Here’s another very interesting 간판(store signboard) I found in Seoul, Korea. If you have any interest at all about Japan, you’ve probably heard of Shinjuku, a major commercial center of Tokyo, Japan. And since Japan and Korea are physically so close, you can say that EVERYBODY in Korea has heard of the name “Shinjuku” or 신주쿠, as it’s written in 한글(hangul).

But this store cleverly used that fact in making a not-easy-to-forget store name.

Before you look at the store name, please look at the pictures below.

This is 쭈꾸미(jjukkumi), a kind of octopus, but a smaller kind. 쭈꾸미 is cooked many ways, but mostly with host pepper sauce (고추장) and it’s made to be really spicy hot and chewy at the same time. Great taste, and allegedly very good for health.

And on a different note, “spicy hotness” (매운맛) is often expressed in this Chinese character.

辛

And in Korean, this Chinese character is read “신”, thus the name of the most famous Korean ramyeon, “신(辛)라면“.

Now look at this store name 🙂 And guess what it sounds like.

Yes, it’s 신(辛) + 쭈꾸, and it reads very similar to 신주쿠(shinjuku).

And if you look at the meaning behind this name, it means “spicy hot 쭈꾸미”.

So you can guess that this place serves spicy hot 쭈구미 but probably doesn’t have anything to do with Shinjuku in Japan. But while I was standing there thinking about the meaning and smiling, I realized that I had already memorized the name. 🙂 That’s half the success for them in attracting customers, I guess.