National Geographic

The problem of living in Japan for too long is that you develop a fine taste in white shinny fish. Agi 鯵（アジ）, Saba 鯖（サバ） or Iwaji 鰯（イワシ）are all my favorite. If you want to assess whether a sushi restaurant is good at what it does, order these type of shinny white fish sashimi. They are very tricky to handle because the fish meat deterioate very quickly (faster than others). If raw fish can be served, that means this restaurant has good channel to get the best fish out of market and knows how to keep them fresh. These fishes are normally not expensive to buy from market, but the restaurant will charge you almost the same price as other expensive fish for the complexity of storage and logistic. Autumn is the best time - they are fattened up preparing for winter (sorry fish, I really like you so much that I eat you).

I was flipping thru the national geographic magazine which shows a rare photos of white shark near Papua Ginea. The sharks filter sea waters to extract whatever eatible. In one of the photos, the shark was about to catch up a large quantity of shinny white little fish with its gigantic mouth - all I can think of is the little white fish must be delicious.

Seoul of Asiao (4)

I bought 2 packs of chilly flakes for my mom a couple days ago. But when we took our stroll to Namdamum, I found a shop selling the same chilly flakes. I asked the clerk (who changed channel to Chinese after knowing that I can speak Mandarin - I found out that I can communicate with Older generation Koreans with Japanese, and younger Mandarin in Seoul most of the time, interesting!) how much it is, the reply is much cheaper than what I have paid for before. I was a bit upset and he said "Lady, you should buy another pack from me such that, averagely, you don't lose
out too much".

I went back to the nice tofu shop next to my client's office alone. I randomly selected a Tofu Kimchi soup with rice. As Korean restaurant normally does, 4 delicious appetitizers were sent to me. I like each one of them but the raw garlic chives salad is going to make me smell. I don't want the nice food to go to the bin, so I dumped them all into the boiling hot tofu soup - the smell is not that bad if the chives are cooked.

As I was eating happily, the waiter walked past me and saw my empty plate. I know the Korean emotion, I immediately signal him that this is good, no more (I cross my fore arm in front of my chest and said "no more, thank you"). He smiled back and brought back another plate of raw garlic chive salad. Much obliged, I smiled to him but said again "Thank you very much, but this is the last one I hope".

I felt bad if it goes to the bin if I don't eat it and my tofu soup is still hot. There is no reason for me not to eat it - it is very delicious, too. I put all of them into my soup and happily started eating. The waiter came by and saw me smiling - he came back with another 2 dishes of garic chive salad!

Seoul of Asiao (3)

Don't remember where we are, it is dark anyways.
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The next day we moved to another hotel in Itaewon, we walked around the area and felt (at least for me) that I am back to New York. I think this area is where the US soldiers hang out, hence, it is filled of western restaurants and pubs. I am not too happy with the hotel, it is too old and not clean (sorry I am really picky, I found disgusiting dirt and trash under the bed after I pushed aside the other bed to place my yoga mat).

I have no problem with old hotel, but a lot of fixtures are desparately in need of replacement. The fan in the bathroom doesn't work and the dressing table surface is broken. The most annoying bit is hotel is right above the pub area, the music normally blasting until 4am.

The only good thing about this hotel is there is a private spa in the basement, we almost went every day after our jog and whole day of walking. Hot water bath is really amazing - funny that you feel really tired after the hot bath as if all the energy is drained in the pool.

The cold water pool was my favorite, it is really great just dive into the pool after a couple minutes in the steam room (the Korean steam room temperature is 81C - you can almost cook something inside). The massage current is so strong, I swim against the current and stay in the same position, ha ha ha. There are not many people using the facility, it is
great!

Seoul of Asiao (2)

We finally had some decent Korean style BBQ.
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Seoul is beautiful in this season, the weather is just mild and you can see the beautiful change of leaves, thus, I have no luck in any hotels nearby my client's office. I was put to some hotel that requires 30 minute commute, fortunately, the subway system in Seoul is very efficient. Still, walking 10 minutes is not very fun with heels. But this makes us live more like locals - my last trip in Seoul was all Taxi rides, I learnt to say "straight, left turn, right turn, P turn (a way to turn left if direct left turn is not allowed)" in Korean, ha ha ha.

We went to experience the famous Korean Spa treatment - Teamiri, which is roughly translated to body scrub in English. Cathy's description was so vivid and fun, I cannot refuse to try it. She said you are basically just like the fish in the market, lying on the board being scaled.

We followed the advise from the tourist information center to the cheaper Spa place (which is 2 stops away from Myong-dong) the next day. Amazingly my broken Japanese works better than English. We were all very confused about how things work but it turned out one of our scrub ladies is from China. Communication is not a problem! The scrub ladies were all middle-age women, who dressed in torn down panties and old granny bra. You can even see the birth mark on their bellies. Before we walked into the body scrub area - which is right inside the spa/bath house, I can see them sitting there, almost naked and chatting happily away with each other. No offense but this scene does strike me as if we are going to the low class brothel.

Everyone in the bath house is of course naked, Cathy and I were asked to lay on the thick plastic sheet covered massage bed. I was thinking if the serial killer wants to cut open his/her victims, this is a great place to do it. The scrub lady scrub us with a rough srubbing cloth, with a great pressure. Quite embarrassingly she almost touched every piece of my body surface. This is very strange.

There are really brown things coming out, I start to wonder if I have showered myself properly every day. After the throughout scrubbing, she poured a bucket of hot water all over me to rinse away the dirt, really just like how fish monger does after they gut the fish.

Seoul of Asiao (1)

Walking out of the hotel eating breakfast, thinking we are just going to have a casual walk but it turned out a 3 hour hike/walk. We reached the top in Nansam Tower.
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Coming back to Seoul after 1 year, the city doesn't change much but I have changed a lot. Thick skinned I walked into any shops and smiled like an idiot to get what I want (sometimes not very accurate, since I don't really know what I was pointing at - they are all in Hangku). Cathy came to visit me and I had to be brave to overcome the language barrier, hence, I walked into all stores and do all kind of stupid things.

It is interesting that we ran into quite a few Chinese speaking ladies in restaurants and SPA, of course, I am the main point of communication. We also ran to the English speaking tourist information center for help sometimes, but inevitably, these ladies in the hub always advise us to take the cheaper option. For example, when we were in the restaurant, the Chinese dish washing lady (judging from her gloved and aproned outfit - being dragged out by the front desk after he saw us non Korean speaking), recommended us to drink Coke because it is cheaper, despite the fact that I have explicitly asked for alcohol.

We want to experience the authetica body scrub (Cathy's description was so interesting, she said, you were scrubed like the fish being scaled in a market), how can I resisted? We went to the tourist information center trying to find a good srub place (TeaMiri in Korean) near Myong-Dong. The tourist information center lady told us not to get to any shop in Miyong-Dong, it is too expensive. She then recommended us to go somewhere 2 subway stops away, according to her, it is cheaper.

It is really funny that people are still looking at me and Cathy as if we were still in graduation school and want to help us to save money.