ELIISA RAATS BLOG : VISITING BUCKHANUN VILLAGE AND YOGESA TEMPLE in first free day in korea with Anna

That was a beautiful day. It was sunday and one of the first days that was not raining in daytime. Usually Korea has big raining season in summer time and when it rains you feel like under heavy shower. But this day was nice and we decided to do something nice.

Bukchon Hanok Village is Seouls largest area for traditional korean homes. Is called North Village and is home to about 900 habitants called hanouk. We saw there extremely many tourists.

After we decided to go to visit the Jogye sa temple which is just around the area and visited also Central Buddist Museum. We were just walking around until we went to temple information office and asked about some information. The man was so nice there he decided to show us the upper floor of the temple,usually where tourist are not allowed as he explained. And even to take some pictures.
He explained the importance of fish symbol in buddist culture and the main philosophies about the buddhist culture. He told us to come back at 6 clock afternoon,then we could take part also from the buddist ceremony. We decided we will defenetly try it and because we still had some time we went to visit Central Buddist Museum. There were some Buddha pictures and history from buddism.

We had meanwhile some ice-cream and went to bookshop and came back at 6 o'clock.
First we sited in a completely wrong place, it was in the stairs in front of the door. One lady told us that this was the way for monk to enter the temple and no one can sit there. She gave us the little pillows where we could sit and follow the buddist ceremony. Buddist ceremony starts with two monks playing trum in up floor of temple,the place where the man from information center had taken us. Then two monks come down from the stairs and enter the temple. Meanwhile there is trum music and everybody is doing hundreds of prayers. Is looking something like going on the floor and then standing again and doing it hundreds of times. When buddha monks enter they start to sing with all the people, and it will last two hours. Everyone has small textbooks.Then there are prayers again and then there is silence. It felt really refreshing experience. One buddhist man sitting next to us said that we did our ceremony very good and we stayed and didn't give up.
We finished around 8 o'clock in evening and then took the metro back. The metro is so huge here,i always go in the wrong direction. Once i changed my train even three times. Now its getting already better.

BUKCHON HANOK VILLAGE