The Strongest Man in Incheon

So, after Orientation week, we ended up hanging out with some of the people we'd met, and made the most of the fact that we had the majority of a Friday off of school. (For me, that meant going to the bank and finally replacing my lost bank card, oops.)

We decided to go to Wolmi and take in the cool sea breeze and go on some rides. But of course, forgetting that we are cursed so that any time we do this the rain is heavier than any other time of the week, month or year.

Needless to say, we ended up totally soaked to the skin, and totally unprepared. Cue all the 아줌마 and 아저씨 shaking their heads and laughing at the crazy foreigners.

I'm doing a rain dance to beg the weather gods to JAM THEIR HYPE

We realised that we're like the BBC's dream team for a minority representation sitcom.

Twist potatoes and fried-things-on-sticks galore! I know it seems like I eat nothing but junk food, but I assure you... you're, uh, probably right. Haha.

(You're not right, thank you very much. But healthy food is far less interesting to blog about ;p)

We went on the Viking whereupon a Korean man shouted at us through the tannoy and laughed at our horrified screams, I can only assume if he was asking when we wanted to die and "AAAAAGH!" in Korean means "Higher and faster, please!!"

I don't know if the ride was made better or worse by the fact we were the only people on board, haha.

We wandered on into the arcade and played all sorts of games, mainly Tekken whereupon I whupped a lot of butts, and one of those strength-test games. This is where the weird title of this blog post comes from, by the way. Our friend Justin managed to get the high score, as well as 2nd and 3rd, so he was duly dubbed "The Strongest Man in Incheon". For the record, I briefly held 3rd position.

Upon reflection, we're really bad at selfies.

Party at our place!

Chuseok | Osaka Day 2

We left Mako-chan at home to guard the apartment. He seemed pretty happy to do so.

We woke up and had a good lie-in (about 10am, oh how times have changed) before going out. We decided that we wanted this holiday to be a little bit more spontaneous and less hectic than the previous one, so we had a list of places we wanted to visit and a rough schedule but nothing set in stone.

A cute little drawing of a cicada near our building. I can only assume the writing says "HI, I'LL MAKE MAEMMAEMMAEM NOISES UNTIL YOUR EARS BLEED AND YOU GO INSANE"

I thought this looked too perfectly anime to NOT take a photo of.

We decided to go to the Osaka Kaiyukan, one of the world's largest public aquariums. I hadn't been to one in ages, so I was really excited.

So was Haru, so we brought him along for the ride.

 The ride from Shin-Osaka to the bay area was easy enough, and the huge aquarium was also pretty easy to find. With an incredibly tall ferris wheel right next door, the area as a whole is hard to miss.

KAIYUKAN

Before going in we decided to have some breakfast (I guess technically brunch by this point) so we went into the little shopping complex nearby and headed for the food court.

Chuseok | Osaka Day 1

Chuseok, or rather, 추석 is the Korean thanksgiving/harvest festival that takes place over the course of 3 days on the "15th day of the 8th lunar month". It's a national holiday, so this year it fell on the 8th of September, conveniently giving us an extended weekend from the 6th to the 10th.

We actually didn't realise that Chuseok was coming up until someone at Nick's school asked about his plans for the holiday, so we jumped to work and booked a holiday to Osaka about a week or so before we actually flew out. I'm so amazed that my time in Korea is giving me the opportunity to do these crazy last-minute ventures.

We flew out on the 6th, and because time is wibbly wobbly and even more so when it comes to time zones, I sent out a birthday "card" to my Nan while we were waiting for the airport bus. Ahhh, technology.

I really enjoy airports. There's actually a lot to do in Incheon airport, and they've really worked hard to make it look good so it's not just a big grey boring building. We'd been warned about crazy Chuseok traffic, so we'd left really early to be safe...and encountered no more traffic than usual. So we ended up with quite a while to spare.

I've decided I must be the reincarnated form of the God of Lost Things, because I swear at least once a month I find something important that someone's lost, from cellphones to bank cards, and this time it was a passport with boarding passes inside, just sat on the floor. We handed it to a member of staff and they disappeared for a while, but ended up just coming back and putting it on a table next to where we found it. Uh. Okay then.

Waiting rooms.

We flew with Peach, an airline with overpoweringly magenta branding. The plane exterior and some of the interor upholstery is various shades of bright pink and purple, the airline attendants wear magenta uniforms, and even the airline safety materials are the same shade of Barbie pink. (Confusingly, nothing is actually PEACH coloured.)

Calpis. Funny to say, yummy to drink.