Dinner on day 4 would qualify as the weirdest and most extreme meal I’ve ever had. It was 7 courses of almost sashimi style everything, meaning raw fish all around! Except it wasn’t just fish. There was sea cucumber, some type of mollusk and a good helping of other sea creatures that I couldn’t even identify. Some of them you can see in their tanks below.
The worst one was that giant earthworm looking thing. It came to the table sliced up but still wriggling. And as soon as you picked it up and dipped it in soy sauce it would freeze up and get all rigid!
I thought the sashimi was kind of weird, besides the tuna everything else was really gelatinous in texture and uncharacteristically firm. Almost rubber band jelly like. I was later told that this was because all the sashimi was cut fresh straight off of live fish before it was served and all the soft fish that we’re more accustomed to in Japanese sushi is due to the fact that they are usually flash frozen and shipped all around the world.
The rest of the fish and bones were cooked in a hot pot style soup that we ate with rice. It wasn’t very good and had too many little bones in it making it nearly inedible.
The most curious thing about this restaurant is that it was floor seating only and you had to take your shoes off first before you entered the main dining floor. But I’ve been seeing a lot of these as I walk around the local neighborhoods. Most neighborhood restaurants seem to share the same floor seating style.
Day 5
Today, we hit up 2 shopping centers. The first one was Shinsegae and the second one was 2001 Outlet.
Shinsegae was nice! It was a 10 story shopping center and had tons of high-end designer brands as well as a super cool market area. This market was on the 1st floor and was like a Whole Foods on steroids. There were a ton of different vendors with foods from all over the world with every vendor trying to persuade you to buy their foods. The ladies waving giant blankets of dried seaweed were pretty funny. I had never seen anything like it.
The 7th floor had a very nice looking food court + restaurants. The design was like that of fancy hotels and the prices weren’t great but we did make out of there with a lunch for 3 for 22,000 won. That’s about ~$20US. Not bad. Oh and I came away from that with my new favorite Korean food, the Korean pancake!
The 10th and top floor had what they call ‘Sky Park’ and a cultural center. The park was open aired and gave shoppers a chance for some relaxation from the shopping. Adjacent to the park was the cultural center which looked like it housed meeting and classrooms. We even caught a cooking class in session as we passed through.
On the way out I stopped by an awesome bathroom. Across from the sinks was a cool bamboo styled bench and background with real bamboos and greens [not pictured].
2001 Outlet wasn’t as nice but still cool nonetheless. It was similar to Shinsegae except it wasn’t as refined and luxurious. Funny tidbit: as soon as you step toe into a store/booth you are immediately greeted and attended by a store person. Too bad I couldn’t understand them but they sure did make sure they followed me everywhere I went. 
Oh and if you didn’t know, parking is like this EVERYWHERE!
hey, the soup was good, just boney.. bony..
[...] our choice to have them prepare it anyway we liked for our meal. We got a cuttlefish, a halibut, an earth worm looking thing, and an orange spiky looking thing and some other kind of fish that I don’t remember. We got [...]