The Good, The Bad and the Far-From-Ugly Part 3: Hovering

American salespeople do this to some degree in shops. "Hello? Can I help you find anything?" Whenever they say this, I want to scream "NO! LET ME SHOP IN PEACE!" Of course, in reality, I just nod and say I'm fine. 

Today, I also discovered that some Japanese people do this as well. I was browsing for some Christmas gifts and the store saleslady literally followed me every step I took. It quickly drove me to madness and out the door. I felt like in that episode of The Office where Dwight tells the lady "I will literally be RIGHT HERE if you need anything."

However, Korean salespeople take the practice of bugging customers to a whole new level. The second my friend and I entered any sort of shop whatsoever, the employees were on us like a shark on a bloody seal. Sorry, a bit of a gruesome image, but I truly felt like the seal being ripped to shreds in some shops. 

At beauty-product stores, the ladies working there would follow me around and get WAY too far into my personal space bubble. They picked up product after product and told me what each one was. "This lip stick. It for lips." Wow, thank you for that insight. I NEVER would have been able to tell that it was lip stick from the sign underneath it that says "lip stick." Or, from the fact that I can recognise lip stick. You really enlightened me, Miss Beauty Store Employee. Thank you.

"Miss. This is face cream. It cream for face." Wow, really?! Face cream is cream for your face!? I thought face cream was for your foot. My mistake, thanks for clearing that up. 

I am not exaggerating. They told me what EVERY product was as if I couldn't figure it out from the English signs, or from just looking at the product. 

The scariest place for me was the souvenir shop in the airport. It was a feeding frenzy of sharks attacking me, the poor defenceless seal. I am amazed I made it out alive. My ears were bombarded by suggestions and more information about what each item was. "Miss! Miss! This chocolate strawberry." Yes, I have eyes, which enable me to do this magical thing called "seeing." Therefore, with this ability, I can SEE the display of the chocolate which shows a strawberry inside. Amazing.

"Miss! Chocolate is great gift! How about orange chocolate?" If she told me that orange chocolate was chocolate with orange, I would have literally lost my mind. The airport medics would have had to wheel me away in a straightjacket. 

I just wish these employees would realise that doing this simply made me want to buy products that I didn't even want to buy even less than I already did, which I didn't even know was possible. Had I been left to browse in peace, I may have actually purchased something. 

The Good, The Bad, and The Far-From-Ugly Part One: Why You Gotta Be So Rude?

My Korean seat neighbour described two blogs ago turned out to be an accurate representative of most Koreans I would encounter during my time in Busan. I'm going to go ahead and expect a slew of comments from upset readers berating me for making generalisations, so let me just go ahead and address that now. These are just opinions based on my observations. I know that people from every country are all unique and have their positive and negative personality traits. However, as an outsider, there were things I observed. My observations based on a short period of time, good and bad, are all that this blog details. So, everybody chill in advance.

Because it's just a blog

I initially wrote all of my observations in one long blog, but I know how short attention spans are these days, so I have turned it into a multiple-blog series. Enjoy.

Why You Gotta Be So Rude?

As I previously mentioned, living amongst the Japanese for months has likely tainted my perspective on how people should act. Japanese people are some of the genuinely kindest I have ever met. They rarely have ulterior motives driving their actions and will go out of their way to help anyone at all, even someone they barely know. Greetings are of utmost importance in Japanese culture as well as cleanliness and politeness. Had I travelled from New York to Busan, I may not have noticed a thing.

However, I was traveling from Japan to Busan. So imagine how I felt the first time I heard a Korean man hacking up a spit wad right there in the metro station. Shocked would describe it pretty well, though the more it happened the less it surprised me.

Also, in Japan people generally walk in a direct path to their destination in the train station. If they divert from said path and bump into you, they are quick to apologise. I know at least three ways to apologise in Japanese because of this. In Korea, people often walked directly into me and didn't even hesitate. No "excuse me" or "I'm sorry." Sometimes, it even seemed like they were INTENTIONALLY trying to run into me. For example, when I would walk down a practically empty hall and someone was walking the opposite direction, they still found a way to bump into me. How!? Why?!

Also, the staring. In India, people ogled me like I was a bearded lady in a freak show and didn't even try to pretend they weren't staring. Even when I returned their gaze they kept starting. Koreans weren't as bad, but some still stared at me to the point I felt very uncomfortable. That is another thing that I never experience in Japan.

Finally, the train situation. In Japan, people line up alongside the doors when the train arrives and wait for the passengers to get off before they file in. In Korea, forget it. The method there was "barge right in as soon as the doors open and don't wait for anyone to get off first."

When push comes to shove, Korea is a dog-eat-dog world.