Noryangjin Fish Market, the home of the escaping octopi.

Well, I have inadvertently not written a blog for another month. That would be due to the fact that I was having a fabulous time with Grant and Adrienne in Seoul! And also Marsha and Greg, my aunt and uncle came in January/February. It's been a very exciting couple months!

If you don't know me personally, Grant and Adrienne are my brother and sister. I am going to take a quick break in my Europe blogs to tell you a bit about the trip. Then I will go back to writing in order. (I'm so close to being finished! They will be finished by the end of May! I am determined! I apologize that life keeps getting in the way of me being a productive writer.)

Grant was able to come for about 8 days and Adrienne stayed for a whole month! It was fabulous. While Grant was here, we spent a lot of time running around, trying to see as much as possible since he had a limited amount of time.

One of those places was Noryangjin Fish Market. After three years, I had managed to never go (because I went to a different fish market in Busan) and I thought it was something we should see.

That and Grant was very insistent that he try live octopus during his time in Korea. He was not disappointed.

Well, he was actually determined to just eat all the weird foods he could. We succeeded in a few of them, but ran out of time before he could eat puffer fish. That means I haven't tried puffer fish...I think I get a pass due to the fact that I've all the weird foods. Including monk fish, which is a truly horrifying looking fish.

It's that fish in the ice to the left. I saw him at Namdaemun Market when I was walking around with Marsha and Greg. A few days later, my friend Hye Jin took me to eat Agu-Jjim, which is, apparently, monk fish with vegetables and a spicy sauce.

Little did I know that they would not just give you pieces of the boneless fish, but they cut up the entire fish, bones and all, and put it into the dish.








I discovered this fact when I found a jaw and basically a full set of teeth in my food.

It. was. terrible.

I immediately lost my appetite. I can put jellyfish, scorpion, live octopus, penis fish and this weird fish head stew on my list of weird things that were good.

(Side note: Yes, it's actually called penis fish. Also known as Fat Innkeeper Worm, also known as Urechis unicinctus).

Monkfish, sea squirt and star fish are on my bad list.

And Beondaegi, also known as boiled silk worm larvae. That was not delicious. And now, every time I smell it, the smell is 5 times as powerful.

I got severe food poisoning the day after I ate the Agu-jjim. I know it was the kimbap I ate that day (either the egg or the spinach was the culprit) but I want to blame it on the teeth I inevitably ingested while eating the monkfish.

The food poisoning was terrible. My evening classes end at 10 PM. At approximately 9:30, I was perfectly fine. At 9:45 I was thinking, "Hmm my stomach hurts, maybe it's not a good idea to go to the gym." At 9:50, I was thinking, "Wow my stomach really, really, really hurts."

At 9:56, 4 minutes before class ended, I had to run out of the room mid-sentence due to the immediate need to vomit. I made it to the bathroom, thank heavens, but I can tell you it is never fun to throw up at work! I returned to my classroom and had to tell my students to go home. They noticed I was sick due to the fact I'd put my hair in a ponytail (seeing as I did not want to get anything unseemly in my hair).

And so it began.

I was up until 8 AM vomiting, which was the worst. I had to go to work for my night class the next evening and my students said, "Your face is so white! You look so sick!" I didn't feel up to speed for several days and when I weighed myself at the gym a few days later, I was alarmed to learn I had lost 10 pounds.

No, that is not a typo. TEN pounds. And it never came back, which was surprising. It was kind of nice, but alarming at the same time.





I also saw a shark in Namdaemun Market. That was a very sad moment.














Anyway, back to Noryangjin. Adrienne, Grant and I headed to Noryangjin a little before lunch time.

It is quite a fascinating sight to behold! It's enormous. And, as would be expected, there were fish everywhere!

There were fish and mollusks of unusual size throughout the market. Including those mussels to the left.

Here's the market from above. You can see the vastness here quite well. It also extends to the right of the picture really far. It's basically a warehouse of fish.















Here is one of the stands from above. Each stand had a fairly large variety of fish, though each stand did not have every kind of fish, otherwise that would have been unfair to the people in the back.

I wonder the people at the beginning of the market have been there to get that prime location!






They had octopus, both dead and alive.

As usual, the live octopus were trying to break free of their buckets. I saw more escaping octopus that I could count! Of course, It took several pictures of them, just to show you.

To the left is one making his escape, straight into the legs of a larger, dad octopus.

Here is the market from the ground. One row of the market at least.

Here are various shelled organisms.

Here are the shrimps, but small and gigantic. I did not know that shrimps existed in that size.

Here are the crabs, small and large.

 Apparently lobsters are also gigantic.

Here is a larger escaping octopus. He actually made quite the break for it. You'll also notice a smaller one in the background of the picture that was also on the run.

If I could speak Korean better, I would have said "Excuse me sir, but your octopus is escaping."

Unfortunately, I could not and just pointed at it and then ran away, just in case he thought I wanted to buy him.

The bottom of this picture is the penis fish.

The market once again. This was towards the end of the first line.

Here are some squid bobbing around.

And another escaping octopus. They were escaping all over the place!

The tentacles on this octopus were shocking. I feel like it MUST have been a giant octopus. Or giant squid. I can't tell from this angle.

And here are some more! Who would buy those and actually cook them?? I don't know about other people, but I only have 2 burners in my apartment and that's pretty standard here.

Some of these rays were looking very smiley. The others were looking quite horrified at being dead.

I don't know what this is but it makes me want to vomit.

 Here are some eels!

I think it's an eel. It's looking at me. I can't look back at it!

You could also buy various spices to cook your various purchases with, both spicy and non-spicy.

Grant purchased the 3 small octopi and we headed to the second floor to a restaurant, where they prepare the octopi for consumption.

They asked if we wanted it live and I said yes.

Adrienne was not happy about it.

 Grant was thrilled.

I had already tried it before but it's actually pretty good, so I was not unhappy about eating it again.

Grant in his excitement and Adrienne in her horror.

Adrienne is an extremely picky eater, so I was very proud of her for actually putting the octopus in her mouth. She even tried TWO bites after I fed her and forgot to dip it in the sauce.

As our mom said later, "She doesn't even like waffles!"

Here is Grant with a tentacle hanging out of his mouth.

Here Grant is at the market with the rays behind him.

Here is Adrienne with the rays.











Adrienne cleansed her palate later with some ice cream waffle. She likes waffles as long as their taste is covered with ice cream and whipped cream. Yumm.

It was an interesting start to the day. I will write later about all of our other exploits.



Just in case you needed them, here are some videos of the three of us eating live octopi, for your viewing pleasure.

Busan, or where I ate the escaping octopus

Ok, I'm officially a terrible blogger. I've continued to be very busy, even though I've recovered from my mini-coma phase and moved on to a normal stage of life. Normal life here is difficult to blog about, since I do the same thing kind of every day thing each day. Go to work. Eat. Go to the Gym. Study. Go to Korean class, which just started etc. But, I am finally writing about Busan. Before I do, I'll write a little about the strange foods I've eaten recently. Then, I'll write about Busan and the strange foods I ate there. I'll start with the most normal and move to the worst.

This is the egg moat barbecue place. Basically, it's normal BBQ, but with a moat of eggs. It's near Carrie's place. They add peppers and other things to the eggs and it's very delicious. I don't even like eggs, but these eggs are great.

Carrie's friend Rosie was visiting for a while (We went to Busan because she was here.)

While she was here, she wanted to eat 곱창, aka Gop Chang, aka cow intestines with vegetables and kimchi.

Now, I can tell you that it did not taste all that terrible. It was kind of weird and tasted a bit like sausage. But, it tasted ok.

However, it looked like this and I was very aware that I was eating cow intestines.

Then, I would think about eating cow intestines and felt like vomiting.

Then I'd drink some cider and decide, "Ok it's not too bad."

Then eat some and then think, "eww cow intestines" and want to vomit again. It was a strange experience. I ended up not eating a ton of it, because it was too gross to think about.

Yet, as indicated, it was not the grossest thing I have eaten recently.

This is Shola. We met in Vienna 3 years ago back and have kept in contact since then. She's in Korea for a couple months visiting her family (since she still lives in Vienna) so we met up of course. Shola, her sister and I met for dinner. We got normal food (BBQ) and also ordered this:

Pig skin. We ordered one serving, obviously, but it came with 2 slabs like that. Shola and her sister So Young had never had pig skin either. After one bite we said, "Oh no we have another one!" It was not delicious. It was extremely chewy and strange. And we had to eat it all. There was a lot of chugging of the water and eating of the vegetables to make sure we finished it. We then made sure to order something else to make sure that we didn't vomit. Bleck.

But it was great to see Shola again after 3 years! I really must make it back to Vienna in the near future.

Also, I saw this dog that was shaved a looks like a lion. In the winter, it's huge and has a ton of fur, but since it's been approximately 300 degrees outside for the last month or so, it has been shaved.



Ok, on to Busan. I went with Carrie, Rosie, Alex and Alexis. (Rosie's from Taiwan originally but lives in America, Alex is from Macau and Alexis is from France). We were quite the international group. We left Seoul bright and early in the morning. And slept on the train, since we were all a bit tired.

Here's Rosie.

We arrived in Busan and headed to the subway station to take the subway to Haeundae (the famous beach) where our hostel was. And more importantly the beach. The subway system is a lot older in Busan, so there's no glass blocking you from falling of the tracks. Luckily, I did not encounter a crazy person to push me onto the tracks.


Oh wait......I did encounter a crazy person. An extremely crazy person. While minding our own business on the subway, not really talking, this lady started yelling at us. "YOU AMERICANS AND YOUR DRUGS! YOUR HEROINE AND COCAINE! YOU ARE ALL EVIL! GO BACK TO AMERICA! F***YOU AND YOUR DRUGS AND YOUR HAMBURGERS!" No I am not joking about the Hamburgers. Little did she know of the 5 of us, only 2 of us were actually American. She shouted at us for a while. Then this very nice man said to me, as the one who was clearly American, "Please don't think that Koreans feel this way about Americans. We also think she's crazy. We like America. I am so sorry." I thanked him for the gesture.

We got off the train. She followed us. We walked to the transfer. She followed us. We got on the connecting train. She got on with us. We walked through 4 train cars. She followed us. And sat down right in front of us and continued yelling about the cocaine and heroine. So, naturally, I took a Claritin in front of her.

She continued yelling at various people on the train about us Americans and our hamburgers and how, if they spoke English, they should never speak English because we're evil.

For 40 minutes. Until she finally got off the train one stop before us.

Also, we saw this sign:

We finally arrived at our hostel. Mr. Egg hostel.

I'm not joking. See the sign.

This was the view from the hostel.

We then headed to lunch on this street.

We got this, which was quite delicious, but definitely a mixture of interesting seafood that I'd never seen before.

Like that large shell.

And this, which is called pajeon, which is a Korean pancake, which is quite wonderful.

There's some octopus, well cooked.

Then, we went to the beach and went swimming, of course.

There we are at the beach, with our bubble swords. Obviously, we are all adults in our mid-twenties.

Well, except Alexis who is younger than Grant. I'm so old.

We all swam for about an hour. The waves were large, but it was perfectly fine. It was so much fun and great to be by the ocean again.

Then the waves got crazy strong and decided to head back in. As I was attempting to get out of the water, a wave hit my legs and completely knocked me on my back.

I was thinking "RIP TIDES!" but I was still in ankle deep water, so it wasn't an issue.

A building by the beach.

Some Surfers.

After swimming and getting dressed, we walked towards dinner along the boardwalk, which had some cool murals, which we took pictures at, of course.

Here are Carrie and I in Busan.

We then ate here at a seafood place, where you choose your seafood fresh and they kill it in front of you, if you choose to watch.

There's the lady choosing the fish for us.

There's the octopus we will eat in the near future.

And the fish we ate.

Octopus and the fish together.

and together again. Notice how the octopus is moving. It never stopped moving...

They added that darn sea squirt as service, which unfortunately I ate again and it was gross still.

Here's the lady chopping our fish and octopus.

Here are all the pictures for the full effect.

The final product. Freshly chopped octopus. Oh look, it's still kind of slimy. But, just wait.




IT WAS STILL MOVING!!!!


See look, here's a video to prove that, not only was it still moving, but also I was the one who ate it first.
 Notice it sticking to the plate as I tried to pick it up?? It really wasn't all that bad. Definitely better than the gopchang and the pig skin. It definitely did move around in your mouth and stick to your teeth...

I do not believe I need any words beyond video and the pictures.














The fish we ate, which was wonderful.

There was a wonderful sunset at the same time as dinner, so naturally I took a ton of pictures.

Rosie and Carrie before.

Alexis and Alex during.

Carrie after eating the octopus...

Me during, perfectly cheerful. I think I am braver than Carrie.

With the rest of the fish, they made a soup, which looked like this.

Horrifying, right??

Not really. The broth was great, though I can say I did not touch the fish's head.

Then, it became nighttime and I took more pictures. Naturally.

I will say this is probably my favorite picture I have ever taken. No, it is not photo-shopped at all. The colors in the water come from the lights from the buildings nearby and the lights created a strange light on the beach as well.

While the others rested, Rosie and I wandered around a bit and took pictures. They were having some sort of event on the beach that night, which the entire population of Korea seemed to be attending.

View from the hostel at night.

The hostel.

The Viking Hat returns.

Then, everyone did fireworks on the beach (including Korean people) but there was announcement not to do fireworks on the beach, so I hid far away and didn't do fireworks. I just took pictures from afar while pretending that I was not with them, so I would not get in trouble.

Obviously, since it is me.

We headed home the next morning, uneventfully. Thank heavens. I didn't want more people yelling about how much they hate me.