What just crawled off my plate?

Koreans eat octopus as ubiquitously as Americans eat corn syrup.

octo-on-the-street

Americans offer corn syrup on the street corner as a refreshing drink. Koreans offer octopus on the street corner as a refreshing snack.

The octo-monger heats dried delectables over coals. As the octo-roma warmly wafts, the octo-monger neatly nips into a small snack bag a . . .

• Three-foot long leg of octopus?
• Small, fat cluster of octopus?
• Flattened sheet of octopus?
• Eight-legged, body-and-all, whole octopus?
• Thick round dried tentacle of octopus (the kind that sunk Nemo's Nautilus)?
  

Whichever you choose, strolling away, you contentedly munch on bites of smoky, chewy, sea flavor.

octo-lunch

Americans eat their lunch with corn syrup. Koreans eat their lunch with octopus.

In some cases, the octo-chef sautes and then serves the octo-lunch. If so, it goes like this.

Octo-chef reaches into the octo-tank, the glass walls covered with sticky tentacles. The octo-chef pries a wiggling writher and slips it quickly into bubbling chili paste. Not many seconds later, the octo-chef scissor-slices throughout the octo-stew and brings it to your table, tender, ready to mix with rice and lettuce and seaweed and onions and oh-so-delicious.

In other cases, the octo-chef just serves the octo-lunch. If so, it goes like this.

Octo-chef reaches into the octo-tank, the glass walls covered with sticky tentacles. The octo-chef pries a wiggling writher -- and meanwhile, at your table, salad is steaming on a stove. Atop the salad steaming on the stove, the octo-chef deposits the octopus. It crawls off. A daintily dressed diner plies her chopsticks to drag the tentacles to top the greens again. It crawls off. It sticks to the table. She plies again. It crawls again. She plies again. It crawls again. She's enjoying her lunch. Soon she'll eat it, too.

octo-appetizer
(not for the squeamish)

As all Americans know, sushi is raw fish and it's best without corn syrup. As all Koreans know, sushi is good food and it's best to start with octopus. Yes, the very best sushi-starter is octopus. Mmm, octo-appetizer.

And the very best octo-appetizer is living octopus. Crawling octopus. Squirming octopus.

You sit down at the sushi restaurant. The waiter brings the water. The waiter brings some beer. You eat some salad. You dip your ginger in soy sauce and in wasabi.

You're waiting for your appetizer.

The waiter brings a dish that's white and wiggly. Not the dish itself. The heap of squiggly. The pile of squirming, wirming tentacles. The mass of mouth-size, cut to pieces, living moving octopus.

You grab a tentacle with your chopsticks. The tentacle crawls away.

You grab a tentacle with your chopsticks. The tentacle suction-cups to the plate.

Your grab a tentacle with your chopsticks -- and the tentacle holds onto all the other tentacles!

You grab a tentacle with your chopsticks. The tentacle crawls away.

Koreans like live octopus as an appetizer. Live octopus is appetizing because it takes so long to eat. By the time you wrangle a wiggle to your waiting mouth, you're so hungry, it's so good.

So tender.
So tasty.
So squirmy.

What happened to yesterday?

Pochangmacha (late night bars) serve makole, along with beer and soju. Apparently makole is also served to rice farmers midday.

Apparently they serve makole to keep the farmers from caring about their work -- or caring about anything else for that matter.

Makole keeps away cares with 38-proof sprite-flavor drunk from soup bowls.

When you gulp makole in this way at a pochungmacha, you don't care about the next day. In fact, you don't even know there is a next day.

How does grandma karaoke?

Family dinners in a Korea differ from family dinners in the U.S. -- and it's not just the food.

But let's start with the food. You eat rice, of course, and then you share all the other dishes, reaching into the middle of the table with your chokura (chopsticks) to grab bite by bite:

• Steamed octopus dipped in sweet chili sauce
• Boiled uncured bacon dipped in salty-salty-salty fish dip
• Cabbage pickled in garlic and chili paste
  
• Greens with chilis
• Skate wing pickled with garlic stems and chili paste
• Blue crabs, raw with garlic and chili paste
• Beef short ribs sliced thin and broiled in garlic
  

You don't drink wine or water or beer or even sparkling apple cider (as we did as kids at pesach). Every few minutes you have a shot of soju (rice vodka) -- everyone reaches into the middle of the table and says kombae or cheers.

Soju has a lots of its rituals too. For example, you never pour your own. When a more senior person pours for you, you hold your glass with two hands. Similarly, if you pour for him, you hold the bottle with two hands.

The next course is fruit and rice cakes.

The whole meal is had at a pap-sang, or short table set in the middle of the room around which you sit cross-legged.

Or rather at two pap-sangs -- one for the men, one for the women.

After dinner, everyone goes to the nooraybong or karaoke. Except the two youngest daughters-in-law who have to stay home and do the dishes.

Below is grandma singing at the club:

Quo vadis in Chunang Park?

Chunang Park is not central Seoul, despite its name.

Surrounded by skyscrapers in a far out neighborhood, it has art, badminton, biking, bands, cards, crowds, drumming (traditional Korean), eating, football, gingkos, go carts, happy families, innovative exercise machines, kites, lounging, water sculptures to walk through, the biggest swing ever seen, and even clean bathrooms.

In fact, the only part of the park not brimming with activity is below.

Do you recognize her?

Her new hair seems to make Candace even more elegant, as if that were possible.

What can you see from a fried chicken bar window?

Mun-sup, Jae, Candace, and I were sitting at bar, eating the juiciest, crunchiest fried chicken ever.

I looked out the window.

What's he waiting for?

We were waiting for Mun-sup and Jae.

It was just outside the Hongdik University stop on line 2.