Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: Day Eight

My parents had an end-of-the-year party to go to today, so Bob and I went into Seoul for the day. I took this photo from our express bus as we passed some of the oldest parts of Seoul, with traditional housing that contrasts so shockingly with the highrise culture of contemporary Seoul:

This statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin (known for his design of an especially effective warship in the sixteenth century) stands in the middle of a main road that bears the name of an even more famous Korean historical figure, King Sejong.

You've seen King Sejong already, perhaps without knowing it, because his face graces the 10,000 Won note that featured in yesterday's post. King Sejong is one of the most loved kings in Korean history, primarily because he created Hangul, the Korean script, during his fifteenth-century rule. Prior to King Sejong's creation of Hangul, only the elite classes could read and write, using Chinese-based characters. King Sejong wanted to create a Korean writing system that all classes could use, and with much opposition from the elite, Hangul was born. Often touted as one of the most logical alphabets in existence, Hangul characters impress linguists with their efficient use of phonetics as well as the fact that the shapes of the written characters represent the mouth and tongue configurations required to produce the sounds! Sounds crazy, I know, but apparently it's true. Compared with complex Chinese characters, Hangul is relatively easy to learn, and anyone can learn to pronounce Hangul with very little study (something that I can attest to, having only learned to read Hangul as a teenager). Before we visited Korea in 2006, and again before this trip, I told Bob that he should learn to read Hangul, but I think he's a bit sceptical about the ease with which I say it can be learned. Still, when it comes to things like the menu at today's lunch restaurant (in fact, it's the bill, but when you sit down, they just bring you the empty bill to fill out your own order), reading can be very useful!

I rattled off the menu options to Bob, but there were so many choices that he just stuck to his old favourite, bi bim bap, while I had dduk mandu gook (soup with ricecakes and dumplings) and we shared two orders of gim bap (large sushi rice rolls filled with a variety of cooked goodies).

In the end, it was a HUGE amount of food for lunch, even considering Bob's appetite, and the bill only came to 10,000 Won (CAD$10 or GBP£5) for both of us. Add in the fact that there's no tipping in Korea, and well, you can begin to see how much this trip has made us rediscover our resentment at London restaurant prices! After lunch, we headed to one of my favourite places in Seoul: Kyobo bookstore.

While I always enjoy browsing through the books, it's the stationery department that I usually end up spending most of my time marvelling over, since the selection is pretty spectacular.

Since this was my first time visiting Seoul in December, this was also my first experience with the absolute mania that seems to overtake everyone at this time of year: finding the perfect diary for the coming year.

With an overwhelming selection of designs, all at extremely affordable prices, looking at diaries and calendars (in Korea and Japan) made me wish that I could concoct some excuse to buy a dozen of the beautiful works of art. I resisted as best as I could, but still ended up returning to London with one notebook diary, one desktop calendar, and one wall calendar. After Kyobo, we wandered a bit, gravitating back to Myeongdong where we encountered two more offers of free hugs, this time from cutely costumed women:

(They held the signs in front of their faces when they saw me taking the photo, so I'm not sure how much of their getup was for effect and how much was for disguise!) We had returned to Myeongdong to wander, but also because one of the best shops that we found in 2006 had eluded us when we were here a few days ago. With my jumbled sense of direction, this didn't surprise me, but Bob seemed to take it as a personal affront that we somehow couldn't find the shop!

Finally, on the last narrow street of many, there it was, the charmingly named A Nature Takes a Hand:

Containing numerous levels of clothes for men and women, homewares, stationery, and just the kind of clutter that I like browsing through,

the shop had a new addition since last year--one that I wholeheartedly approve of!

We left Myeongdong and wandered some more, passing some of department store light displays along the way. My favourite of the lot was the Shinsegae "fountain":

It occurs to me that this travel "journal" isn't really giving you a balanced look at Seoul, since Bob and I have already done many of the touristy things in Korea's capital, like tour ancient palaces, walk along the old city wall, marvel at the historic gates that still punctuate the city, and experience the old-school marketplaces (the frenzy of which has to be seen to be believed). We very briefly visited one market tonight, although Namdaemun market was pretty quiet this evening, and slowed to a halt when it started to rain shortly after we entered the market.

As with Techno Mart, Namdaemun is either your vision of shoppers' paradise or hell, depending on your stamina and bargaining sense. There are separate areas to the market, each with its own focus, and you haven't seen selection until you've been in an entire building full of whatever category of item you can think of--decorative hair pins, camping equipment, dishes, socks, tools, you name it, you can buy it here. We stuck to the relatively tame outdoor market and passed many groups of people enjoying dinner and drinks at the food stalls along the way,

enough to remind us that it was past dinnertime for us too! But we weren't craving a rustic market experience for dinner, oh no, and we headed to the top floor of the Shinsegae department store (in Korea, as in Japan, the cheap eats are in the basement, and the fancier restaurants are on the top floors of any department store) in search of sushi. Bob had a zaru soba and sushi set,

while I really pigged out on a sushi, tempura, and udon noodle set. (I didn't end up needing the udon, and Bob happily polished off most of my noodles!)

Full and happy, we wandered toward our bus stop, passing Bosingak, the pavilion that holds a contemporary bell, cast in the 1970s, that represents the original 1396 bell that rang at 28 times every 10:00 P.M. (once for every solar stage of the zodiac) to signal the closing of the city walls, and 33 times at 4:00 A.M. (once for each of the Buddhist heavens) to signal the opening of the walls. Nowadays, it's only rung on New Year's Eve, keeping the 33-ring tradition to signal the beginning of a new year--we wouldn't see or hear this event in person this coming New Year's Eve, but we'd still watch it on television from my parents' living room!

Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: Day Seven

The most curious thing about Korean currency, in my opinion, is that the largest bill in circulation is the 10,000 Won note you see below.
Now before you go thinking that I must have a lot of money in my wallet to possess a note of the highest denomination, I should tell you that I had about ten of them in my wallet today, and that still doesn't make me rich. You see, at current exchange rates, 10,000 Won equals about CAD$10.80 or GBP£5.40. Imagine if the largest Canadian note was a $10 bill or the largest UK note was a fiver! Such small denominations necessitate having a rather large wad of bills on you if you intend on shopping or eating out, especially in a society in which cash is still widely used over credit. Banks will issue cashier cheques for denominations of more than 100,000 Won that you can use in most places if you sign the back and provide identification--this type of traceability is supposed to counteract money laundering and bribery. Although the Korean government has long been reluctant to issue a note worth more than 10,000 Won, 50,000 and 100,000 Won notes will finally come into circulation in 2009, and everyone's bulging wallets (many Koreans actually carry 10,000 Won notes around in separate envelopes because a stack of bills is often too thick to fit in a regular wallet) can finally relax. Anyway, today we drove into Seoul so that my mom could have lunch with some of her friends (the end of the year is a very popular time for get-togethers) and Bob could visit a place that he's been curious about. It's called the Techno Mart and depending on your shopping inclinations, it's either heaven or hell: seven floors of all things electronic, with each floor divided into a mind-boggling number of cubby-hole-sized shops, each with their own sales staff, prices, and rounds of bargaining.

Techno Mart isn't a place to face on an empty stomach, so we headed into the basement food court for some ban chan

and three orders of bi bim bap.

I've been to the Techno Mart with my parents once before, many years ago, and let's just say that I didn't enjoy the headache-inducing shopping experience, but since I was here last, they've introduced several levels of non-electronics shopping, so my dad and Bob disappeared up the elevator into the electronic unknown while I wandered through the other shops. I was delighted to discover that a branch of one of my favourite shops, Kosney, had opened on the ground floor, and with an over-the-top name (trademarked, no less) that makes no attempt to hide its belief in shopping as life activity:

The rooftop views from the Techno Mart were pretty spectacular, making the most of the building's location right next to the Han River that divides the city. Actually, I didn't really think about it until I looked at this photo again while writing this post, but this could be some sort of alternate-reality Vancouver photo as well--looking from the south end of the Granville Bridge, with Burrard Bridge in the distance, and all the condos of the West End as well as the North Shore mountains in the background. Just multiply the condos by a zillion, add in some hazy pollution, get rid of Granville Island, and replace Stanley Park with another zillion condos!

When I met up with Bob and my dad an hour and a half later, Bob looked a bit stunned and giddy. "This place is crazy," he said with mesmerised eyes before sheepishly pulling out something from his coat pocket. My dad had bought him another Christmas present! (Hint: it begins with a lower-case "i" and holds a lot of music.) Anyway, they both seemed very happy with their purchases (my dad bought a new calculator--I don't really know what was wrong with his old calculators, but both of them seemed to have gotten caught up in Techno Mart fever) and I left the Techno Mart empty handed, which was just fine with me! We met my mom and took a taxi back to the hospital where my dad used to work, since that's where we had left the car. When my dad started working there, the area around the hospital was pretty undeveloped, but the presence of such a huge teaching hospital encouraged other businesses and residential development, and the area is now very desirable and busy. New apartment buildings are still going up on whatever land is still available--here's the view from the hospital parking lot:

As we drove home (with Bob at the wheel once again), I had to get a photo of this apartment complex--something about the giant playground mushrooms in front of the buildings lent an even more hallucinogenic sense to the view.

We made a stop at the E-Mart on our way home, and Bob's job was to push the cart (and do his best not to get too full sampling from the dozens of food and beverage stations in the grocery store).

Although Bob pushed the cart, my dad always likes to hold onto the corner of the cart as well, which can, um, make pushing the cart a bit challenging!

We passed by Bob's and my new favourite fish, gum teh, but we didn't buy any because we already had some at home waiting to be made into dinner.

You may have noticed that we haven't been eating very much (any?) red meat since we got here, and my parents don't generally eat much beef, preferring fish and vegetables. This doesn't mean that our mouths didn't water at the sight of all the marinated bulgogi beef on display, though!

The bakery sample counter suckered us into buying two loaves (buy one, get one free) of the "most popular" bread in the bakery for breakfast for the next few days.

This is the view from my parents' living room window. The small yellow square almost in the centre of the photo is the E-Mart sign. When they first moved to Suji, their apartment was one of the first new ones to be built, and this view was of mountains and sky. In the years since, a bit of development has occurred, and while it is still technically a mountain view, it's also gotten a whole lot more urban!

Dinner was gum teh, ban chan, and some pieces of delicious fried tofu, coated in an egg batter and dipped in a sauce of sesame oil and soy sauce. As I've mentioned before on these pages, I've really missed good tofu, and we certainly ate a lot of it on this trip!

After dinner, I did some laundry while my parents did the dishes

and Bob used my dad's computer to start his i-Tunes obsession. Based on this recounting of tonight's events, can you tell who's the king of the house?

Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: Day Six

We "slept in" this morning (which by my parents' standards meant breakfast at 8:30 A.M.) and instead of a Canadian-style turkey dinner today, we were going to go to a brilliant place for a steak lunch, but they didn't end up taking reservations and everyone figured it would be too crowded today, so we changed our plans and went to a "sushi and seafood family restaurant" instead. On our way from the parking lot to the restaurant, we passed by quite a few doorways that made Bob smile, as they seemed to accentuate his extremely tall stature in Korea:

"Sushi and seafood family restaurants" are currently very trendy in Korea, and well, if today's meal was any indication, we both certainly hope they remain trendy until our next visit. As we had our first glance at the buffet, I asked Bob if he missed turkey today. He replied, "This is the best Christmas ever! I don't know how to pick!" and then zoomed off to get a plate. Not only was there the advertised sushi and seafood, there were also assorted Asian noodles, meat, chefs standing at the ready to make personalised pasta meals (with fresh pasta) and omelettes, a do-it-yourself taco station, pizza, a small section of Chinese stir fries, different soups, various hot and cold drinks, do-it-yourself parfaits, a selection of cakes, a fondue station, and (most incredibly to me) a spin-it-yourself cotton candy machine. With all this on offer, we only had about a quarter of the items, concentrating on, well, sashimi, sushi, and other seafood items!

Oh and there was also a fresh juicebar, made-to-order! For dessert, I had some strawberry juice, a few fresh lychees, and intoxicating squares of tiramisu and a pecan-pie type cake.

After our long lunch, it was definitely going to be a day of relaxing around the house, so my dad, Bob and I had a game of scrabble (Bob won)

and Bob and I had a good look at the map on my dad's office wall which shows all the places in the world that he's been.

Incredibly, my parents called us for dinner at the usual time (they're not into skipping meals). After our Christmas-Day feast, Bob and I could hardly eat any of the ban chan

or tempting denchang chigae (soybean paste stew)

that they had devised as a "light" supper, but we still somehow managed to fit something into our stomachs! After dinner, we flipped through my parents' channels (they may have way more than our humble five, but there's still not much on TV) and my dad watched one of his favourite channels for a while--an all paduk (go) channel, with games and expert commentary.

Soon after, it was time for bed, and our heads hit our pillows after a lovely day of good food, good company, and plenty of what my dad calls "doing lazy." I hope your Christmas was filled with similar delights!

Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: Day Five

After finding some elusive (at least in Suji) feta cheese for Bob's breakfast creation, Bob made us breakfast today, although he was a wee bit stressed about it, since Korean bacon ended up being completely different than the bacon we're used to (much thicker, unsmoked, and completely lacking in salt), and the feta was way less salty and had a much softer texture than usual. In the end, he needn't have worried because everyone enjoyed their breakfast. My dad did agree with Bob that the appearance of the dish left something to be desired (and in Bob's defence, he's not used to using so many eggs, since he usually just makes this for the two of us, so the different ingredients and cooking times kind of threw him off), but he said that the flavour was still delicious. My dad's solution to this disparity? Eating with his eyes closed:

(Okay, he didn't really spend the entire meal with his eyes closed, but I thought it made for a funny photo.) After a lazy morning, we all left the house--my mom had a lunch with some of her friends, so my dad, Bob, and I walked over to Suji Restaurant Town to have lunch out as well.

This time, we chose a rather rustically decorated restaurant

that put on a great shabu shabu buffet. Following my dad's system, we first selected meat and vegetables

and added them to the broth for round one of our buffet,

then went back to the buffet spread and chose seafood

for round two!

Although my dad stuck to shabu shabu, Bob and I couldn't resist trying some of the other items on offer, including sushi rolls and one of Bob's favourite Korean dishes, japchae, which is potato noodles and vegetables stir fried in a sesame-oil-based sauce.

Japchae can be really addictive--last time we were in Korea, Bob made the mistake of polishing off some japchae and commenting on how much he loved it at a big family outing, and one of my uncles instantly called over a waiter and got another enormous plate set right down in front of Bob. When Bob smiled to see that the group of us were going to have some more japchae, I leaned over and whispered, "My uncle got that plate for you, and you alone, and now everyone will be watching to see how much of it you eat! You better made a decent dent in the plate!" Of course Bob thought that wouldn't be a problem at all, since he loves japchae so much--until I told him that there were several substantial courses still to come in our fancy lunch, and to budget his tummy space! (After that, no matter how much he loved a particular dish, he kept his mouth shut. :-)) For dessert, we had some sweet punch and a few rice cakes.

While we appeared to be the only people who had walked to Restaurant Town, we were very happy to have an excuse to walk off some of our substantial lunch! We walked a different way home, passing through a sports park with a very familiar sight in the background (golf driving ranges).

A football team was practicing while we walked around the track, and Bob looked over a bit wistfully, resisting the urge to join in.

It wasn't until we left the track that we realised the players were from the local team!

Even though I'm used to Seoul's various urban landscapes, I'm still often struck by the otherworldly feeling that rows and rows of Korean apartments can't help but create.

We spent the rest of the day lazing around the house, and my mom made a special treat for dinner, scabbard chigae,

while my dad marked final exam papers from his course.

"What's the lettuce for?" I asked as I walked by. "It's to keep my energy up," my dad joked. The lettuce was actually part of our dinner,

since we used it to make ssam, little lettuce bundles filled with whatever meat or fish you're eating, whatever bits of ban chan that you want to add, and a nice dollop of ssam jang (soy bean paste for ssam). You won't find ssam on the menu in Korean restaurants, but if you ask for ssam, they should bring out lettuce and ssam jang so that you can start bundling away! The chigae was delicious

and since it was Christmas Eve, we had another round of Christmas cake to mark the occasion.

My parents don't usually decorate for Christmas, so we used one of their tall plants as a stand-in for a Christmas tree

and opened presents before we went to bed. I know this may strike some of you as odd, but when I was growing up, we always opened all of our presents on Christmas Eve!