This is the cityscape. The buildings are apartments. On the side of most of the housing is corporate logos. I don't know if this is because the company workers live there, or if the company built them.

Just next to here is the second largest river in Korea. At its widest point it reaches 2km across, and even its narrowest section is 800m wide.

There is also a huge road. The roads are sometimes 12 lanes across, and the drivers are absolutely mad!

This is the Korean version of a geisha. The girls worse their hair down until they were married, and afterwards they styled it in various complicated styles depending on era and rank.

This is a traditional rice cooker.

This hut was used for making kimchi, a spicy cabbaged based side dish. A large stone jar was placed under the ground and the structure kept it shady in the hot Korean summers. Even now, the Koreans can't live without kimchi and most families have a separate fridge just for making and storing it.

Playing traditional Korean instruments.

Making bibinba

This lady is frying up bugs that are going to be ground up and made into pancakes. Yummy.

These statues were placed either side of the town gate to ward off evil.

The 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac were very important and can often be seen on the roof of buildings. They were thought to be lucky charms.

All the buildings had central heating, using an underfloor heating system. The chimneys were very ornate and are being used here as part of the garden decoration.

This is built in the center of the lake on shifting ground, but the clever architecture keeps it level.

At the time this palace was built, dragons were depicted with 7 talons. Over time, this was reduced to only 5.

This was built in 1395 by the founder of the Joseon Dynasty, King Taejo. The royal family lived here.

Gyongbokgung Palace

Our Japanese companions decided to use Saturday to have a day at a spa, so we took ourselves off on a cultural sightseeing day. As we only had one full day, we decided to go on the tour organised by the travel company we came with. The only problem being it was completely in Japanese, so absolutely exhausting not only going at Japanese tourist pace, but also doing it all in a foreign language.

All I can say about the Korean food was it was HOT!!!! I think you can feel the pain from this photo. Even the chocolate had chilli peppers in it.

This may look like a delicious and nutritious dish of chicken and cabbage, but it is actually a concoction made by the devil himself. It took two of us and four large bottles of beer to eat half of it before giving in to the pain that was consuming our mouths. We then took the safer route and had cheesecake and cocktails.

Restaurant

We have no idea what this restaurant sold. It was only one dish made of stir-fried meat and cabbage with various toppings. The waitress took one look at us and chose something for us.

Tour bus

Jo and I decided to surrender ourselves to a Japanese tour holiday to Korea for the long weekend. We left our weekend plans in the capable hands of Jo`s Japanese friends and they sorted us out a fantastic trip to Seoul.

This was taken outside the "shopping stop" on the way from the airport to the hotel. They gave us a 5% discount coupon, but we went down the escalator, saw Gucci, Prada and Channel and went straight back up and wandered around the streets.

Snake

This morning on my way to school I had the excitement of stumbling across this. It was still a bit dark, so I didn't notice it until I was right on top of it. Who says Iwate isn't an exciting place to live?!