Night life in Korea: work dinner, norae-bang, age denial

I’ve decided to start sharing more about my cultural experiences in Korea.  I figure, this also makes for a more “colorful” and interesting blog.

After work dinners are quite the norm here.  There is no happy hour because it appears Koreans feel that any hour (any day) is a good hour for drinking.

Work dinners typically comprise of a lot of meat, garlic, onions, spicy paste, a few leafs of lettuce (to wrap around the garlic/onion/meat goodness) and a whole lot of soju and beer.  Basically, I can’t eat anything. I’m not a fan of stocking up on onions and garlic because not only does that do a number on the breath, it also does a number on the way a person smells.

I decided to venture to the Korean dominated table and had a conversation with my branch manager, the head honcho, of our academy:

Me: “How are things?”

Him: “ohh like crap!”  said with a Korean accent and a smiling face

Me: not really sure how to respond, “oh really?”

Him: laughing, “Yeah, everyday always smashed! I’ve been so stressed out.  Always the same thing, work all day, drink every night.”

This is an odd conversation for multiple reasons.  First of all, in America, your boss would never tell you if he’s having a truly bad day, nor would he admit that he gets wasted every night.  However, we’re in Korea here and it is anything but unusual.

The past two weekends, I’ve felt the urge to experience the night life  and have been a bit more adventurous.  I still have no desire to intermingle much with the expat drinking scene and pretty much avoid those areas altogether.  You know, gotta go where the locals go for real culture.

My closest girlfriend leaves Korea in a month and I’m trying to maximize our moments.  Saturday night, commenced with Japanese ramen, a huge thing of sake and then my Korean girlfriend convincing me to go to a singing room. Yes, I’m talking the norae-bang, busting out karaoke style.

We walk down stairs, into what appears to be a seedy underground club where you could rent rooms and do inappropriate things to hookers.  However, each room was really clean and set up with a huge flat screen, a nice trendy couch, a table, a light up floor (for dancing), two microphones and books in Japanese, Korean and English to choose your songs.

One hour later, two really bad renditions of “Hotel California” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” I realized a) I have no businesses singing and b)neither does anyone else in the bulding.

On my way out of the bathroom, I ran into a cute (yes, the asian’s are growing on me) Korean guy.  He, of course, spoke no English, but I knew was asking for my number and if I could speak Korean.  I also knew he was younger than me.  The one thing I’ve noticed, other than the brutal honesty, they ask you for your phone number even before getting your name.  His friends spoke some bad English and next thing I knew, we were in their singing room having a choppy conversation.

The whole honesty thing is really getting to me here.  As I’ve mentioned before, they will tell you that you look old, fat, ugly, tired, etc quite often.  My students, as young as 9, are aware of their too largely, rounded face, short legs, fat body, large forehead, small lips, not white enough skin, and so on, so forth.  In my semi-inebriated state, I decided to lie about my age and said I was 25 (I know, I know, I’m still 26), but the point is, this whole age nonsense is getting to me.

I realized later, I’m too young to be lying about my age already.

Reason #20 why I can’t live in east Asia forever.