This is

Daegu

 

This is Migliore.  I might call it a Department Store, but Koreans don't.  It's really just a series of small retailers with one or two workers in a booth selling product.  Sometimes the products were all made by one company.   Most of the building is devoted to clothing and accessories.  Two more similar stores are in downtown, Xn Milano and Gallery Zone.  Migliore is the most recent addition.  When it was under construction I took the shot on the right.

This is the center of downtown Daegu.  If you want to know more about Daegu, please check out the Daegu info website.  The green sign under the red arch is over the entry of Debec Department Store.  This central fountain (dry in the winter) is the main meeting spot for Daegu young people.  Refer to the map on the Daegu page if you want to be better oriented.  There is a small circle drawn to represent the fountain.  

Below a block of apartments shine like a crazed beehive in the last rays of the setting sun.  The good thing about these buildings?  Apartments come complete with bathtubs (not a Korean regular), the newer ones have elevators, they are very efficient and you have at least one parking space assigned to you.  The bad things?  Some apartments I have been in have public service announcements occassionally piped directly into homes.  Of course, they are announcements like "There is a crying child with a trike in the stairwell, please check to make sure it's not  yours" and "Don't forget to take your recycling out, tomorrow is the collection day." but I certainly wouldn't want to live with them!  And of course the security guard at the bottom of your building knows when people come in and how long it is before they leave...

 

This is Daegu at night.  You can see rows of apartments, starting to light up as people come home from work and school.  In the foreground you may wonder what all the Christmas lights are about.  Those are what are called variously "budget hotels", "yogwans" and "love hotels" depending on who you are talking to.    They aren't nasty at all, well, at least most "yogwans" (that's the Korean word) aren't.  Most yogwans are clean and quiet and you've always got a private bathroom, a coat rack, a TV, a mini-fridge with free water and maybe a can of coffee or oj.  But they are used primarily by people who pay by the hour for a room with their lover (who is undoubtedly someone else's husband or wife).  Teenagers can't legally use yogwans.   They also are usually too emberrased to face the questions of the old person at the desk to risk being turned away.  Yogwans differ from normal hotels only in that you don't have to sign in, they are cheaper and the parking area is concealed so you can get out of your car and into the door without anyone seeing who you are with.

Andong Int'l Mask Dance Festival   Buddha's Birthday  Court Dancers  Daegu Tech Athletic Festival  Farmer's Music  Korea Korean City: Daegu  Korean Funeral  Kumdo (Sword-form Martial Art)  Poong-gak Susung Girl's Middle School  Taekkyun  Daegu's 400th Anniversary Celebration Home

This is the "Big Bell" which graces "That Park with the Big Bell" as foreigners commonly call this wonderful park, especially popular with teenagers on the outskirts of downtown.  If you look carefully at the stairs you will see a bunch of bags and a kid.  The bags have been set there by the skateboarding kids who are using ramps on each side of me.