Culinary Adventures!

Man, this lack of internet in my apartment is really cutting into my ability to pursue this blog undertaking. I, unfortunately, have to wait until my Alien Registration Card comes before I can set up cable and internet in my apartment. Korea’s bureaucracy, unfortunately, seems to operate along the same timeline as the DMV, so I have about a month before that magical card comes. In the mean time, I’ll be taking full advantage of my shiny new Korean smartphone.

As I sit here in reflection sipping my fermented rice beverage, I realize that today was a day of culinary exploration.

At about noon, I met a friend at Kwangjang Market, one of Korea’s many open-air markets. We had heard tell of a special culinary event for foreigners, and, being both hungry and foreign, decided to check it out. After being photographed performing and saying a series of very silly things that will no doubt end up on TV for the whole of Asia to laugh at us, we were handed 5,000 won and a stamp book with the charge to eat as much food from the vendors as possible. And so we did.  Fried potato pancakes, sushi rolls, tofu and kimchi dumplings, rice cakes cooked in hot sauce, and something else that I think was pig liver. It seemed that all the normal parts of the pigs had been used for something else, so the vendors were serving up pig tongue, pig foot, pig intestine, and pig blood sausage. Thus, I assume that when the nice lady handed me a slab of meat that tasted like liver, it was in fact pig liver. Also on display at the market, were fresh fish, dried fish, enormous tubs of chili powder and hot peppers, and…fabric. Apparently, Kwangjang is famous for its fabrics, especially its silks.

Rice cakes in hot sauce, blood sausage, kimbop, and pig head and feet. Delicious!

Enough spice to set a person on fire.

Having collected our stamps and prizes, we wandered out of Kwangjang and into a large park inhabited entirely by old men. Perhaps you think I am exaggerating. I am not. These old men weren’t even doing much. They were mostly just sitting around, talking, smoking, and playing the odd game of shogi. And, no, these guys weren’t homeless. A good number of them were dressed in some pretty swanky suits. In fact, upon closer inspection, I realized that even the nearby subway station, Jongno, was overrun with old men. Just. Sitting. I guess this is what they do with their free time. In retrospect, it was pretty cool. I hope that when I’m their age, I can chill out in a park with all of my buddies, smoking cigarettes and laughing at the rest of the world.

In the middle of the park, we found Jungmyo Shrine, a state shrine established in 1395 to house the spirits of deceased kings and queens. The architecture was actually pretty simple, but there was a path leading throughout the shrine that visitors were not supposed to walk on. According to signs posted in Korean, Japanese, and English, the pathway was reserved for the spirits. Unlike any of the other Confucian states in Asia, Korea still maintains its royal shrine and each year they have two very elaborate rituals wherein they offer sacrifices to the deceased royalty. There’s also a nearby shrine to the spirits of nature (I think???), which used to be connected to this shrine until the Japanese built a road in between them during the occupation. I have a really awesome booklet full of information about Jongmyo Shrine, but out of fear of boring my audience, I shall refrain from disclosing it until a later date.

Jongmyo Shrine. Behind those doors are the ancestral tablets of the deceased kings and queens of Korea.

You thought I was kidding. No. That path is for the spirit.

At the conclusion of our adventure, I went home and decided that I’d give Korean pizza a try. I decided that, of all pizzas, cheese pizza was probably the safest. Not so. Apparently, when you say “cheese pizza”, you really mean “cheese and corn pizza”. It was pretty gross, but once the abominable corn was removed the pizza was pretty good.

And so here I sit, still sipping my fermented rice beverage, thinking about how awesome Korea is.