August 23, 2010

[bofi] Calendar 2011 (wall hanging / desk top)

source: bofi

delivery date: 25 September 2010

wall hanging type
price: jpy 2,625 (tax incl.)
size: B2, 8pages


desk top type
price: jpy 1,575 (tax incl.)
size: 240mm X 180mm, 16pages


bofi privilege: 1 photo

August 17, 2010

my youtube channel is deleted!!!

dear bae-sisters,

thank you for stopping by to my quiet blog.

i just realized that my yt channel has been deleted.
(not sure if this is only suspension or deletion....sigh)

it is my fault that i violated copyright for one of the vods. but to be honest, they deleted my account so quickly i have no idea which one caused the problem.

i may upload the files again with a new account, but for now, i do not have power and time to reload all the files again.

sorry, if you were enjoying my channel.


love
tomato

August 16, 2010

[bofi] 2nd anniversary set / Gosireh makgeolli & cups

source: bofi
2010/8/13



bofi celebrates its 2nd anniversary on 13 August 2010.

to show our appreciation to everyone, we have prepared a special makgeolli & cups set.

contents: 2 bofi original makgeolli cups + 2 bottles of Gosireh Makgeolli

price: jpy 3,500 (tax incl.)

ordering start from 18:00 Friday, 13 August 2010

delivery date: end of October 2010







[book] StyleCity Seoul

source: Thames & Hudson


StyleCity Seoul
Text by Martin Zatko
Photographs by Gijs Bekenkamp

ISBN 9780500210253
21.00 x 17.00 cm
Paperback
192pp
400 Illustrations, 400 in colour
First published 2010
£16.95

Coming Soon
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

StyleCity™ heads to the Far East for the first time in this new addition to the
genre-defining series

From cutting-edge restaurants to the most stylish shops, hotels and neighbourhoods, the StyleCity™ series uncovers all the special places where both locals and travellers can find a vibrant urban experience. Each book is superbly designed yet ingeniously practical, with vibrant photography, easy-to-read maps and informed texts.

The first Asian city to be featured in the StyleCity series, Seoul is one of the East's most dynamic and creative locales. A centre for technological innovation and design, SeouL with its creative and digital industries, attracts leading international talent and youth to its heady mix of high-tech wizardry and the traditional values of an ancient society. This very contemporary global metropolis bustles with royal cuisine and street food, historic inns and neon-lit late-night bars - all with a distinctly Korean flavour.


"Gorilla in the Kitchen" will be introduced in the book!

August 15, 2010

[old vod] 24 hours TV 2005 (2)

6

BYJ:One more wish I have is, please look over and find people who are really in need for your support and I hope you could care for them as much as possible. I will do my best to do so myself.

Program shows making scenes of “April Snow”, and explains BYJ’s schedule for Japan visit.
Also, MC explains the story of April Snow and introduces location sights in city of Samcheok.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MC: This is a shooting studio ”Art House Studio” located at suburb part of Seoul, Bae Yong Joon ssi is shooting a new commercial for “Nana-iro A-cha”. Media are not allowed today.
N: What kind of shooting are they doing today? Rumor says that he is shooting in a more complicated set then last one.


7

N: We have secretly obtained new “seven light” version’s making video. There’s Yon-sama. He seriously talks about his acting just like he would with a movie shooting.
++++
Yon-sama uses a leaf as fan, the studio was already 41 degrees high. He does not show steam bath like heat, and he shoots a scene with coolness. ‘Man meets seven color rainbow at a taro field’. What an actor spirit!
As his favorite phrase is “one more time”, he of course looks into the monitor and checks his acting, he cannot compromise. He is always most hard on himself, will he give an okay? He is nodding. He seems to be satisfied.

8

N: Finally finished? No, no, there’s one more task, still shooting for posters. Oh, he has changed his eye glasses. Yon-sama arrived at studio at about noon, and it was originally planned to end at around 19:30. But it is already after midnight 1:30, but he answers to cameraman’s request with big smiles. Truly a smiling prince!
++++
He must be most tired of all but he is kind enough to care for all staff. Staff gives applause to Yon-sama.
BYJ: Please look forward to second version of “Nana-iro A-cha”


Urgent flash from Seoul!  Fundraising charity program, ”24 hours TV, Love saves world” counts 28th year this summer. Bae Yong Joon ssi has sympathized to our many years of charity activities and has decided to take part in it, this year.

9

BYJ: hello to viewers of “24 hours TV,” I am Bae Yong Joon. I am happy to share the same feeling with you all.
N: Bae Yong Joon ssi donated 20million yen. This donation will be used for welfare car and send to disaster area or disabled people. Seeing disasters that continuously attacked Asia, and seeing people suffering from them, Bae Yong Joon wanted to do something to support people. When he was hoping for it, BYJ meets “24 hours TV” by fate and sympathizes to its ideas. He was also deeply touched by this year’s theme, it is…
BYJ: “ikiru” (in English, live)
N: What is the most important thing to “live”? BYJ wrote his message to a giant T-shirt that will be decorated at Budokan, he wrote in Chinese character, “Love of Family.” You can live only because you have someone to support and you are supported by that someone.

BYJ: People watching TV, with your little help and heart will give big power, I ask you to join this donation together.


10

BYJ: I will be visiting Japan for promotion of “April Snow.” I will meet you in Japan. Please be healthy till then.
I hope your family will be always happy and healthy. Thank you very much.

[photos] Anime "WS" necklaces

source: mucha



links to my older postings; here and here
also some photos from last scene shooting site; here

Woman joongang - Ryu Seungsu interview video



August 14, 2010

[news] Seoul Food

source: wsj.com
AUGUST 12, 2010

By HELEN SEUNGHEE YOON


SEOUL—For many years, dining in Seoul was distinguished mainly by mom-and-pop restaurants and a late-hours dining called pojang-macha in outdoor tents—all serving cheap Korean food.

But over the past few years, Seoul has quietly become a city for foodies. Just this spring, Zagat's, the U.S. publisher of survey-based dining guides, produced its first Seoul edition. The variety and sophistication of restaurants has exploded; foodies seeking Spanish tapas, Uzbeki shurpa and even New York-deli style pastrami sandwiches can now find them here. And Korean dishes are being revamped to mirror the broader upgrading.

So while gourmands from outside Asia are still more likely to stop in Tokyo, Hong Kong or Beijing than Seoul, a visitor who hasn't seen the city for a while will be stunned by the options, cuisines and quality that it now has to offer.

The change is largely shaped by the hundreds of thousands of South Koreans who have studied or worked overseas in the past decade, developing a broader palate and keener sensibility about the dining experience along the way. Among them are young Korean chefs who have gone off to train in culinary capitals like New York, Paris and London, then returned to start their own restaurants.

"Ten years ago, it was rare to see chefs who studied overseas," says Lee Yun-hwa, a food critic and chief executive of Diary R, a Seoul-based restaurant-guide publisher. "Now there are so many that people are no longer impressed by an overseas diploma. A great chef should have more than that, such as their own creative recipes."

Both Korean and foreign chefs are experimenting with multicourse menus—a typical Korean meal consists of many dishes served all at once—and more artistic presentation. Their aim is not only to increase its appeal to foreigners, but to show Koreans that their national cuisine, at its best, is on par with the finest French or Italian or Japanese food.

The food boom has also had its gimmicky side, such as the arrival of celebrity-owned restaurants.

Here's a snapshot of some of the people and places shaping Seoul dining now:

Boomerang Chefs

When Eo Yoon-geun returned to South Korea in 2003 after seven years in Italy, where he studied at the Culinary Institute of Italy and worked at the Four Seasons Hotel in Milan, his plan was to join a hotel staff. But then a new realization hit.

"I wouldn't be able to try unique things," says the chef. "I wouldn't be able to show the true color of my cooking." So instead he opened his own restaurant, Ristorante Eo. (Italian food, which first appeared in South Korea in the 1950s, is by far the most popular foreign cuisine in the country; hundreds of cafes serve Korean takes—meaning spicy—on spaghetti and risotto.) He thus became a pioneer in the most powerful force transforming the Seoul dining scene: the chef-owned restaurant, of which there are now dozens. Mr. Eo's place is the highest-ranking restaurant in Zagat's new Seoul guide, though he describes his clientele as the type that doesn't need help from a book.

"The people who come here know what good food is," he says.

A few blocks away on the fourth floor of a humbler, multipurpose building, chef Kang Kyung-jin estimates 90% of the business at her tiny French restaurant, Swell, is from repeat customers.

"I know their personal stories, their birthdays and tastes," says Ms. Kang, who opened the four-table restaurant in 2003, after returning from studying at Le Cordon Bleu in London.

Restaurants like hers and Mr. Eo's, she says, attract people because "an owner-chef can be more focused on his or her own cooking style." She says she's resisted customers' suggestions that she expand Swell or open new restaurants. She doesn't want anything that's beyond her control.

"Expansion is meaningless for me," she says.

Upscale Korean

The image of Korean cuisine outside the country tends to be shaped by what people know about kimchi, the cabbage-based condiment that is present at nearly every meal but is hardly representative of the variety and complexity of food here.

An even more constraining idea about Korean food exists inside the country: that it should always be cheap.

Since South Korea's government began two years ago to step up its overseas food-promotion efforts, officials have been wrestling with price and image issues. After a rice wine called makgolli—a downmarket drink at home—became a hit among trendy young Japanese two years ago, government marketers and producers created new bottles and labels, hoping to encourage Koreans to look at it anew.

A few chefs are trying to counter Koreans' preconceptions on price.

Nick Flynn, the Australian executive chef at the two InterContinental hotels in the massive Coex trade tower and convention center, tapped a dozen members from his 400-person staff to experiment with upscale Korean tasting menus.

The team, a mix of old and young chefs from Korea and abroad, came up with a 75,000-won (about $63) prix fixe dinner called "Made in Korea" that rotates seasonally and is served in six courses.

"Not many people are accustomed to eating everything at once, so we thought, Let's focus on individual, smaller portions," Mr. Flynn says.

They aimed for distinctive presentation. Japchae, stir-fried glass noodles with vegetables, eggs and meat, is customarily served in a heap on a dish. Mr. Flynn's team put it in a rice-paper parcel, on a plate with seared scallops, fresh herbs and dabs of the soy-based marinade that's commonly used in the dish.

The menu is built around Korean produce, which Mr. Flynn researches on buying trips several times a year. On a recent trip to Jeju island south of the Korean peninsula, he and a crew of six other chefs made deals with farmers for seafood, a number of varieties of lettuce and spinach, cactus fruit and a crop that's new to the island: apple mangos.

Perhaps the most aggressive attempt to take Korean food upscale can be found in one of Seoul's ritziest areas, Apgujeong, where a restaurant called Jungsikdang offers a menu for two at 200,000 won (about $170). The chefs there even created their own twist on the soybean-paste soup called dwengjang jigae that's a side dish in many meals. They've used the paste, which gives the soup a more intense taste and smell than Japanese miso, as the base for a risotto with cuttlefish, sesame leaves and zucchini.

Star Allure

South Korea's success at exporting movies and TV dramas made many of its actors famous around Asia. A few have capitalized by opening restaurants, as Hollywood actors have for decades.

Movie star Lee Jung-jae started the trend in 1998 with an Italian restaurant, Il Mare, in the Daehakno neighborhood. More recently, actor Bae Yong-joon's "Gorilla in the Kitchen" restaurant near Dosan Park in Apgujeong was for a time so popular that it drew lines of tourists, particularly Japanese women.

The restaurant displays no photos of Mr. Bae, star of "Winter Sonata," part of the "Korean Wave" of TV dramas that became international hits. There's no hint at his involvement. But fans know.


Now, the celebrity-restaurant trend has reached a new stage with the return of 38-year-old Edward Kwon, star of a different sort—a star chef. Ten years of cooking achievements outside Korea have made him a name in food circles back home. In 2003, while working at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, he was named to a Top 10 list of young chefs by the American Culinary Federation. He went on to work in China and then as senior executive chef at the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai.

Mr. Kwon has opened three restaurants in the past year in Seoul. His newest, The Spice—in Seoul's expat-heavy Itaewon neighborhood—offers dinners for 40,000 won (about $34).

"Everyone thought that I would open up in an expensive area but I wanted to serve value without a high price tag," he says. "My target is not 1% of the population in Seoul. I can cook for the homeless. It doesn't matter who they are."


—Helen Seunghee Yoon is a writer formerly based in Seoul. Evan Ramstad and Jaeyeon Woo contributed to this article.

August 11, 2010

[photos] goods from "BYJ 3D in Tokyo Dome 2009"

source: bofi


【BYJ 3D】commemorate catalogue (26 pages)
price: jpy 1,500 (tax incl.)



【BYJ 3D】plastic files (2 A4-size files)
price: jpy 1,000 (tax incl.)




【BYJ 3D】fan's collection A (6 photos, Lsize(89×127))
price: jpy 1,800 (tax incl.)





【BYJ 3D】fan's collection B (6 photos, Lsize(89×127))
price: jpy 1,800 (tax incl.)





purchase fan's collection photos and get an album to stock your photos!!
this is for free when you purchase the photos!!

August 10, 2010

[old vod] 24 hours TV 2005 (1)

tomato: I am reposting this Japanese TV program from 2005.

1

Narration(N): right after this, Yon-sama sends you an important notice.


Today, No. 1 Korean actor, Bae Yong Joon ssi, Yon-sama sends an important notice.
We had done an exclusive interview in March.

(tomato: NTV had a special program introducing making of April Snow, introduced making scenes of Lotte chocolate commercial, and made announcement of IMAGE photo auction in March.)
Five months has passed since then, what is the important notice ? Urgent flash! Bae Yong Joon sends Important notice today!

2

BYJ: hello to viewers of “24 hours TV,” I am Bae Yong Joon. I am happy to share the same feeling with you all.
Fundraising charity program, ”24 hours TV, Love saves world” counts 28th year this summer. Bae Yong Joon ssi has sympathized to our many years of charity activities and has decided to take part in it, this year.

3

BYJ: There were so many bad things happening in Asia last year, as I have been loved by so many Asian family I could not just stand there, doing nothing.
It all started from continuous disasters in Asia. Niigata Chuetsu earthquake and hearing the disaster of Smatra earthquake, he wanted to assist people. And he has carried out a plan, “Photo exhibit of Bae Yong Joon.” The exhibit was to commemorate publishing of “Image” and using this for charity was the idea. All 48 exhibit photos were auctioned.

4

BYJ: As I had promised since the photo exhibit started last November, I wanted to use all profit from photo exhibit for contribution. Now, I am very happy that I could keep that promise, and I appreciate all family for their concern and their support with love.
TV Program introduces “Image,” and with vod of “100days with BYJ” showing scenes of BYJ excercising. Short interview of trainer JP explains how hard BYJ had worked out.

5

N: 48 photos which he has deeply devoted were auctioned, and collected 20 million yen was donated to “24hours TV”.
tomato: BYJ hands the inventory to NTV’s Editing CD, Mr. Amasaki.
the contribution will be used for people of devastated area, and bus with lifts for disabled or elder people, van with bathtubs will be given to deeply damaged Niigata area.

[photos] The FACE SHOP calendar









August 9, 2010

[trans]BYJ Mgr’s Blog (58) Annyong Hasaeyo, dear family

source: BYJ Mobile Official Site
BYJ Manager’s Blog


Annyong Hasaeyo, dear family
4 August 2010

by: Manager Yang Geun Hwan
Japanese to English: tomato99


Annyong Hasaeyo!
Dear family, this is Yang Geun Hwan.
How are you all doing?

Now in Korea, air of excitement to support the World Cup is incredible.
I am very happy to see players representing Korea and Japan are fighting well at far away South Africa.
I pray for the best for Asian countries.

Recently, I heard number of heat strokes are rising because of hot weather.
I am concerned whether everyone is doing well.
Please take good care of your health.

Rain season will be soon over in Korea, and hot days will continue.
I have told actors and staff of Keyeast to take care of their health.

Yong Joon-san completed calendar shooting in Hawaii last month and safely returned home.
Every year, we try hard to show new style in the calendar.
Yon Joon-san worked hard for the shooting so that he could create a calendar that can satisfy everyone this year as well.

Also, Keyeast office had relocated this month.
As I was preparing for relocation, I was sorting out office supplies.
As we stayed here for long period, we will miss it greatly, but as we sorted out stuff it was a good chance to get fresh new feelings.
We will do our best to show our new style from our new office.


Please take care of your health in the hot weather.
Kamsa Hamnida.

Sincerely,
Yang Geun Hwan


August 8, 2010

[vod] BYJ donates NICU bed to Okinawa Hospital

source: RBC, Okinawa
2010/8/6



Korea's popular actor Bae Yong Joon-san sent an incubator for new born to Okinawa Prefectural Chubu Hospital.

At yesterday's presentation ceremony, a staff from medical equipment company attended in place for Bae Yong Joon-san and handed the catalogue list to Hospital Director, Dr. Eisei Henzan.

Dr. Henzan thanked and said,
they would use it to take care of new borns to help patients and their family,


The incubator is latest in model which came on sale just last month, which cost about 5 million yen, there is a plate with Bae Yong Joon-san's name.

Bae-san is actively participating in charity activities, he has thoroughly studied high quality medical treatment and conditions and has decided to send incubators to 8 hospitals including Chubu Hospital.








tomato: now, three out of 8 hospitals has been revealed, Kanagawa, Kagoshima and Okinawa.

[photos] Cafe artienue

source: iTour Seoul