sitting on a bus to takes us up to a temple, i'm staring at this sign trying to figure out what it says and i'm completely stumped. i'm not talking about what the words mean, i'm simply trying to read it. i can't because the letters are turned sideways with no explanation. 삼신마트 is what it says, but as you can see, the ㅅ is turned sideways and what is now the top part is shortened. hyunjoo said that that is common and i'm like 'just when i start to get good at reading, things like this pop up and frustrate me'.
about halfway up mount geumjeong is 범어사= beomeosa. this temple is 1300 years old.
these guys were at the feet of each of the four guards at the gate, but hyunjoo told me i wasn't allowed to take photos, so i was only able to get two of them.
huge bamboo.
there were thousands of these 기와 or tiles/shingles.
i think we all know these guys.
of course, monks.
there were a whole lot of monks at this temple.
this was pretty awesome. the probably very old carving on the rock, the evidence of rain, the little buddhas, the hundreds, if not thousands, of stacked rocks, the history.
don't forget to count your beads.
a few of the buildings were under restoration.
more chinese writing carved on old stones.
more here, in the middle of the waterfall.
note: beomeosa was on the north-east side of mount geumjeong. on the south side were large fortress walls that went from the base up the eastern ridge to the peak and down the western ridge. kind of, it's hard to explain. we would have walked it and it's 17 kilometers if we were more prepared for a long hike.
instead, we went to the southern part of busan to the jagalchi raw fish village and market. these are all basically 'hip shots'. no composing, just point the camera in the direction and shoot. you can pretty much see what everything is. i wanted to put a shot of these huge prawn in, but it's just too blurry.
the combination platter.
like pig feet?
some of the cane poles on these carts were at least 20 feet tall.
this is a shopping marke, kookje shijang, similar to myeong dong in seoul.
this is at the restaurant we ate lunch at, above the urinal in the restroom. it says 'use one step closer!'
this traditional treat just tasted like burnt sugar.
these guys were the equivalent of the marines (read: toughest form of korean military).
these guys were from russia.
the quick draw.
is that even possible?
mj is everywhere.
took a few long escalators up to yongdusan park.
let's shake hands.
i'm not really sure what this thing is, but i've seen similar ones in various cities around korea.
we then went to centum city where there was a huge mall. this was coming out of the subway station into the mall.
i'm quite certain this was fake, but it looked cool.
the claim is that it's the 'world's largest dep. store' but i'm not sure i buy it.
this kid looked so thrilled to get his new toys. he was rocking that outfit hard.
it's too bad that kid will turn into this guy.
the metal trees were cool. i realized the next day that there was a very large outdoor sculpture park right next to this mall, but i didn't get a chance to see more than this.
back to the basement to catch the subway.
these guys were in the motel stairway and do they look good.
found this little hole in the wall for dinner. this toilet paper holder, toilet paper being the primary napkin, as you can see says 'reonardo & davinchi'. i can assume that those are cartoon characters of some sort, but i can't seem to find any info about them. the reason i put this on here is to show how much of a japanese influence there is in busan. busan has a large amount of tourism that comes from japan, where as seoul has very little. koreans can say 'l' sounds, but not 'r'. where as japanese can say 'r', but not 'l'.
the owner tried to sell me on the spam. eh, no thanks.
the photo is not great, but this was sooo much food.
and we finished it all.
