Eating good in the Asian Neighborhood

I made it through work ok yesterday. I wasn't really tired during the day. Other than work though, I didn't do any sight-seeing, so the only news I've got is food-related. I had a Korean box lunch for lunch. It looked very pretty, but it wasn't warm anymore and there were some ants crawling on it. I don't think they were supposed to be there, but I didn't want to say anything, so I kind of just ate around them. And they have mango juice, which is awesome. I love mangoes, so mango juice is some pretty good stuff. Then for dinner, I went with some of the sales guys here to dinner at a Japanese restaurant. They had sashimi, which is just plain raw fish. They ordered me some cooked fish too. I tried the salmon (raw) and it was pretty good. I was praying the whole time that I wouldn't get sick. I also ate cooked octopus and squid, which I liked a lot. I had fish eggs, jellyfish, pumpkin soup, Korean wine (which was more like vodka), sushi rolls (the best I've ever had), tempura, and a bunch more random things. It was all very good. We sat at a table where you took your shoes off and then sat on the floor and put your feet under the table. I don't quite get it because the position was the same as if we were sitting at an American table, except they dug a hole into the floor and moved the whole thing down. I was nervous that my feet might smell, but they didn't (as far as I could tell). And it was more comfortable than wearing my shoes - which were regular dress shoes, not flip flops. It's now been 3 or 4 days and I haven't worn flip flops...my poor feet. So, we were at this table, in our own room, and we had 2 or 3 waitresses who would come in the room constantly and bring more food. The chef guy would come in with more fish and he looked at me (the only female, the only Caucasian person, and the only blond in the entire city so far) and pointed and said "octopus". He was very excited that he knew the name in English and he was very cute about it. Later he said "salmon" too, still smiling that he knew the word to say to me. When they brought in a new dish, he would just pick up the fish and move it with his hands to another plate. I couldn't imagine this happening in the US ever. And everyone ate with their chopsticks out of the same dishes. You didn't really even have your own plate. You had your own 4 different kinds of sauces to dip stuff. After dinner, I was exhausted. I was starting to blink very exaggerated at the table to keep myself awake. One of the guys with a cool orange tie drove me back to the hotel. He bought the tie in San Marcos, Texas when he was in Austin for training. Weird. Then I pretty much crashed, which was unintentional. I was intending to walk around, but I fell asleep until midnight, woke up and changed into pajamas and read the hotel magazine about Seoul and then went back to bed. Breakfast in the hotel in the morning was a buffet - included in the room price for me, but costs about $30 US. Wow. I'd never spend that much money on breakfast for sure. But they had everything, including this mysterious fruit that looks kind of like a peach, but is very solid almost like an apple. I ate in 5 minutes and went to work. Did some work. Went to lunch at a Korean Barbecue, which was great. Two guys that I taught that morning took me to a department store that had a food court, except the places were all restaurants and not to-go places. We had Korean BBQ, Korean "pizza" which was more like egg and vegetables and octopus fried together, 2 kinds of soup, something made of acorns, some potatoes that I loved, and kimchi. Everything was really good, except the acorn thing, but expensive again. Apparently there isn't a middle ground in Korea. You eat cheap food for less than $5 or you pay $30. But the Korea office paid for it. So far, I've only spent money on the limo. But I'm done with work early today, so I think I'm going to take off and go exploring. I don't know where exactly to go, but there's a big mall with an underground aquarium next to the hotel and there's a temple across the street. I'm in the commercial downtown area, so there's a lot of concrete, big buildings, and people shopping for Gucci and Prada clothing. Hopefully I'll find something unique before I leave for Japan tomorrow morning or at least have pictures to prove I was really here!