Cultura-

So, this is out of order, but there is more stuff I did in Korea. Also in Thailand. I just got so excited about the elephants, I had to share! Priorities. I am in the airport lounge at Schiphol, enjoying a real, tearjerkingly fast internet connection at last. So here are photos and narration!

One of the things I did in Korea was visit one of my favorite places in Seoul, Insadong. It's the craft area of the city, and it's super Korean. By that, I mean that all signs, even those for foreign companies that usually keep their signs in the Latin alphabet (Starbucks, Etude House, etc.) are in Hangul. It's also full of tiny shops that are one-off purchase points for a variety of handmade items, like pottery, paper, and clothing. There are a lot of places that sell items completely unique to the maker and vendor, and they're beautiful. It's like being in a really active museum, where everything you're admiring is for sale. (To prove this hypothesis, I bought some stuff. For science!)

First, one cannot embark on an epic journey without breakfast. In that, we can all learn a valuable lesson from our hobbit friends. In fact, on this special day, we had two breakfasts, because we paid attention to the LOTR. This was the first, had at a bakery in our neighborhood called Le Alaska. Those are lattes and delicious pastries of a flaky and fruity sort.

This was Second Breakfast, blueberry panna cotta for me and raspberry for TJ. Obviously, round two on the lattes, too. These were had at the 4M Cafe, because we'd previously seen the panna cottae (LINGUIST) sitting in their display case, tempting us, and we are not strong. They were delicious.






Suitably fed and watered (with coffee, the best kind of water), we walked to Apgujeong Station and hopped on the subway. On the way there, we passed this little restaurant thing, I guess, which had a funky roof made out of kimchi-pot shards, and a couple of intact kimchi pots. It's not a place whose architecture makes it likely I'll enjoy what they serve, but the roof deserved some attention, and so I present it to you:

Okay, and then we were on the subway. It's weird to take photos on the subway, so I didn't. Instead, I admired the wonderful Seoul subway map. Does anyone know if/where I can get a copy of that, suitable for hanging up on a wall? I would like one. Disclaimer: I should tell you not to steal one from the train and send it to me in your deep dedication, because that would be illegal and a disservice to all the people trying to use it and not at all an amazing story I would tell people every time I showed it to them. Ahem. I really would prefer to purchase such an item through totally legal channels, for srs.

When we got out and eventually walked to Insadong, this was the first indication we had that we were approaching craftiness: a stonemason's yard/shop.

 
 This is the approximate feeling of standing between these two monkeys, being judged hard. They had the most character of anything else in the yard, and I liked them, despite the judging.

This store was right next door to the stoneyard, and it sold cloths that had been dyed entirely naturally, like with plants. I was amazed at the saturation they could get. Not amazed enough to get anything, but impressed.
Then, we moved on to one of my favorite kinds of stores, a paper store!

Look at those beautiful jagged edges! Those textured pages! Those saturated colors and terrific fibers! Look, calligraphy!


Paper, glorious paper!

Also pictured, glorious fans and inkstones and chops

O joy, o rapture! Brushes! Those are for big calligraphy and paintings, for signs and Large Art. They are also aesthetic objects in their own right. I feel the strange compulsion to rub my face in them. God, I love writing and painting implements. I will have a room in my mansion just for my personal papetrie, and in it I will spend many happy hours, petting my brushes and sniffing my fibrous, cloth-rich sheets.


Ahem. I'm back.



We saw something totally new to me while walking down the main drag of Insadong, and that was these wild curly ice cream antlers. 


They're hollow, and the vendor pumps soft-serve vanilla through the whole thing. As you see, this is a tube the size of a toddler, and resembles nothing in execution so much as a model of a wormhole to diabetes.

Per the neighborhood in which we were, there were a lot of pottery/ceramic shops, of which this is a good example. I love that celadon color for pottery, and some of the nice, simple shapes of Korean traditional ceramics. I'm also pretty okay with the complicated layered and woven textures some of them have, like that big vase/pot second from the left on the middle shelf. None of these items, tragically, is coming to America, because physics says no.


The place I was looking for, I eventually found, which was the craft/shopping center my friend Hyo took me to during my second-to-last weekend in Korea.  It's full of one-off designer shops for handicrafts, so you're not allowed to take pictures inside. Korea, as a nation, is a land of very loose adherence to copyright laws (movies get put out there at the same time they do in the States, otherwise they'd make no money off them, e.g.), and copying is a real concern of the vendors and artists who work here. I bought Christmas presents here when I came in 2010, and all the shops I bought from then were still in business, full of new designs they thought up while I was away, (solely for my benefit, obviously). I got some really gorgeous things from them and a few others while here, and just enjoyed how much wonderful art/design there was to admire.

 

The building itself is pretty fun, and nicely designed. It is reminiscent of the Guggenheim, in that the whole thing is a long ramp up. 

If you look closely (or zoom in) there are sculptures on top of that green roof - the whole place is a bit of an outdoor art space, too, there are different exhibits all the time. If you looked at that older blog post linked above, the one up then was giant snowmen. These are giraffes, and the level below are sheep. I choose to preserve the memory of the giraffes, as sheep and I have an ongoing conflict of interest (viz. they think they should poop on everything I love, and I disagree).



 


There are stairs at each corner, in case you have a more immediate need to ascend or de-, and enormous roses climb up the middle. Random strangers for scale.

Here is clue #2 you are in Insadong: even Starbucks has a sign in Hangeul. 

Suh-tah-bok-suh coppee.

We passed this shop full of paintings with this one displayed out front, and had to stop. I'm afraid my camera does not do it justice. I love landscapes, and this is one of my favorites to date. The place my phone camera really falls down is capturing the quality of light, which is fantastic in person. It looks like some of the places I have been in the Korean countryside - not only looks like them, but feels like them. It's also done with a palette knife, which is a medium/style I like, too. Anyway, here is a mediocre picture of a really good one.

And here is a fellow painting fans for people as they watched/requested. Nice to see someone doing it live, and if I'd had room to pack it and time to let it dry, I might've brought one back.

 
Okay, this is a terrible picture. What it captures is an amazing idea, though. That is a stand selling potatoes that are cut in a spiral while on a stick, stretched out like a slinky, and deep fried, so you get one long spiral potato chip on a stick at the end. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!








The reason I didn't eat one of those brilliant things is that we had passed a tonkasu restaurant on our way to Insadong from the subway, and Internet, there are few things in this world I love as much as I love tonkasu. So here's what tonkasu is: fried pork cutlet. You'd think, "Aw, this is easy! What is she rhapsodizing about now?" and the answer, friends, is the sauce. That square dish with the brown sauce goes on the tonkasu, and then, by their powers combined, it is Captain Tasty. 

 

I got curry tonkasu, and got a little sad remembering Curry Lady from Daejeon, who disappeared one day, taking her charming smile and curry bowls with her, and forced us to find somewhere else to get our lunches 3 times a week.












Wandering around the food part of the neighborhood, we came across this shell-shocked looking octopus on a sign, which I show you as further evidence for the fact that, if there can be an adorable cartoon mascot for something in Korea, there will be.

Here it is, cheerfully announcing its oppressor's name in little red dialogue-flowers of joy. suicidalfood.blogspot.com would explode in this country.

Heeeeeelp Meeeeeeee!

Picture of octopus for Sara. For those saddened by this chapter of our story, go watch Oktapodi, the award-winning short film by Studio Gobelins.




You're welcome.

So that was Insadong! Land of culture, craft, and tasty food, both delicious and disturbing! This, surprisingly, did not take the whole day. As we made our way back to where we would transfer to go south of the river and back to Gangnam, it occurred to us that while we were northerly, we might as well hit up Dragon Hill Spa in Yongnam...








 A story for another time.