After our early day, all-day adventure in the DMZ, I've been taking it easy on account of my blistered feet. My everyday shoes fit well, but they're new and I didn't get a chance to break them in until we left for Korea. So I've been hoofing around the very immediate neighborhood in flip flops, mostly on the mission of feeding myself at some place other than the hotel breakfast and convenience stores.
When I set out on Tuesday afternoon, I had a restaurant in mind, the Chicken999, a fried chicken joint across the street from hotel. I went down a flight of stairs, found a surprised middle-aged couple, her on the floor shucking beans, him watching a soccer match on TV. I grabbed a seat and the confused man asked in Korean, I think, "What do you want?" "Chicken!" I said merrily. "Tshikken?" The husband and wife exchanged looks and between pidgeon English and gestures indicated the "tshikken" was upstairs, and I was too early for it, anyway. So I thanked them and climbed back out to the street. Indeed, there was a separate door in the same alcove that was shuttered, and the sign for the door I had entered actually said it was a hair dresser. This made me wonder if what was clearly a restaurant was in fact a covert "gaegogi" (dog meat) restaurant. Though officially banned since 1988, older Koreans still like to eat dog in the summers, both as a way to beat the heat and to increase male virility. (Younger Koreans are very attached to their pooches and find the old practice abhorrent.)
A lap around the block through a cobble-stoned merchant's alley found me a fairly tidy place with a menu subtitled in English, named Sinpo Woori Mandoo (roughy, "Serving our (Korean) dumplings"), which, as it turns out, is a chain of restaurants. I sat down, and a neighbor helpfully showed me the menu tucked behind the condiments. I settled on teriyaki chicken with mung beans and scallions over knife-cut noodles. The banchan that came with it was kimchi, pickled daikon, and pickled lemon radish, and it was additionally accompanied by a small bowl of chicken-ginseng broth, garnished with scallions. This very filling meal cost only 6,500 won (roughly $6).
On the stroll back I had a look at some amusing signs. In Korea, English is very fashionable, and is peppered into conversation and advertisements the same way it is in India, with occasional amusing malapropisms, misapplications, and misspellings called "Konglish" (the Indian equivalent is "Hinglish"). One of these was a shop called "Soup" (sells dresses, not soup), and another shop called "Style by The The," an homage to the much-used, entirely functional definite article—uses which otherwise have little meaning of their own. But to Koreans, English give their business a worldly panache.
Later in the day, I returned to my usual Sun-Mart for a pot of instant noodles and bottle of makgeolli, since finding one restaurant already was enough adventure for one day. The clerk (I don't think he ever leaves) had cut his hair, which I complimented him on, much to his embarrassed delight. On the way out I was accosted by a good-looking, very eager woman with a business card, going by the name Hanna (spelled "Han na"), offering "Room fully body massage" for 50,000 won and "Chinese medicine body massage" for 65,000. "If you have free time, call, any time day and night." I hurriedly thanked her and scampered off, my wa having been disturbed by the street proposition of what was probably sex services. At least, like a proper Korean, it came with a business card. Koreans love business cards.
I used yesterday to find a ferry ride from Busan to Tsushima, a Japanese island between the mainland proper and Korea. This was enormously frustrating, as many of the ferry websites have an English edition of their front page, but then the ticketing is either Japanese or Korean, and Chrome's in-page translation tool doesn't always give clear results. As none of these companies give out their e-mail, which I find to be a good alternative to phoning, I found one with a fax number for ticketing for "inconvenient persons" (i.e. the deaf), so I internet faxed them, asking them to e-mail me, as I was hard of hearing (increasingly not a total lie, at least on the telephone). So now I have a reservation for Monday at 8 a.m., returning at 4:30 p.m. Each way is about two hours, so this will give me a good six hours to hoof about the island, seeing whatever can be seen. Izuhara, which incidentally is the port we'll arrive at, and apparently is a nice, historical, reputedly walkable town, full of temples, shrines, and ruined castles, so I may be able to see the sights and get around without worrying about (and paying for) cabs.
Having given the whole afternoon over to that, and having saved my appetite since breakfast, I decided upon a second attempt at the Chicken999. Why it's called that I have no idea; my imagination suggests it's the place to go if you have an emergency need for chicken, but the local emergency number is something else. In any case, I had the place to myself. Though the signs outside have English on them, the menu itself was entirely in Korean, with few pictures. So I pointed at a picture, said "Chicken!", pointed at another and said "Beer-u!" "Tshikken? Beeru? Okay!" What the heck, I thought, it's an adventure! First she brought out what looked to be the local equivalent of beer nuts, but looked and felt suspiciously like breakfast cereal. This was followed the beer and some banchans of cabbage slaw and pickled daikon. While ajussi worked on the chicken, ajumma was plagued with cell phone calls from presumably her daughter. After her third interruption, she looked at me and made an exasperated crazy face and we both laughed, which was a nice human touch in a land where everyone is generally prim and reserved, at least in view of foreigners. Just before the "tshikken" arrived, her daughter came in, dressed for work and clearly a moody youth, and mother fussed over her for a bit. The chicken when it came was an entire bird, cut 30 ways, steaming with a golden breading, and was delivered by ajussi and ajumma both, with great flourish and pride, and after putting down a saucer of mustard sauce, ajumma was keen that I take a picture for posterity. So then I tucked in to the mountain of tshikken, and found not only was it the best fried chicken I had ever had, but the bird itself was a magnificent specimen. If the Koreans have discovered factory farming and GMOs, I wouldn't know it from this chicken. With difficulty, but greater gusto, I succeeded in finishing the whole thing, to the surprise and delight of ajumma. The cost was a bit steep at 17,000-won (was it meant as a two-person dish?), but I happily paid and waddled back to the hotel, heavy with golden fried Korean tshikken.
If I had hoped to come back to the U.S. a little thinner, these Korean moms aren't about to let it happen.
I ate breakfast this morning alone, as Laura has started working odd hours. I took a complimentary newspaper with me to page through while I ate, and unsurprisingly, very little of it made sense. I wondered whether this was obvious to the hostess, hovering nearby to clear plates, or whether she was surprised to see an outlander reading a Korean paper. Later, I caused a bit of a stir when I told the housekeeping manager that my pipe tamper had gone missing, and that I thought the maid might have tossed it out when she replaced the ashtray. I was only hoping to get a fat bit of dowel, if they had any laying around in the workshop. Instead they tore apart the linen room top to bottom, looking for it. I don't think they'll find it, but they need to be seen as doing something about it. I do know of a lumber store nearby (lumber is apparently sold in storefronts, not yards), so perhaps I can get them to sell me a piece of dowel to use as a tamper. I don't mind the loss of the pipe tool, as they're only $1 when you can find them, but for the moment I'm using a bit of rolled up cardboard to tamp my pipe. The manager suggested I try e-cigarettes, but like most non-pipe smokers, I suspect he misses the point.
I figure I may cram my feet into sneakers and go for a walk later, depending on whether Laura comes home for lunch or not, and apart from the lumber store, maybe attempt to find the local Catholic parish church. It's always interesting to see the little the local touches on a global, centrally-administered activity that set the national churches slightly apart. I might be more interested in checking out an Anglican parish, but the closest one is about 35 km away, so not within walking or taxi distance.
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