Why I love living in Korea, Part 1

Korean eye doctors kick ass.

I can find no other way to accurately explain how I currently feel about Korean doctors in general and Korean eye doctors in particular. But before I get into my love for doctors in Korea, let me explain what brings me to this conclusion.

This past Friday I had a 회식(hoeshik) or company dinner gathering. These are gatherings that happen intermittently in Korean companies and usually involve dinner, lots of drinks, karaoke, and lots of drinks. The cool thing at my company is that they rarely happen (at some companies they happen very often and are completely mandatory), but when they do, they are very fun. Also, since I haven’t been drinking at all lately, it was a good chance to get out and grab a few cold ones with my team who, due to their work load, have been unable to converse with me in any detail lately about anything unrelated to work.

So after work Friday we went to a little meat restaurant called Mani. Our entire team is comprised of 10 people of varying ages, backgrounds and temperaments but we all came together for one purpose that night, to have fun. Since my immediate team member, lets call her Tee for intensive purposes, hasn’t been able to do anything but work lately, she was hell bent on drinking soju and lots of it. Of course being the only guy there at the time because my bosses hadn’t arrived yet, I had to match the girls in shots of soju and before I knew it, 4 bottles were gone in 25 minutes. Then the bosses arrived and the mandatory group drinking began. 헉.

So after a polishing off a few more bottles I started to realize that since I haven’t been drinking at all lately and following a pretty healthy lifestyle, my tolerance had fallen substantially and I was starting to get pretty damn tipsy. After we finished there, we went to karaoke where the bosses had to (of course) order a huge bottle of whiskey. 헉2

Now during this whole debacle, I had been trying to escape to Itaewon to Joel’s goodbye party because I wanted to see him off before he left that Sunday. As much as I tried, the bosses were like “Ah sure, go ahead, right after this shot” which was usually followed by “Oh, and this shot here too”. By the time I finally got to leave, I was so drunk that I could barely walk straight. I looked at my clock and it was a quarter till 11pm. I figured that since I had eaten, I would be able to go home real quick and catch a quick nap before I would go and meet Joel and everyone by like 12:30 or so. It sounded so good in my mind at the moment. Drunken-Plan-Action-Man, Away!

I arrived at my door around 11:10 or so and dug around in my pockets for my house key. Then a revelation struck me as my memories faded back to the karaoke room.
*clouds*
*my friend Jay asking to borrow my bottle opener*
*bottle opener attached to house key ring*
*my hand giving Jay my bottle opener/house key*
*clouds*
When I finally realized where my damn keys were, I sat down on the stairs right in front of my door to figure out what to do. Then I took a nap. A long one. With my damn contacts in my eyes still…

So I awoke with a start at about 3:30am, eyes burning like Richard Pryor running down the street. It took me awhile to gather my thoughts but I realized I was sober again and laying on the stairs in front of my door. I hurried down to meet Joel before he went in and managed to stay out for a bit longer before crashing out at a friend’s house. The next day, my eyes looked like someone colored them with red magic marker and they burned horribly. So I pretty much stayed in Saturday and Sunday nursing my poor eyes.

Finally on Monday I could stand it no longer and made the mad dash to the eye doctor down the street from work. I waited for 5 minutes and the doctor sat me down, looked at me and said “Ah, sleeping in your contacts, eh?” as he proceeded to put drops in my eyes. 30 seconds later, my eyes were white and didn’t hurt at all. I was back in the office in 25 minutes. The cost for all of this? For two doctor visits, three examinations, and prescription, 8000 won or about 8 dollars. EIGHT DOLLARS. Plus the entire time I spent there was a grand total of about 9 minutes. As I walked back to the office, I started thinking, how much would this have cost me in both time and money, back in the States? I shudder to think about it.

I sit here and type this with white, pain-free eyes and profess my love for Korean eye doctors. You guys kick some serious ass.

Oh, and this reminds me of my 5 dollar wisdom tooth removal I had about a year ago. So you Korean dentists out there, you kick ass too.

Tokyo Beach Bash 2007

No matter how long I've been away, it's always nice to get back and enjoy Japan even if for only a little while. This time I was going out to meet Doug, Matt and a few others from the old Chiba crew to celebrate Matt's birthday and the 5 year anniversary of the beach party we started back in 2002. It had been about a year or so since I met Matt and almost 5 years since I've seen Doug so I was determined to kick it old school and have a blast.

Unfortunately, since everyone lives in seperate areas of Japan now, I wouldn't be able to meet Doug or Matt until Saturday. I still managed to meet up my old friends Kaise and Myi in Tokyo for awhile to get food, drinks and spend a few hours in karaoke (where I was able to drink alcohol!!!!!). I also met Kaise's co-worker SoYoon who speaks the same 3 languages I do. It was fun, albiet sometimes confusing, to go back and forth in Korean, English and Japanese.

The thing that kind of sucked was that since Kaise had to work, I was just wandering around with Myi for 5 hours or so before we could meet them up. I managed to check out some stores and eat some gyuu-don before we met though, so it wasn't a total waste.

After meeting, we went to a Mexican-style bar in the Ebisu area. The Mexican waiters in there spoke fantastic Japanese and were really quick to serve us our drinks. I also had a lot of fun trying to figure out how exactly somebody ripped the toilet seat off the men's bathroom. After a few Long Islands, a few shots of Tequila, a margarita or two, and a couple beers, we all went (staggered) to karaoke. It was great being able to find a songs they didnt have in Korea, so of the 3 hours we did karaoke, I was probably singing 5 out of every 7 songs. Needless to say, my throat hurt at the end of the night when we finally went home.

Kaise and SoYoon at karaoke

The Mexican bar we went to for tequila shots, which would also prove to be the place of Kaise's undoing


Kaise, Myi, and SoYoon


Myi, SoYoon, and Me


After finally getting to Kaise's and crashing at about 4am. I found myself waking up in the middle of the night a couple of times to blow my nose and cough up mucus. Yeah, I know, it HAD to happen on my vacation and on the day I've been most looking forward to in the recent 3 months. Yes, I had caught the flu. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

I ended up waking up late because I wanted to sweat as much of the flu out of me as possible. After showering and saying bye to Kaise, I set out for the train. Now, I've been used to Korea's subway map for awhile and though it can be somewhat difficult at times to get around, it is very rarely confusing. Japan's train line, on the other hand, is possibly the most confusing attempt at mass commuter transit in the history of the world. Doug said it best when he described it as " a bunch of fucked up spider webs super imposed upon each other". After finally getting out to the beach and meeting up Doug and Matt, we started getting the party ready.

Since we were the only 3 there at the time, we had to lug all of the stuff Matt brought in his truck for the party down to the beach by ourselves. It took us about 45 minutes and by the end of it, me and Doug were sweating bullets. We freshened up and started setting everything up when people started to arrive. We set up the canopy and barbecue (despite the oyaji's complaints) before we started making the jungle juice.

For those of you who know what jungle juice is, you may skip this paragraph. For those that don't continue reading. In lament's terms, jungle juice is God's gift to summer, beach-going drinkers. Its vodka, gin, rum, Malibu and whatever other clear liquors (this is how I do it, I know there are other recipes) mixed with an array of fruit juices and chopped up tropical fruit all mixed in a giant cooler with ice. Lots of liquor, none of the taste, all of the satisfaction. I have perfected my recipe for Jungle Juice over the years and this time, as usual, it did not disappoint.

After getting kicked off of the beach and moving further into the park, we continued our antics at a few outside camping tables. We would spend the rest of the evening there hanging out, talking, dancing, etc. until about 11pm.

This was the liquor stash that Matt brought, bless his soul

The first of about 10 batches of Jungle Juice we would make

Doug making his favorite face

Just when people started getting there

Yes, we should be careful with stingrays because not only do they have very mischevious faces and seek to do us pain, but they also apparently have two gigantic testicles

More jungle juice being made at the 2nd location in the park

These were some great people. I especially like the little Japanese girl on the right because she was absolutely hilarious.

As it got darker, more people started to show up out of the woodwork

This girl was drunk and loved Doug's "Gay Musik!!!!"

Birthday boy Matt. No that is not the visual effect of standing next to two extremely short Japanese girls, Matt actually is 400 feet tall.

Me and Doug near the end of the party

Now I wish I could say I ended everything on a great note but that unfortunately wasn't the case. Since I had to be at the airport at 6am on Sunday to fly out (there were no other tickets) and the flu that I had been attempting to ignore all day finally started to take over, I decided not to go out clubbing with everyone until 4am like originally planned and just took a taxi to the airport at around 12:30 so I could get some sleep. It really sucked not being able to hang out with everyone more since I was having a blast but I figured what the hell, I'll be back in February for a week or so anyways.

That was how Tokyo Beach Bash 2007 went down. Not exactly as planned, but easily one of the best days of the year anyway. It was really great seeing familiar faces and partying like it was the Chiba days again. I invited everyone out to visit me in Korea sometime but I have the feeling that only a select few of them will take me up on my offer. Let's see who those select few will be.

Thanks everyone, I had a great time. Let's make sure we do it again in February or sooner!