In Korea, there is a dish called sannakji. A living octopus is cut up, and served in sesame oil still squirming. Apparently there is a potential risk of death, as the tentacles can suction onto the back of someone's throat if it is not properly chewed. This strange dish, despite my distaste for octopus, quickly made it on to my to do list.
On June 20, 2009, I successfully completed what would become Part I of the Great Seafood Challenge: surviving eating the seafood.
Although surprisingly tasty, Part II of the adventure was not a culinary treat, but an aquatic venture into the unknown. That Saturday I went forth with a new seafood challenge: survive being eaten. The Busan Aquarium regularly offers shark diving expeditions. For 95,000 won, you too can risk your life and possibly be dinner.
After the first question we were asked was, "Is anyone menstruating?" and two of us answered yes, you'd think there might have been some hesitation on our part. Alas, three crazy waygooks and a wonderful Korean man named Saul decided to swim with the fishies anyway.
Why is Saul my hero, you may ask, since he obviously wasn't one of the menstruating women? Well, we needed a group of five people for an English lesson, but Saul called and magically four was okay. It turned out that this was because our guide was to be Korean, and Saul was to be our translator. Saul was terrified, but he went because he felt obligated to translate. Had we known we would be without English, we probably would have been even more terrified. But Saul is amazing, because out of the 10+ Koreans we asked, he was the only man brave enough to follow through.
