Adventures

I don't know how it happened, but this weekend ended up being a shopping mall weekend. In Seoul, there is a mall called Coex, and it is the most confusing mall I have ever been in. The halls wind and twist and the lighting is strange - probably as a ploy to get shoppers lost so that they have to buy more ice cream. In addition, signs are often faulty or missing. I was trying to get to the Hyundai department store, so I followed a sign. But it only took me as far as a split in the hallway, and then there was no subsequent sign. So... which way, Coex? Sneaky place.

So the reason we ended up at the mall twice this weekend was that we discovered an awesome Japanese restaurant called Teriyaki (though as far as I can tell that's just a name, and not a dish they actually serve). Previously, Andy and I had both been sick after eating sushi at a sub-par Japanese restaurant (meaning very sub-par food for a very NOT sub-par price) and the sushi had been terrible - impossible to chew so that you had to basically swallow it whole, which felt weird in the throat because it was raw fish (obviously). So we decided we didn't like sushi.

Until Teriyaki! We were seduced inside by the plastic model of a rice dish (restaurants here often have displays of their dishes in the windows - real food coated in something plasticky, preserved for generations to come), but once we were seated we found ourselves bravely ordering sushi.

And it. Was. Lovely.

Shrimp, salmon, octopus, and some unknown white fish sushi. Everything tasted great, melted in the mouth, etc. Even the octupus. Sad, isn't it? The bad sushi we had before was the same unknown white fish sushi, but it was even chewier than the octopus sushi at Teriyaki.

Additionally, there was a random Korean celebrity taking pictures with people outside the bookstore. I didn't see much because of the crowd - I could only make out his hair. It was very whooshy, and swept to one side. People screamed whenever he put his arm around a girl for a photo.