Busan, part III - Lotte Department Store and Jagalchi Fish Market

Lotte Department Store and Jagalchi Fish Market. The department store was like any old department store in Taipei, but I went anyway because it was right next to my hostel plus I wanted to get some food for the fam and buy myself some coffee. Kafija. I've noticed that in SK, they tend to have these giant, monopolizing companies that basically run everything - at Beommil I think it was, there was a Hyundai mall and I was a bit surprised because Hyundai has always been a car manufacturer to me. Obviously I don't know enough about SK.

I took the metro to Jagalchi, which was only one stop from my metro, but I had that one day pass so figured I might as well. I found the fish market without too much difficulty - basically I just followed the smell of the sea and the way the wind was blowing from - and saw it, a long, covered market filled with vendors and hawkers in a scene so similar to my home country that it felt as if I had fallen into a portal and was now in a parallel universe equivalent of my home country, except that everyone spoke Korean.

I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed Jagalchi fish market far, far more than I was expecting to. I wandered along market in a sort of happy daze. The sun was quite bright but it wasn't hot, and the wind from the Tsushima Strait was clean and slightly salty and extremely refreshing. I strolled at a leisurely pace, stopping to look at the squids, the octopuses (is that even a word?; apparently so because google spellcheck hasn't underlined it in red) and the clams and all the other sea creatures who were happy as a clam, with no idea of the grisly fate that awaited them.

I raised my head and saw Gamcheon Cultural Village in front of me in the distance, and the lazy voice at the back of my mind said - well, if you can see it from here then there's really no need to go and see it in person. I decided to see how I felt about that later, and to go along with the flow, because it's my own damn holiday and I'm going to do exactly as I damn well please and there's nothing no one can do about that so there.

What made me really happy about the fish market was that I got to see some actual 'Beondegi (번데기)', silkworm pupae soup, in person. At first I thought that Kim Jaejoong was joking when he talked about this, then he posted a real picture of it, and then I saw it in person, and no I did not try it at all because it looks like cockroaches and there's no way I'm eating something that looks like cockroaches, be it steamed or fried or boiled or broiled.

Beondegi 번데기 - silkworm pupae

After reading reviews about that, I think I made the right choice not to eat them.

More to come.