Day 7 - Sinsegae Department Store

I went to the area called Myeongdong in the city center where there are many tall buildings. I went to Sinsegae, a department store. There are 3 big department stores in Seoul and they all compete with each other: Hyundai shopping center (with blazer girl), Shinsegae and Lotte department store.

My new shoes

On the way to Sinsegae

When I approached Sinsegae from far away I already saw it was a very tall building. Although it only has 11 floors, it has high ceilings and each floor is quite large too. So when I entered the building I was struck by the same feeling that I had when I first entered the Hyundai shopping center. So much shininess, so many things to see. Since the place was bigger than the Hyundai shopping center and somehow it looked more expensive, I thought how can Hyundai win from their competition?

Shinsegae in the evening, when I left

I walked around a bit on the first floor but since that’s always the make up floor I went up higher. I immediately noticed the personnel behaved differently than in the Hyundai shopping center. In the Hyundai shopping center the sellers greet you when you walk in/near their store. So I was expecting the same thing here. But they usually didn’t do that. They were talking amongst each other or they were busy with administration or something, but they didn’t seem to have as much attention for customers somehow.

After dinner I went to a hallway with a sign that said Culture hall. There was some weird confusion as the 2 girls there couldn’t explain to me what culture hall was or even where it was (this happened in the culture hall). One of the girls asked me "What's your culture?" so she could call a translator to help me. She was surprised to find out I was Dutch ; ) Luckily on the top floor I met the nicest girl of the day, who was actually not that special.

My dinner

View from the restaurant. Check out the roof.

On the top floor you can take all kinds of courses: dancing, “fashionable cooking”, things like that. So I asked her what kind of dance courses can I take, but unfortunately she couldn’t speak real English. She did seem like a nice person but I didn’t get to know her.

Before leaving I went into the basement where there were was a supermarket and a lot of food stands. I remember “always say yes to anything” and I tried some drink that was quite spicy, like hot chewing gum. That was the only thing I bought in that mall.

Before leaving I asked this info girl about the tax free shopping situation. It took her relatively long to explain to me how it worked. I guess they need to communicate better in this mall. I can see how Hyundai shopping center can stand up to this place. So I should check out the Lotte department store soon.

After leaving I walked around randomly and I came across a nut stand/vehicle. A 45? year old man was selling 6 types of nuts from some kind of vehicle. We talked a bit and there was one kind of nut I didn’t know (black nut?), it grows in Korea. Unlike in the Seyeogae mall where the food sellers were just trying to sell stuff, this guy just talked to me. Despite that we were only talking in Korean, I could talk quite well with him.

But Sinyeogae is not a bad mall, except the floor that’s almost exclusively for golf and the expensive stuff they have there. I mean, I wouldn’t buy most things there because of the price. I did buy the black nuts from the man outside. Instead of a spoon-type thing, they put the nuts in an open wooden box and that's 1 unit. When I said I wanted half, he just took out half with his hands, that's how they do in Korea ;) - 4OOO

What I would buy at an inflated price were some SPAO pants I saw later. Walking into the store I saw a poster of Yoona, and Soo Young & Taeyeon posters were there too. But the training pants I wanted to buy had a zipper near the ankle so I couldn’t buy it. Tomorrow: dance practice ; )