had dinner in Akihabara, the "Electric Town" where you can buy every electronic product imaginable. The place I ate at, Tsuki No Shizuku, is a chain in Japan and a pretty good place for a date or drinking with buddies. I ordered this duck dish and it was served raw on top of a flame. I think I was suppose to wait until it cooks, but I got hasty and ate it raw... haha... I hope I don't catch any weird diseases.







I ended my night in Ginza, the famous high-end shopping district of Tokyo. Pretty much every name brand you can think of has a presence in Ginza.






This trip to Tokyo has definitely given me some insight into high density living. The city planners here must face some amazing challenges. There are energy conservation ideas that the U.S. would do well to adopt. For example, my hotel room requires you to place your room key card into this slot before you can turn on any lights. So lights are never left on when not being used. Also, public transportation is extremely efficient and the infrastructure is well laid out.









I am hoping to visit Japan again real soon. Tomorrow I'll be off to Korea!