Lotus Lantern Festival

This past Sunday we went to the Lotus Lantern Festival in downtown Seoul. This is a huge annual festival to celebrate the birthday of Buddha (which is actually on next Saturday). He was born over 2550 years ago!

The festival is centred on the Jogyesa Temple which is located in Jongno District of central Seoul. The street in front of the temple was blocked off for a large city block or two and there were booths lining the street. The booths offered various Buddhist experiences (like trying out meditation for 5 minutes), arts and crafts (like making prayer bracelets or paper lotus flowers), demonstrations (like tea ceremonies), food and information about Buddhism in Korea and around the world. There were also musical and dance performances.

Jogyesa Temple grounds are set amid the highrise buildings of downtown Seoul. It was all decked out for the big birthday celebrations with canopies of lanterns covering the temple grounds. There were perfomances and various ceremonies on the large stage of the main temple building. Note the swastika on the small building with the drum and bell. This was an ancient Buddhist symbol, long before the Nazis used it.

Our main activity at the festival was participating in the Lotus Lantern Making event, a free event organized for foreigners. The hundreds of participants were welcomed by the head of the Jogyesa Temple. Then volunteers showed us how to prepare and glue little pieces of coloured tissue paper to lantern forms.

Deb and the girls even won prizes for their lanterns! Deb's lantern was judged to be one of the ten best and the girls' were among the best of the kids! Here are shots of my prize winners.

Once Deb and the girls collected their prizes we took our lanterns and went to check out the rest of the festival. Jin and Deb got a lesson on how to make Buddhist prayer braceletes.

The girls coloured a wish card that was laminated and now hangs on our wall. There were all sorts of crafts for sale. Here is a photo of Deb and Jin trying to decide which little balancing dragonfly or butterfly toy to buy.

It was cold (note the fleeces and toques!) so after an afternoon of festing we looked for a nice hot bowl of soup. Note the happy campers below. Then we went to the nearby Tapgol Park to catch the Lantern Festival Parade. They had a section reserved for foreigners who particiapted in the lantern making and we got front row seats. It was great!

As the sun set, small lanterns provided by the organizers were lit along the route and the parade began. Groups of people ranging from kids to women in traditional Hanboks to Buddhist monks carried lit lanterns of various shapes and sizes. Music was provided by numerous pungmul groups and a few marching bands. Then there were the large illuminated paper lantern floats.

The best float of all was the smoking DRAGON!

Some were a bit odd....

It was a grand parade! The girls were getting sleepy and, even with the blankets, we were getting cold, so we decided to head home before the end of the parade. It was a fun day, but Monday was a school day.

Here is a website that has some really good pictures of this year's lantern parade: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/AytX_UbBWlx/South+Korean+Prepare+Buddha+Birthday

Before we sign off I should tell you about our trip to the Flea Market on Saturday. We heard there was a foreigner's flea market every month or so in the Sinseoldong area, east of Dongdaemun (downtown Seoul). Since we still needed a few items for our apartment (like forks and plates) we thought this would be the ideal venue, seeing as how forks and plates are relatively foreign items here. Unfortunately it turns out it was just a regular flea market. I don't think we saw another foreigner there. It was an interesting trip nevertheless. And we did find forks!

Here are a few photos of the place. The approach was encouraging with flags of many nations strung across the laneway. But inside it was mostly standard fare flea market stuff. Pretty neat, but not what we needed. Anybody need a VHS player? Or a Super8 movie projector?

SUCCESS AT LAST! And only for 1,000 won (about a buck) each!

We've been managing with chopsticks and spoons and the girls use the small plastic picnic forks we brought. But we sure can use a fork from time to time. Now we need to find affordable plates.....

Well that's all for now. Bye for now.