I just got back from a trip to Songjeong Beach and Pusan. We left yesterday and came back today. While travelling we ate Mongolian grill, palace ddukboki, a Turkish kebab, a quesadia, dokiyaki, and Subway sandwiches twice. Looking this over it certainly seems like a lot of food for just two days...
Cut straight to the stuff GearHead players might be interested in: at the Bexco convention center they have "The Art and Science of Star Wars". We didn't go see it today, we just saw signs for it all over Haeundae. Apparently they have a C3P0 suit used in the movies and a number of other artifacts. My wife's only exposure to Star Wars was seeing bits of the prequel trilogy, so she's not all that excited about it. At this point in time I will avoid making a joke about her having had a deprived childhood, not only having grown up under a military dictatorship but also not having been able to see the original trilogy.
I just asked her about it, and she said neither one of them concerned her much when she was little. Now that she's an adult, she'd much rather have to watch Star Wars than live in a dictatorship.
Also in Pusan, we went to the "Special Fun Zone", a.k.a. SfunZ. It's one of the few actual shopping malls you can find in Korea. We usually go there because it has a SubWay restaurant and a really good bookstore in the basement.
There were signs up for a new shop on the third floor- "Gundam Korea". It was a small shop but packed full of stuff. I found some new Bandai models of some very old robots- apparently they've re-released some Dragonar and Mazinger models. Now if only they could do the same for Dougram and the Macross Destroids and Zentran, I'd be happy. They had some fairly cheap 1/144 scale Guncannons, GMs, and Zaku IIs. I'd like to find a 1/144 Guntank that doesn't come as part of a set. Anyhow, owing to my personal rule that I shouldn't buy more plastic model kits until I get the deathscythe I've been painting for a year and a half finished, I didn't pick up any... instead I picked up 3 models from the 1/400 Gundam collection.
Also at Gundam Korea was a model kit of Seargent Frog Keroro assembling a Gundam model kit. They also had a 1/1 scale model of Keroro. I don't know if Keroro is popular anywhere else yet, but if I had to guess based on my past experience I'd say it's going to be the next Japanese kids cartoon to become popular in North America.
At the bookstore I picked up "Catch 22", a book I've wanted to read for years but never got around to. We also picked up an English book for my boss's daughter, Hyunji. She's going to go to Canada for exchange study in September. This past month I've been working with her and a number of other students going to Canada for about 2 and a half hours each day. I know she'll do just fine; the other students I'm concerned about.
Enough rambling for now. We got dunked in seawater, ate too much, spent too much money, and had a good time.
