Going International

Recently we went to the international market; for WA people: this is a different market from Uwajimaya. While we were there we could hear a guy over the PA going on and on about something. Since we don't speak or understand Korean we had no idea what. As we were leaving Sam asked the cashier about it (joked is he reading a book? She laughed...uh no.); she said he's conducting flash sales, basically going around the store and selecting an item to feature and marking it down to ridiculous prices! She didn't say it like that but it's pretty much what it is. She did tell us that we should find the moms and grandmas when he's doing this as they're the ones usually following him on his crazy sale trail.

We went to the market yesterday and when the sales started we looked around to where the guy with the mic was. Hee hee! He was surrounded by all the smiling and giggling Korean moms and grandmas! No lie. And yay, he was in the produce section. I joined the crowd and everyone was so nice to me because I'm clearly in the minority here. Is it that obvious I don't understand Korean??

The mic guy told me they were selling (whatever) 8 for $1. I was confused as to what he was selling since all I'm seeing are hands and bags flying in every direction. Was it the purple plums? Or the white things? Thankfully someone handed me a bag since they were out of reach and someone else pointed out it was the white plums (at least that's what I think they are) on sale 8/$1. Once you've got your bag o'fruit mic guy uses his sticker gun to slap on the price. Phew! I made it just in time before he moved onto the next item, which was mushroom water. I'll pass thank you.

We followed him around a bit more but since he was out of the produce section our opportunity for more screamin' deals was pretty much over. That's okay, it was fun being part of the chaos. And hey, I got white plums out of the deal. They're really good.

At our garden we talked with a Chinese couple who are growing Japanese sweet potatoes. At least we think. They didn't speak much English but we did clearly hear "Japanese" and "potato" so after googling this we came up with Japanese sweet potato. They start out as ivy-looking vines which they had growing up some sort of pea trellis. It just looked really pretty and it made the woman really happy that we were admiring their garden so she gave us some crazy looking huge radishes. Ah, that's sweet. Since they were so nice to us and always smiling we gave them some romaine. The woman nodded in excitement and said, "I like!"

Take a look at the radish she gave us.

Hee hee...of course, I'm kidding.