Seoul Weekend Trip: First time Solo Adventure Abroad

I mentioned in one of my previous post that in my first year of university back home, I actually had a huge interest in learning the Korean language. Since Korean wasn’t offered at my high school, I didn’t start taking formal classes until I went to university so most of the Korean phrases I would learn or hear were from K-pop or Korean dramas because lets face it, all of us at one point in our lives had a k-wave phase. It’s like the Asian version of the emo/punk phase (which I shamefully also admit having. Haha!) In my first year of university I was really stumped because I really wanted to study abroad and the places that my university offered study abroad programs at the time were Korea, Japan, and China; all of which I super stuck on deciding. Because I learned Japanese throughout a majority of my High school career, I switched it up to Korea, aiming to be trilingual.

This interest slowly fadded out as I was only using Korean in classes and lacked other individuals (preferably native speakers) to interact with so I gave up on the Korean language after my first semester as it just seemed undoable and jumped back into learning Japanese again. Oh boy, do I regret that.

To this day, I still remember how to read majority of the Hangul I learned back from my university days so I can easily type them into google translate, which really helped me a lot when I took my first solo trip to Korea over the week of Valentine’s Day. As much as I love Japan, (and still do to this day) Tokyo can get very overwhelming and congested. There are days when I feel like I need to go fast and I just cant catch my breath (especially during job hunting) no matter how early I leave my apartment. Maybe I’m just really bad with time managing. No. I’m ABSOLUTELY awful with time managing ( a habit Im working hard to break).

The break Also felt like a good chance to take photos out of Tokyo. Of course I knew what I wanted to check out in Seoul since it was my first time. Hongdae and Myeongdong for the touristy areas and a few spots that I found in a travel book hike panning my trip. You can read about my experience in each area here for Hongdae ・Myeongdong

But while exploring these areas, I found myself finding a lot more than I had planned to see as I wandered the city Thanks to my natural ”easy to get lost” nature. There were some similarities in Tokyo that I found in Seoul but also some differences. Sometimes looking back at the photos, I Imagined myself as a person who was seeing these images for the first time and thinking if they were shot in either Seoul or Tokyo. Would anyone be able to tell the difference? Enjoy for yourself

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