Shabu-shabu to you.

Fellow humans, I salute you.

Here are some words:

Three of the expats had their birthdays during the week so we had plans to spend the weekend on an island by way of celebration. Unfortunately, monsoon season has started here in fair Korea and the torrential rain scuppered our island plan. We therefore had to go with plan B: a group of us shared a bowl of spine soup, we followed this with some drunken bowling and then we rounded the night off with a big bowl of  homemade carbonara at 3 in the morning. Twas an unusual yet enjoyable night.

The eatery we went to was a Japanese shabu-shabu restaurant. They serve a kind of Japanese-style hot pot. Ours looked like a witch’s brew; it contained the spine of some unfortunate animal, many a vegetable and some boiling broth. We all ate from the same cauldron which was lit from beneath by a fire. We had to fight over the bits of animal carcass and the best spoils went to the mightiest warriors. I found that growling loudly and embiggening my body usually scared off my fellow predators. Once you had wrestled away a tasty morsel you had to strip the meat with your chopstick and then wash it down with the soupy stuff. It was quite a predacious plunder but I guess you don’t win friends with salad.

After shabu-shabu we went en masse to the bowling alley where we drank soju and also did a spot of bowling. The white pins would try to intimidate us by standing smugly in uniform formation at the end of the lane but we did not tremble. We knocked down those arrogant white soldiers with our bowling balls of justice and then went out into the night in search of more ale. We drank in a nearby pub until closing time and then retired to a friend’s house to have some carbonara. It was probably a tad gluttonous of us to have pasta in the small hours of the morning as we had already had a plate of chicken in the pub as desert after the spine soup but we had our fun and that’s all that matters.

Join me next week for more tales from the Hermit country! I shall be attending the famed Mud Festival next weekend so I shall be sure to post a blog about our upcoming capers. :)