June 30th - Day 3 in Korea

Today will be my second official day of teaching! Yesterday was a lot of fun. I only taught 3 of 5 classes because the last two have final exams this week and they need to study hard. So it's nice that my first couple days are kind of half days.

The time change has been a little difficult, but I went to sleep at 8pm last night so I got up at 5 and was ready to go explore some more! Everyone here says Suncheon is a small city but it's not that small (population roughly 300,000), there's definitely a lot to see. But maybe after a year I'll have seen most of it, I doubt it, I think there's plenty to see and do for a while!

So because I know much more about Japan than I do Korea and I have been to Japan before I tend to take note of all the things that are similar or different about the two. A couple of recent things I've noticed: department stores are basically the same, super nice clean stores of purses and make-up and all kinds of clothes and then restaurants on the top floor. Also, although there's no Blendy to drink, Pocari Sweat (another popular Japanese drink) seems pretty widely available at convenient stores! I personally don't like it but if you do you can find it here!

Today I wanted Iced coffee from a coffee shop instead of MiniStop so the first place I found was Benisaf Coffee which seems to be a big chain store because it was very nice and clean and Starbucks-like. It was pretty good, but for 3000W (about $2.50) I think I'll just stick to MiniStop in the future (only $0.80)!

Tonight I am going to try to stay awake and go experience some nightlife hopefully! First Vlog soon, I promise!

First blog in South Korea!

Okay so I'm hanging out in the Seoul Airport and thinking of lots of things I want to share. I'll probably say a lot of the same things in a Vlog but anyway.

14 hour plane from Chicago to Seoul was LONG. Only because I was expecting to watch movies the whole time but the only movies available were TERRIBLE so that didn't work out. Anyway, made it okay and it was all worth it...

After getting through customs and all that, I walk out into the airport and the first business I see is FAMILY MART! Yes, one of the the conbini (convenient store) that I fell so in love with in Japan! I got so excited. The first thing I wanted when I went in was a Blendy (cold coffee drink comparable to convenient store Frappacino) but apparently those are a Japan-only item... Luckily I found an exact equivalent called French Cafe that was just as good and just a cheap! (There's also 2 MiniStops in here, I LOVE conbini so much)

We got in at like 4:30am and by the time I made it outside around 6am it was still cool and foggy but super humid. Since then I went outside again at about 8am and the sun was out but it was still cool mostly, luckily. I don't mind it being too hot, but it's annoying when you're hauling luggage.

I'm trying to get some basic Korean memorized but it's proving to be really difficult to get anything to stick. I know 'hello' and 'thank you' as of now... And it's really difficult to use them because I'm so unsure of myself. I love Japanese and I loved speaking it it Japan, maybe I'll just speak Japanese here and maybe people here will know more basic Japanese than basic English. Maybe? They'll probably just think 'why is this American speaking to a Korean in Japanese?'

Also, thanks to Mat Harris, for whatever reason that silly Die Antwoord song has been stuck in my head all morning.

The bus ticket from Incheon to Suncheon was only 37,000 Won ($31 USD), which is awesome. (There's dogs barking in the airport?) Otherwise that's about it for now I guess. I've got a bunch of video recorded so I'll start that new YouTube channel soon. In the mean time feel free to see my current one and BOOKMARK it or something if you don't have an account, if you do then SUBSCRIBE. (I'm tryin to blow up so I can get partnered and make $5 a month from YouTube! haha)

Want to help an organic farm while you experience Japan?

Ok, where to begin...
You want to go visit a new country (Japan in this case), but you don't have a lot of money. Are you a hard worker? Are you open to getting a real experience of native culture and lifestyle? Then check out WWOOF Japan! World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is a program that is basically self-explanatory, it provides travelers with a network of local farmers wanting to live organically and/or self-sustaining. How it works is that you pay a small yearly fee to become a WWOOFer (something like $63 USD if I remember correctly), then you have full access to their site where you can locate a family based on where in Japan you'd like to be and what type of work you'd like to be doing. Then you simply send them a message saying that you'd like to come be a part of their community on whatever date and they'll respond to let you know if they'll have room for you or not (sometimes if they're already hosting a WWOOFer they may not have room for 2, or 3, or whatever).

From my experience, the family I stayed with was actually renting out a second house in a different part of the village we were in (Sasayama, Hyogo Prefecture) so they could house more WWOOFers. They were hosting about 10-12 of us in all, a few from America, a few from England, and a few from other parts of Japan. It was a great experience, a lot of hard work but a great learning experience and it's beautiful countryside, really amazing.

So check out there website for more info. And if you're interested in WWOOFing in other parts of the world, good news, you can! You can WWOOF in many countries, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, pretty much anywhere in Europe and North America, The Philippines, Taiwan, Uganda, and many more!

The photo below was the view out of our bedroom window, pretty amazing!

Blog taking a new (tangent) direction, TRAVEL BLOG

This blog is still about my filmmaking interests, but now ALSO about world travel, specifically Japan and East-Asia.
So here's the first thing I'd like to share, great information about one of the greatest things about Japan, the combini (convenience store)! Ok, so it's not one of the GREATEST things, because there are many other, more worthwhile, things, but they are really amazing! Especially great if you're wanting to travel around Japan for very little money, combini will keep you alive for the least yen possible!

first let me also add this video is by Tokyo Cooney aka Kevin Cooney, a vlogger who's lived in Japan for a few years now and has made many many helpful and interesting videos. I highly suggest him as a vlog source for info. (Also BusanKevin is good, but more about them later)

Tokyo Cooney's F.Y.I. The Combini:

The most beautiful music and candle label in the world from Tokyo.

Ok so I just want to provide some links the music I'm working with. Anyway, here's a link for Haruka Nakamura, the first Japanese artist I'd talked to. Haven't heard back from him in a bit, so I'm a little worried, but this is who you heard as one of the songs in the segment I showed at the end-of-semester crits.

http://www.myspace.com/harukanakamura

And just recently I also got the OK from Takahiro Kido, musician and owner of Ricco Label, a Japanese label consisting of a handful of amazing artists/musicians. So between all the music available from them it's more than enough. They do some really amazing work, I'm really excited!

http://www.fleursy.com/riccolabel/news.html

Ricco consists of Takahiro Kido, Yuki Murata, and their side-projects and collaborations Mokyow, Annoice, and cru.

http://www.myspace.com/aneigean