I took this picture yesterday, and before anyone starts in on the 'fruit' jokes from the countless angles one could possibly tackle this joke, don't even bother. While some may think of this, in lieu of the title, as a prelude to a discussion of a certain academic journal started last year, it sadly is not. I'm sure I'll talk about that at some later day; there are 99 days left. No, today's picture was taken on my way home last night, around 6.30pm. As you can see, this is a truck with various fruits and vegetables parked on the street. This truck is literally a one minute walk from my front door and has some of the best fruit around. A little known secret about Korea: the best fruit is not found in the grocery store but in the basement of the department store, but the second best fruit is found on the side of the street in trucks. Most of these truck fruit vendors are independent sellers, either with family in the country growing them or small business owners. You can find these trucks all over Seoul in the residential areas, and if you can't spot one, you can definitely hear them, as they have loud blow-horns that repeat the same word over and over again: 과일 (or fruit). I suppose they expect people to run towards the truck like the ice cream man. The irony of this particular fruit truck, though, is that it is parked out in front of a chain store of 도시락(Korean lunch boxes), Hansot (the prices at this place are so cheap, but the amount of fat and calories that they put into these things would shame us all, well besides the middle and high school kids that swarm there everyday) and across the street from an actual store that sells nothing but fruit. Needless to say, the owner of the truck doesn't pay attention to irony all that much; he is just trying to sell himself some fruits.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Day 1: No Pears Allowed!
I took this picture yesterday, and before anyone starts in on the 'fruit' jokes from the countless angles one could possibly tackle this joke, don't even bother. While some may think of this, in lieu of the title, as a prelude to a discussion of a certain academic journal started last year, it sadly is not. I'm sure I'll talk about that at some later day; there are 99 days left. No, today's picture was taken on my way home last night, around 6.30pm. As you can see, this is a truck with various fruits and vegetables parked on the street. This truck is literally a one minute walk from my front door and has some of the best fruit around. A little known secret about Korea: the best fruit is not found in the grocery store but in the basement of the department store, but the second best fruit is found on the side of the street in trucks. Most of these truck fruit vendors are independent sellers, either with family in the country growing them or small business owners. You can find these trucks all over Seoul in the residential areas, and if you can't spot one, you can definitely hear them, as they have loud blow-horns that repeat the same word over and over again: 과일 (or fruit). I suppose they expect people to run towards the truck like the ice cream man. The irony of this particular fruit truck, though, is that it is parked out in front of a chain store of 도시락(Korean lunch boxes), Hansot (the prices at this place are so cheap, but the amount of fat and calories that they put into these things would shame us all, well besides the middle and high school kids that swarm there everyday) and across the street from an actual store that sells nothing but fruit. Needless to say, the owner of the truck doesn't pay attention to irony all that much; he is just trying to sell himself some fruits.
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We have this strawberry man on my way home. The man has nothing but strawberries, but Japanese people are odd about it. He is selling boxes of strawberries for cheap and people won't buy them. Why? because they aren't "brand" strawberries. If they don't cost a lot they just can't be good. Even though the " brand" companies probably buy berries from this guy's farm, he just sells the not so pretty ones on the street.
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