19.05.2014 - Coming Age Ceremony

This ceremony is for people who reach 20 years old (or that's was what I heard), but for no reason foreigners can also take part in it.

So basically we experienced a full korean ceremony but everything spoken in korean. So we understood...almost nothing. Anyway, it was really funny because we could be dressed with the korean costumes and join a ceremony with a lot of korean students. It was a nice day!

We also received a new korean name. In my case, my name, in european alphabet, would be Jin Song. The meaning of this name, is something like: "who achieve everything". Or something like that.

Some tv channel was broadcasting the ceremony in live. And when it finished, I was interviewed by a reporter. She was asking me about my experience in the ceremony and my feelings about it.

And after all, we had some group pictures!

And that's all folks!

Riding in Incheon Park

The Incheon park is a big park located in....surprise surprise....Incheon! There you can rent a bike for 2000 won and ride around the park. It is a good way to spend the afternoon.

So, few weeks ago we decided to try it, and we went to the park to do a little picnic. Riding around the big park, and afterwards beer, potato chips and some cookies. It was a nice day!

The highest building of South Korea

Every single time we go to the Lottemart to buy some stuff, we see this building. The Norheast Asia Trade Tower is located in Songdo, around 2 km far from the University of Incheon. We all know that this is the highest building of South Korea, but today it is the first time I have looked for the exactly number of floors that this building owns.

The Norheast Asia Trade Tower is 305 meters high, and this skycraper has 68 floors. The second highest building of South Korea is 300 meters tall.

This picture was taken by me few days ago. Maybe it is not possible to appreciate how tall this building is. Let's try a picture found in internet.

Now it seems as tall as it actually is, isn't it?

For more information, here is the link in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Asia_Trade_Tower

05.05.2014 - Suncheon trip (part 3)

After two days sleeping in a Jimjilbang, my back started to complain. This is definetely not a place to sleep several days in a row, at least not for a foreigner.

Our only destination this day was the Suncheon Bay. This place is simply amazing. The bay is one of the most famous natural places in South Korea, so there were a lot of tourists but all of them were koreans (except us hehe).

The bay is located a bit far from the old town, so we had to take a bus and travel for more than 30 minutes. The ticket fee is 2000 won per person, but we could get a discount by using our limited korean skills and telling them we were students of the University of Incheon. So 1000 won for us hehe.

Here you can spend a lot of ours walking. The place is not that big, but still, if you can reach the viewpoint (and it absolutely worth) you have to walk for a while, and uphill. Anyway, you can take good pictures along the way.

Finally, after a couple of hours walking, we reached the viewpoint. Very nice landspace.

After visiting the bay, we finished our trip in Suncheon. So we went to the bus station to come back to Incheon. But, as I told you in the first post about this trip, holidays are not good days to travel in South Korea. So this time we spent another 8 hours by bus in the return. This is South Korea guys.

04.05.2014 - Suncheon trip (part 2)

I don't know how can koreans sleep in a Jimjilbang and being fully refreshed in the morning. In my case, I can sleep in a Jimlilbang, but I don't rest there. So next morning I woke up ok, but still tired.

This day we had 2 destinations, and the first one was Naganamsan Village.

This is a very ancient village where real people are currently living in. Of course is a tourist place, so the people who live here are actually kind of employees. We were walking aroung the village for several hours, and I can say it was a ver nice place.

Afterwards, we took a bus and we headed to the Drama set of Suncheon. This is place is supposed to be very famous between koreans, because a lot of famous tv series and movies were filmed there. However, for me it was not very interesting, because I don't know any of the tv series of movies that are being filmed there hehehe. So for me it was just a place to explore for a while.

And that was all for this day. At night, we went back to the jimjilbang to sleep again there. Another hard night hehe.

03.05.2014 - Suncheon trip (part 1)

After the return from Japan, the University of Incheon started its exam period. So during those 2 weeks we didn't do anything worth to be mentioned. People just worked and studied. It is not very interesting, isn't it?

Fortunately, after the exam period we had few holidays. Fortunately or unfortunately, it depends on the point of view. Why do I say that? Let's me explain.

Here in South Korea, EVERYBODY want to travel during holidays. What does it mean? One phrase will explain everything: traffic jams.

We planned to go to Suncheon, a city which is located in the south of South Korea. With normal traffic, we just needed 4 hours to reach our destination. We spent 8 hours.

So here is one advice: if you can avoid travelling throughout South Korea during holidays, do it.

We arrived to Suncheon on 3rd May at night, so we didn't do too many things that day. Just walking towards the place we wanted to go to sleep, and taking some beers before.

So where did we sleep? In a Jimjilbang. What the hell is that? you may think. Well, it is like an spa, but bit different....Ok, step by step.

First, you pay around 8000 won (5'50 euros) and they give you a key with your prisoner number like this:

Then, they also give you an orange pijama, you can feel like in Guantanamo there hehehe. Then you can use your locker to keep all your clothes. You have to enter there totally naked. Of course men and women have separated areas.


When you get inside, you will see that, suddenly, all the koreans are looking at you. Suncheon is not a very tourist place, so they are not used to see foreigners there. Anyway, you have inside two saunas, and 4 pools with different temperature of the water: from 10º to 36º. This is a good place for chilling.

The worst (and actually the only bad part of this kind of places) is when you have to sleep. With the following picture you can figure it out.

So, basically, we all sleep in the floor like in a refugee camp hehe. Maybe koreans can sleep directly in the floor, but when I slept there, the next day my back was asking me why I did it hehe. Do you want to experience the korean culture? then you have to try it at least once, or twice, because actually we slept there the next day too.

16.04.2014 - Japan trip (part 8)

Finally, our last day in Japan (what a long trip! or what a long blog! hehe).

We didn't visit many places this day, just the castle of Osaka and its surroundings. The castle of Osaka is located inside of a big fortress, which has been reconstructed as a big park. A very tourist place indeed.

Anyway, the castle of Osaka is supposed to be very important in the history of Japan. The castle was built by the Toyotomi clan. And actually the castle is mainly well-known because of the siege of the Tokugawa clan. The Toyotomi clan held out in the castle even when the army of the Tokugawa clan had 200 000 more soldiers.

It is important to mention that, even when Toyotomi held out for more than one year, finally Tokugawa took the castle in the year 1615.

Ok, let's finish the history lesson and show some pictures.

 Afterwards, we just had time to take the lunch and go to the airport.

And that's all, we said goodbye to Japan, out trip was about to finish.