Next week is Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving. It is a huge national holiday for several days (the universities are all closed and so is everything else). The newspapers are already printing comments like "and there is only one week before Chuseok..."
I am looking forward to it, although since I think everyone will be with their families the city is going to be desolate and I will be wandering streets out of 'The Day After".
Actually, I am planning to hole up and work. I have two conferences coming up in October and November, and the papers are conveniently due right after Chuseok, so even here in Korea Thanksgiving can be the crucial time to get procrastinated work done!
From what I can tell, giving gift baskets is very popular at Chuseok. The stores are starting to fill with them. Being a bit slow,when I began to displays of boxes I just thought that perhaps Koreans went for packaging in a big way. But the sheer variety of the boxes made it clear that it is gift giving time.
Some of the boxes are quite striking and also quite expensive. And some are strange.
My local market has a large wooden box of "Jiri Mountain Honey" still in the comb, nicely displayed, for 28,000 Won, which is not too bad for that amount of comb.
There are many more, collections of everything you can imagine artfully arranged into gift boxes, from shrinkwrapped and bubble wrapped pieces of fruit to toiletries. It is hard to take pictures of them since if you pause in front of a display saleswomen are very eager to help. I didn't want to be rude snapping pictures.
Fortunately, the Lotte store has pictures online.
[Incidentally, Lotte is a huge and bewildering operation about which I need to learn--they own department stores, casinos, credit cards, and they also make chewing gum, which is not very good.]
This fresh meat box goes for 270,000 Won ($270)
The strings of fish are cool, they sell these all over the place, usually for over a hundred bucks. I am not sure why they fetch such a high price since most fish is very cheap (about 5 bucks for two full mackerels, about 2 bucks for two squid), but there is something about this specific kind with the yellow wrapper.
This one is only 88,000 Won.
It comes in this nice presentation box.
here is a box of the terrible coffee selection that you see everywhere.
Sometime I will write at length about coffee in Korea. There are coffee shops about every ten feet across the city, but it is impossible to buy decent coffee at any store. You can buy these coffee substitutes and these bizarre mixes and whatnot, Taster's Choice seems to be a favorite.
I would be very happy to get the specially selected dried fish array box. I have seen variants of fish of three to five different sizes, fish with laver seaweed pieces, and so on:
But the winner of all, and the boxes that first caught my eye, are the Spam gift boxes. Why these exist, I don't know.
This is a small one. The largest I have seen is 18 cans.
Here is another processed meat products box
and another. I think there may be more varieties of the processed meat boxes than of the others
and then this magical collection: "meat" product and oil:
I am looking forward to it, although since I think everyone will be with their families the city is going to be desolate and I will be wandering streets out of 'The Day After".
Actually, I am planning to hole up and work. I have two conferences coming up in October and November, and the papers are conveniently due right after Chuseok, so even here in Korea Thanksgiving can be the crucial time to get procrastinated work done!
From what I can tell, giving gift baskets is very popular at Chuseok. The stores are starting to fill with them. Being a bit slow,when I began to displays of boxes I just thought that perhaps Koreans went for packaging in a big way. But the sheer variety of the boxes made it clear that it is gift giving time.
Some of the boxes are quite striking and also quite expensive. And some are strange.
My local market has a large wooden box of "Jiri Mountain Honey" still in the comb, nicely displayed, for 28,000 Won, which is not too bad for that amount of comb.
There are many more, collections of everything you can imagine artfully arranged into gift boxes, from shrinkwrapped and bubble wrapped pieces of fruit to toiletries. It is hard to take pictures of them since if you pause in front of a display saleswomen are very eager to help. I didn't want to be rude snapping pictures.
Fortunately, the Lotte store has pictures online.
[Incidentally, Lotte is a huge and bewildering operation about which I need to learn--they own department stores, casinos, credit cards, and they also make chewing gum, which is not very good.]
This fresh meat box goes for 270,000 Won ($270)
The strings of fish are cool, they sell these all over the place, usually for over a hundred bucks. I am not sure why they fetch such a high price since most fish is very cheap (about 5 bucks for two full mackerels, about 2 bucks for two squid), but there is something about this specific kind with the yellow wrapper.
This one is only 88,000 Won.
It comes in this nice presentation box.
here is a box of the terrible coffee selection that you see everywhere.
Sometime I will write at length about coffee in Korea. There are coffee shops about every ten feet across the city, but it is impossible to buy decent coffee at any store. You can buy these coffee substitutes and these bizarre mixes and whatnot, Taster's Choice seems to be a favorite.
I would be very happy to get the specially selected dried fish array box. I have seen variants of fish of three to five different sizes, fish with laver seaweed pieces, and so on:
But the winner of all, and the boxes that first caught my eye, are the Spam gift boxes. Why these exist, I don't know.
This is a small one. The largest I have seen is 18 cans.
Here is another processed meat products box
and another. I think there may be more varieties of the processed meat boxes than of the others
and then this magical collection: "meat" product and oil:
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