Blog de las Letras

Disclaimer: we realize this post is low on photos.   Do not fear.  A feast for the eyes is soon to come!        We have now been in Tokyo for one week! The flight over from Seoul was a breezy two hours, and it felt quite weird to set foot in Japan without any jetlag.   That said, getting to and from the major airports is nontrivial in both cities and our total travel time was about 11 hours.   One funny image that has stuck with us from our journey- a t the airport, there were many, many signs warning passengers not to bring kim-chi in your carry-on (apparently it counts as a liquid.) From Seoul to Incheon airport, we took a 90-minute airport shuttle bus with many stops around the city.   Matt was a great sport and carried all three of our suitcases (2 hand-carries and 1 checked bag) down 4 flights of stairs to get out of our AirB&B, and then 5 minutes along hilly terrain to get to the closest shuttle stop.  Leaving Narit...

      We've now visited 2 of the 5 palaces in Seoul and feel empowered to comment on them. "Why so many palaces?" I hear you asking. When you're king, sometimes you like to change things up, so it was common to have two palaces. Every so often, a palace would burn down- the dangers of building everything out of wood. Then the king would only have one palace, which is one too few palaces for comfort. So a new palace would be built. Not one to let a perfectly good half-burnt palace go to waste, they would also repair the burnt palace. And so the palaces proliferated.       The main palace is Gyeongbokgung, and the best-preserved palace is Changdeokgung, and as it happens these are the two palaces we've visited. Gyeongbokgung The main gate- twice a day visitors can watch an elaborate changing of the guard ceremony. We patiently waited in direct sunlight for this coveted reward. Pictured: Matt in the blessed shade before venturing out for a closer look at the p...

You cried out for more, and we have heard you. Here is more of What We Have Been Eating: Bingsu - Shaved Ice     Even as summer came to an end, it was hot in Seoul! One of our favorite discoveries was the humble Bingsu- shaved ice with toppings. Pictured below is the absolutely mammoth first bingsu we tried. Thanks to this titan of refreshment, we hesitated to get another bingsu for far too long, fearing it would be too big for our fragile appetites. Thankfully, this turned out to be an unusually generous portion.     Popular toppings include fruits like melon and mango, as well as chewy nubs of rice cake, sweet red bean, and black sesame. But the number one best topping, in our opinion, is gomul - a dried soybean powder with a nice sweet, nutty taste.     As we reached the end of bingsu mountain (pictured below), commenting on how unusually filling it was for simple shaved ice, we realized it's not shaved ice , per se, but milk that has been frozen and sha...

     We had the opportunity to learn about several South Korean crafts while visiting the city of Jeonju, about a two hour train ride southwest of Seoul.   One highlight of our time there was a “Hanji” or papermaking class. If you’ve been reading closely, it was everything the fish cake making experience was not. Considering we do not speak Korean, signing up was a bit tricky but we benefited from having several days in Jeonju.  We had visited a public craft center and museum, and on our way out, Karen stopped by a paper lantern shop. She was so taken with the pretty lanterns that she struck up a conversation via Google translate with the artisan who works there. He mentioned that there were papermaking classes in the building across the street, and we were able to sign up for one the next morning! We ended up taking the class on a Saturday morning and had two other fellow classmates: elementary school-aged brothers native to Jeonju (chaperoned by their pare...