Or start from the beginning, Part 1: Flying to Tokyo
After stuffing ourselves, we rolled over to my aunt's apartment. Pretty much everyone lives in apartments in Seoul (and Busan, the two largest cities in Korea) and they all look something like this:
Super-tall (20+ stories) apartment buildings dominate Seoul's landscape - it's one of the first things I noticed the second I entered Seoul. Huge companies like Samsung and Hyundai build clusters of 5-10 apartment buildings like this and the "neighborhood" shares really nice walking paths, gated security, a pool, and other community complexes. Naturally, some apartments/neighborhoods are more upscale than others but the principle are all generally the same - it's a lot of people crammed into one building. Seoul, Korea is one of the densest cities in the world and as a twinkie, I didn't realize exactly what that meant until I visited. Everyone - including the wealthy - are truly packed in like sardines. I felt a little claustrophobic, honestly. It's not like Japan where things are *ahem* small (I don't think I've recovered from the hobbit bathroom), but neatly spaced out. Korea is regular-sized yet squished closer together somehow. I could elaborate more on my thoughts about this topic but then this would turn into to anthropological analysis of Korean society xD
Anyway, this is one of the awesome playgrounds in this neighborhood:
Yeah, it's a whale! Cool tidbit: Playgrounds have cameras running 24/7 and the neighborhood broadcasts these camera channels so that moms in their apartment can watch their kids playing on the playground via TV. Very practical :) Anyway, my aunt likes to collect little gizmos and some of them are really pretty ^_^
I was especially fond of her tea sets~
Aren't they pretty ^_^? Totally impractical for anything, but nice to look at~ The red teacups are actually transparent :D so delicate!
She also had a cool lamp:
They were so pretty to look at with the lights off ^_^ They made the room very romantic ;) And sorry that I've been no-makeup-ish the past few posts....I dunno, I just felt like taking a break ^_^
And next up, the shiny Part 9: The 63 Building.
