Korea - Day 9

In the morning, went to Gangnam Gyobomoongo Book Store to buy an English language study book for a friend. This is a really huge book store and they sell books, DVDs, CDs, stationary, and other accessories in a huge 2 floor retail space.
Then I joined my dad and his friend for a Japanese sushi lunch in a restaurant next to my hotel. I've eaten a lot of seafood here and I have to admit that the sashimi and sushi quality does not match Hawaii's. The locals here say its really good but I'd have to disagree. I wonder what they'll think when they eat really good seafood here. A few people I know said that they enjoyed the sushi at Todai so I'm thinking that they'll be blown away by the name places like Sasabune or even a place like Sushi King.

After lunch, was curious to check out the newly constructed Cheongyecheon. Blah. Not much to see here. Took some boring pics. After the nice entrance, it's pretty much the same thing all the way down the stream. I've noticed that as the days go by here I'm less and less inclined to take pics. Hmm....







Then at night, went to visit a friend in Apgujeong. He suggested seafood but I was already seafood'ed out so I said let's eat anything except meat or seafood. He admitted that that would limit choices by quite a bit. I felt like eating some noodles so we ended up eating at a Vietnamese pho place which was actually not bad.

After dinner, of course, soju. There were a bunch of celebrities at the table right next to hours, a few I recognized from the Phoenix celebrity basketball game a few years back. But they were all B-level celebs. The type of actors who play the guy who doesn't get the girl, provides the comic relief, the mean jealous girl, etc. The only name I remembered out of the bunch was Gong Hyun Joo.

After soju, finished off the night with some karaoke. And yeah, sorry to say that I did get pretty drunk on my last night. I tried to keep it together but the combo of beer (during dinner), soju, and then poktanju (literally translated as "bomb drink") did me in. Poktanju is what you get when you mix a shot of whiskey or other hard liquor with a glass of beer and then you usually 1 shot it. I think I had maybe oh.....7 or 8 of these? And that's after 2 beers and 2 bottles of soju. Yeah, I was pretty wiped. I ended up spending the last 30 minutes of karaoke lying down in someone's lap!