[Friday 23rd November]
Jinro, for those not familiar with all things Far Eastern, is a Korean drink made principally from rice - so kind of like a strong sake I suppose.
Tonight me and Chie met up with my friends Leon, Stew, Gav and Kyle for a night out in London, starting off with a film, and then going decidedly Korean from that point onwards.
The film was The Darjeeling Limited - Stew is something of a Wes Anderson fan apparently, so was keen to see it soon after it was released in the UK. We went to a rather nice little "independent" cinema (not sure if you can really call it that as it is part of a small chain) - The Screen on Baker Street. They were very civilised there - they even had a bar.
The film was rather enjoyable - I'm not sure that it was laugh-out-loud funny, but it certainly had a strangely entertaining character to it.
After the film we headed over to Holborn for dinner at my favourite Korean restaurant (OK, I only know 2 or 3) - a place called Asadal. Therein we were met by Leon who hadn't been able to make it to the film due to some work thing, and to our delight arrived already fairly hammered. Nice work. The food was every bit as good as it had been the previous time, and the Hite (Korean beer) and Jinro flowed freely.
We'd been collectively very keen on trying to squeeze a spot of karaoke into the evening - but our usual haunts - Karaoke Box and Lucky Voice - were all booked up. Actually the latter did have a room, but it was for 10 people and we were only a group of six, so it would have worked out hideously expensive. Luckily though we had some very resourceful people with us, and Gav managed to secure us a room at Assa - another Korean restaurant - which was much more reasonably priced, a lot more authentic than Lucky Voice, and had the added benefit (?) of being able to provide us with more Jinro.
So we then had a good hour or so at Assa, wherein the Jinro flowed freely again, and we had a thoroughly great time trying to fathom the controls on the karaoke system which were entirely in Korean. This was a really great place for karaoke - much more like the down-to-earth places I'm used to from my time in Japan.
I don't recall exactly what time we left, I think we then got a night bus back towards our flat, with Leon and Stew in tow, who had opted to stay over at our place as the last trains had already gone some time ago. Back at the flat, around 3AM, Leon and Stew discovered the electric keyboard we have (but pretty much never use). I can't help but think our neighbours probably hate us now. Ho, hum.
I'll leave you with this little video delight, taken in the karaoke place. Enjoy.
Comment 1
A splendid evening all round.
Posted by Gavin at 2007/11/26 19:08:53.
Comment 2
Honestly speaking I never really liked Jinro all that much, although I drank rivers of the stuff when I was in Korea during my business trips... Oh well...
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