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Moving to Seoul... any advice?

Wonderboy416, good luck to you in this country where many unknowns are waiting for you.
I've been to Seoul about a year and a half ago, and I really liked it.

The food was excellent (I'm not a big fan of sea food in general thought), the city was amazing, and the discoveries were countless.

Please, post some of your thoughts, impressions, and pictures.
 
Hey I thought I should check into my own thread and let you know how it is so far.

I flew in on Monday at 6:30 pm, we took an airport limo into my part of town. The amazing thing was I kept seeing cluster after cluster of skyscrapers and everytime I saw one I thought "that must be the main business district, after about 5 of them I gave up and was just awestruck at how freaking huge this place really is. Since I live in central Seoul I only got to see the first half of the city on the way in, but what an impression it was. The size and scale of this city is unbelievable, it makes NYC seem like a shoebox in comparison in terms of its sheer density and built environment. My new employer is fantastic, the job seems highly entertaining (I have been sitting on the past few days) and the co-workers are great.

Intersting observations I have made thus far:
- Driving here is organized chaos, everyone cuts everyone else off and the roads are an awful mess, yet accidents rarely occur
- It is legal to watch tv on your gps (there's actually a service similar to XM for watching tv while you drive), nearly every car has the TV on in plane sight of the driver
- The bathroom is purely for doing your business and taking a shower, they're open concept meaning often there is no tub, the shower head just sticks out of the wall and water can go anywhere, there is a drain on the floor and you wear slippers, the vanity mirror is usually located outside the washroom
- Fitted bed sheets do not exist
- Love motels are everywhere, a small double barbershop pole means you can find a lady of the night inside
- Taxi's are insanely cheap, a 20 minute cab ride ended up costing 4900 won (less than $5), they go up slightly when the subway is down at night - my Korean co-workers thought I was insane to take a 15 minute cab ride alone for $3 each way and insisted I should have taken the subway... I guess that's expensive to them - these cabs must be subsidized by the government somehow
- It is customary for employers to have kitchen staff on hand and supply lunch to their employees (free lunch woohoo)
- Pop cans are the size of the small red bull cans, a more appropriate size and they only cost about 60 cents
- Coffee on the other hand is about double what it costs in Toronto, thankfully Starbucks are few but coffee boutiques are everywhere, as is Dunkin Donuts
- Tap water is not safe to drink, most places have a filtered water dispenser with hot water ready on tap
- Central air and heating don't exist, most high-rises do not have a boiler room, each unit has a huge air conditioner sticking out of it and heating unit inside
- All utility lines are above ground, kind of reminds of Toronto
- Seoul makes San Francisco look flat in comparison
- Cell phones are not available unless you have an alien registration card (which requires an HIV/STD/drug test) - I was able to by-pass this by obtaining one in Itaewon in a back ally, it's a modern phone and only cost me $80 to get up and running
- Incoming calls on pay as you go phones are FREE even after your account is out of minutes, the phone will never expire, this is clearly the way to go along with a landline
- The motel I'm in does not provide bed-sheets (my apartment is ready on Saturday) but strangely it has several varieties of cologne and lotions - a full selection of beauty products and not just the trial sized crap we get in North America
- The best steak I ever had was all you can eat for around $20, better than Ruth Chris or Barbarians
- Beer is allowed on the streets and at $1.70 for a tall boy, why not???
- While most Koreans don't speak English they will bend over backwards to help you and are amazingly nice in general everywhere you go
- Rodeo street makes Yorkville look and feel a whole lot less swanky
- Garbage cans are impossible to find in the city, as is garbage on the streets, where does it go?
- People routinely park with 2 wheels on the sidewalk or anywhere they can squeeze their car - parking patrol does not really ticket anyone
- If a taxi is black, avoid it, black taxi's are more expensive despite being the same vehicles painted black
- There is no formal street addressing system, many cab drivers had no clue where they were going despite being provided a business card with the full address, you just have to know each area very well, most high-rises have giant numbers on their side visible everywhere to help out, they are used to help locate smaller buildings as well
- Your cell phone will never have less than full bars, even on the subway or elevator, in fact most cell phones have full digital tv service as well

In a nutshell, in many ways Seoul makes Toronto feel like the Flinstones, but in others it's completely ass-backwards (lack of central air/heat, poor tap water, a mess of utility lines above ground EVERYWHERE).

I've only been here 2 and a half days and despite spending 2 days at my employer I've been doing my best to see what's around.
 
Is this your first time in Asia?

I saw many of the same things as you mention, especially about beverages, transport and the apartments in Mainland China, though there, I found most wires are not above ground. The bathrooms (and notice a strange lack of U-traps?) are weird at first, aren't they? I guess it's partly to save space. Driving is something else - expect people to park on the sidewalk, "right of way" there means "if I'm in first, I have way", and lots of honking.

Cellphone service and rail transport are really well developed, but I found surface transport (buses and cars) still to occupy an almost third-world feel still. Lots of electric bikes and mopeds?
 
Shon, yes it is...
It's mopeds galore, and if you're not careful on the sidewalks they'll run you down!

I created a post with a lot of pictures in world photos (linked from photobucket) only to be told I can only have a maximum of 4 images/pictures per post? MODS? Hello???? How on earth am I supposed to post anything? I remember being on this board back in 2002 and posting pictures to my hearts content.

Anyway, since I get a whopping 4 pictures here's a few...

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Great shots Wonderboy. How are you finding the air pollution? I've heard it's terrible in Seoul.
 
The air pollution isn't so bad. Although whenever I have been to a higher vantage point the view across the city has always been hazy making it difficult to see things in a the distance, not quite LA bad but still pretty bad. You guys are really spoiled in Toronto.

Thanks ganja, that's a giant piano keyboard they are walking across.

Here's a few more:

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Typical street seen in my new hood:

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The subways here are buried deep. Singuemho (the stop nearest to my apartment, about 2 minutes walking) has TWO giant escalators this big to get to the bottom, and that's after you've already taken 3 flights of stairs (to enter the station, then another to the ticket platform, then another to the platform with the first escalator). It's hard to describe but because there's so many lines crossing each other and because the terrain is so hilly this was their only option. Amazingly you'll find many Koreans watching digital tv on their cell phones down into the subways. They're in the process of adding automatic doors to each train platform that open as the train arrives to prevent access to the tracks. Also you are well informed as to what subway stop is next, which side the doors open and how long until the next train. Each train also has several subway maps always in the same locations for reference, the TTC could stand to learn A LOT from how Seoul runs their subway system, small things like always having maps in the same places go a long way when you're from out of town.

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Ah, memories...have you been to Itaewon yet, Wonderboy? It's a bit of a sleazy foreigner drinking enclave but worth a visit. And enjoy the nice galbi restuarants--the better ones are miles ahead of the Bloor St. joints.
 
That's good news WB. Perhaps things have improved in the past little while. It looks like you're already having a great time. If everything goes well perhaps I'll be joining you next year.
 
I wanna move to Seoul!

hey wonderboy, have you partaken in much yobai up there?



http://www.japanfortheuninvited.com/art ... wling.html

Yobai (Night crawling)Until quite recently in rural Japan, yobai, or “night crawling†would have been an introduction to sex for many young people. While a young woman slept, a silent intruder would creep into her room, slide behind her and make his intentions known. If she consented, they would have discrete sex until the early morning, when he would have to slip out of the house as stealthily as he had slipped in.

The young man might be known to the girl and her family. Also, in a seasonal agricultural economy, farmers might have a number of laborers sleeping under their roofs sometimes, knowing that their daughters might be targets for yobai. In some cases, groups of friends would travel miles to neighboring villages, where the embarrassment of capture wouldn’t be as great, and each target a different girl.

In many cases, yobai would be conducted entirely with the knowledge of the girl’s parents. In fact, it was sometimes a prelude to marriage - parents would turn a blind eye the first few nights a young man secretly visited their daughter, but then he would be “caughtâ€, and a more public courtship would begin.

Yobai tactics

Take your clothes off before you even sneak into the house. In Fukuoka, it was once illegal to attack a naked intruder, as he was probably engaged in yobai rather than theft.

Keep it quiet, even if socially questionable acts are required. One technique to avoid detection was to urinate along the bottom of doors to prevent them squeaking as they were slid open.

Practice safe sex. A night crawling man would often cover his face with a cloth, protecting himself and his chosen lady from embarrassment if she rejected his advances.

Yobai clubs
Reportedly, yobai still happens in the more remote areas of Japan, and there seems to be nostalgia for the practice elsewhere. The seduction of sleeping women is a popular theme of Japanese pornography, and some image clubs offer special yobai services - providing prostitutes who pretend to be asleep while the client slips into their futon.
 

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