A little bit of culture

This weekend, Emily (who is also from Halifax) introduced me to her favourite Juke restaurant. Juke is a Korean rice porridge. It comes in various flavours, and has a mild and comforting sort of taste. Typically, you are served several side dishes along with your meal. We had gimbop, which is rice wrapped in seaweed, and a cold soup. Afterwards we were brought a cup of rice "juice". It was by far my favourite Korean meal so far, and I'm looking forward to having Juke again soon.


Gimchee (or kimchee) is a fermented vegetable, usually cabbage, that is served with pretty much every meal. It's used to add to other dishes for flavour, and is often eaten on its own as a small side dish. I actually haven't found it appealing until I tried this stuff. It seemed a little less tangy and a little spicier than the kimchee I've had before. Sometimes it comes in small pieces, and other times you are given a pair of scissors to cut it with.



We picked a great day to visit Duryu Park, which is in the western part of the city. It's a really beautiful park, and the landscape seemed almost surreal.





The cherry blossoms are everywhere now, and they really are beautiful. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture with my camera how they float off the branches and fall to the ground.





Older men often sit together and play games. Sometimes they just sit together on picnic blankets and hang out.



At first we thought he was a woman, and as he walked by with his cart a few times, we wondered what he was doing. Then eventually he set up shop and put on some music, and started dancing while people watched. We were snapping pictures when suddenly he pulled up his skirt and revealed a huge plastic penis. We're still not really sure what the story is, but it looked like he either put something in the penis, took something out, or just touched the money to it (for good luck perhaps?). It happened so quickly, we both looked at each other to make sure we had actually seen what we thought we saw. I'm thinking there must be some cultural significance to this "show", since it seemed completely acceptable to everyone around. I will have to do some googling and post an update.