November 29th 2009 - Japanese

November 29th 2009

"New" Japanese restaurant and traffic jam .....

So we are back from the Philippines (read more here) and straight into the end of fall. The temperature has finally dropped to Paula's comfort zone - way too cold for me !!

Once back at the office I learned that the shipyard has pulled themselves together and that it now looks like they will deliver the ship on December 4th. That means we should be able to pull out of here around December 17th. Of course we wont go directly home ... we will stop over in Taiwan to see my sister and her family for a week or so. Might take a night in Seoul to finally see the capital of where we have lived for almost 3 years ! So far we haven't been there for more than short overnight stays.

Stephanie and Jerome have now left us for the second time. First time was two years ago and now they have gone back to France again. Jerome's project is a little delayed, so they were relocated. In a couple of weeks we will be the ones to say goodbye and then disappear - these last years we have said a lot of goodbyes but still not left....

Thursday we hooked up with Colin, who was back from a vacation in Koh Samui. He had left Jamie in Singapore so was ready for Rumba! Well, maybe not - if he was, he sure would have picked better partners! Anyway, Colin picked us up and we headed downtown to the Tourist Restaurant close to Ulsan Station. Given the choice of Korean and Japanese we went for Japanese. All the X-mas lights were up (they are also up in April, August ... well, all year!)

Unfortunately we had to sit on the floor, but on the other hand this restaurant was built true to Japanese design, so there was a handy hole under the table for our stiff legs. I hate sitting cross-legged ... my feet are not meant to come anywhere near my head - especially while eating!

The food was awesome. There were several - to us - unknown things on offer. A few of those things actually still moved when you picked them up! Our wautress was very helpful showing us what fish went with which sauce etc. and she even took to chopstick-feeding Colin. He quite enjoyed that, so you'd better hurry home, Jamie!!

Saturday Paula and I went on our last shopping trip to Busan. It was a fitting farewell to Busan, as we pretty much spent all day in traffic jams, totally lost between tunnels, overpasses and small crowded streets. We should have known better than to venture out without our GPS navigation (in for an update before we sell it)

Today I was meant to go biking, but as it was raining we had to cancel. It gets too slippery in the rain. At noon we were invited for a mega-lunch at Marilyn and Flemming's. They had invited a couple of other expats from Busan and we spent a very agreeable afternoon at their house