Busan's Madame Tussauds

Busan's Centum City Department Store is billed as the world's largest department store.  I've always wondered what the difference between a department store and a mall is, as the title seems to just be marketing.  Marketing or not, the structure is massive.  It's actually two department stores connected by an underground area with access to the subway and a replica statue of Rome's Trevi Fountain.  There are probably thousands of little stores to shop in, as the department store model means that most shops are set up on the floor with a couple of partitions between them and the surrounding stores.  You sort of walk through them as you walk through the mall, without ever having to really enter a store.  There are sections that are more like an American mall, with massive stores, H&M, The Gap, Ralph Lauren, Banana Republic, Zara, Nike, and on and on and on and on.    You can buy a ton of expensive crap here and a lot of people do.

In order to both fill space and provide entertainment between dizzying credit card bills, Shinsegae and Lotte, the two connected department stores that make up Centum City, have provided a number of entertainment options inside the store.  There's an ice skating rink.  Multiple movie theaters, a fine dining restaurant attached to a movie theater where the tickets are thirty bucks a pop and you watch the movie in recliners, multiple food courts, Starbucks' and other coffee shops all over the buildings, one of Korea's largest spas - Spaland, a huge grocery store, and a recent addition, Madame Tussauds wax museum.  9,000 won entrance fee gets you a chance to stand next to a Johnny Depp figure that looks so real eleven year olds will believe you met him when you show them the picture.  The new lens Sara got me was a huge help photographing inside the museum, as it allowed me to stand right next to the wax figure and take a picture.  With a normal camera, you have to stand way back, which allows lots of other people to get into your pictures.  This lens, you get right up in the face, and only the people you want are in the picture.  As always, here's 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

Die Harder Than Ever Before

Bruce Willis was in the lobby of the mall, just hanging out.  Waiting for trouble to break out so he could stop it in a fiery explosion that would mean an airplane jet falling through the roof and the entire structure exploding in a fire-ball that could be seen from Japan.  Which would be the last safe place on Earth after Bruce Willis was done apprehending a couple of shoplifters.  

Shinsegae

Here's a picture of the department store as it goes up.  It looks like a spaceship.

Senator Obama

Sara met the prez!  Although this likeness seems to be before he entered office.  Not a lot of grey on this guy.

Sara and MB

And the president of South Korea, everybody's favorite, Lee Myoung-Bak.  The Korean election is coming in about a month and they're poised to elect a woman president.

Swoon

Sara's second choice for life partner, after me.  Literally, this wax figure is her second choice, that's how real it looks.

Fashion Icons

Quite the pair.

Hot in Here?

She's just doing this to make Johnny Depp jealous.

Ocean's 2

And then I said, "Dude."  And then he said, "Who let you in here?"

Winners

Sara stole the tiny Academy Award from the giant Angelina Jolie.

The Pitt and the Poe

Is that what Brad Pitt's hair looks like?  And if he cuts his hair in real life, do they have someone style the mannequin?