" Eating at a Korean Restaurant "

                  On the 21st of May, I went to a Korean restaurant with my father. 
             The restaurant is located near my house. At first we were not planning to 
             go to this restaurant. In fact, we didn't even know this place. 
             We were walking around our neighbor trying to find a reasonable place to dine. 
             There were French restaurants, Japanese restaurants, Italian restaurants, but 
             we had already tried these ones out. So we decided to go into streets we had 
             hardly never been and there we tried to find some place to eat. That day must 
             be our lucky day! Because within 5 minutes we found a Korean restaurant, 
             "����".It was written on the menu outside of the store, Korean typical family 
             food and since I had never had Korean food, we decided to go in. The restaurant 
             had just started its business, actually 3 days from its open. Till then I had 
             no clue of what Korean food was, apart from the famous Kimuchi. The people 
             working there were all Korean, and the place was, because it had only started 
             to run, very clean. The place was decorated with Korean furniture, very 
             beautiful. The main food served was Bibinba, a don-mono in Japanese. It comes 
             in a bowl, filled with rice at the bottom. On top, there were sliced raw beef 
             meat, several vegetables, like bean sprouts, leeks, and so on. There was a 
             bottle of red pepper on the table so that we could control the chemical 
             "hot-ness" on our own. Beside this, the rest of the menu was some what similar 
             to that of Chinese cooking.

                           About the name of the restaurant "����", isn't this name charming? 
             Korea is a continental country and the people living there were originally nomads. 
             Their homes must have been made of grass. The name means "a house made of grass". 
             In the old days the homes of the nomads must have been made of grass, and in the 
             houses they must have been eating Bibinba and Kimuchi!

                            Now let I would like to talk about what kind of creativity I felt 
             at this restaurant or not this paper will be only an appraisal of Korean food. 
             I guess this didn't have to be Korean food. Japan has brought in technologies, 
             language, written characters, clothings, and many other things from abroad. 
             But the food. The Japanese food is its original. One of the most nearest 
             countries to Japan, Korea even has a very different dish on its table at dinner. 
             In terms of economic technology, Japan is criticized to be a "copier" and not 
             only in these fields but nowadays Japan's relative impression itself is regarded 
             as a "Copier". But that is not right. We have tradition and history of our own, 
             that was highly creative once. Knowing that and taking pride in that is very 
             important. I would like to repeat, that we were once the most creative creatures 
             throughout the world.

Written by Shunsuke Nagao
based on the his portfolio project of 1998



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