Korea: Shopping, rehearsal, lunch

After the partying the night before--during which I distinctly recalled being woken up by being poked by Mrs. Abiru--I was easily the most energetic of the group. I eagerly gobbled down my half-a-pizza from the day before, and relished every deliciously lukewarm bite.

The group had planned to go to a nearby grocery store to do some souvenir shopping. It was a short taxi ride away. We flooded the store, glancing at the produce on the first floor before heading upstairs for the shiny things.

In addition to awesome Engrish, we found tons and tons of goodies. Intent on finding omiyage, we found plenty of items seemingly made just for Japanese tourists. While a few of the others and I went for sweets, several in the group loaded up on seaweed. Called nori in Japanese, it's the dark green wrapping used in sushi. In Japan and Korea, however, nori also makes for a popular snack on its own. As such, it's cut into roughly four-inch squares and sold in packages of about 30 squares. This store and many others in Busan offered packages of 20-40 of these packages.

After shopping and dropping off our plunder at the hotel, we headed to Kokusai Ichiban. (I never did catch the Korean name for the area.) There we strolled along for a couple of hours, giving everybody a chance to shop. Noguchi was attending the competition again, so I was the only person in the group who had been there already.

Apart from hilariously bad English, most of the shops weren't very interesting. I wasn't on the market for anything remotely related to clothing--I neither want nor need new clothes for me, and I don't know friends' and family members' sizes and tastes well enough to buy for them--so none of those shops held any allure for me.

I did find it amusing to watch the group interact with shopkeepers when Kim wasn't nearby. Most of the shopkeepers spoke more English than Japanese, which of course was no help to Chorus D. I was always willing to help, but most of the time either the shopkeeper would muster enough Japanese, or Kim would jump in and save the day.

As we pressed on, we came to an open-air food market. Stall after stall offered fresh fruit, vegetables, seafood, and meat. The smell of kimchi was pretty much everywhere, but it wasn't that bad after a while. Kazumi tried to buy some kimchi from a shopkeeper, but he quoted her a price per kilo. She didn't want to haul two pounds of the stuff around, so she eventually got him down to about half that. She made sure to get him to double-bag it, too--a sack of kimchi bursting in a purse would ruin anyone's day.

We moved on, and slowly came to more and more interesting food stalls. First there was the impressive if not that surprising fresh seafood stalls, featuring different species of recently-alive squid and octopus. These were followed by live snails and a turtle. The pièce de résistance, however, was a lovely grub squirming around in a basket. I normally wouldn't have thought it was for sale as food, but its stall was right next to the seafood ones.　(The sign--(간)굼겡이--means "(liver) white grub," which I'm told means it can be used for homemade liver medication.)

After having our fill of stalls of exotic food, we hopped on the bus and headed for a park. I didn't catch its name, but it was on a hill overlooking Busan itself. (A tourist brochure I picked up later describes a park called Youngdusan, and I think it's the same one.) I thought we were just sightseeing, but Noguchi had decided to kill two birds with one stone: we held rehearsal in the park.Under the shade of solar panel overhangs, we rehearsed our full set: 宇宙戦艦ヤマト (Space Battleship Yamato; skip to 1:30 to hear the song), 朧月夜 (おぼろづきよ, "Misty, Moonlit Night"), and もののけ姫 (Princess Mononoke). Our only two tenors, Mrs. Umeno (yes, Mrs.--the lady can wail) and Mr. Ushijima (the preacher), couldn't make it to Busan, so Noguchi had to fill in for them.

After rehearsal, we headed to Lotte for lunch and to give the new arrivals a chance to shop. I was more than willing to eat Pizza Hut for the second meal in a row, but the group wanted to have lunch together. Not wanting to make a stink and ditch everyone, I went along with it, and we ate at a nice udon shop.

We split up for an hour or so of free shopping time. With even less interest in shopping than the day before, I stayed in the food court, intent on snacking and people watching. I sat down at the food court Krispy Kreme (which is in addition to the basement-level shop), where an amused Kazumi found me. We talked over a couple of donuts, then she went downstairs to buy some jeans. I headed for the Baskin Robbins, got a small item as an excuse to sit down and read, and the workers--who couldn't have been long out of high school--gigglingly tried making conversation with me in English.