To celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday, my wife and I joined both of her parents, two of her three siblings, and one of her brothers-in-law on a weekend trip to the east coast city of Gangneung. It wasn’t a random visit. We went there to see some other relatives at their recently built house outside of the city.
In a post last month I mentioned a funeral and a great-uncle in a paragraph about Korean drinking habits:
I got hammered at a funeral once. Since many of my wife’s family members in attendance had never met me I found myself drinking a shot of Korean soju with each of them. Soju is nasty, rotgut stuff that I usually avoid. But when an older person asks you to drink a shot with them it is rude to decline. I actually offended one of my wife’s great-uncles at my father-in-law’s 60th birthday party because I refused to drink soju with him.
On the way to Gangneung, I learned that some people from the branch of the family we were visiting has been at the funeral. One of them carried me over his shoulder when I had passed out in the restroom. I moaned when I heard that, knowing that I would be the butt of several jokes throughout the visit. Once we arrived, I learned that the house we were visiting belonged to the great-uncle I had offended at the birthday party (it had been one of his sons who carried me out of the toilet, a fact I hadn’t known before). Suddenly, the weekend was looking grim. And it had already gotten off to a bad start.
Several factors had caused us to leave Seoul much later than planned Saturday night and we (me, my wife, her two sisters, and one of her brothers-in-law) arrived at almost 1 am. My wife’s parents were already there and already drunk. The great-uncle was drunk as well. He harangued me a bit on some trivial matters, but it was bearable. I just nodded and agreed with everything he said. At least he didn’t offer me any soju. I drank a good bit of beer and we ate a kind of lamb stew. I went to bed around 4 am.
I woke up early Sunday, feeling surprisingly well. Breakfast was my favorite Korean soup, followed by a brunch-time meal of another Korean dish I really like. Then it was off to the beach for sashimi (which is actually a Japanese word, Koreans have another word for it which is usually spelled hoe in English but pronounced hway). Americans often make the mistake of calling raw fish sushi. While sushi (called chobap in Korea) is made with raw fish, it’s a specific dish. Sushi is a ball of rice topped with wasabi sauce and raw fish. Sashimi is just raw fish cut into thin slices and served on a plate. In Korea, they usually put an entire fish on one plate, often on a bed of cabbage or something else. Usually it’s served with three different sauces as dips (Korean bean paste, Korean red pepper paste, and soy sauce mixed with wasabi). Koreans love to eat sashimi. On any given block in Seoul you can usually find at least one sashimi restaurant. There are two fish markets in Seoul that all fish goes through before being distributed to the restaurants, but they also have little eateries there that can serve sashimi and other fish dishes to you at much lower prices than the restaurants, but it’s a warehouse atmosphere and has a very strong stench. The markets are cheaper, but the restaurants are more hospitable.
As much as Koreans love sashimi, they love sashimi on the coast even more. There’s this belief that any raw fish you eat inland isn’t going to be as fresh as it would be on the coast. It’s just wholly irrational to me. I mean, we aren’t talking about dead fish being shipped from fisheries, to markets, to restaurants. The fish used for sashimi and sushi are transported live. When you go to a shasimi restaurant, you can see the tanks with the fish swimming around in them and watch as a worker grabs one and slices it up. You can’t get any more fresh than that. But, take an inland Korean to the coast and they will often insist that you eat “fresh” sashimi, especially the older ones like my in-laws.
So we sat on the second floor of a sashimi restaurant with a view of the ocean. We had three plates of raw grounder, an assortment of side dishes (raw and cooked) of different sea creatures, and three big pots of a spicy stew made with fish, shrimp, and crab. It was just close to 4:00 pm when we finished there. In case you haven’t grokked it yet, this was a lot of friggin’ food we had eaten since morning. But we weren’t finished yet.
My wife’s great-aunt and great-uncle are on her mother’s side of the family (being the aunt and uncle of my mother-in-law for those who don’t know what great-aunts and great-uncles are). The great-aunt, being the youngest of several children, was born shortly before her niece (my mother-in-law), so she and her husband are close in age to my parents-in-law. In Korea, where social standing is usually based on age, this can make for some complicated relationships. For example, my mother-in-laws cousins are younger than my wife, but my wife still has to be respectful of them because they are in a higher position in the family structure. Aside from that, watching my parents-in-law interact with my wife’s great-aunt and great-uncle is like watching old friends hang out.
My mother-in-law and her aunt got incredibly drunk at the sashimi restaurant. When we were finished, I assumed we would be heading back to Seoul, but the two drunk ladies insisted we go to a mak guk soo restaurant. mak guk soo is a kind of noodle soup that is actually very good, but when you are already full the last thing you want to do is eat more. However, since we had to defer to the great-aunt there wasn’t much choice. Even her husband failed to persuade her.
By the time we finsished at the mak guk soo restaurant, it was after five. I was stuffed and my knees were killing me. Koreans traditionally sit on the floor at home, even when eating. While many restaurants do have tables with chairs, many are also laid out in the traditional style — low tables with cushions on the floor. Some restaurants have both, but my wife’s family will go for the floor-tables before the chairs every time. Koreans sit on the floor from childhood, so even elderly people have no trouble doing so. Their knees are conditioned for it. Well, mine aren’t. I’m tall and I have long legs. Sitting on the floor all day with my legs crossed under a table is quite painful. But the worst was yet to come.
The trip from Gangneung back to Seoul should have taken three hours. Unfortunately, many Seoulites, as usual, had taken a weekend trip out of the city. Although it wasn’t epic traffic on the scale of the major holidays, we did hit a couple of bottlenecks. The three-trip wound up taking just under six hours. With 5 people in the car, I had very little leg room even sitting in the front seat. By the time I got out of the car at my house, my knees hurt so badly that I could barely stand up.
So now it’s Monday morning and I had a solid 11 hours of sleep. That’s about 5 hours more than I prefer, but I was so tired and so sore last night that I feel refreshed this morning. My wife’s great-uncle turned out to be a super nice guy when he’s sober. We had some good conversations yesterday. I had a great time playing with my mother-in-law’s cousin’s two little daughters (I guess they would be my wife’s third cousins — I’m really not clear myself on extended relationships back home in the West). We took a long walk around the beach and piers outside the sashimi restaurant. They are very energetic and are probably the main reason I was so tired last night. So even though the trip was painful, it was a lot of fun.
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