Jeju Island Day 2

In the morning I stopped in a botanical garden on Jeju Island in the Jungmun resort district.  It was near the motel/pension I was staying at and the gardens were very pretty.  They had representative gardens for Italian, French, Japanese, Korean, and Jeju Native plants and such.  Below are the Japanese stone garden and Korean water garden.  There was also an indoor greenhouse and a tower to look down on all of the gardens.

I then went to lunch and some of the power grid conference before heading out to wander along the coast.  The coast was beautiful, and I walked several miles towards a temple and some other nearby attractions.

I walked to the Yakcheonsa Temple and it was really interesting.  It was a Buddhist temple that was also host to some anti-Japanese occupation groups or gatherings.  There was also a very dark cave shrine that I went in mostly to cool off...

There was also this section of funny little monk statues including this one with the cat in his hand!

Last, I went to a raw fish restaurant.  It was expensive, but a cool experience.  They bring you out various types of raw and cooked seafood.  The island is known for a seafood delicacy of abalone (which is actually a sea snail).  There were several dishes they brought out (like the slug) that were still alive.  I was not having that and tried and failed to eat the live slug (settling finally on just scooping it out of it's shell, letting it die and then eating it).  

They bring you the raw fish and then make a fresh stew of the rest of the fish parts that they bring you out at the end of the meal.  They also had a kind of special white kimchi which was more like a pickled ginger and really good. It was actually pretty great (aside from the things that were still living!) and I enjoyed the experience.