스튜디오 지브리 입체조형전 | Studio Ghibli Exhibition

Party Trick: Taking reallllly flattering photos of people.

We were told about the Studio Ghibli exhibition aaaages ago, and went "it's okay we'll get round to it later on. It'll be less busy that way." It was on for several months, so there was no rush (especially as we were hoping to get tickets for the Ghibli museum in Tokyo).

Flashforward to a few weeks ago and I suddenly remember its existence. We check the website, and lo it's the last ever weekend that it's running for. Of course.

As luck would have it, it coincided with a time we'd arranged to meet up with our friend Nicolette (another south coast buddy), so we all met at Yongsan iPark mall, where the exhibition was apparently hidden away.

Unfortunately, iPark is both enormous and really confusingly laid out. We got lost, quite frequently (as documented in the above photo), even though there were maps dotted around. Maybe it was just us, because nobody else seemed to be lost.

As you can expect from the title of this post, we did actually make it eventually, paid our money, and went in.

Google GIF magic

The first thing you see as you come in is a big animated model of Howl's Moving Castle, complete with clanking, groaning sound effects from the movie. It's so nice and really got us excited for the rest. The photos are pretty self-explanatory, and there are plenty of blogs online that probably did a better breakdown than I can, so I won't bother saying too much.

Calcifer! Eggs! Bacon!

경복궁 와 대림 | Gyeongbokgung & Daelim

So, in the timeline of events, (rather than my horribly non-chronological blog posts) a few weeks after Chuseok Nick and I went on another day out with Rachel and Jamie, this time to Gyeongbokgung and the Daelim museum.

But first: food. Of course! ;D

In honour of Nick, we had bossam (boiled belly pork, what's not to like?) but this time rather than ssam (large salad leaves that you use to make a fajita-style wrap) we had crepe-like pancakes, effectively a thin, plain version of the jeon that we love to eat. It was super good, I'd definitely eat it like that again, but then I'm not even TRYING to convince myself it's healthy via all the salad I eat when we use ssam. ;p

So. Stuffed full of pork, ssamjang and pancakes (and soju) we went to the Daelim Museum where there was an art exhibit called "Persistent Illusions" by TROIKA, a UK-based art collective that'd I'd heard of before but never experienced.

This ominous sculpture greeted us in the main lobby/gift shop.

The rippling mirrors reminded me of The Imprisoned from Skyward Sword and generally made me feel kind of uncomfortable and scared for some reason. But I like it when art causes physical and emotional reactions, good or bad.

For the uninformed: This is The Imprisoned. It's creepy.

Anyway, we headed upstairs to the main exhibits and it quickly became clear that this place was all about the kind of big hipster non-statements that I absolutely adore, so this was very exciting for me.

Deep, man.