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After leaving the grandparents house we went to the beaches of Ulsan and had sushi. I had expressly saved my first sushi experience for my trip to the south, where the fish are right off the boat. Little did I know how it was really done. We went to a fish market by the docks, where there was a huge circus tent full of fish vendors. Each vendor was packed up against the one next to her (they were all old women. I can only assume the wives of fishermen...), and each one had buckets full of live fish. We walked along, looking at tons of different fish. Finally HongDae's parents start speaking to one of the vendors, at which point I get nervous. The pointing and haggling also gets me nervous. Then about 8 of these special fall fish get plucked out of their bucket and promptly beheaded. In addition, I saw her cutting up squid, some sort of sea worm, and octopus as we walked out of the tent. We sat down in a restaurant, and about five minutes later the woman comes in with a plate full of fish slices. FRESH!

As for the octopus...the interesting thing about octopus is that it doesn't entirely die after you kill it. Like earth worms or snakes, you can cut the head off and the rest of it just keeps on moving. Well, one plate was full of writhing tentacles. First of all, I'm not the best with chopsticks. I still drop things occasionally, I have moderate difficulty with noodles, I drip, and sometimes can't get a grip on round thing like garlic. So imagine trying to pick up a squirming, slimy, tentacle.

The octopus is not just tentacles, it's suction cups. The amazing part of eating live octopus is that when you put it in your mouth, it's still gripping at your gums, tongue, inner cheek, and teeth. Statistics tell us that at least one person dies every year from eating the live octopus. These people fail to chew thoroughly and the tentacles tear the unsuspecting diner's esophagus open. For this reason, despite constant laughter as the legs gripped and pulled at the inside of my mouth, I chewed each leg for minutes on end.

The whole rest of the night I kept thinking about that writhing plate of legs and combining that image with the inside of my stomach, leaving me with a strange sort of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea meets Magic School Bus imagery that made me almost positive I felt motion down there.