Goodby 2023

 



2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Bucheon's promotion to the city. Looking back on the last 12 months, I realized that there were many events celebrating it, but I had never been to. The overall population of Bucheon is declining, and it is understandable because major manufacturing sectors moved out of this city for some other places. Other than the anniversary, nothing much had happen to the city.

Hospitality industries went to through tough time even after COVID19 year and we do not know yet if this is the end of the ordeal of service sectors. I however think this place has potential of being more attractive for both people at home foreign tourists.

As I mentioned in the very first post, while Bucheon has not so many places for sightseeing, here We do not have tourist traps thus you expect to find out things available in Seoul at cheaper price in this city. This is the charm of Bucheon with its convenient location of being between main entry point to Korea, Incheon, and country’s capital Seoul.

Unfortunately, so far, none of any tourism promotion agencies seem to put an effort to use such obvious merits to boost visit to here. Including annual festival of movie and comic books, there are many traditionally held exhibitions and showcases. But I think something else is needed to increase the number of people to come and make restaurant business thrive.

And now, let me talk about what have happened to seafood scene in the last 12 months here. In the early time of Fukushima release seemed to affect. As a result, two most popular seafood places, Hoepocha and Kumade went out of business. Hoepocha had been here since we moved to this city, back to 2015. The restaurant served Korean style sashimi with many delicious side dishes. Kumade was an izakaya located near Lotte department store providing localized Japanese foods and drinks including imported sakes.

I am not sure if the shutdown of these places were preemptive measure of expected aftermath of release of contaminated water, but the fuss over Fukushima seemed to eventually be fizzled out. I did not review the statistical reports regarding how many customers have visited seafood places, apparently, there is not much change after November this year.

While traditional Korean style Hoe places decrease, there is a new trend of increase in izakaya. I suspect that this may have something to do with recent boom of travel to Japan. In the back alley behind Hyeondai department store, several izakaya have been opened over last three month and a new one is under construction that will be finished within few weeks. We visited some of them and had good impression due to their successful localized dishes and good manner of serving customers. However, I think the competition will be keen and some of the new venues are destined to vanish.

As a sashimi mania, I don’t care what happened in Japan at all because I just can’t live without eating fish. May be there are many with same mindset like me. That is good news for seafarer and related business. But recent media overages of thousands of dead fish washed up on Japanese shores raise our concern. Sardines and lately hairtails died in a large number and nobody knows for sure what killed them. Some people speculate that this mass death may be related to released contaminated water from Fukushima. I hope not but we will continue to monitor what’s going on next year.

Happy holiday and New Year!



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