I find it increasingly difficult to keep all the different languages spoken around me apart and to always pick the right one to use. Here in Seoul I should probably try to address people in English, but somehow find myself throwing Japanese fragments at them, which they possibly do not like very much. I was much relieved to see that others seem to have the same problem: while shopping for shoes today, the Korean shop-keeper started to praise his merchandise in Japanese, although I had given him no indication that this might even be remotely helpful.

Trilingual meetings, Japanese lessons, Russian colleagues demanding to be spoken to in German in order to practice it, the strange music mix heard in the streets ( K-Pop, J-Pop, Eminem and on this Easter weekend religious chants from Christian processions), none of this makes me feel Babel was a good idea.

A lot of people tell me that Japan (with its economy in a slump for ages) has seen its time and that Korea is the place to be now. For the ignorant Westerner life in Korea and Japan seem to be very similar. People smoke just as much and they even have the strange English consumer product poems:

Sansachun: Sansa is a fruit bearing, broad leafed, plant belonging to the rose species. Red and a pleasant scent. Good for treating weak stomachs, backaches, and cut.

Here are some of Seoul's merits over Tokyo

• everything is much cheaper
• mobile phones are a lot smaller than in Japan (yes, I know how weird that sounds)
• Cherry Coke is sold everywhere
• Internet is everywhere
• not as many expats

On the other hand, while I do not especially like Japanese food, Korean food is spicy enough to easily kill me, taxi drivers here do not like me and Tokyo still gets much more attention than Seoul, so I will probably just wait for Shanghai to overtake them both before going anywhere.