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Our dinner selections. The bags contain the octopuses.

The situation here is that in this market area you select the fish you want right out of the tanks/baskets where they're wriggling around, then they take them away, you go up in the elevator, and the next time you see those fish is when they're presented to you sliced up raw on plates. You may know the concept by the Japanese term "sashimi." The Korean word is "hwae." Unlike the Japanese style, here the slices of fish are eaten wrapped in leaves, as with Korean barbecue. The other creatures are eaten by themselves or with a little sauce.

I did not have a hand in these selections, other than to encourage the process and put in a vote for octopus. I put my trust in my hosts, and they did not disappoint.

The red spiny things are called sea squirts or sea pineapples (I've recently learned this from Bizarre Foods, a show on the Travel channel).