Writing from Korea again, where the
smallest things are shocking. The fact that people line up, in
actual lines, rather than filling every available inch of space in
front of (the cashier/the egg custard lady/the subway door/the ticket
booth) with pushing and shoving and craning necks. There's toilet
paper in the bathrooms. There ARE bathrooms, and these bathrooms
don't have cranky old women sitting outside demanding a toilet fee
for what always turns out to be a dirt-covered hole in the ground.
Traffic lights mean something, and sidewalks are for walking, rather
than for storing motorbikes, electrical wires, extra restaurant
stools, and piles of steel beams.
We booked the cheap, slow, old train
from Busan to Seoul (which takes 5.5 hours instead of the bullet
train's 2), and people on the internet had nothing but complaints
about how shitty and last-resort-esque it was. As such, we were
expecting it to be cramped, dirty, and spartan, but no: it had leg
room galore, reclining seats, internet stations, karaoke rooms, and
an arcade. This would have been extra super first VIP class in both
Vietnam and China!
My sole purpose in flying through Busan
was to go to the Jagalchi Fish Market, which I promptly did the very
hour we arrived. The guidebook billed it as 'the smelliest place on
Earth', which was untrue: it smelled like an uncommonly clean and
well-kept fish market. The first floor's floor was perpetually awash
in sloshing seawater, and periodically the flick of a fish's tail
would sent spurts of water onto my shirt. Crabs bigger than
volleyballs climbed the sides of their tanks; fish species prone to
fighting would choose one comrade to gang up on and nibble; eels
writhed, molluscs never seen before or since lined the edges of
tanks, and vendors did this strange thing where they'd roll their
smaller crabs around in sawdust on the sidewalk to demonstrate...
something... to potential customers. Look how well my crabs' shells
absorb sawdust? See how what you're about to feed your family is
actually touching the dirt, old fish juice, and likely urine of the
sidewalk right now?
I had a set meal 'for one' (Korean
restaurants are no different than Korean-American ones in that meals
'for one' usually can feed at least four) that consisted of a pile of
halibut sashimi, four sea urchins, assorted banchan, a whole grilled
fish, stacks of shiso and lettuce leaves, and soup made with the fish
head and tail that had been encircling my sashimi like a watchman as
I ate it. Julian had a traumatic moment when I began eating my
sashimi a few seconds after the plate had been placed down and
suddenly the fish head twitched, tossing a lemon slice. Even though
its spinal column had been cut, it was so freshly killed that its
nerves were still in throes.
We have four full days here in Seoul
before we board a plane that arrives, five hours before it leaves, in
San Francisco.