AkaSha : Global Wellness & Culture

If you're in Korea right now and a lot of doors look shut, that's not a glitch in your trip. Today is Chuseok, the middle day of Korea's three-day holiday, and a good share of what's closed is closed for the same reason my own front door was locked earlier this morning: I was behind it, doing charye. I'm not going to walk you through what that looked like. I'd rather stop there than invent a scene nobody asked me to describe. What I can do is something the Instagram cards couldn't: tell you about the door from the side I was actually standing on, then hand you the same facts everyone needs for the rest of today and tomorrow. Here's the honest limit on that, too. I have never seen a foreigner in Korea during Chuseok, not this year and not before. So I'm not going to guess what your holiday looks like from where you're standing. I can only tell you what mine looked like from where I was, then hand off to what's actually running, closed,...

Search "Seoul hanok village" and you get both of these in the same page of results: Bukchon and Ikseondong, a short walk apart, both rows of tile-roofed houses. They are not the same kind of place. One still has people living behind those roofs, in numbers small enough that the city now limits when you can walk through with a camera. The other lost a fight with a demolition crew, and what's there now is cafés. I've been to both. In both, what I did was walk into a café or a restaurant and sit down. That's a smaller claim than "I know these neighborhoods," and I want to be upfront about the gap it leaves, because it matters for one thing I'm about to tell you plainly: I have never seen Bukchon's visiting-hour rule in effect. No sign, no cutoff, no moment of being told to leave. It's real, and it's documented by the city, but it isn't part of what I personally experienced there. So here's what this piece actually does: it ex...

Eating alone in Korea has a word for it, honbap, and most days it is unremarkable. The friction you have read about is real, but it is narrower than the search results make it sound, and it is not the thing that stops people. What stops people is the doorway: the half second where you look in, count the tables, and decide you are not doing this tonight. So here is what I actually do, and it is two decisions rather than one. I choose the kind of shop before I leave the house. Then, once I am inside, I take the counter. Neither of those is brave. My solo list is short and fairly dull: gimbap, tteokbokki, guksu, ramyeon. Rice rolls, rice cakes in chilli sauce, noodles in broth, instant noodles cooked at the shop. The Korean word for that whole category is bunsik, and I did not arrive at it through research. I arrived at it because those are the places I keep going back to on my own. This piece is about why that list works, why the seat matters more than the shop, and what the num...

A one-night templestay in Korea costs roughly ₩60,000 to ₩100,000. It checks you in during the early afternoon, feeds you dinner before six, turns the lights out at nine, and wakes you somewhere between 3:30 and 5:15 for a chanted service held in the dark. None of that is dramatised. It sits in published timetables, printed the way train departures are printed. I've done templestay at several Korean temples, not all of them in the mountains. One of my stays was at a city temple you reach by subway, and the wake-up time was no gentler for it. The part that stayed with me isn't the food, or the room. It's the alarm. I set it myself, on my own phone, the night before. I didn't wait for a bell or a knock on the door, and the reason is easy enough to admit: I didn't want to be the person who walked into the hall late. That small dread was already there at lights-out, hours before anything was due to happen. So: four official 2026 schedules hour by hour, what th...

One of the first decisions after arriving in Korea looks deceptively simple: which transport card should you buy? The familiar advice to “just get a transit card” skips an important detail. Different products can suit different itineraries, and their coverage, reload methods, and added functions are not identical. Korea Tourism Organization lists options including Tmoney, EZL, WOWPASS, and the Climate Card . Instead of choosing by logo, begin with your actual trip. Start with your itinerary, not the card Write down where you will sleep, how many cities you will visit, and whether your days are concentrated in Seoul or spread across several regions. A short Seoul-focused visit may create different needs from a multi-city route through Busan, Gyeongju, Jeonju, or Jeju. Then ask four practical questions: Where can this card be used on my planned routes? Where can I purchase and reload it? Does reloading require cash or support another payment method? Does the product incl...

Your Korea itinerary may be stored in the cloud, but the most useful travel note is one that also works when your battery is low, your connection is unstable, or you are too stressed to search. Before landing, save three numbers: 112, 119, and 1330 . They do different jobs. Knowing the difference helps you reach the right service quickly instead of losing time in an urgent moment. 112: police assistance Use 112 when you need the police or face an immediate safety concern. Examples include theft, violence, threats, or a situation in which you feel unsafe. Give your location as clearly as possible. A hotel name, subway-station exit, landmark, or Korean address shown on your map can be easier to communicate than a long verbal explanation. If you cannot explain the situation fluently, begin with the essential facts: where you are, what happened, whether anyone is injured, and whether the danger is continuing. 119: fire and medical emergencies Use 119 for fire, rescue, or a medical ...

  TAX with United States · South Korea · Japan For small businesses that accept Bitcoin payments, it is essential to report income thoroughly and accurately according to each country’s tax laws. AkaSha is a P2P Bitcoin payment platform that envisions a decentralized, fee-free, borderless economy . While protecting user privacy and never charging transaction fees, AkaSha actively encourages lawful tax compliance. The platform also supports transparent bookkeeping through its Bitcoin POS function. Merchants on AkaSha will soon be able to download monthly Bitcoin sales data as Excel files to assist with tax filings. Still, even without this feature, every business is responsible for keeping its own detailed records and filing taxes properly. Let’s review how Bitcoin income is taxed and reported in the United States, South Korea, and Japan . 🇺🇸 United States: How to Report Bitcoin Income In the U.S., cryptocurrency is treated as property , not currency. When a business receives...