Monday 18 July 2011

Mouldy Fruit, Mouldy Life!

[Katherine]: Random aside blog post.....

One of the weirdest things we have come across in Korea is the Korean's obsession with mouldy and rotting fruit. It's very very odd but Koreans seem to leave the fruit they buy until it is mouldy and falling apart and then eat it! Even worse, they try to get us to do the same! I had been offered mouldy fruit a few times at work, but thought nothing of it - thinking it was out of date (unbeknown to the provider). Poor Greg got a much worse deal! His lovely friend and English conversation partner, Won Chul, often bestows gifts on him. Sometimes they are useful - towels and ramyeon and sometimes they are just plain weird! In the spring, he gave Greg Persimmons every week. Now, we don't like most fruit so we never ate the permissions. Greg still kept turning up with persimmons week after week and to our horror we realised they were getting softer and softer and blacker and blacker. We kept just ignoring them and leaving them around the flat (as you do) but one day to our horror one just collapsed in Greg's hand. Unluckily for me he was chasing me with it at the time, so we ended up with Persimmon all over us, the table, the door and the bathroom! We received even MORE persimmons from Won Chul over the next few weeks unti Greg couldn't actually carry them. I think it is the grossest thing I've ever seen:

Apparently, it's a Korean cultural thing to eat rotten mouldy fruit, but not one I agree with! Luckily these days the fruits in season are oranges and melons which don't get half as mouldy - score!

Mouldorama! Can't believe Koreans eat these things!

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