Korea & Japan: The Crowds

I've been meaning to make this post for a while, but I've been a little lazy about it...

I know Korea and Japan don't really like being compared to each other. Well, really Korea doesn't like to be compared to Japan. However, since I live in Korea and I studied Japanese for almost four years...I've done it. I tend to take a pretty neutral stance since I love them both pretty well. And while I'd rather keep most of my opinions off the internet, there is one thing I will declare:

The crowds in Korea are crazier than Japan.

I've been to Japan twice now. Last summer I was in Kyoto/Osaka for a week. This past March I was in Tokyo for three days. I never really wanted to go to Tokyo nearly as much as I wanted to go to Kyoto, but I had the time and the money and it was the easiest trip to take at the time. I was curious and so I hit some sights, met a friend of a friend, and had a pretty good time.

Most people will talk about how it's super crowded in Tokyo. How there are people pushers on the subway. I didn't experience that, but then I didn't try to travel around the city before 9am. In Kyoto, once, my friends and I experinced a sardine packed train on our way to a very popular fireworks display. I can see crowds like that in the USA, too.

Something that struck me that I would like to compare, is how a busy shopping area looks around 6/7pm on a Saturday night.

This is Omotesando in Tokyo:

This is Gangnam:

(Note: I promise they were taken at the same time of day, but one was March the other was July)

Now, yes there are a lot of people in both pictures. However there are more in Gangnam.

To be fair, here is Harajuku:

Harajuku was pretty crowded, but it's also super small. The street isn't that wide and the shops are pretty well crammed together.

My take from living in Seoul and visiting Tokyo is that I don't think Tokyo is busier than Seoul. Sometimes, I think Seoul might be busier, but it's also more modern. I wonder what it's like to live in Tokyo, rather than live there, but then while I could ask people I know who spent more time there, if they haven't lived in Seoul as well, the comparison is lost.

Japanese Pattern Book: The Success

I bought a Japanese pattern book a year ago thinking I'M GONNA MAKE A THING but then my sewing machine broke and things never happened. That's okay. I bought a new, cheap, sewing machine a few months back and for all the cursing I give it, it does manage to reward me most of the time.

Someday I'll find another issue of this magazine. 

 Japanese pattern books are great because you get tons of patterns in a nice little package. However, they can be daunting because they're 1: in Japanese and 2: jumbled together.

This post is not going to be a tutorial, however. I will say that using them is not nearly as scary as you might think since you just need to find the right pattern on the folded inserts, trace them, and add seam allowance.

I wanted to make this pattern. It's very pretty.

There is this red sheer fabric that I have been dragging around of years. I used to even just hang it over windows but I had never sewn or made it into anything. There was nothing I wanted to use it on. So, this dress...yeah. That's a good one to use it on.

I was very careful. It was hard because that cheap machine likes to fight and skip stitches, but I got it there. I did french seams anywhere it would be left exposed to make sure fraying was kept to a minimum. I also took it to a repair shop nearby and had the collar overlock stitched (serged) before I attached the yolk because the collar seams are exposed on the wrong side of the fabric.

Skipped stitches. Many a seams were redone. 

La French Seam. You can see the fabric is encased. 

It took me a few weeks to finish but I really took my time. Mostly this is because of the fabric, which is a pain to work with. Yay sheers!

Phone camera makes not the good picture.

I'm really happy with it, though. I even added a ruffled bottom so I can wear it to work without tights (I have a tattoo on my leg).

Quick! Take a picture before I go to work!
No time for nice faces! 

Peach Preserves in Korea

Fruit is Korea is super seasonal. There was a period in the late winter where suddenly I could get crates of strawberries for like, 12,000원 and that was a special month.

Being summer, tons of stuff is suddenly in season. During my two years in Korea, I see peaches in the summer, and only in the summer. I keep thinking about peaches and how yummy they are and how they should be in my oatmeal.

So I tried canning them.

It was easy, but time consuming. I used a recipe I found from 100 Days of Real Food that is no pectin and no refined sugar. I don't know how to get pectin and since I wanted to make the preserves, like, today, I didn't want to find it on Gmarket, either. It was originally for strawberries but fruit's fruit.

I divided it by one third for my purposes.

2kg (2 pounds) peaches
1 1/4 C honey
1/2 Apple, grated
1/2 Tbs Lemon Juice

The peaches were cheap. I asked them at the supermarket to make sure the packages were 1kg each like I suspected. My Korean was a little wonky (did you know 한기로 should be 일기로?), but they got what I meant and said yep!

I picked up my cans from Homeplus. They were about 3,500-4,900원 each. I will have to return the taller ones because they are too tall for the largest pot I could find. The water wouldn't cover them to seal properly. These are Quattro Stagioni jars from Bromioli Rocco (an Italian company). They each come with a multilingual instruction book on how to pasteurize and seal the jars. I checked online and people claim they are also freezer safe.

I also picked up my honey at Homeplus. One bottle was almost exactly 1 1/4 cup, so easy peasy. This Acacia Honey (11,000 원) is pretty common in Korea and while expensive, much more natural than sugar. The lemon juice I had, but I also got it at Homeplus. Not it's not fresh squeeze. What do I look like, a hippie? 

I put my jars in the large pot to sterilize for about 10 minutes while I prepared the peaches. I also boiled some water and put the lids in a bowl to sterilize

After the peaches are chopped and peeled, throw all the ingredients in another large pot and boil for about 60 minutes. (The longer the thicker).

After the preserves were ready I poured 1.5c into my blender and gave it a few pulses, then put it back in to mix so there were less chunks. Then I ladeled it into one .5L jar and one .25L jar.

 It made a lot less than I would have liked, but that just means I won't be giving any away to friends...

It also means I can experiment with making other jams from the nectarines and other things around without needing more jars immediately.

After filling the jars and tightly put on the lids, you submerge them again in water and boil them yet again for 10-15 minutes. I'm still waiting for mine to cool. I'm hoping they sealed okay. If they didn't I might try resealing the larger can. Mostly I plan on throwing it in the freezer to keep for a later date.

I'm not even sure why I processed the smaller jar. I wanted to make sure it would work, I guess. I plan on opening it again right away and putting it in oatmeal, anyway.

Update: 

I left the jars in the pot to cool and when I came home. The jars sealed. I read this on another blog that it would probably do it as the jars cool, which is great!

Ash's Birthday Costume

My friend Ashley from Getting Past the White Tiger decided to have a theme birthday party. "Rehab for Fictional Characters." As the star she decided to be repentant Ash Ketchum from Pokemon and asked me to help her put together his somewhat unique jacket.

It's actually pretty easy and she pointed me in the direction of a how-to website which suggested rather than making the jacket from scratch taking a white and a blue dress shirt, detaching the sleeves, then reassembling them appropriately.

I picked up some yellow cotton from Dongdaemun for the trim and fake pockets, then sewed them on.

For her hat, we masked the check off with tape on a piece of fabric then spray painted it. Then the white was basted onto a red hat.

I even had a pokeball from Japan on hand. It had stickers in it.