IF - Toy

Toying with one's heart.
Companion piece to IF - Stir.

Korea - Malls and Markets

I visited a couple of malls because you can't go walking down the street in Seoul without bumping into a mall. 

Found a Miyazaki store.  Got Laura a stuffed Teto - the fox squirrel from Nausicaa.

An insane toy store.

While walking around a mall  I found an aquarium. 

The ever dreaded, ever spotted Moray Eel.

Attack of the Giant Spider Crabs!  (I don't know why these guys could be mad - it was either this or the market which I'll get to in a minute)

I also visited serval markets - which I found more interesting than the malls.  This one was a fish market - which wasn't that different than the Aquarium - in fact it had a better selection of octopi.

Wanted to get one as a pet - didn't think US customs would find that very funny.

 I also went to a couple of street markets.

Strret food Korean style.  Notice the tentacles.

Some sort of magical roots.

Caligraphy shop.

Korea - Built Enviroment

You've got to click on this picture to really take it in.

Seoul's greater metropolitan area has a population of 24.5 million people making it the second biggest city in the world (after Tokyo).  Despite this it was a beautiful city - clean streets, nestled in mountains, felt safe - and had a human scale due to most of the fuctionality (shops, restaurants, services) being spread across the first two stories of all the buildings across the city.  It felt like a very new city even though people have lived here for at least 2000 years and some of the architecture was pretty out there.

New Condos in the middle of older housing.

An interesting mall with the circulation spiraling up like the Guggenheim in New York.

The Campus center at EWHA Womans University.

The transportation center at Incheon Airport.  Looked like an alien spaceship.

The inside of the transportation center.

One of the old neighborhoods that has not been torn down for new condos.  The steps were insane.

A park along the river.

View from our hotel.

The Teheranno buisness district - it was close to where we were working.

The Galleria - the facade was animated.

Korea - Food

I must admit to being a little worried about the food in Korea.  But thanks to usually having someone who spoke Korean and English with our group on most of our dinners we could order accurately and could receive recommendations - which is a small things that really made a difference.  I really liked most of the food I had (and was complemeted several times on how well I rendered the chopsticks). 

Korean restaurants are a mixture of western style seating (with chairs) and eastern style sitting (on the floor).  This is one of the floor ones - and if it was had floor seating the floor was heated.

Every meal came with side dishes - usually side dishes of Kimchi (pickled cabbage).  Kimchi was the only thing I didn't try because I don't like pickled things.

Steak being cooked on the table over coals surrounded by side dishes.

A spicy pork dish. 

Barbeque octopus - which was surprizingly tasty.  Also you can see cooked jellyfish tentacles over to the side - which were alot like pasta.

Grilled eel.  Didn't really care of it.

Large pork dumplings.  Yummy.

A plethora of side dishes.

Ingredients for our soup.

They heated up a boiling soup and then you dipped thinly sliced beef into it to cook the beef.

They had these bakeries on almost every corner.

The raw dough for making dumplings.

You had to be careful with the 'American' food.  Here is a Dunkin Donuts offering Broccoli, Carrot, and Spinach Donuts.