ice

One of the bars in the area I typically go out in is an "ice bar". An ice bar is a bar that serves you a beer in a plastic cup which sits in a mug shaped block of ice. The benefits of this are two-fold. For one, it keeps your beer nice and cold, but that pales in comparison to the second benefit.

Once you've finished your beer, you have this empty block of ice. You proceed to take it over to the front of the bar, where everyone can watch as you throw it at a target which stands about 15 feet away. If you nail the metal center of the target, you win a prize. Prizes vary from a glass of orange juice (which necessitates the purchase of a bottle of soju to mix it with) to 20 bucks (a prize which nobody has ever seen won). I'm probably 4 for 10 in my career thus far, the spoils of which have been three glasses of orange juice and a pair of ankle socks.

There's a couple different strategies I've seen employed when people try to hit the target. The people who succeed most treat it as though they are throwing a dart. They line it up nice and slow and lob it toward the center. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing method, and it runs the risk of not hitting the target hard enough to register, but it's accurate.

I don't go that route though; I make it more of a spectacle, because there's typically a lot of eyes on you while you do this. I go through a whole Satchel Paige-like wind up, and whip it as hard as I can. This runs the risk, especially when drunk, of coming nowhere near the target. However, when I do nail the target and the ice shatters into a million pieces while I flex my muscles and revel in my success, well, it really makes the Koreans go wild.