(Journal from last Sunday)

Following a late breakfast sunday morning, we made our way through Seoul's subway system to Gyeongpokgung Palace.

We arrived just in time to witness the changing of the guard.

The ceremoney lasted around half an hour, during which a new set of guards paraded around the corner.

The architecture of Korea's traditional buildings is similar to Japan, in that they both use rounded ceramic tiles with sloping roofs. However, a striking difference is the use of colors. While Japan seemed to employ primarily Orange and Red, Korea uses a lot of Greens and Blues in their buildings.

There are various buildings throughout the palace grounds, with paths winding between them and large courtyards. I wish I knew which building was which, but we were just doing a walking tour on our own. Apparently the palace complex used to have many more buildings, but a lot were destroyed during the Japanese occupation in the early 1900s.







A neat little building on an island in a pool. Unfortunately, visitors didn't have access to it.







Following this, we went to the Buddhist Lantern festival. The festival started with a street fair from Jonggak station to Jogyesa temple. Because Buddha's birthday is this coming Saturday, all the Buddhist temples in the country are adorned with colorful paper lanterns.

Jogyesa, being one of the busiest as it is located in central Seoul, has a virtual cieling of lanterns.



An entertainer in front of the temple singing to the crowd. He was actually pretty good.

The inside of the temple.

Following that, we ducked into a Dunkin' Donuts and watched some breakdancers perform on a stage. What do break dancers have to do with Buddha's birthday? I don't know. A celebration of life, perhaps? Maybe the simple existence of a party is the only excuse needed to breakdance.

The Latern parade consisted of alternating groups festival goers carrying lanterns and large, colorful floats. As stated in a previous, the parade was pretty orderly to start out with. We got to the main intersection kind of late, so we were a few rows back from the street (which sucked for picture taking). We noticed some floats not turning onto our street, though, so we ran to the street they were going down to get a better view. Police were stationed every fifteen feet or so holding up a tape barrier, but... they ran out of tape. The officer holding the end of the tape half-heartedly tried to keep the crowds from going past him, but, for the most part, after him the crowd just sort of overflowed into the streets. It was largely up to the crowd to get out of the way of any floats coming towards it. I mean, the police had whistles, but people seemed to just ignore them.


Part of the parade.

A collection of floats -not- in the parade. These ones were just lining the street.





Dragons are popular.

They breathed smoke!

And fire!

Blue Chocobos can cross rivers and streams. Actually, it's probably a peacock.

A girl riding a float, waving at the crowd from a lotus flower.

Everyone loves elephants!

Pig on motorcycle with a bazooka. Crowd stands underneath the jets of flame, unafraid. About as much to do with Buddhism as breakdancing, I suppose.

Buddha in a helicopter. It gives him hitherto unknown speed and mobility in personally reaching the masses.

A row of esteemed personages, in glowing lantern form.

A more traditional buddhist float.

This parade was a blast, between dodging parade floats and bright, fire-breathing dragons. From this, I learned that Buddhists definitely know how to throw a party.