Hey guys!
So, as of today, I have been officially living in Korea
for exactly one month,
and I've gotten so many comments from you guys
asking me to do a comparison video
of living in Japan versus living in Korea
But you need to keep in mind
that I lived in Japan for over 12 years.
And I've only been here for a month,
so my opinion is not gonna be a fair opinion.
You can't compare living somewhere
For such a short period of time
with somewhere that you lived for over 12 years.
So I can't really give you guys like, a balanced opinion
of how it is living in either country now.
Maybe in like 12 years?
(laughs) I could do one on Korea or at least like,
you know a good like three years?
Like give me some time to settle in here
And learn all the good things and the bad things
about living here - because of course,
for the first year or two you're just gonna be like,
well at least,
this is how I am,
I'm always super excited about living somewhere new,
everything seems awesome.
And I don't really know about, you know,
the hardships of living in that place.
That's how I felt in Japan,
and then the longer I lived there,
I got to know it more, and I kind of figured out things
that are tough about living there.
So I don't really want to do a comparison video
But what I did want to do is kind of share with you guys
just some of the things I've noticed living here like
Things that are totally new for me,
Things that are different from when I lived in Japan.
What I like,
what I don't like,
but again, keep in mind I've only been here
for one month.
So, in general, I'm just super excited about being here.
I was in Japan for so long that it was really...
I needed a change.
Like, it was time for me to go somewhere
and try something new, and
I feel like no matter what country I ended up going to
I would have been super excited to be there
because it's something new for me.
So keep that in mind!
Uhhh, not saying I like one country
more than the other or anything,
let's not start a fight in the comments.
(laughs)
So I've made like a list in my notepad here
And I've kind of broken it up into categories
to make it a little easier to talk about.
So first I'm gonna talk about my house here,
and what I feel about our new Korean Apartment.
First of all, we don't have a bathtub
And that's really the only thing that
I'm struggling with here
because I really miss having baths
I really like using nice bath bombs
and relaxing in the bath, and
I can't do it here. It's kind of a shame.
We have one of those combination bathrooms
It has the toilet, the sink, and the shower,
all in one little room.
So you just kind of shower towards
the back side of the washroom,
and the whole floor gets wet.
It's kind of a pain in the ass, but it's not too bad.
It's not super crowded in there,
so I don't mind it too much. I'm getting used to it.
Another thing about our living situation
that is different for me
is the garbage separation rules.
Here in Korea, they're really strict
with how they separate their garbage
and their recyclables,
which is really good.
It's great,
It means that they have a really good recycling program.
But the one thing that is really different from living
in Japan is you need to throw away your food -
Leftovers, your food scraps - in a separate place.
You can't put any food in the garbage.
And I keep accidentally throwing stuff in the garbage,
just out of habit, and not putting it in
the separate food container.
It's gonna take me a while to get used to
hopefully I will get there.
But, at the moment, we have..
one - two - three - four - five - six,
different garbage cans in our house.
The floors are heated!
I've mentioned this before, but I love it.
The floors are really nice.
It's so nice to turn on the floor heater
And have a really nice floor in the evening
We sit on the floor a lot.
Sometimes we eat our dinner around
the coffee table and sit on the floor, the cats love it.
They're constantly like lounging
on the warm floor like spread out.
They're just in heaven.
The cats are really seeming to enjoy the new place,
which I'm really happy about,
it took them a while.
Oh, there's Luna..
It took them a while to get settled in here.
They're really scared of all the voices
of the neighbors and everything, but right now,
I feel like they're really comfortable
and really happy with it, so really really happy about that.
Let's move on to transportation
The subway system is so easy to understand here.
I get really anxious
about using the train in Japan
It's really confusing because you have to
switch companies. If you've been to Japan
you know what I mean.
But sometimes when you're taking the train,
you need to go out of the gates,
and then find the other train station,
and enter those gates and switch to a train that way
and switch train companies...
but here in Korea,
It's all one company, so it's super simple,
you never need to leave the station to find another
station to transfer your train -
It's all like within the same place.
So it's super easy to understand.
Everything's labeled really simply,
the lines are color-coded,
And there's not too many of them.
So, I think it's very foreigner friendly
if you don't speak Korean. It's okay.
There are apps to show you
like where to transfer and everything
and then it's just super easy to
figure it out when you're in the station itself
to find the exits, to find the transfers,
it's all labeled very well.
so I really really like the subway system here
and,
BONUS!
It's really, really, cheap. It's like amazingly cheap.
I can take the subway for an hour
over to the other side of Seoul
and it'll be like $1.50.
So, I'm really enjoying how much money
I'm able to save now on transportation.
Taxis are also a lot cheaper,
So... really cool!
subway and taxis are cheap.
It's great for me because I go out a lot.
I'm traveling around the city.
One of the bad things about the subway here...
I would say, is that the people push,
It's really common, to be like really pushy with people
and like shove them on the train.
When you're like trying to get in the doors
and everything and that's common here,
people don't really see it as rude, I think.
It's just something that people do,
so that might bother you if you're not used to that,
and also the trains are a lot noisier.
but like in a good way or at least I think so,
you're allowed to talk on the train.
It's not like a big no-no to make noise on the train
You're allowed to talk on the train
and you're allowed to answer your phone
and talk on the phone
which I like, because sometimes that it's really inconvenient
if you're on like a really long train ride
and you need to make a phone call
you can't do that in Japan
because, it's like really against the...
...not like actual rules,
But you know I mean, it's like not acceptable
to talk on your phone in Japan.
and here people don't care, so the train's really noisy,
which can be annoying.
But, it's also a good thing
if you need to talk on your phone.
Food! Food is amazing!
I'm really really loving the variety of food here
And, I find it really easy
to tell them not to include something with my meals
so if I want them to like take the meat off of it and
Just give me the veggies on the rice
They're super open to that and they don't question me,
and I really like that, so I found it really easy,
to find vegan dishes here.
If you're a vegetarian it would be even easier
So that's a really really big plus for me
It makes it really easy to eat out.
As for cooking at home:
the grocery stores have a really
huge variety of vegetables, and salad greens,
which is new for me.
In Japan they didn't really have a big selection of lettuce
because it wasn't really a big staple in Japanese diets
to make like a big salad or anything like that.
But here they use the salad greens to wrap up meat,
like Korean barbecue.
They usually eat it with like a leaf
and then wrap up the meat and eat it that way
that means that there's this huge selection
of salad greens to choose from. They have like these
salad bars at the grocery store, where you can choose
which leaves you want, and then they'll weigh it
and give you a price, and it's really reasonable.
And there's just lots of really dark, leafy, healthy greens
And I'm so excited about that because,
I love making salads and putting them
in like my rice bowls and it was just like
endless opportunities now.
So, I'm stoked about that
Lots of foreign foods available.
the only downside about the food for me -
Is that lots of it is spicy as fuck!
Like really, really spicy,
and I'm hoping that my
body will get used to that eventually,
but at the moment,
I'm having some trouble eating some of the dishes.
So, we will see.
I'll update you guys on my spicy Korean food adventure
and hopefully I will get used to it one day.
Delivery food is really common here. It's really
cheap and there are so many places that deliver food
Like Subway, McDonald's, anything in your area
will most likely deliver to you
if it's within like a couple kilometers of your house.
They probably do delivery.
Something else I love as somebody who works
from home and works outside in cafes,
Is the cafes!
the coffee's amazing.
It's really really good quality
and the cafes are so cute and so pretty
they have just like probably one of the best selection
of cafes in the world.
There's just so many nice places to choose from
and the drinks are freakin' delicious.
OK! Beauty, health, and fashion:
I've grouped these all together.
So, I love Korean skincare, so it's been really awesome
To have access to Korean skincare for so cheap.
Korean skincare is just such high-quality
and now that I'm living here
It's a lot easier to get it shipped to my house
I can make a wish trend order and it'll arrive at my house
in like two days and the shipping is free.
It's just so awesome. I feel so blessed
Fashion?
I really like Korean fashion style
I find that it's closer to like American style?
It's more like casual and sporty.
As opposed to Japan, where it was a little more girly
and...
Cute-sy? I want to say...
It's definitely more my style here.
I find it a lot easier to find clothes that I like here
And it's a lot cheaper.
Fashion seems to be quite affordable here
Even if you go into like a little boutique store,
and you think like,
"Oh I'm not gonna be able to afford this place."
like the place that I showed in my vlog
The ImVely place? It looks so expensive, right?
But, then a shirt that I got was like $30
So I've been noticing that just in general
clothing's a lot cheaper here.
Health wise: Koreans love gyms.
They're obsessed with gyms
So you can find a gym on every street basically,
which is really cool!
I'm really, really excited about it and
also it's quite cheap. The one that I registered at is $30
a month and that includes a sauna.
There's like a little wooden sauna room for relaxing
There's exercise classes that I can join if I want
there's like a trampoline class and
there are aerobics classes,
and then there's like the regular gym
with the weight training machines
and the cardio machines, and for thirty dollars
I think that's such an awesome deal
So really excited about the gyms
the next category is like outside
like the living environment...
So, in general the streets are a lot dirtier here than
in Japan..
When I say a lot I don't mean that it's like horribly dirty
or anything, but Japan is impeccably clean
you'd never see trash on the ground in Japan
and just everywhere It looks like super tidy
unless it's like Halloween or something
then it gets kind of crazy.
But even after Halloween they were like on it
for cleaning up the streets in Japan.
Here, people don't seem to care as much
so you will see some trash on the ground
People littering, like receipts or like
people like to throw their business card..
This is like a thing!..
They'll like ride by on a bike,
And then they'll throw like,
cards advertising their store or something
and then they'll land on the ground
and then I guess you're supposed to like
See that as you're walking and be like,
"oh yeah, I do need a haircut. Maybe I'll go to this place."
It seems like a really stupid way to advertise to me
But you will see lots of business cards
advertising stores and stuff on the ground
So that's a thing
and also when it's garbage day here,
people will take their trash and put it outside of their
apartment buildings, and it'll be on the street in a bag
there aren't many trash BINS.
So everything's just kind of on the street,
so if it's garbage day and you're walking around
and the garbage hasn't been picked up yet
It'll smell like garbage,
and they'll be like garbage bags everywhere
so that can be kind of gross
But once the garbage has been picked up and
everything then it's fine.
the air pollution can be really bad
It's definitely one of the downsides of living in Korea
There have been a couple days recently
where I didn't even want to be outside for
Any longer than five minutes
because I would just start to feel sick.
the pollution comes over from China mostly
I'm sure some of it is made here in Korea as well
But lots of the pollution comes over
in waves from China and you can see it in the sky
and like yellow dust, and it's really bad for you
So you should wear a mask to protect yourself from it.
Even with the mask you still get some of the air in
and you start to feel really sick
So that has sucked,
but today and yesterday were really clean air days
So I've been trying to be outside and walking around
as much as possible,
but you do need to be aware
that some days it's really bad and you can download
an app called air visual and
it will give you the stats of the area that you're in
so you know if you should try to protect yourself
a little more than usual
Inside our house we have an air filtration
Machine that keeps the air in our house like perfect,
so it feels SO nice in here all the time.
So I don't need to worry about it when I'm inside
but going outside, I always make sure to check my app
and see how the air is that day
one thing I really like is that there are
speakers outside everywhere,
and they play music all the time.
So they're constantly playing like songs that I like
it's mostly kpop I think, like
95% of the time they play kpop
But it's so cool to hear songs that I like
on the street like that all the time.
It's usually Big Bang or BTS... You hear lots of 101
recently... Some hip-hop stuff, not as much,
mostly poppy stuff, but it's fun.
it's fun to be able to hear music everywhere, even when
you're just like outside walking down the street
Annnnd.
I think that's it!
I feel like I'm probably missing a bunch of things
that I could talk to you guys about
but this video is already super long.
But I hope that gave you like an overview of
some of the differences I've noticed here
some of the things I'm liking
some of the things that aren't as good.
If you're not already subscribed to my channel
please do that.
I will be making lots of videos about my life here
in Korea and trying to explore as much as possible
so I can share lots of Korea with you guys
I don't want to stay just in Seoul
I'm planning to go outside of Seoul and explore
some of the other places that maybe you
haven't seen as much of on YouTube.
I'm really looking forward to doing that when the
weather gets a little warmer.
Got some trips planned, so stay tuned for that.
Thanks for watching guys,
and I will see you again soon with another video!
Byeeee!