Korea 2025 - Day 1

 

the start of our trip to Korea and Japan for Steven's wedding. Bob, Jen, Me, Eric, and Yumi all took the same red eye flight at 12:30am on a friday night and arrived in Tokyo at 5am. We stayed at the airport and ate and immediately took a flight to Korea arriving at noon Saturday. Something like 36 hrs of travel.

bad thing about JFK terminal 8 is everything closes at 10pm and after you've been working all day super hard to get your work done to go on a 2 week vacay you want a drink. But Jen discovered randomly this kind of hidden cocktail bar in the back of some duty free shop! I think it was open until midnight.

goodbye new york

Disney's strange new world was one of the movies that was wiped from the face of the earth during all the media companies' purges but it still lives on JAL airlines.

Haneda airport in tokyo

immediately buying these benadryl based sleeping pills called Sleepin'

teishoku and beer at 6:30am

they goin to korea for the first time

first stop. Nokwon Saam bap. Look at that. Every leaf was perfect and perfectly washed and curated for our stacking pleasure.

bossam is their meat of choice.

like thousands of possible combinations

fast forward past checking in to the airbnb in yeonnam dong, a nap, hustlin to take an hr train to apgujeong to meet Robert Joe (the original dubu owner who was a local celeb with his samoyed dog), Nana my roommate from Beijing, Helen whom jen went to graphic design school with, JP from my japanese class in tokyo, and their spouses. It was also coincidentally Jen's birthday so I wanted to get a big party together. Everyone was so nice and brought cakes for her and gifts and we gave gifts.

super clean naengmyeon

robert lives in itaewon so knows a lot of people and took us to Southside Parlour

Karaoke until 5 am is a hell of a way to kick jetlag cold turkey.