Anju

Koreans don't drink alcohol without eating. Doesn't matter what you are having: beer, soju, whiskey, wine, whatever. You've gotta have something to snack on while you eat.

It's a basic food category, with it's own Korean word: anju 안주 按酒 'food to accompany alcohol'. It doesn't really translate well into English, as you can see on this bilingual sign at the supermarket:

The item after the slash is anju: see the "안주"? "Nuts" is pretty much the best they could do in English.

A lot of restaurants have a special anju section on their menu. Here are two of them from places we've been to for lunch; in the evenings they become drinking joints.

The entire right side is anju (except for the three kinds of drinks listed inside the oval). One of the items listed is right-eyed flounder sashimi.

There are three anju on this menu, at the lower left (seasoned snails, bulgogi, and seafood scallion pancake). The alcohol is on the lower right.

It's no accident that the dried fish and seasoned dried fish are in the same aisle as anju in the supermarket shown above. Dried fish and squid are among the most popular anju. I mentioned in this earlier post that dried anchovies make a good anju.

Here is a photo from a blog entry I posted in 2008.

It's a bit hard to see, but there is a little wooden rod running through the fish heads. I think that traditionally these fish would have been hung from the rod to dry in the wind. Note too the little round packet of hot pepper paste, for dipping.

Other good anju are fried foods, kimchi and tofu, and nuts.

Always setting out a little snack when you have a drink, whether out or at home, is a Korean cultural practice I heartily endorse.

Snail meal

That restaurant seen under construction in the last photo of this post opened last week. Here's that older photo again:

And here's the restaurant on opening day. As apparently required by custom, all windows are blocked up so there is no way to look inside. You just have to go in and hope for the best.

The name of the place is Ureongi Ssambap Jip 우렁이 쌈밥집 'Snail Wrapped-Rice House". Ureongi is a kind of freshwater snail. Wrapped-rice refers to the serving of a plate of greens with a meal, so that you can wrap up the food and eat it like a roll.

Many restaurants are decorated with images of the 15th-century text promulgating the Korean alphabet. The walls of this restaurant were covered with this repeating pattern:

Apparently from 훈민정음언해본, though I'm not entirely sure ....

Below is the menu, quite simple. Basically, you can get an $8 set meal of snail with fermented beans, steamed egg with seafood, and fried pork; or, you can get a $10 set meal which substitutes vinegar-seasoned snails for the pork. (The other items on the menu are alcohol and food to accompany alcohol -- another topic for a future post.)

The note at the bottom left says that the pork is sourced from the United States.

Here's Erma with our meal. That's the wrapping greens on the right. The covered metal bowls hold our rice. On the left is a broth made of burnt-rice dregs. (It's better than it sounds.)

Fried pork on the left, steamed egg on the right. Arrayed around them are some side dishes, counter-clockwise from top right: shredded radish, flowered tofu, spicy sweet fried anchovies, kimchi, mushrooms.

Snails in fermented bean paste.

The snails were delicious but salty. We were advised by our server to dump a bunch of rice in and mix it up together before eating. It was good advice.

Because we'd visited the construction site with Tek many times, and he had met and charmed the owner, she recognized us when we came in, and give us a gift when we left.

"Thanks for You"

It's a towel.

"CARVEN Paris". The name of the restaurant is stamped at the bottom.

Names of Korean letters

When I was blogging here seven years ago, I was immersed in language classes and interacting with native and non-native Korean speakers on a daily basis. I was thinking a lot about Korean language and writing, and blogging extensively about both.

This is the introduction to Korean writing that I wrote back in 2007.

I haven't been doing that so much this time around. (I'm planning to blog in the future about how weird and constrained my life is here.) But it occurred to me that a post about the origin and structure of the Korean alphabet letter names might be of interest. Some of you have seen the video posted on FB showing Tek contorting his body into the shapes of various letters. You can hear him and me saying the names of the letters. Unlike the English names of the letters of the Roman alphabet, the Korean letter names are highly systematic (if not entirely consistent, as will be explained later).

These are the consonant letters, their transcriptions, and their letter names. It is helpful to remember that eu represents a single sound close to that in the English words book and put (for the linguists: [ɨ]) and eo represents a single sound close to that in the English words butt and some (for the linguists: [ʌ]).

ㄱ g: gi-eok
ㄴ n: ni-eun
ㄷ d: di-geut
ㄹ r: ri-eul
ㅁ m: mi-eum
ㅂ b: bi-eup
ㅅ s: si-ot
ㅇ zero/ng: i-eung
ㅈ j: ji-eut
ㅊ ch: chi-eut
ㅋ k: ki-euk
ㅌ t: ti-eut
ㅍ p: pi-eup
ㅎ h: hi-eut

(The vowel sounds are simpler; their names are just their sounds. For example, the name of the letter ㅏ a is "a".)

The names are each two syllables, and they indicate precisely how that letter is pronounced when it occurs at the beginning of a word and when it occurs at the end of a word. The difference in pronunciation can be considerable.

So: The name mi-eum shows that the letter ㅁ is pronounced with an "m" sound at both the beginning and end of a word. The name si-ot shows that the letter ㅅ is pronounced with an "s" sound at the beginning of a word but a "t" sound at the end of a word.

We actually know the origin of this system of naming letters. It is later than the invention of the alphabet itself. The alphabet was invented in 1443 and promulgated in 1446. The document explaining the use of the alphabet does not specify names of the letters. Some scholars believe they were simply pronounced with an i ("ee") vowel:

ㄱ g: gi
ㄴ n: ni
ㄷ d: di

etc. But we don't really know.

In 1527 a brilliant linguist named Choe Sejin 최세진 published a Chinese-character primer for children called Hunmongjahoe 훈몽자회 訓蒙字會. The pronunciations of the Chinese characters were given in the Korean alphabet. Choe lived at a time when most literate people were more comfortable and familiar with Chinese characters than with the still-new Korean alphabet. Because of this lack of familiarity, in his introduction Choe laid out the letters and examples of their pronunciation, much as a modern American dictionary explains its pronunciation guide in the front matter.

Here's what the relevant page of the introduction looks like:

The text is read from right to left, top to bottom. Click through for a larger image.

You should be able to identify the first eight letters listed (in the second column from the right) as identical to the first eight that I listed above. (As it happens, modern Korean alphabetical order also originates with this work.) These are the eight letters that could normally occur both at the beginning and the end of a word in Choe's time.

To illustrate the proper pronunciation of the letters, Choe provided two Chinese characters for each: one illustrating its pronunciation in word-initial position, and one indicating its pronunciation in word-final pronunciation. (The characters under each letter are half-width.) For example, the letter ㅁ is illustrated with the characters 眉 (pronounced mi meaning 'eyebrow') and 音 (pronounced eum meaning sound).

To the extent possible, he chose initial characters with an i vowel and final characters with an eu vowel. He was able to do so for the letters ni-eun, ri-eul, mi-eum, bi-eup, and i-eung. But there were no Chinese characters available that had the right pronunciations for the other letters, so he picked the closest available, yielding gi-eok, di-geut, and si-ot.

This basic system was later extended (I don't know when or by whom) to the other consonant letters in regular fashion, which is why the last six letters in my list above all have completely regular i-eu names. (Interesting aside: in North Korea they regularized the names of all the letters, so instead of gi-eok, di-geut, and si-ot, North Koreans call them gi-euk, di-eut, and si-eut.)

Now if you go back to that FB video, you should be able to hear and understand the letter names.

Yogurt ladies

So there are these brown bags that one sees hanging on doors.

This is across the street from Tek's daycare.

This one is actually on a door inside our apartment entryway, on the first floor.

Here's a close-up:

The URL is www.yakult.co.kr

There is also this lady who is always walking back and forth in the neighborhood pushing a cart. We see her often on the way to daycare in the morning.

Notice the bag hanging from her cart?

We gradually came to the realization that there is an extremely vibrant yogurt-delivery service here. One morning I caught the yogurt lady in action.

Putting yogurt into the brown bag ...

... and flipping it over to the inside of the gate.

The carts don't seem to be motorized, but I think they have some sort of gearing mechanism that makes them extremely easy to push around.

Once we became aware of these yogurt ladies (and they are all ladies), we started noticing them everywhere. They all wear the same distinctive pink jackets. And they are not just out in the mornings; I see them any time of day when I walk around outside. Sometimes the ladies stop in and chat with customers.

Each lady is responsible for a pretty small neighborhood patch of just a few square blocks. Yet somehow an army of them is kept busy all day long. There must be dozens in Gyeongju. It's hard to fathom how much yogurt must be being delivered each day in the city to keep all these yogurt ladies employed full time.

Two yogurt ladies on the same street at the same time.

Yogurt cart "parked" at our apartment complex while yogurt lady makes deliveries.

We've gotten friendly with the one that we see almost daily on the way to daycare. She occasionally slips Tek a little yogurt drink. She also makes sizable yogurt deliveries weekly to his daycare.

A few weeks ago I was watching a New York Times Fashion & Style video featuring the hip Hongdae 홍대 neighborhood in Seoul. And what do you know -- there's a yogurt lady cart going by during an on-the-street interview with a fashionable young student! Check out the video yourself, between 1:25 and 1:33.

This is what I think of as the prototypical Yakult product, a small sweet and sour yogurty drink, just 65ml, for kids.

According to the Wikipedia page, it originates in Japan. But if you go the Korean web site, you'll see they have a fancy line of other products as well, with more sophisticated branding and a marketing pitch related to healthy living. At Tek's daycare, the kind they drink is 7even. (We get charged extra for it based on his consumption.)

Neko Jjang

Today Erma and I stumbled across this place at lunchtime.

Neko Jjang 네코짱, i.e. Neko-chan ねこちゃん, i.e. Kitty

It's a Japanese ramen place. The inside was decorated with all sorts of Japanese-y tchotchkes.

Yes, the official term is "Japanese-y tchotchkes".

 So we got us some ramen.

This is tantan 탄탄 ramen. I honestly have no idea if this is supposed to be tan-men タンメン or tantan-men 坦々麺.

This being Korea, one must have kimchi with one's ramen. And danmuji (though I suppose I should call it takuan in this context).

kimchi (top) and danmuji 단무지 (sweet pickled daikon) (bottom)

The romanization of the Korean name of the restaurant hurt our eyes and our brains.

If ever there was a need for an interrobang, this is it: NeCoZzanG ‽‽

Drainage (may be more interesting than you think)

The sheer density of storm drains in our neighborhood streets is astonishing.

You can see three of them in the picture above. (That white building on the right is Tek's daycare.) You can also take note of how many there are in the nearby alley shown in this video.

They work pretty well when it rains hard. Underneath both sides of the street (what one might charitably call the "sidewalks") are basically just giant tunnels for flowing water.

So it's pretty baffling to me that so many residents and shop-keepers deliberately block up the storm drains in front of their buildings.

Three in a row are blocked in the above picture; it's the same street as in the first picture, just a bit farther down the block. All sorts of things are used to block the drains, including welcome mats and old carpet scraps, but the most popular object seems to be automobile floor mats.

The result is predictable.

I guess they want it this way. But why?

Update (April 19): Erma's mother says the drains are covered to block the unpleasant smells that emanate, especially in summer.

Burial mounds

Gyeongju, where we are staying, is the ancient capital of the Silla Kingdom, traditionally dated 57 BCE to 935 CE. During the Three Kingdoms period of Korean history, Silla shared the Korean peninsula with the kingdoms of Goguryeo and Baekje. With the help of Táng China, Silla conquered the other kingdoms in the 7th century and unified the peninsula in 668. From that point on what we think of as Korea has existed as a single state.

Although it is now a small city with a population under 300,000 and no downtown skyline to speak of, evidence of Gyeongju's glorious past is prominent throughout the city and its environs in the form of giant burial mounds (tumuli). According to Wikipedia, there are 155 tumuli in central Gyeongju, and 421 tumuli in the outskirts of the city. Nearly all are unmarked and unexcavated, so we don't know who is buried in them. But it's a fair bet that many Silla kings, queens, and nobles lie at rest within them.

Here are a few pictures of some of the burial mounds we've visited during our time here.

twin burial mound

Entrance tunnel to Cheonmachong 천마총, one of the few burial mounds that has been excavated. There is a small archeological museum inside displaying artifacts from the tomb.

This exceptionally large mound is one of the few with trees growing on it. It is situated in a downtown park. the yellow sign says "Please do not climb on the tumulus."

Three burial mounds at the base of (Mount) Namsan 남산 南山

Riverside run

Yesterday I ran along the river. The weather was perfect for outdoor exercise, mid 60s, slightly overcast. Since I haven't run for over four months, I took it easy, stopping to take pictures when something interesting took my fancy. I managed 4 miles.

It's only a few minutes from our apartment to the river. When I got there, I was surprised to find a bunch of ultimate frisbee games underway.

The players seemed to be mostly if not all foreigners. I heard a lot of American-accented English as I ran by. There were a few Asian faces, but of course impossible to know if they were locals or not. After my run I chatted with a few of the Americans. They told me that this was the opening weekend of the Korea ultimate frisbee league season, and that teams from cities all around the country competed in different locations each weekend. The man and woman I was talking to were expatriates living in Daejeon and Busan.

I started off running along the in-line skating pathway, since it seemed like the best option. The other paths were reserved for bicycles and, judging from the icon, strolling families. But after a while I reached some signs that definitively indicated I should be jogging on the path for walkers.

The green sign says "jogging and strolling path"; the blue sign says "in-line skating path".

It's astonishing how few people were out. Can you imagine Green Lake in Seattle being this empty on a spring Sunday morning at 11:30 am?

In total I saw two other joggers; a few power walkers (see above image); a handful of folks out walking their dogs; a fair number of cyclists, and one motorbike. (Technically motorbikes aren't allowed, but that doesn't seem to stop anybody.) There were stretches when nobody was in sight.

You shouldn't get the impression that Korean aren't into outdoor exercise. They are mad for mountain climbing. I'm sure all the locals trails in the surrounding hills were thick with hikers. (But that's a subject for another blog entry.)

This whole riverside pathway is only about 7 years old. It's a lovely city resource, if underused.

This map shows the area where fishing is forbidden. That also doesn't seem to stop anybody. In fact, the guys on the motorbike stopped to do some fishing.

At several locations along the trail are some very nice sets of exercise equipment.

Can you believe how empty this place is?

If you click through to the larger version of the photo above and squint, you can probably see the giant swastika on the building in the background. But I'll save you the trouble.

Bulguksa Munhwa Hoegwan 불국사문화회관

It's a Buddhist cultural center.

There was a poster along the side of the path for a rock climbing center. "Have you tried the Gyeongju 'Rock Climbing Center'??" it reads. It is of linguistic interest (to me).

The English word 'rock' is written . The English word 'climbing' is written keullaiming <클라이밍>. The English word 'center' is written senteo <센터>. I honestly have no idea if 'rock climbing' should be considered a Korean word or not.

These little-kid queens and kings are symbols of Gyeongju. They clearly belong to the category of excessively cute Olympic-type mascots. Perhaps they were created for some sort of international sports competition held here once.

Take-out

This is how take-out works in Korea:

You order your food. (In the old days—i.e. more than 5 years ago—you would have had to provide directions to your place, using only landmarks. Nowadays there are actual street addresses.)

A delivery person zooms over on a motorbike, running red lights, driving the wrong way down one-way streets, and zooming up onto sidewalks without warning. The motorbike contains a big metal case inside of which is your hot food.

A motorbike food delivery case. (If you are in Gyeongju and want samgyetang, please call the number shown.)

Said person, usually having arrived without killing anybody, keeps shoes on in the foyer, puts knees on clean inside floor, and slides food, utensils, and other objects into house. Then leaves.

The takeout includes real metal utensils and actual heavy, heat-retaining bowls.

Raw hot peppers, raw garlic, and raw onion, with a spicy dipping sauce, is a commonly seen side dish.

Yum, it's take-out samgyetang 산계탕 蔘鷄湯! (That's a classic ginseng chicken soup.)

The soup is tightly sealed with plastic wrap. Not a drop has spilled.

samgyetang close-up

After you are done eating, you collect all the non-disposable items—bowls, spoons, chopsticks—and leave them outside the front door. At some time in the middle of the night the delivery person will scoot by and collect them.
The second time we ordered take-out, the delivery guy didn't scoot all the food onto the floor. Instead, he left the entire metal case with us, so we got to see the inside. Shelves! Genius!

So that's how the magician does the trick!

This was much more convenient for us. We put all the dirty dishes back into the metal case, and had a lot less trouble carrying it downstairs to leave for pickup.