Sashimi in Busan

After arriving in Busan and checking into our hotel, we walked around the Haeundae Beach area for a while. It was a beautiful, warm night and there were tons of people out.

Musicians performing on the street

The beach was crowded! At night?

We had some fun with some large pictures on a wall along the boardwalk 🙂

The next day was very foggy so there was no use in laying on the beach! This is the day we toured the Busan Aquarium and walked around town. We ended up along the water for the final stretch of our walk and found a great walking/bike path that was lined with the giant cement jacks that I first saw on Ulleungdo Island.

There are a lot of impressive, beautiful bridges in South Korea.

There are 3 major beaches in Busan: Haeundae Beach, Songjeong Beach, and Gwangalli Beach

Johnnie read about about the Millak Fish Town on the internet so we headed there for a sashimi dinner after our day of walking. (Sashimi is thinly sliced raw seafood traditionally served with soy sauce and wasabi paste. In short, it’s sushi without the rice.) We weren’t sure what to expect but the whole process was very easy. As we approached the front door of the building, a lady working there starting waving her hands and inviting us in. We told her we wanted to eat sashimi and that was all we had to say. She led us through the fish market, shouting “sashimi!” along the way. She led us to a tank where she pointed to the fish and said Korean-something and “sashimi” to the lady there. The lady dipped a net into the tank, caught a fish, and put it into a basket for us to see and to weigh it. She then took a knife and jammed it into the fish’s head to kill it – we weren’t quite expecting that!

The lady threw in some odd looking sea creatures at no extra charge. Umm… thank you?

Our fish and the other sea creatures were put into a plastic bag and a lady carrying it led us up to the 4th floor where there was a nice restaurant. We sat down and almost immediately got our drinks and all of the little side dishes that typically come with a Korean meal. You may notice in the photo that there is no kimchi! This is the first Korean meal I’ve had in a restaurant without kimchi. We did get some other unusual side dishes instead – the bowl of seaweed, and lots of raw peeled cloves of garlic.

The steamed shrimp were full of eggs! Yes, we ate them 🙂

Our sea creatures all cut up. The pink pieces were still moving! We still have no idea what these creatures were. It looks disgusting but yes, we ate this too 🙂