headaches, shabu-shabu, and hello kitty

Somehow - miracle of miracles in this workaholic country - I managed to finagle a four-day holiday weekend out of my employer. I'm planning on spending Saturday and Sunday down in Daegu with G and her family, and planned to spend both today and Monday relaxing and puttering about Seoul.

Late Thursday afternoon, I started to get a headache. This is nothing new - I've had problems with headaches my entire life. Within an hour of returning home after work, it had evolved into a full-blown migraine. This isn't anything too surprising either, although I no longer get migraines nearly as often as I used to. During my late teens and early twenties, I used to get one or two a month. Now it's more like one or two a year - far preferable, except for when one comes pounding into my head at the start of my minuscule vacation. After a miserable night, the migraine sauntered off in the morning, leaving it's relative the Very Bad Headache in its place. The Very Bad Headach apparently decided that my head was a pretty awesome place to chill, and it stuck around until early evening, when it passed off the duty of torturing Anonymity to its friend Minor Headache. Yep, over 24 hours later and I am still headachy. I've consumed an unhealthy amount of OTC pain relievers in the hope that something would rid me of this nastiness, but to no particular avail. I'm hoping that Minor Headache will have skeedaddled by the time I get around to boarding the train for Daegu tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed!

I'd planned to meet my friend S for a late lunch on Saturday (S is a high school buddy of mine who just so happens to be stationed in Korea with the USAF). Well, I did meet up with him, although I suspect I was *not* the most companionable of companions, as I'd brought the Very Bad Headache along with me. S and I decided to go to the Fresh Shabu Dining restaurant in Hongdae, where we'd been before and where we knew the food was super-awesome. Headache or no headache, a girl needs to eat. I'm a huge fan of shabu-shabu, a Japanese dish involving veggies, mushrooms, noodles, and thin slices of meat boiled into a tasty stew at your table. This restaurant offers a bit of a twist on the traditional shabu-shabu goodness. You can choose two different soup broths and cook two different soups at the same time in a dual-partition yin-yang shaped pot:

The two broths

Veggies and mushrooms added

And lastly, with the meat added
This stuff is absolutely wonderful, and it certainly perked me up, even if it didn't drive the headache away. 
After lunch, I wasn't really up for doing much of anything, so S and I went to the Hello Kitty Cafe. It's very, very, very pepto-pink inside and full of Hello Kitty knick-knacks, products, and decor. We got some coffee and enjoyed the bizarre ambiance and squealing girls taking copious photos of themselves in front of various Hello Kitty displays until my head couldn't really take it any more. (FYI - they won't take your order until you've placed your shit on a table and staked claim to your space. Unfortunately, we didn't discover this until we stood in line for 10 minutes to order only to have the cashier eye our winter coats and bags then point disinterestedly at a small sign on the cash register saying that we needed to do so. Oi.)