Hot off the press, fresh in from our spies at E-mart, our local superstore type shop......My new favorite garbled-english-Korean-t-shirt, supplanting "rabbits don't eat sausages" and "we taste like soap scum". The new champion is "let's pretend we're rabbits and do it all day" Wow. What else can one say to that. Just wow. I think that even surpasses the now-defunct local bar whose name "D.R.O.P." stands for Dream Romance Orgasm People. And yes, the acronym is spelled out in full and in large print as you walk in. And yes it was just your normal bar. Albeit with a charming moniker. What, pray tell, is a orgasm person?
Continuing on the non g-rated theme, I will tell you a little bit more about Korean culture.
A while back I had my first JimJil Bang experience. Which for the uninitiated (i.e. everyone), is a public sort of bathhouse/spa type dealeo. My first experience was rather traumatizing in fact, so it's worth a telling. The deal is you pay like $5 and get access to this massive building. Floor #1 is the naked floor. Men and women separated of course lest the reader be confused. You can take a shower, watch TV, or partake in the communal baths. They are of varying temperatures and depending on where you are, they may have fancy "jade pools" or the like. All naked of course. Bear this in mind. So anyway, I went with my girlfriend for the experience of the thing. We had to part early on because of the whole naked thing, and I was greeted by these puzzling small lockers that I couldn't fit my clothes into. After trying to stuff a shirt inside, I spied some large lockers in the room (along with some old naked men) . As I was making a beeline for the lockersofsufficientsize some guy came and yelled at me. Apparently first you put shoes in the small locker, then you take the key and give it to the guy behind the counter, then he gives you another key, and you proceed to large lockers.
Please keep in mind this is a smallish Korean town, and this is a very Korean type of place (as in, there has never been a white guy in this building before kind of thing). Otherwise nothing I am about to tell you will seem magical or mysterious. Anyway, I collected my charming burnt orange oversized shorts and t-shirt and made my way to the locker. All I really wanted was to take a shower and then go up to the co-ed area, so I (still wearing shorts) could meet Jenny and escape the staring naked people (both pluses) On my way to the shower/hottub room I was intercepted by another guy yelling guy. "You, foreigner! Strip!" Or something like that. And now, if everyone wasn't already staring at me, the time had come. So I slank back to my locker in shame and phoned Kyle to commiserate. "Everyone's staring at me and the mean man just yelled at me to take pants off etc etc. " Anyways, after much waiting I finally just stared straight ahead and did what I had come to do. But very awkward let me tell you.
Anyway, after the naked part it was great, endless rooms of saunas from -10 to 65c where there's like a 30sec time limit and it burns your lungs. A room of hot rocks where you lie on these hot spa rocks (like gravel size) and it's quite comfortable. Common room (see picture) where old women are passed out every where. Cafe, internet, tv, sleeping rooms, we even had our own mini sleeping caves at this one in Seoul. I've been three times now, one good experience, one terrible experience and one with mixed reviews (the naked one I just told you about) Anyway, there you have it, JimJil Bang.
s must be pretty unromantic, because making her dinner, buying her a birthday present, taking her to a nice restaurant were like mind blowingly nice....