Listicle Touring: 6 Amazing Things You Don't Know About Life in China That Will Literally Restore Your Faith in Humanity. What Happens Next Will Blow Your Mind. Hashtag.

Over the *mumble* kilometers that we traveled in China, we had the chance to encounter a fair number of crazy, kooky things in China that we hadn't expected.  And now, for your illumination, I present them to you in the traditional manner of my people: a numbered list.

1. Babies wear pants with a big ol' split in the crotch.

Note: this is not an original photo.  All credit to the original photographer, mostly
because I don't want to be known as the dude with all the photos of baby butts.

Yes, we'd heard of this before visiting China, but there was still something of a triple-take every time we saw these garments in action.  The usual emotional journey goes like this: disbelief, shock, disgust, curiosity, looking away because you don't really want to be watching a baby ding-dong.  Historically, these pants were used instead of diapers, which does kind of make some sense if you live in a country with a ton of outdoor space and not an abundance of clean things that can afford to get baby poop all over them.  Now that diapers are more common, you'll often see diapers worn under the split pants, which makes all kinds of sense.

In our experience, parents seem to be pretty on-the-ball about being respectful with baby poop.  This cute lil' guy with the mohawk, for instance?  We looked away to take some photos, and happened to look back just as the mom was holding him gingerly over a plastic bag (sorry, no photos of that).  The boy seemed to be taking it in stride.  I would have opted for the traditional "Dog Doo Technique" and put the bag inside-out over my hand.  Actually, knowing me, I would have probably fled the country instead.

2. People smoke cigarettes out of enormous bongs.

This one was a bit of a shock.  Old men (and only old men) assemble by the side of the road or in little restaurants throughout the day and stuff the filter end of their cigarette in the chamber and pull huge lungfuls of smoke out of the bong.  Sometimes they're made of elaborately carved bamboo or wood, but most of the time they're this sort of repurposed-tin-can material.  I assumed they were just huge pipes, but we saw waitresses pour liters of dirty water out of these things into the street (and onto our shoes).

Our only guess is that these bongs are so popular because, I've been told, Chinese cigarettes are nasty.  Even nasty by the standard of foul-smelling rolls of tar and cyanide.  So maybe they use these to...I don't know, make the smoking experience more pleasant?  I guess it must beat quitting.

3. Condoms are extremely plentiful.

Photo also not taken by me.  I'm not a creeper.

Walk into a pharmacy or supermarket in China and there's usually a giant wall of condoms.  This is notable mostly compared to our experiences in Korea and Japan, where condoms are usually very surreptitiously kept behind the counter or hidden away somewhere, and then usually only one or two boxes of local brands.  I guess Korea and Japan are both struggling with population decline, and...um...

...Is this insensitive?  I feel insensitive for bringing this up.  Let's move on.

4. Everybody wants a photo with us!

Basically everywhere we went, whenever we had even the slightest interaction with someone in Yunnan province, when we finished up they asked if they could take a photo.  Shopkeepers, hotel staff, waitresses, random pedestrians, everybody wanted a piece of us.  Sometimes they wanted to be in the photo with us, sometimes they just wanted us...standing there awkwardly (well, I'm not sure if that's what they wanted, but that's what they generally got).  This guy poured me a beer and tried very, very hard to communicate with me while I was waiting for my dinner.  We're best friends now.

This guy just happened to be around, I think.

We always heard that foreigners traveling in this part of the world got a lot of attention from the locals.  And sure, we occasionally hear people mutter the word laowai as we walk past (the equivalent of gaijin in Chinese, and also one of about four Chinese words we understand).  But the attention all seemed to be pretty positive, as far as we could tell.  People wanted to talk, they wanted to know something about us, but mostly they just wanted a record of us being there.  Can't say I understand what they would do with these pictures -- "Hey, remember that guy I met for thirty seconds, the one I couldn't talk to or understand?" -- but it's nice to be celebrities all the same.  We're trying to enjoy it before going back to looking like everyone else (but far more attractive).

5. They sure eat a lot of bread in China.

Photo also not mine.  No bread has ever lasted long enough around me for anyone to get their camera out.

We assumed that, like Japan and Korea, the diet in China would be generally rice-based.  But while we were in Qingdao and Beijing, everyone sure seemed to be eating and selling a whole lotta bread.  Flatbread, fry bread, onion bread, cheese bread, rice bread, rye bread.  Bread bread bread.  Bread.  Bread is a funny word, isn't it?  I forget where I was going with this.

6. There's three-wheeled cars everywhere!

Yes!  Just like Mister Bean!

Actually, a lot of them seemed to be three-wheeled motorcycles (some kind of...tri-motorcycle) that confusingly had the shell of a car installed over it.  Whee!

Wanna Take You to a Snack Bar

The City That Sleeps on the Subway.

While we waited for our Chinese visas to process, we went to go see a performance by our old friend and bandmate, Satino Satio.  Since we'd left town and Raku 3 was no more, he had since formed a new band with another friend of ours, and since they were unfortunately unable to join us at the Pasar Music Festival (our next stop), we were thrilled at the chance to see Sa-chan in action.

Sa-chan is one of our oldest friends in Japan.  He's an excellent guitarist, the most ripped vegan I've ever met, and a stone classic Japanese hippie (our favorite kind of person!).  We met him through a couple of vegan friends of ours -- he happened to run a vegan cafe, and he was just so darn charming that we kept going back, week after week.  One day, out of the blue, he sent us a text message saying that he wanted to perform a show with the two of us; I hadn't performed a thing since band class in 7th grade, but having fooled around a little on the ukulele, we took him up on his offer.  We called ourselves Raku 3, after Sa-chan's (ultimately doomed) cafe, and playing with Raku 3 opened the door to countless unforgettable experiences.  Sa-chan took us to places in Osaka that we would never have found (let alone visited) as a couple of clueless honkies, and he introduced us to dozens of people who had lived fascinating lives.  In short, Sa-chan is probably the main reason we have such strong ties to Japan.

"Where is your performance?" we asked him via Facebook.

"I don't know yet, I haven't been there.  Just meet me at the south entrance of Daimaru Department Store at 6:50 and we'll go together."

We had no idea what to expect from this turn of events.  Sa-chan had taken us to perform at numerous venues throughout Osaka, and all of these fell into two distinct categories: hippie cafes, featuring all the standard accoutrements (incense, organic Fair Trade coffee, handmade jewelry, drum circles); or dive bars packed with day laborers drinking cheap beer.  Daimaru, on the other hand, is right in the middle of one of Osaka's more upscale shopping districts, flanked by Louis Vuitton and Coach stores that seem to contain very little merchandise in a shockingly large space (which, as in the rest of Japan, is prohibitively expensive in Osaka).  What strange new experience were we in for?

We turned up outside Daimaru at 6:55 (early for us, really), where we shared a warm reunion with Sa-chan.  His companion, the owner of the venue ("manajaa," he corrected us with a laugh) led us through Shinsaibashi's warren of side streets and alleys while Sa-chan caught us up on his life.  It seems he had decided to leave his current job, the fifth or sixth job he's had since we've known him; apparently the boss wouldn't stop pressuring him to eat meat despite his strict vegan diet (it should be mentioned that this was a job working as a chef at a barbecue restaurant).

Before we knew it, we were outside one of Shinsaibashi's thousand identical buildings, strung up in neon signs advertising food, drink, karaoke, and other services unknowable to the illiterate foreigner.  We chained up our bikes and followed the party into a tiny room on the third floor.  It was decorated like a reasonably cheap hotel room but windowless, airless.  We were greeted by a scarecrow-thin woman with a great deal of plastic surgery and the make-up and clothes of a much younger woman.  "Please, come in!" she beckoned to us in a cigarettey voice.  An enormous cockroach scuttled up the wall and behind a came-with-the-frame painting.  After some initial introductions, the hostess and another woman called Mama began to pour glasses of whiskey from a variety of expensive-looking bottles while the boss ("manajaa," he insisted with a laugh once again) sat and traded unintelligible jibes with the women.  There were no other customers yet.

"Oh my god," Jenn whispered to me, smiling, eyes agog, "this is a snack.  We're in a snack."

Snack bars (スナク) enjoy a great amount of mystery in gaijin circles.  No westerner we've known has ever been into one, and no local friend of ours has confessed to going, but they're everywhere in Japanese cities big and small.  We've always been a little unclear as to their exact purpose.  Maybe they're the same as a hostess bar, where customers pay obscene hourly rates just to flirt with the waitresses?  Or are they closer to soaplands and other almost-prostitution services you can find throughout Japan?  Late, late at night on the streets of Shinsaibashi, we've seen teams of kimono-wearing ladies bid farewell to very drunk salarymen and assumed this had something to do with snack bars.  As it happens, they are closest to hostesses: the proprietors keep your glass full, keep you talking, flirt with you, then slip you the bill when it's time to go home.  The whole institution hearkens back to the geisha tradition of paying for someone to keep you company and entertain you for an evening, at least as I understand it.

This, then, was a snack bar.  Eventually more customers filed in.  Each of them looked to us first with surprise, then a weird embarrassed smile.  The ladies found some way to shove a few of the velour-lined chairs into the far corner to make room for the performers, who rifled through their sheet music and talked quietly, clearly as surprised to be in such a place as we were.  The other customers occasionally tried to make conversation with us...or rather, each of them attempted the same conversation with us in turn (where we're from, how long we've been in Japan, and so on, petering out as our Japanese eventually fails us).

Meanwhile, the proprietors continued to make jokes at one another's expense and pour glass after glass of whiskey.  Except for Scarecrow Woman, who just kept adding ice to everyone's glasses.  The customers made conversation with one another and with the hostesses; maybe they were flirting, which I'm increasingly convinced is the actual nature of snack bars.  I guess I did expect that the hostesses of snack bars would be...well, younger?  The hostesses were all at least in their fifties, heavily made up and wearing the clothes of twenty-somethings.  The "manager," too, a man at least in his sixties, kept pawing at his employees good-naturedly while they batted his hand away and berated him.  I got the feeling that this team had been going through this same schtick for the last twenty years at least.

Then it was time for the show!  Sachimisachi took the stage (or...corner of the table) and played a lovely set of jazz standards and oldies.  They even played a few of Raku 3's old songs!  By which I mean, jazz standards and oldies that Raku 3 also covered.

Sadly, the audience was less than reverent during the show.  Sachimisachi's singer, Misa, has a lovely voice, but in the absence of a mic stand, it got rather lost among the conversation.  Most of the patrons seemed more interested in talking with one another than with listening to the show.

When the band took a break between sets, Sa-chan invited us to play a song with him for old time's sake.  We tried to see what songs we still remembered, then settled on "Chocolate Jesus" by Tom Waits.  We launched into it and the crowd went silent.  This could be because Jenn has a voice so powerful that it can knock over small children, but whatever it was, the audience was extremely appreciative.

After Sachimisachi's next set began, the trouble started.  A mustache and glasses in a white shirt, at the end of the first number, loudly demanded to know when Jenn was going to sing again.  Before the applause had ended after the second song, once again he let the room know that he had a request for Jenn.  We sank into our stained, overstuffed chairs and tried to politely turn the attention back to the featured artist, but that did little to pacify Jenn's newest fan.

We did take the stage after Sachimisachi's first encore (save for us, there was precious little enthusiasm for a second one), and, naturally, we turned it out, but it was a very sheepish triumph.  Afterwards, during karaoke time, we apologized profusely to Misa for showing her up, but she wouldn't hear of it.

"Hey, we should all play together sometime, the five of us," I suggested.

"That's a great idea!" Misa said.  Sa-chan and their flutist agreed, excited.  "So when you come back to live in Osaka, we can play shows together!"

Jenn and I exchanged a look.  God, it would be so easy to do that, wouldn't it?  Just come back to Osaka, play more shows, study more Japanese, see all of our friends whenever we wanted (the ones who haven't left, anyway).  We really were happy in Osaka.  Why the hell did we leave in the first place?

We pushed the thoughts out of our minds and tried to focus on the most important things: first, that Sa-chan had once again introduced us to a facet of Japanese culture that we would never have discovered on our own...

...And second, the rising suspicion that we were most certainly going to be hit with an enormous bill for the privilege.

Return to Shikoku: (More Than One) Day in Photos

The last of the sakura, still blooming on Ommishima.

At the very top of that mountain, children, is the very site to which we pushed our bikes, the place where we weathered a storm and a crow took my goddamn gyoza.

We dined like kings on Ommishima, where the speciality is a kind of fish known in English as "convict grouper."  Bon appetit!

We did not take advantage of the Kaido's many offers of a cup of pee.

Strange omens, indeed.

The sign that graced every one of those bridges.  A pun of sorts.  That anguished boat became a familiar friend by the end of our trip.

Sanuki City, a.k.a. Flatsville

NO-LONGER-TIMELY SAKURA REPORT:

SO.  CLOSE.

After resting up and filing our final report on the sandwich case, we left our haven in Higashikagawa.  We hadn’t made it very far around Shikoku yet -- once again I have been deceived by the relative sizes of land masses, and once again I curse the American educational system that has failed me in geography -- so we really had to haul ass to get to the next campsite that Jake had planned for us, which he assured us was “only” 70 kilometers away.  Doing some quick mental calculations, I was relieved to figure out that 70 kilometers worked out to 2.6 cubic acres or 1.0 standard soccer pitches, and that we could be there by lunchtime (DAMN YOU ONCE AGAIN, AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM).

The road was much the same as it had been the day before: wide-shouldered, relatively well-maintained, and sparsely populated with courteous if confused motorists.  We made good time that day, biking over a few small mountains (or extremely large speed bumps) and stopping for a long lunch at one of Shikoku’s many excellent and very cheap self-serve udon restaurants.  Happily, we pedaled our little hearts out and took photos of some of the local sights.

Goat count: 1.

I'lltakeit!  Whatever it is,  ya sold me!

And: abject horror.

We were confident that we could make it to Kannonji with a few more hours of hard work.  Students of foreshadowing should be well aware by now that I was due for the mother of all flat tires.

Now, before embarking on this grand cycle-venture of ours, Jenn and I took the precaution of taking a bicycle maintenance class at Sunflower Cycles in Lawrence, a fine organization staffed by many competent young men with giant gauges in their ears.  Our instructor demonstrated how to do common repairs such as lubing our chain (which we had only screwed up once) and patching a flat tube.  We had nodded at his sage advice to practice at home on our unladen bikes to familiarize ourselves with the process, but unfortunately had to cancel our plans to follow through on it due to an urgent X-Box-related appointment.  Which explains why we had carried spare tubes of the wrong size and a pump for the wrong tire valve for about 1000 miles afterwards.

By this point in Shikoku, we were seasoned vets: we had repaired flats many times before, by which I mean we had paid others to repair flats for us.  No judging, you.

Fortunately, Jake is an expert in all matters cyclic; a former D.C. bike messenger and frequent bike tourist, he is a kind of Wolverine of the road, though I imagine an adamantium spine and healing factor would be much appreciated to better accommodate his habits of chain smoking and carrying his whole load in a messenger bag.  Anyway, Jake was on hand to instruct me in all of the ins and outs of tube patching, and before long it was successfully patched.  CUE MONTAGE:

Only to find another punk in the tube right behind the first one.  This was slightly less troublesome than the first one, as I had learned much from my first experience patching a hole, and also Jake did this one to save time.  CUE SECOND MONTAGE:

Our celebratory booty-dance was short-lived, as we discovered an additional six punctures, bringing the total to eight, also expressed as function (all of the patches in my patch kit) + 1.  Again, that is eight punctures in one day.

With yet more help from Jake, we were eventually back on the road, just in time to pick up several more patch kits at a nearby Daiso before the sun set and it dipped below freezing once more.  We sought refuge at a city park at Sanuki City’s welcome center/rest stop, which remains the first and only park with a posted, explicitly-worded “no camping” policy.  Too bad we, as gaijin, can’t read Japanese.

Toilets of the World (Flush Up Your Life!)

As Jenn and I have wandered this great big Earth of ours, visiting cities exotic and familiar, world capitals and remote hamlets, mountains high, valleys low, rivers wide, and basements damp, two things have followed us wherever we have gone: our deep and abiding love for one another, and our need for a bathroom.  Yea, it is truly an inescapable truth of travel.

This may not seem that big of a problem, but when you’re exploring a new place, some extremely basic questions are pretty hard to ask about.  For example: “Excuse me, how and why should I eat this entire fish with a head on it?”  Or, in this case: “How do I use this toilet?”  It really contributes to the feelings of being completely lost when you’re unable to take care of some simple functions that a three-year-old would mock you for not knowing how to do.

Of course, some cultures are considerate enough to leave such information lying around. (Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/)

And sure, we could have stayed right at home in the Midwestern U.S. and never needed to carry a spare roll of toilet paper, never looked for a museum or a Starbucks only so we could use the bathroom, never opened a door with crossed fingers, muttering “please be a Western toilet, please be a Western toilet.”  But if we had, we wouldn’t have learned a couple of truths that have made us better people.  The first: no matter how scary the bathroom, your body will deal with it.  The second: American toilets aren’t even that great.

Seriously!  Research has shown that the human body is more suited to a squatting position than a sitting one anyway, but that’s not even what I mean.  I mean that in the grand scheme of toilets, the standard Western toilet gets a solid B to B-.  Let’s go to the data:

Our old toilet from our apartment in Osaka.  We call her "Widowmaker."

1. Japanese super-toilet -- an entirely new bathroom experience, with volume control, heated seat (excellent for cold winter days), and Magic Fingers
2. Any non-super toilet with multiple flush settings -- standard in Japan and much of Europe
3. Regular ol’ American toilet (or “Old Glory”)
4. Japanese squat pot -- once you remember what direction to face (towards the plumbing) and what to do with your pants, it’s still pretty hard to make yourself use (at least it was in my case, but then, I’m a giant whiny baby, and Jenn got over it just fine).  Though holding a squatting position is obviously less comfortable than sitting down, the human body really understands what’s going on and hurries things up to compensate.  So again, once you figure it out, it’s just fine.
5. Standard Filipino toilet -- see below
6. Pit toilets -- *shudder*
7. Toilet from “Trainspotting”
8. That one public pit toilet we found outside Providence, MO (Population: 36) -- had clearly been written off as unsalvageable just before the glaciers swept the country (seriously, Jenn still has flashbacks to this one)
9. Nasty hole in the ground  -- not yet witnessed in the field by the Gaijin Patrol

A bit of explication about number...uh, the second item in the list (sorry) (seriously, I’m so, so sorry): typically in Japan, even toilets of the non-heated-seat-singing-and-dancing-variety can be flushed with either a large amount of water or a smaller amount, depending on what is necessary.  It may not seem like a big difference, but, hey, save the earth, ride a toilet, right?  I’m still sorry.

Now, Filipino toilets are a new thing, and they leave something to be desired:

For instance, a "seat."

Somewhere between a Western toilet and a squat pot, it’s too tall to squat over, yet too not-having-a-seat to sit upon.  It is flushed by scooping water out of a bucket with a smaller bucket, then pouring the water into the toilet.  The water gets cleaner, and the water level never rises due to the scientific principle of Magic Toilet Elves (mathematically rendered as Ψ).  The only thing we don’t yet understand about Filipino toilets (besides everything) is whether toilet paper can be flushed as well.  We have had experience in Italy, Korea, and some older buildings in America where TP can really do harm to a septic system, and where a trash can is provided for disposal.  However, toilet paper is never to be found in the stalls of the Philippines, nor are there trash cans next to the toilets.  More research will follow this question, whether we want it to or not.

UPDATE: As of press time, Jenn no longer has a problem with Filipino toilets.  Harry remains unconvinced and somewhat uncomfortable.

And Now for an Important Message

I know that blog posts that are nothing more than links to other blog posts are somewhere between "lame" and "typical," but this is one we really can't pass up: Japanese Fart Scrolls.

Ultimately, I agree with the author's conclusion that farts are totally funny.  However, to offer my own smarty-pants English student twist: it's extremely likely that this stuff is meant to be pornography, protected from detection by being unrecognizable as such to most people.  Google James Joyce's letters to Nora Barnacle, for instance.  Or don't, actually, if you're planning on eating anything today -- know that the best line (and the cleanest) reads, "I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women."  I think my thesis mentor would agree that Joyce has something in common with the artist of He-Gassen.  The fact that Japan produced a lot of porn in its history, especially the weird stuff (tentacles and the like), only confirms this hypothesis, as far as I'm concerned.

Korea Party Three: Gaijin on Parade!

And now, back to your regularly-scheduled (ha ha ha) photos of weird stuff from abroad.  In this installment: marvel at the unique and yet eerily familiar sights of Korea!

Eh.  Close enough.

Kenny Rogers' official Karaoke Establishment!  It was decorated in a faux-Medieval village motif inside, strangely, the walls painted with scenes of cute wooden hamlets and roads winding off into the hills.  I believe Kenny Rogers may be from the Shire.  Incidentally, there were no Kenny Rogers songs on the karaoke machines.

We can take a hint.  This specially designated area for foreign shops was well stocked with knock-off merchandise and what I can only assume was an abundance of brothels staffed by Eastern European women.  So...this dude's friendly expression might be a tad inappropriate for the situation, is what I'm saying.

Some of the better graffiti I've seen.  Commentary on the club culture and its adherents?  Or...dude who thinks rats are cool?

Entry number 6 in my collection of pictures hung above toilets in Asia.  This one is evocative if confusing.  Personally, I think the warning would be more effective if it acknowledged the dangers of soju.

The Women's Lounge at a subway station in Seoul.  As you can see, it offers all the amenities to which women are accustomed to, provided there is no more than one woman waiting for the toilet.

Seen all over the subway in Busan.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Korea Part 1: In Which Harry and Jenn Eat Bugs

Hey, belated Happy New Year!  Also, belated Merry Christmas, belated Happy Hanukkah, belated Happy Boxing Day, etc. etc.  Also, sorry it's taken so long to get this blog post up.

So.

Three days ago Six days ago Last week we got back from our winter vacation to Korea, and we're still recovering from it.  I'd say that we got enough blogworthy material to give up the Japan game altogether and just post about our trip for all of 2012.  To spare everyone the most boring of vacation recaps (a chronological recounting of where we went), this time we'll switch things up and group our trip by theme.  Today, the most interesting of any trip: the food!

Korea and Japan, despite being so (relatively) close to one another, are very different places.  Everyone with me so far?  Cool.  I think the differences between Japanese and Korean cultures are most obvious in their cuisine.  Japanese food, in general, makes use of very little spice or seasoning, making use of fresh ingredients to highlight the taste of each component with great subtlety.  In other words, it can be bland as fuck, especially after eating it for 2 1/2 years.  Korean food is the yang to Japan's yin, or, alternatively, the Evil Mirror Universe Spock to Japan's Regular Spock.  90% of the Korean food we ate was slathered in chili sauce and raw garlic, which made for 10 days of tasty times (and uncomfortable trips to the bathroom).

We dined out for pretty much every meal during our vacation, a habit enabled by the dizzying strength of the yen, which made it seem that the whole country was having a half-off sale; we would regularly eat enormous, delicious dinners for about $6.  We tasted many delicacies, none of which I can name.  TANGENT ALERT: the time that it takes the human brain to begin to comprehend the syllables of a foreign language can be represented by the formula t+1, where t=how long you'll be in the country.  As such, every dish, neighborhood, or person's name I heard entered my ear and traveled to my brain, where my brain promptly squinted, shrugged, and forgot it entirely.  END TANGENT ALERT.

After 8 days of deliciousness, the Puritan genes that lay dormant in our American brains began to flare up and demand some form of penance, which we found in one of Korea's less well-advertised specialties: silkworm larvae.

Yep.  Bugs.  We ate just a big ol' cuppa bugs.  One of our Couchsurfing hosts assured us that the smell was far worse than the taste.  This provided some small comfort, as they smelled like wet socks.

Screwing our courage to the sticking places (which, we found, was located right in our stomach lining), we asked this nice lady for "one."  Sadly, "one" unit of stewed larva means about 100 individual bugs.

You may ask, "Why?"  We certainly did.  The short and easy answer: because it was there.  The longer answer: because eating weird, scary foods is something we can be proud of, something that we can say we've done.  Most of all, "eating bugs" can provide a comfortable worse-than scenario for any crappy day, a point that we exploited often for the rest of our trip.  Ex.: "Hey, climbing this mountain totally sucks.  But you know what it's better than?  Eating bugs."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but beondegi (as I have since learned that the dish is called) smells and looks nasty, and it tastes about as bad.

Here, Harry can be seen wondering if he now has eggs in his brain.

As with most foods, however, stewed bugs taste considerably better when washed down with good old American Coca-Cola.  Though it must be said that Silkworm Larva Belches are a nauseating experience in their own right.

Again, we can see Our Heroes quickly undergo the transformation from Seasoned Globetrotter, Ready for Exotic Experiences...

...to Weary, Cynical Traveler Who No Longer Thinks Such Bad Things About Wendy's.

And if you look really close (not recommended), you can even see the horrible little things' shriveled-up faces.

Having eaten enough of the paper cup's contents to consider ourselves sufficiently cool (I'd estimate 10% of the serving, or exactly Too Many bugs), we chucked the rest.  Culinary Rubicon crossed.  Y'know the great thing about Rubicons?  You only have to cross them once.

After a couple of days, we had stopped belching up thoraxes long enough to remember that we had unfinished business in Busan: on our first day in Korea, when we were literally fresh off the boat, we were looking for something to eat in the Jagalchi fish market, a beautifully gross area with tanks full of live sea creatures directly from our nightmares.  Seasick, sleep-deprived, and intimidated by our ignorance of the Korean language, we stumbled past a few restaurants, hoping to find something edible.  A lady yelled to us from the doorway of one of the restaurants: "Hello!  Sashimi?"  Though it wasn't quite as adventurous as we were hoping for, at least it sounded reliably delicious.

Our lunch was tasty if difficult: more yellowtail than we had ever seen in Japan accompanied by a collection of unrecognizable sauces and condiments, as well as several cloves of raw garlic and a plate of lettuce leaves.  Not knowing quite what else to do, we spread a little of everything on the leaves, wrapped it around some fish, and made little tacos.  We ate quickly and furtively, hoping to avoid offending anyone too badly (as it turns out, our table manners were correct if messy).

When we had finished, Jenn pointed out that everyone else in the restaurant was eating the same dish, and it was one vastly different from our tame plate of raw fish: drenched in sauce, grilled right on the table, it contained some pinkish fish that horrifically writhed through piles of onions as it cooked before their eyes.  It quickly became apparent why the proprietor lured us in with the promise of sashimi: if this dish were put in front of an average confused-looking American, the reaction might be one of fright and disgust (my thoughts went to Temple of Doom as soon as I saw it).  Jenn, however, realized that we were sitting on a golden opportunity that might pass us by forever if we didn't jump on it.  So, for our last meal in Korea, we returned to the little restaurant for what the menu called "grilled hagfish."  Hagfish is described by Wikipedia as "Lovecraftian" and "exud[ing] copious quantities of a slime or mucus of unusual composition."  Bon appetit!