Busan: Jagalchi

A few weeks ago we traveled to Busan for the International Fireworks Festival. I've heard the festival is really a sight but unfortunately, because of the torrents of rain, I'll have to wait until next year to see things exploding in the sky.

Busan was by no means a bust though. Busan, the 2nd or 3rd largest city in Korea, (I could probably look this up but I'm going to be lazy), is located just southeast of Daegu, on the Sea of Japan. Even for late October, it was warm enough to run around in the water, and that's exactly what we did on Friday night when we arrived.

As I said, Saturday was a complete washout. It rained extremely hard for 30 minute intervals. The rest of the time, it just rained steadily. We made the best of the situation though. Our first stop was Jagalchi Fish Market. The market is located right on the water so we were able to watch some pretty impressive fishing vessels head in with the morning catch.

Let me explain how Jagalchi Fish Market works. The ground floor is basically a living menu. Each vendor has a designated area on one of the top floors for preparing and serving their goods. 

Step One: Find something identifiable while keeping in mind that you will eat that very fish a few minutes later. If find yourself growing particularly fond of a specific Octopus, step away, unless you respect it enough to devour it raw. It's tentacles will still be writhing around on the plate and they will attach themselves to the inside of your mouth. If you really think you're up for the fight, get ready to chew hard and fast. Don't dishonor yourself or the fish by letting it crawl down your throat, causing you to probably choke to death in front of everyone. The people are busy here. They have enough fish to clean and they certainly don't need to waste their time mopping you up off of the floor.

Step Two: Stand clear of the squid! They're feisty little bastards. We watched one leap from it's basket and nearly send two young girls into cardiac arrest. I was also lucky enough to be assaulted by the same squid that we were going to eat. I have to give it to this guy, he put up a fight, but in the end, I digested him.

Step Three: Head upstairs and get ready to eat. That's basically it. Pick some fish, watch out for the live ones, and then chew thoroughly.  

We circled the bottom floor once before deciding on our meal. We were lucky enough to meet a vendor who spoke pretty good English so we ordered from his baskets o' fish. Most of our meal would be sashimi, which is just slices of raw fish. We had tuna, what I believe to have been fluke or flounder, octopus tentacles, (as previously documented), squid, (again, see above), two grilled fish that were white, flaky, and delicious, (the nice woman who served us forced our friend to eat the eye ball. Really wish I would have recorded that but I was too busy fighting with tentacles), and some type of shellfish whose innards can only be described as looking intestinal. I would have taken more pictures but I wanted to eat my lunch before it flopped back into the sea.

Jinju

On October 5th, 1592, the invading Japanese army attacked Jinju Fortress with 30,000 soldiers.  General Kim Si-Min was set to defend the fortress with an army totaling only 3,800 people.  Of these 3,800, many were civilians.  After six days of combat, Jinju Fortress remained under Korean control and the Japanese army was forced to retreat.  The battle was recorded as "The Great Victory in Jinju" and it is one of the most important battles of the Imjin War.

Each year, Jinju holds a lantern festival in commemoration of this victory.  The river, along with the confines of the fortress walls, are adorned with lanterns of all shapes and sizes.  Wobbly footbridges span the river's surface and for 1,000 won, festival goers are able to (slowly) cross the water for a closeup look at some of the lanterns.

Jinju Fortress sprawls the rivers edge and winds its way up into the hills.  After the sun set, we made our way inside.  I'll let the pictures do the talking for me.

The river 

paper cranes

topical

the original John Wayne

the first joke ever told

this guy took all of my money

Kim Si-Min

some guy who followed us around

On the other side of the river was a bamboo forest where it must have been mating season.

At least the tigers were on their best behavior.  

Chuseok in Gwangju

Five weeks into the semester and we are afforded a long weekend on the account of Korean Thanksgiving, or Chuseok as it's properly called.  While there are some similarities between American Thanksgiving and Chuseok, (them being family time and LOTS of food), there were no pilgrims or Indians or 25 pound stuffed turkeys with pumpkin pie chasers.  That's not to say that there weren't plenty of other delicious eats to be had.

Proof

This spread was first offered as a tribute to the family's ancestors before being prepared and passed around the table.  

I guess I forgot to mention that we were staying with Caroline's friend, Yuri, and her family so let me back up.   

Our wonderful hosts

That's Yuri (on the right) and her boyfriend Jun-Yeong (on the left, duh).  Jun-Yeong drove us around all weekend and I felt bad for not being able to say much to him, (he spoke very little English and I speak VERY little Korean), but we were able to share a nice moment over a plate of chicken when he recited every position on the baseball field in perfect English.  Jun-Yeong is a fan of the Kia Tigers and later that night they defeated the Lotte Giants and advanced to a playoff game.  

After eating (way more) than our fill on Sunday, we ventured out into the country on Monday afternoon.  Our first stop was Damyang where we strolled through a bamboo forest.

All of that hiking burned right through the massive amounts of calories we had consumed a day earlier, but lucky for us there were dozens of noodle shops along the river on the outside of the forest.  This particular region is known for its guksu, which is a type of buckwheat noodle.  I ordered the spicy noodles and was not at all disappointed.

cold, spicy and delicious

Satiated, we made our way further out into the countryside where we hiked around an old garden from the Silla Kingdom.

The Bitter End

This is going to be the most exciting entry I've written to date.  A few topics that will be covered include and are probably limited to:

Pizza in Korea

A Rock and Roll Show

A dancing cook

and

another Korean hot dog adventure

Saddle up and prepare to experience Korea vicariously through text and images.

I'll start with our first (and to this date, only) encounter with Korean pizza.  Just around the corner from me is a cozy little place called Pizza Flower.  One Sunday night Caroline and I decided to give it a shot.  Twenty minutes and seven dollars later we were sitting on the floor of my apartment.  Nothing stood between us and the pizza and the cameras were rolling.

Just in case curiosity has got the best of you, I'll describe what you've just seen.  You were looking at a Bulgogi Pizza, or a pizza with Korean-style barbecued beef on top.  What you probably don't know, and what we also were lucky enough to find out, is that the pizza was also covered with other bits of randomness including corn and maybe onions.  Corn seems to be a condiment here.

I hope you're all geared up for the first bite because it's happening right now:

Good not great.  Similar if not identical to a standard frozen pizza.  Nothing about it tasted Korean to me so I decided to improvise.

Buckle up:

Kimchi strikes again!  This stuff is fantastic.  Add it to anything that tastes of mediocrity and sit back as it instantly drums up some flavor.

The next topic that I'd like to cover is music here on the peninsula.  I'm not sure why, but KPop reigns supreme.  KPop is loud, dancy, technoey, (what?), rap/pop music.  I'm about to offend the entire country but I'd like to be honest about my feelings towards this musical genre.  

I think it's pretty terrible.  Every single song sounds exactly the same.  The male singers look like they've never heard of sandwiches.  The girls look fake.  The musical groups have more members than the entire Wu Tang Clan.  It's as cookie cutter as it gets but the  everyone here loves it and I mean everyone; from kids to teenagers to adults; I've even caught some older men listening to WonderGirls while devouring chicken and knocking back shots of soju.

I'd pretty much given up on seeing live music while living over here but then we stumbled into a bar called Urban.  We couldn't believe our eyes or our ears.  On the stage were about 6 or 7 young Korean rock and rollers.  In front of the stage were about 15 or 20 young people flailing around uncontrollably.  We had struck gold.  

Here's a quick glance at the Chef, as I've named him, dancing around to a rendition of the most popular KPop song in the world; Gungnam Style.  We're still debating whether or not this guy was actually a chef who had just finished his shift or if wearing a chef's apron is hip with the country's alternative youth.  Either way this guy was great.  We danced around with him and his crew for a while.  I even introduced some college kids to the Charleston and the Twist.  I hope it catches on. 

I'd rather not leave this post on a sour note but I can't be held responsible for my culinary exploits.  Dancing around like idiots strikes up your appetite.  There were some hot dogs on the horizon, Korean hot dogs.  After my first experience I still haven't learned my lesson and decided it was a good idea to try something else.  The dog I selected looked pretty decent.  It resembled a giant corn dog and it looked something like this:

Shock and Awe

Out On the Weekend

We've been in Daegu for 3 weeks now but sometimes it feels more like 3 days.  The work week passes by so quickly that we hardly have (make) the time to plan out our weekends.  Luckily the city has plenty to offer and the public transit system makes it easy to wake up on Saturday morning and find an adventure.

Our first outing was a walk through Duryu Park.  The park is gigantic and beautiful.  As soon as you enter you forget about the massive city that lies beyond the trees.  The only maps we could find were in Korean so we decided to wander around and hope for the best.  Here is a glimpse at what we found.

Keumyong-sa

View from the front porch swing

After checking out the temple grounds we continued down the trail until we came to a large pond where people were feeding a massive school of fish.  These fish were terribly ugly and extremely desperate for potato chip crumbs and other scraps of food.

We were feeding these pathetic saps from a footbridge that connected to a tiny island which seemed to house another small temple, but the gate was locked so I snapped a quick photo and then we went to find some food.

Hidden Temple

Duryu Park was a nice time and we've already set our sights on going back.  A teacher at my school gave us some info regarding a small mountain that people climb in the center of the park.  When you reach the top you'll find a small restaurant serving chicken and beer.  Sounds pretty nice.

Speaking of mountains our second outing took us to the top of Mt Apsan.  The hike was only about two miles but here in Korea, hiking trails seem to go straight up.  It wasn't until we had almost reached the top that the trail began to meander nice and slowly around the mountain's edge.  It was hot and we were hungry, (which seems to be becoming a common theme among this blog), but the view quickly struck this from our minds.

Daegu Tower

Duryu Park

Daegu.  Every inch of it.