A Fish This Big

Early one Saturday morning several weeks ago, I managed to drag myself out of bed like a corpse from the grave following a rather over-enthusiastic Friday night of celebrating the work-week's end. Early, when taken in the context of my Saturday mornings, is 10:30, but it may as well have been the crack of dawn; I awoke squinting at the world in an early morning misery I very rarely subjected myself to on my precious days off. This morning, though, there were plans: another festival, of course, this one for yellowtail fish. After arriving on the tail-end of several festivals in a row, me and my friend Gabe decided that we needed to get a headstart on the day and make it out to the events earlier to see anything worth seeing at all. Thus it was, with no small amount of effort, that I pried myself out and got dressed, fighting off the advance waves of nausea heralding a full-blown hangover, and crept down to the car waiting to take me to the far side of the island.

The Yellowtail (or Bango) Festival is one of the more popular festivals on Jeju Island, and after last year's it is perhaps the most infamous. Last year, the weather was much worse this time of year, but those in charge of the festival did not think that a little choppy water should stop the festivities from taking place; they loaded (or rather, dreadfully overloaded) a fishing boat with a number of festival-goers and dignitaries, only to have it sink in the rough seas, killing around eight people, including the mayor of Seogwipo City. This would be the first occurance of the Bango Fest since that time, surely relaunched with new safety measures.

We were hoping that no such disasters would disrupt our morning as we arrived at the outskirts of the seemingly-enormous tent grounds, packed with shops selling everything from medicinal herbs to knock-off North Face jackets to back-flipping robot dogs. On the way in, we passed by a what was possibly the least safe carnival ride I have ever seen, which I gave wide berth to even in taking a photo of it, lest the ride come undone and fly off, crushing me. As if trying to top the shock of the truck-back disaster-waiting-to-happen we had just witnessed, a food vendor perched right outside the entrance to the actual festival grounds had a steaming bowl on his cart, right beside the rather common snails, of what appeared to be roaches. It was days later that I found out that these were actually silk worm pupa shells, which I suppose is better than steamed roaches, but I imagine if I had known, it would have still been disgusting to watch the lines of smiling kids shoveling these crunchy brown insects into their mouths.

As we arrived, we saw a crowd gathering at the foot of a group of what looked like raised platforms in the center of the docks where the festival was being held. Men in green neoprene waders were marching to a shallow pool constructed within steel barriers which were full of yellowtail, and being steadily stocked by fisherman carrying net-fulls of the fish from nearby fishing boats. After an endlessly long introduction (though I suppose every speech I have to listen to here seems to take ages, since I cannot understand a word of it), the large group of men plunged into the pool of fish, and began a race to see who could catch the most fish by hand. It was clearly a skill which must be acquired, as the younger men and sole child who participated ended up missing far more than they caught, the child falling face-first into the water as he was bested by one particular quarry. The fish, now caught for a second time since they had been snatched from the ocean, were taken over to long white tables, where burly fishmongers filleted them, and I, who was forunate enough to have obliviously wandered over to exactly the right spot before this occurred, was first in line for what I had been praying for since arrival- free fresh fish. It was a matter of minutes between the fish being knocked out and it being laid out on a plate, and as a result it was some of the tastiest raw fish I've ever had.

The fishermen's prey.


Moments after the scramble began.


A professional at work


Seaside sashimi


Not content, however, with the measly mouthfuls I was given for free at the chopping blocks, I traipsed (or I suppose that I traipsed; having perhaps never seen a clear example of traipsing, I cannot be sure that such an action occurred) over to the food tent, where I used the one useful Korean skill I have achieved, that is, reading hangul characters, to order a $20 platter of yellowtail for myself and my friend. I soon learned that he did not in fact enjoy eating raw fish, which raised the question in my mind as to why one would attend a festival celebrating one of sashimi's (using the term both loosely and transculturally) most celebrated fish breeds if not to consume said fish raw? I stuck to my order, however, and soon received a massive plate of sliced yellowtail, which I consumed in its entirety, all the while being covertly filmed by a cameraman for the local news station, whom I pretended not to notice. I suppose footage of foreigners doing Korean things, like eating a whole raw fish, for example, is a novelty; this was neither the first nor last time I have been filmed in Jeju doing something which undoubtedly, and perhaps unnecessarily, surprises the locals. I do not, in this instance, know if I made the cut and was featured on air.

Before (after having a few exploratory bites)


After (chopsticks added for size reference)


The day had only just begun, and soon got even better, as we, in our travels homeward, glimpsed a gaping dragon head emerging from a roadside building. We stopped to investigate, and learned that we had found the Crocodile Park. It was indeed a crocodile park, yet so much more... well worth the admission price. But that's a whole new entry.