Are there toys at this Museum Daddy?

Out with the Kids - In with the Kids:
We are now back to a routine of sorts - school, work, weekly craft classes (I am making a hanji tea table and repeatedly hear "no touchy" and "you - too much glue!"), occasional lunch or play dates and this week, very excitingly, a neighbourhood dinner party where grown-ups made merry (multi-lingually) while children played with a nanny. We must really learn the art of hiring evening wait staff and not hesitating to invite strangers over for late-night meals on weekdays. It's a different world. On the weekends we head out for family fun. At a restaurant a few weeks ago, while admiring our cute children, the waiter said "even though you have two babies - you are not afraid - you still take them out." Indeed out we do take them, but since we had record snowfalls (the most snow in 100 years - ever since they have been keeping records), we have been seeking indoor fun - indoor fun with a three-year-old-sensibility.
Here we are at Changyeongung Palace, built by King Sejong for his father's three Queens in 1484. Very little of the original still stands except for an audience hall from the first rebuilding in 1616, and a greenhouse built by the Japanese during the colonial period when they turned the palace to a pleasure park/zoo/garden in an effort to "diminish the stature and authority of the Korean royal family." We enjoyed the greenhouse and the scenic winter lake-walk, and wished, briefly, that the Colonial overlords were still running their outdoor skating rink and petting zoo. Mostly we are finding a great similarity between the palaces in Seoul, but this one shares a parking lot with the Science Museum, so how could we refuse? And here we are at the Railroad museum. This was a bit tricky to find as it is out of town in Bugok, Uiwang (the Seoul one is temporarily closed), but Brian persevered and we found ourselves, with many many of the under 5 set, paying our 90 cents to explore what was railway history as of 1981. There were trains to climb aboard, models to enjoy, and a very comprehensive collection of railroad artifacts - ticket punchers through the ages, signal flags, and "objects pertaining to railroad opening" including display cases of last spikes and scissors used for ribbon cutting. Very thorough are these curatorial staffs. The lady sitting on the train below top centre is a model, hired for the afternoon by a photography club. Since we arrived, all over Seoul we have seen groups of men of varying ages following around their high-heeled, long-haired, elegantly dressed young model as they snap her picture in front of various scenic vistas with a variety of light conditions. Hobbies are very important here.

This is the National Folk Museum of Korea. Consisting of three exhibit halls, two special exhibit spaces, a children's museum and an outdoor "street to the past" where you can enjoy 1960s Seoul, we didn't manage to see it all, but we enjoyed what we did see. We learned about village life and life cycle events, admired Lee Rheeza's designer hanbok (her bojagi hanbok bottom left and maedup-decorated hanbok top left), saw what Iris' first birthday party table should look like and told our children that if they really loved us they would spend several months camped on top of our graves once we died. Jamie and Iris enjoyed playing at the children's museum (based on a folk tale about the filial loyalty of blind Shimchong's daughter) but I'm not sure they learned the required lessons about indefatigably and reliability. There was a ball room though. afterwards we visited a bookstore specializing in English books about Korea (Seoul Selections/Hank's Book cafe) so now we have much reading material. Currently my Korean cultural education is coming from the mini-series IRIS (no really - spies, guns, a secret organization with my daughter's name), but soon I'm sure I will turn to text - I bought a graphic novel that promises to explain the Korean psyche so just you wait.

Speaking of Iris' birthday (her Tol), much of our time is spent currently planning it. Invitations, caterers, thank-you gifts, photographers, outfits - it's all very exciting. My lovely friend Sun is helping me try to pull off this important Korean passage. Last week she took me to a traditional market to buy the kids their very own Hanbok. (Hanbok alley was only one of the many alleys in the market - wrapping paper alley, bakeware alley, furry hat alley etc.) Here is Sun in street-food-alley where she introduced me to spicy rice cakes, pressed-fish-cake soup, and blood sausage with accompanying organ meat. I ate some of what was on offer, really enjoyed the heated benches, and was pleased to be able to share in some of this vibrant culture on non-foreigner terms.

Near us is the Seoul Arts Center. In addition to opera, theatre, dance and music halls, and museums of calligraphy and traditional music, it boasts a number of art galleries with rotating exhibits. We went to see a Matisse and Picasso show, but the lines were too long so instead we saw a very strange exhibit of reproductions of Renaissance frescoes, painstakingly repainted life-sized, and a giant exhibit of children's book illustrations. We ate at a tasty buffet with lots of fresh sushi and crab legs, and then drove up the mountain to gaze on snowy Seocho-gu and admire the mountain temple overlooking the Arts Center. Apparently there is free childcare at the SAC if you have performance tickets, so we might yet see some opera, but life is long and babies are short.

And finally, here is Seoul National Science Museum where we can learn about velocity, enjoy the magic mirror hall (there is a reverse mirror, and one that makes it look like you are following yourself down a hall), be a spaceman (like Yi So-yeon, the youngest woman in space), make a balloon-powered car, and discover the history of humankind's fascination with killing and eating the creatures of the wild (early man, top centre, crushes small mammal for breakfast). So, we've been finding lots of indoor outings, and fitting a few uniquely Korean experiences in and among the seeming universality of 3-year-old fun involving trains, pushing buttons, stomping snow and playing toys.

Snow days

Next up on the neighbourhood challenge was Hongdae. Now you'd think a neighbourhood known for night clubs and indie-youth-culture was not for us, but it is supposed to be hip and artsy - and we have hips and like art so off we went. Indeed there is sort of a student vibe, but as it was winter and daytime we didn't see many of the young and free enjoying the food stalls, dessert stands and retro clothing stores. The Free and Hope art/craft market was not running and the ice-bar was less of a curiosity when we were already in snowsuits. We did notice many hat and boot stalls and many people wearing hats and boots (the young are favouring the large pom-pom and the furry suede these days), and Western-influenced consumer and dining options (we ate Mexican and considered the pink leather parka in Gangsta clothing). Mostly interesting, however, were the cafes designed to cater to the student set. There were DVD bangs - private rooms where you can watch movies and snog, Gaming bangs (play video games - maybe snog?) and princess cafes for the young female students with no-one to snog to have some "YOU TIME" and sip from china cups in pink floral comfort. Ann House, shown top (billboard on bottom left) is situated underneath videobang PLAY, for the complexly layered princesses. We left the university neighbourhood, like so many young women do, via wedding dress lane, and went to find some more family-friendly-fun.
So here is World Cup Park, where, much to our surprise, we found families doing their best to eek as much snow-day fun as possible out of what, to we Canadians, seemed to be a very faint dusting of snow indeed. There was a large tubing hill where families queued for hours to go down an almost snow-free slope holding onto one another. There were many daddies pulling their kids around a snowy field on improvised toboggans (I saw cardboard boxes, picnic blankets, plastic-wrapped couch cushions, car mats, and windshield sun shades). We looked at many snowmen (they seem to favour those with pointy hats - and use more of a sand-castle building technique since it wasn't packing snow) and we built a very tiny one of our own (right centre beside Brian and Jamie at the pecuter). It was cold; the road up the mountain for "spectacular views of the city" was closed; but we drank hot chocolate and Jamie had a bit of winter fun. There was very little traffic (the long line of cars at the bottom centre is the line to get into World Cup Stadium Home Plus, a grocery/department store owned by Tesco which is one of the most coveted grocery destinations in Seoul - they really like to line up to park at grocery stores here). We drove home quickly, spent some time at the local automatic car wash (they hand-dry your car, and two men open your doors at the end and vacuum the carpets beneath your feet - Jamie was quite surprised), ordered pizza (dishwasher is still kaput) and snuggled the young off to bed. Now we will spend Saturday night drinking tea, folding laundry, and watching American TV - take that you hip and artsy indie-clubbers!

All Imaginable Owls

We decided to check out some of the Seoul neighbourhoods that we haven't visited yet. First on the agenda was Samcheong-dong, home to art galleries, museums and traditional Hanok homes.
Here we are having tea at the owl museum. Run by Mrs. Bae, proclaimed in her English hand-out as "crazy lady for owl," the museum houses her collection of 2,500 owl-related items "regarded as family treasure #1 at the time of marriage and house-moving." Admission included a hot drink and Jamie drew some owl pictures and gave one to Mrs. Bae for her collection. This neighbourhood also has a chicken museum (bottom left), but we save that for another day.
Look - it's ToyKino museum. Here you may find 200,000 character figures, mainly from the last 15 years (we felt quite old - our childhood was off the radar). There was, however, some CanCon with Don Cherry and Wayne Gretzky dolls (Cancon at the Owl museum was supplied by Mrs. Bae proudly showing us her photo album containing a snap of a young shirtless Canadian lad with a giant owl tattoo on his back). I also made it into the toy collection in my incarnation as Dr. Aki Ross from Final Fantasy. Top left you can see a young couple in their matching plaid padded hoodies exclaiming with glee over the Disney princess dolls. Top right is a restaurant billboard included because it recommends "Well-being" pasta and risotto. Everything in Seoul is promoted as being "well-being" these days: well-being walnuts, well-being beauty-care, well-being peach water, etc.
And here are the Hanok homes in Bukchon village. Hanok is traditional Korean architecture, made of wood, stone and earth. The homes are tightly packed together along narrow, steep, winding alleys ringed with mountains (the parked cars needed wheel-stoppers - see bottom left). It was very scenic in the new fallen snow, and we enjoyed the details of carved porches, elaborate hidden doors and papered windows. Jamie was cold and crying though, so perhaps a warmer-weather visit next time. The neighbourhood main street was full of coffee shops, European bistros, and jewellery stores and it is a popular place to stroll and shop for trendy urbanites in search of tradition, but it was a bit tricky for those of us with strollers and hungry babies to find a place to rest. Lucky there were perches for all imaginable owls, once you knew where to look.

63 Building

Looking for something closer to home, and offering one-stop fun, we went a few km down the road to Korea's golden landmark, which for about a year after it was finished (1985) was the tallest building in Asia. Technically, it has 60 storeys above ground and 3 below, which is where some of the main attractions are. For about $27 Cdn per adult (kids under 4 free), you can go to the top floor observation deck, watch an Imax movie, and visit the aquarium. Plus free parking. (We skipped the wax museum.) The top also hosts travelling art exhibitions, and thus bills itself as the world's highest art gallery. The views are pretty good in all directions, and it makes a nice complement to Namsan Tower on the other side of the river. The Han River is crossed by something like 20 (actually more) bridges, which makes for one of the major aesthetic elements in the Seoul panorama; tall buildings and craggy hills in all directions round out the picture.

The aquarium was the kids' favourite, of course. It's not as large as the one across town at COEX, but kept us busy for the better part of two hours. Zoos and aquaria in Korea, while usually not alarming, do not have the rigid "pure science" ethic that the most serious institutions abroad do. There is generally an entertainment element that doesn't have much to do with wildlife conservation. (We've also noted a tendency to amp up the visitor experience by cramming enclosures full with as many animals as will fit. No more peering hopefully for the lone specimen in the back corner, as often happens in zoos at home.) Anyway, the main tank here at 63 Building features a nearly-continuous dancing mermaid show (video below), as well as some spunky floor performers (not shown) in fairy godmother and ballgown attire, whose thespian antics were sadly on lost on us. Yet another of those occasions where it would have been nice to have had really any idea as to what was going on.

In today's final installment, you'll hear me promising Jamie ice cream if he'll let a tiny fish nibble on his finger. (This "Dr. Fish" skin reinvigoration is a big spa thing here.) He consented, briefly; unfortunately, the creatures seemed little interested in his diminutive digit. That's my finger in the shot. I got a few bites. I really wanted that ice cream.

Icheon Ceramics Village

Another in the series of day trips around Seoul. (Blogger dates an entry from when it's started, not when it's posted, which is why it looks like you're not seeing this until about five days later -- with this in mind, please scroll down to make sure you haven't missed any other new additions over the holiday season.) There are a number of smaller towns and villages just to the southeast which make up one of the historic heartlands of the Korean pottery industry. This goes back to the middle ages (in European time) and at one point Korea was second only to China in ceramics technology. There is a good, and free, introductory museum in Gwangju (not to be confused with the larger and better-known city of the same name farther south), and a number of artisans and production sites down the road in the villages around Icheon (not to be confused with Incheon, on the other side of Seoul, where the airport is, or Ichon, a neighbourhood in Seoul.)

We didn't actually see any potters or kilns in action, but looked around a bit and did some token shopping (at the generic store, nothing by a specific artisan. However, the store people did bring us little cups of tea on wooden saucers as we were looking around.) We might have stayed longer but it was starting to snow. As noted in a previous post, the return journey took 4.5 hours, though I read later in the paper that the traffic disaster that occured that afternoon was not to be considered normal or acceptable. The explanation had something to do with the fact that it started snowing a bit earlier than expected, which caused the usual response plan to collapse. (In the photo collage, you'll see someone shoveling with a large signboard -- don't forget that collages in all posts are clickable to view large versions.)

Anyway, this region is not very far away, and I'm sure we'll go back in better weather. I don't know that we really got into the thick of things on this first visit. The most famous spot, Haegang, is that of the founder of the reborn industry (like so many things here, there was a significant interruption due to the Japanese colonial period and then the Korean War), including a museum and working area. The pieces are rather pricey, but it's fun to look through the reject heap of broken shards.

Ganghwa Island

Here's another popular and very worthwhile day trip from Seoul, to Ganghwa-do (Island), at the mouth of the Han river (immediately south of the DMZ), listed as two hours away, but drivable in one. It's a decent-sized place, of which you can do a lap in one day, but to see the many attractions you need more time. It's great because it offers a "royal sampler" of Korean history and culture: pre-historic dolmens, working fishing villages, ancient Buddhist temples, and 19th-century fortifications. Although not that distant from the mainland, the island was used as a strategic retreat on a couple of occasions in the last 700 years at times of foreign invasion (a recurring theme in Korean history). Its cannon also saw action, believe it or not, against US and French vessels in the late nineteenth century. (Don't worry, I didn't know this either.) Finally, it also apparently has one of the largest tidal ranges in the world (after the Bay of Fundy), but we had to leave the Tidal Flat Centre to be explored for another time. To note, the temple shown above (Jeondeungsa), while not an enormous complex, has some fantastic decorative elements and interiors, quite the equal of what we saw in Japan. (NB. to readers that the "swastika" is very old Buddhist symbol, often used as a icon to indicate temples here.)

We had lunch in a harbourside place in one of the larger fishing villages, watching the small vehicle ferry to the outer islands load and unload. The setting was not completely unlike that on one of BC's Gulf islands (one of the regular ones, not super-fancy). The waitress promptly spirited Jamie away and sat him down by the pass-through where the kitchen staff could admire him. They plied him with a free lunch and a bottle of Coke. We repatriated him to our table before too long, but at the end of it, the staff somehow got him to bow. Did he learn this at school? We hadn't seen it before and were impressed.

Harmonious City, Happy Suwon

One of the first day trips we did outside the city was to Suwon, which is very nearby and just to the south of Seoul. It's about a million people in its own right; Korea's eighth-largest city, or so I've read. But this isn't wikipedia.

It's known for its old fortifications, designed and built in the late 18th century on "scientific" principles. The main attractions are recreations and reenactments of various events and activities, but these don't run in the winter. So our visit was mainly for reconnaisance, to go at a quieter time. In fact, we found a lot of the restaurants in town were closed on a Sunday, although the street markets were in full swing. There was a bit of snow in the air. It's a slight climb up to the old wall in places, but worth it for the view. When we go back, we'll ride the little train ("with teeth") to see more of the walls.

Korea has a fair allotment of ancient to moderately old structures, mostly dating to the Joseon era, which isn't all that specific a designation, as it covers over 500 years from 1392 to 1910. However, where structures haven't survived due to war and foreign occupation, the Korean government has been rapidly rebuilding. So at any given site, there may be some original buildings and some that have been reconstructed in the last few years. This can give a striking sameness to many of the palaces, etc, in terms of design, materials, building techniques and decoration. However, I suppose in due course these new buildings will age too, and the niceties of "authenticity" will begin to fade with time. After all, some of Canada's top historic attractions (Ste-Marie among the Hurons, Fortress of Louisbourg) are entirely modern reconstructions as well.