Yesterday, I went to the Nagwon Instruments Arcade with Nick (coworker) and Matthew (friend from training who lives on the opposite side of Seoul). Matthew and I had planned to go there for a while now, since my chops were itching and his fingers curling and we needed instruments. Alas, he hasn't the money for his piano until two paydays from now, but it's worth taking a look anyway, so off we went.
The instruments arcade is massive. Tiny shops crowded with all manner of musical devices. It is honestly a musician's Mecca. Yes, that's right, a musician in Seoul will invariably turn toward Nagwoon at specific times of the day and offer prayers. We spent far too much time looking around and trying things out. Nick bought a guitar tuner, and Matthew found an incredible range of prices for the digital pianos he'd been looking for. I tried several saxes, trying to find something reasonable below 800,000 won ($835ish). I was looking for a tenor because my chops are very out of shape, I don't own a tenor, and I wanted something that would give my mouth a challenge - it's easier to blow on the smaller instruments, as my experiments on the sopranos proved.
There were a couple I found for 600,000, but they weren't fantastic. So we were heading out to Insadong for a little exploration, and we talked about instruments, when a random fellow foreigner overheard us and approached.
"Excuse me," he said, "did I hear you say you were looking for a saxophone? 'cause I've got one I've been looking to sell."
It turns out that this guy had bought an alto sax in Nagwon a couple of months ago, spent a lot of time trying out all the instruments he could find, bought a fantastic mouthpiece and a great case which doubles as a backpack and two boxes of reeds and cork grease, and played it plenty - until he realized that he really, really missed the trumpet. But he couldn't find anyone to buy his sax, because there's not a huge foreigner demand for wind instruments, and no Korean stores need to buy used items (or if they do, it's not easy to communicate in Korean, and they don't generally give good deals to waigooks).
I tried out his horn (he'd brought it with him), and it had a very nice sound and a lovely mouthpiece. He was hoping to let it go for half what he paid, and I coincidentally had withdrawn 400,000 won before we left on the off chance I might want to buy something - so I pulled out that wad and now I have an instrument!
The four of us exchanged numbers; turns out this fellow lives near Incheon, which is actually fairly close to Gangseo-gu, and knows of a lot of jazz clubs in Seoul.
Hooray!
I've been playing for much of the time since I got up, and it's been wonderful. I'm a musician again. I just need to find myself some music...
But now, time to get some work done. The teenage girls are screaming outside the SBS building, as they have been doing since the morning, the sky is horribly dark and grey, and it's a balmy five degrees outside and eighteen in my apartment, and I'm going to see if they've got any reasonably-priced tangerines at Homever. I've got a saxophone, I'm drawing again, and feeling my way through my writing projects. John (my head instructor and a great guy, who is a fellow movie/comic/zombie nerd) has promised to talk to the hap ki do place he knows of three subway stops away from here. My head has stopped hurting from the beer and the hard liquor that had a dead baby cobra in the bottle. Things are looking good.
If only I didn't have report cards to finish tonight.
2 comments:
Not just cobras, but snakes of all kinds in the liquor. Also, I've not only seen a bottle of liquor with a mother and six newborn mice floating around in it, I've seen a pregnant woman do a shot of it. It's all about the "transfer of powers", an animist thing. You eat the "king of snakes", you get the power of a king. The medicine markets have some scary stuff in there.
You know, I might've thought about that, if I wasn't so damn wasted. It's true, now that you push the thought on me... I remember watching a video about "taboo foods" - foods that western cultures are completely disgusted by but are accepted or even celebrated in other cultures - and one of them was the cobra. Said to cure all manner of diseases, including baldness. They rile it up with a mongoose before killing it, to get the blood flowing and have that extra medicinal kick...
A lot like they do with dog over here, come to think of it. Y'know, how eating dog is supposed to transfer that virility and vitality...
I'm told there's a place behind my building where you can get dog meat. Soon...
So what are the baby mice supposed to do for a pregnant woman?
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