| Taipei Day 6 |
[Jun. 14th, 2006|12:55 am] |
The major theme for this day was either shopping or eating.
We got up late for whatever reason today and did not get over to Shaowen's parent's apartment until about 11. There Shaowen's mother had a giant Spring roll for each of us (plus a second kind that were smaller). The big one was as good of a Spring rolls that I've had, and wasn't fried so it was good for you. It had some sort of peanut powder, that made it taste kind of sweet but not overpowering.
45 minutes later, we went out to lunch to eat Shabu Shabu. This was a place that was brought to our attention by Shaowen's cousin. We had had this once while in Tokyo, but the meal we had hear was both better and bigger. They basically give you all the vegetables, and a big plate of meat that you cook in a pot of boiling water, then you dip it in a special sauce (that was some sort of soy sauce base with garlic and green onions in it). It was excellent but to much food for such a short amount of time.
We spent the rest of the day shopping. This included Jeff, Shaowen, Shaowen's sister and cousin, & I. Jeff and I went on a mission to find an appropriate gift for Shaowen's sister. She was responsible for a lot of the planning of our time in Taipei (and Taroko Gorges) and had also paid for many things. We needed to find something nice to show our appreciation. So we were both doing reconnaissance seeing what she looked at and picked up. Maybe she would give us clues to this. The problem was that she really didn't pick up all that much. We had to consult with Shaowen. She finally told us that a gift certificate to a local bookstore chain would be best. Although I felt bad about getting some general like that as opposed to something that they could actually use, she probably would appreciate that more.
At some point, the girls ditched Jeff and I just outside the mall while they took care of some stuff. We started to watch a demonstration near by. We were trying to figure out what it was about. We noticed the words "Touch Aero." After a while a woman stepped out and started speaking in Chinese. Neither of us could understand it. The crowd began to scream "Touch Aero," and the host would throw out gifts to the crowd. Jeff deduced that it must be some sort of a brand name or something. We started yelling it. We also started yelling "Go Ligers" (see our Tokyo adventures).
We met back up and continued shopping for a while. Eventually we made it up to Tom's World which was like a giant arcade. We played several games of air hockey (some of which were we actually lost the puck because it went flying off the table). We also played this very strange game where you had to throw balls into trash cans, and you would get points for each ball that goes in--the challenge is that the trash can lids close at random intervals so you wouldn't be sure how much time you would have. I guess you just had to be there.
At 6:30 we had a huge dinner. It was an all-you-can-eat restaurant that had very good food. They had Japanese tempura, sashimi, sushi, etc. Chinese noodles, soups, fish balls, dumplings, etc. And some western food. In addition to the food was the absurdity of the translations. It's like they weren't even trying. Let me share some of the award winners:
1. Shrimp's ball of the law of the fruit
2. The excellent junket honey thinking of (This was a drink called Calpis which was translated from Japanese into Chinese pronunciation characters--such that it sounded the same in both language--and then literally translated into English)
3. Value highly the fragile fish maw
4. Propagandizing hotly area
5. Beverage please bring ink cup splendid attire at your desk
It seems that we got most of the value of the meal back just from the translations that we found. Although we certainly got our value in food, we left and we all felt somewhat sick of food from the experience (some more than others).
After this, we went to bed. |
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| Public Retraction |
[Jun. 13th, 2006|11:51 pm] |
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Apparently, I was mistaken in saying that Shaowen visited an epidemiologist. What I meant to say was dermatologist. Oops. Sorry! Correction has been made. |
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| Taroko Gorges Day 3 |
[Jun. 12th, 2006|08:51 am] |
We had plans to go explore it but had yet to stop raining. We didn’t feel like getting wet, so we stayed inside today. We didn’t do anything of much interest.
The only thing worthy of writing about is that about an hour before we had to leave, we saw our tour guide again—this time she was working in the restaurant. (She apparently put in a full day as a tour guide & worked in the restaurant other days. In addition to the classes she was taking in Tourism Management. We had actually seen her a few other times.) She had a small rock to give me that was from the shore as a gift—I guess she gave it to me because she saw me picking some out. Shaowen kept nudging me to ask for her email address. In the end, I wimped out. I basically just said thanks, goodbye & good luck.
I went back upstairs and scolded myself for not being more courageous. This was exactly the sort of thing that I wanted to try to force myself to do. After 20 minutes of staring at my journal, as if I were trying to write an entry—I got up and went back downstairs. I asked her for her email address and she gave it to me. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. It was important not just because she was a nice person to be friends with, but because that is such atypical behavior for me. I guess if one does not take advantage of the opportunities for growth, then one never grows.
After that incident, we went back to Haulien, had lunch, and got on a train for Taipei.
When back in Taipei, not much else happened. Jeff & I went out again—to another bookstore—and bought more books. They are both such a bad influence on me ☺. |
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| Taroko Gorges Day 2 |
[Jun. 12th, 2006|08:49 am] |
We had an early morning today. Had to be on a tour bus by 8:40. I was still very tired 30 minutes into the tour. This was not made any better by the fact that everyone was speaking Chinese. Occasionally, Shaowen or Jeff would give me some commentary as to what was going on in English. It wasn’t until our first walk that I started to wake up.
The first stop was along the coast line. We had to walk down a long set of stairs to get there but it was worth it. It wasn’t really a swimming area (there were too many rocks there). The journey was also complicated because it was raining fairly hard. The hotel through which we were going on the tour had provided us very nice umbrellas to use however (I think they get a lot of rain). Otherwise, I would have been out of luck. The beach was nice—it makes up for not being able to go to Emerald Isle, NC this summer). I noticed Gugu picking up rocks, Shaowen told me she collects them. I helped her transport a couple big ones, Then I started to find a few interesting ones. (A lot of them were actually bits of marble because of the intense geological pressure in the region). One other problem we had was mosquitoes. I continued to get bit all over my body including a huge swollen area on my arm, which I think was a spider bite (though not the huge one we saw before, I probably would have noticed that on me & would probably be very ill had I been bitten by it.) It got so bad for Shaowen that she had to go back to the bus.
After this, we stopped at a gate in the road that connected the East & West sides of Taiwan. Shaowen told me there had been 2 roads before that which made traffic difficult so they connected the two. At this point, he tour guide came up to me & started talking to me in English (Until no she only talked in Chinese and I didn’t know if she spoke English.). She seemed nervous because of, I thought, speaking in English. But she spoke well enough for me to understand her.
Our next stop was a side stream & trail that we would walk. Shaowen, influenced by the mosquitoes on the last walk, decided not to go on this walk. We were warned of poisonous snakes & killer bees at the entrance—thankfully we didn’t encounter any. (While poisonous snakes may be on the trail, killer bees exist only in African countries if I am not mistaken.) For the first time on this trail, the water was very clear. Jeff & Shaowen related to me (from the tour guide I suppose) that all the other waters were muddy because of an earthquake that made them so a few years back. A lot of the rock formations in this area were really interesting, I’m not sure but I think that they were marble. Also he pathway, while level, was difficult to walk through for me because the trail had over hanging sections that I had to duck to get through. This was further made problematic because of the umbrella.
Those of us who went on the trail, although it was beautiful, all came back completely soaked. We went to lunch. Jeff, Shaowen’s father, & I all took off our shoes. Jeff got his blessed milk tea. It seemed as though anywhere we went was absolutely beautiful. Even now we were eating lunch watching the clouds play around the mountains in the background. After lunch, we watched a short film on the region & the indigenous people here. The films well put together but I didn’t understand a word of it. There were other people in the theater, but only the tour guide & I from our small group. I asked her how many times she had seen it. She said she normally doesn’t watch it. That’s when I realized that she liked me.
After our stop we went to a pretty amazing temple it was carved right into the face of a cliff and had a waterfall running right through it. The temple had been erected for all the people who had died in the making of the road. It had actually been destroyed & rebuilt 2 times.
After this we visited several indigenous shops where they made crafts. Again the view was spectacular (even though it would not stop raining). Finally the tour guide, one other woman from our tour, Jeff, and I walked along the last trial. It was slightly more dangerous than what we had walked before, as the fall was higher than before & the rapids were faster. I, however, didn’t see it as anymore dangerous than anything else we did.
We came back & I jumped in the bath tub (my first in years ;) ) and it felt great after being soaked all day. After that we went to dinner & then to a dance put on by the hotel. It featured dancers dressed in local gear & performing local dances, though I don’t think they were part of the local tribe. It was quite incredible including an extremely well choreographed routine where the dancers danced around bamboo poles as the poles were moved around.
We saw another spider in the hotel this time & had a mini-adventure (sort of) but this is running too long, so I’m cutting it short… now. |
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| Taroko Gorges Day 1 |
[Jun. 12th, 2006|08:48 am] |
Today, Shaowen, her Parent’s, Jeff, and I took a 3 day trip to the east coast of Taiwan. We took the trains from Taipei to Hualien & took a coach from there to the gorges. The road in was magnificent as was the hotel we were staying at.
After checking into the hotel, we caught a bus from the hotel to a trail along the way we had come. This first trail was called trail of the nine turns. It walked right up against the river of the gorges. The view was breath-taking, and the pictures that I took do a pathetic job of representing the scenes that I saw. It had been raining recently and so there were many waterfalls coming down off the extremely tall cliff-faces (at least 1000 feet) including some that were right on top of us.
After this we went on a trail through the jungle that had been cleared. It started off rather boring. We just walked and were not able to find anything interesting or even take any good pictures. Then, we got to the tunnel. For those of you who have read Lord of the Rings think of Shelob’s Lair without the giant spider. That was what we walked through (The movie doesn’t let you really understand the utter darkness.) Thankfully it was very short & we just had to guide our hand along the wall. The terrain started to get much more hazardous. Also we started to see very large insects. We finally came upon the kind of suspension bridge you would find in Indiana Jones Temple of Doom as Jeff shared. I started humming the theme song. The bridge actually wobbled as we crossed over it. As we walked out of view there was a loud crashing noise which Jeff said were falling rocks. I suggested that the bridge had snapped just like in the movies. On the way to the bus, we saw what I thought was a flying 3 inch long spider. None of us were happy to see it.
When we got back to the hotel we walked around the grounds. We saw a tree that had a huge web in it with the largest spider I have ever seen in person. It had to have been 4-5 inches in diameter and was actually bigger than my hand. After that scare, Shaowen’s father offered to buy us tea—despite the fact that only he & I bought tea. Gugu & Shaowen got Ice Cream and Jeff got a Cappuccino.
I spent some time after looking around. The place really looked deserted. Most of the rooms for activities looked unoccupied & unused. It was as if they invested a ton of money into it & did not get the clientele they expected. Everything is beautiful, but goes unused.
We had a buffet style western dinner & then Jeff, Shaowen, & I searched the hotel. We came upon the game room and played a couple of games of air hockey. We then tried the bumper cars (Yes, I said they invested a lot of money into this place). We all tried to do it but apparently mine was the only one that really worked. Disappointment is an understatement for this event. Finally I fell asleep to reading about Heidegger. |
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| Taipei Day 5 |
[Jun. 12th, 2006|08:48 am] |
Again I’m behind so I don’t quite remember everything. At any rate…
We started the day in the botanical gardens. This time it was just Jeff & I going around. Shaowen wanted to spend some time w/ Gugu shopping. The first thing that greeted us as we walked into the garden was a frog statue that had a telephone inside. We strolled around for about 1.5 hours. After that we went to the historical museum. We saw some western watercolors (which we breezed right through), some authentic Taiwanese furniture, tapestries from a guy who was obsessed with mountainscapes, and finally some calligraphy. We didn’t get to spend much time there so we unfortunately didn’t get to see anything in real detail.
Then we walked around some shops for a while. At this point, we met up with Shaowen and her sister. We ended up back another bookstore. Another set of books purchased while we were there, we found an “Introducing De Sade,” which like the Hegel book that I bought earlier was in comic book form. The pictures were, needless to say, rather graphic. (Think sado-masochism for those of you unfamiliar with Le Marquis de Sade.)
We then went to dinner at a traditional Chinese restaurant. Shaowen was nice enough to pay. After that we stopped by her parents apartment for a while & then they went to see an dermatologist for Shaowen. Apparently, you can schedule an appointment in the morning to go see them at night here in Taiwan—try doing that in the states. She was having problems with what I thought was eczema.
That night at the hotel, Shaowen & Jeff gave me some gifts from Taiwan. (She had given me a traditional shirt earlier, which looked really nice on me.) They also presented me with two Buddhist charms one for traveling & one for the year of my birth (which is rooster). They also gave me a seal to mark my books. Earlier Shaowen told me that these seals are how Chinese people mark their work or belongings. I was and am very grateful for these gifts. |
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| Taipei Day 4 |
[Jun. 12th, 2006|08:47 am] |
I’m getting badly behind and barely remembering anything for this day. (Sorry ☹) I will try my best to remember.
We started today by visiting the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. It was only myself, Shaowen and Jeff. This is a much larger the Sun Yat-sen memorial Jeff & I saw earlier. It had a large main gate that opened onto the main courtyard. To each side of the courtyard were two theaters one for concert and one for drama. And in the back was the building with a grand staircase leading to an enormous statue of Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek was the person that led a major contingent of people from mainland China to Taiwan when Communists took over. He set up a government in the ways of Sun Yat-sen and established a true democracy. Jeff had told me earlier that if Communists were ever to take over in Taiwan, they would leave the Sun Yat-sen memorial as it is (the one who turned China from an empire into a modern nation) and tear down the Chiang Kai-shek memorial. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. In addition to these buildings there was a garden behind and on the sides of the main memorial. While we were wandering around, we stumbled upon some performers practicing the “Peking Opera.” Shaowen told me that each of the musicians were playing instruments that are only used in China. There is also a singer (who happened to be singing in the guise of a woman—so it was rather high pitched).
After this, we met Shaowen’s sister (who I will henceforth call Ur-jei) and her mother (who I will henceforth call Gugu) for lunch. It was a Japanese restaurant and I had a seafood with rice dish. The waitress spilled soup on me (she kept saying sorry but I was just staring at her blankly—I didn’t know what to say until the others were saying something which I repeated).
We visited a temple afterwards together. This was again a similar kind of Buddhist temple, but the difference was that in Japan the temples are mostly plain. In Taiwan, the temples are extremely ornate. They have bright colors (mostly red, which is the most popular and auspicious color of China) and many carvings of dragons. There was even spiritual music being pumped over the loud speakers.
After this, I don’t remember much. We ate dinner. Traditional, homemade Wonton soup. It was delicious and much better than the stuff you get in the states. We also had Zhong-zi which is glutinous rice mixed with pork and beans wrapped in a prism like shape using bamboo leaves. Shaowen told me that the story behind this was that there was once a poet who wrote things about the then-emperor. The emperor despised him, but the people loved him. The emperor sentenced him to death by drowning. After he was thrown in the river, all the people in the village gathered to throw these dishes into the sea. The bamboo cover was to prevent the fish from eating his body.
At some point, Jeff & I went out to a tea shop at some point. Then I had trouble falling asleep. |
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| Taipei Day 3 |
[Jun. 7th, 2006|08:51 am] |
Today we had a planned day ahead of us. We would first visit "Eslite," which is the largest bookstore in Asia, and then go to Taipei 101, which is the tallest building in the world presently--though I was told Dubai is building one that is taller. The group of those going consisted of Shaowen, Jeff, Shaowen's mother and sister, and myself. After breakfast, we met up at their house and then departed.
We spent a lot of time at this first bookstore. At first, we kind of went off to our own corners then Jeff, Shaowen, and I converenged on the Media, Cultural Studies, and Philosophy sections. I bought books that were a very short introduction to Poststructuralism, Kierkegaard, A Critical Thinker's Series book on Paul Ricour, Remediation, a book on video game studies, a book on postmodernism and design, and a book on virtual media studies. I'm not going to disclose Jeff and Shaowen's list because that would cause a buffer overload for the server (for the non-computer scientists in the audience, that means it would be a number so large that the computer could no longer count it--i.e. if I have a buffer ranging from -255 to 256. Then if I tried to put in 257, the computer would read it as -255.)
After getting all of our books, we went down to have lunch at the food court downstairs. Shaowen told me that she would help me to find something to eat since everything was in Chinese. She asked if I would like noodles or rice. I said noodles and then asked if I would like noodles with beef on them and I said sure. So she told me that she saw a restaurant that had that. We went to it and she ordered it for me. I got my food and went back to where we were sitting. As I sat down, her mother told me that it was hot--but I thought that it wouldn't be too bad. Wow, that was a bad mistake. That dish had me in tears, it was so hot. Everyone looked at my reaction and started to give me their food so that I would stop eating mine. Eventually Shaowen's sister got up and ordered me something similar that wasn't spicy. We started joking that Shaowen was trying to assassinate me. And we all had a good laugh. Then Shaowen's sister, Jeff, and Shaowen all tried my food and each confirmed that it was indeed very hot. Shaowen's mother said that the dish is normally not that hot but we got it from a Szechuan restaurant. Szechuan cuisine is notoriously spicy and I experienced it firsthand. Note to self: don't let Shaowen pick food for you any more :).
Everyone got up and went to the restroom. Jeff came back first. He revealed to me that he had misplaced a small notebook that Shaowen had loaned him. He said that he might have left it in his basket in the store (we had yet to buy are books but were still browsing, but the front desk held them for us--think of it as halftime), but he thought that he may have left it on some of the shelves somewhere. First, Shaowen’s mother said that she was going back to the apartment because she needed to take a nap (Shaowen told me that she gets up really early in the morning and needs to take a nap in the afternoon).We go up to the desk after lunch to get our books, but Shaowen and her sister say that we can just leave them there and get them when we’re ready to check out—but Jeff insists that he wants to have them with him. When we get our baskets back, Jeff realizes that they are not there.
Jeff and I go back to the philosophy section and Shaowen and her sister split up with us. When we get there, we find it we see it right there on the shelf. Jeff said he was lucky because Shaowen would have killed him if he didn’t find that (it had some of her notes for her own blog on the trip, which she didn’t have anywhere else). I suggested that Shaowen would make him finish off the noodle dish she got for me. When Shaowen and her sister came back to us, Jeff relayed the story to her and had trouble finding the notebook. He got caught up in his own story again. Eventually he found it in his pocket.
We made our selections. Purchased the books and went to Taipei 101. We purchased our tickets to go to the observation deck. This would give us a complete Panoramic view of most of Taipei. On most days, apparently the rain clouds and fogginess would prevent one from seeing much of the city, but we had excellent whether. As mentioned above, not only is this the largest building in the world, but it also has the fastest elevator in the world. It took us 37 seconds to get from the 5th floor to the 89th floor. The elevator even had a really neat visualization of our ascent. They even featured a completely unnecessary set of stargazing animations on the elevator ceiling and a new age soundtrack as the elevator climbed. They got me an English audio phone explaining what I was seeing that came with the ticket—it actually didn’t help at all so I was sort of half-listening to it and eventually gave up altogether. After we had strolled around the deck, Jeff, Shaowen’s sister, and I decided to go up to the top level that we could go to (the 91st floor) and go outside. This cost an additional 100 NTD (New Taiwanese Dollars) which is about US$3. It was extremely windy up there. One poor girl had to keep her hands on her skirt the whole time because it kept blowing up.
After this we went down to Pageone, another bookstore on the 4th floor of the building. We spent another 30 minutes there. I got a book on Hegel called Introducing Hegel. This is only of note because it is basically explaining the philosophy of Hegel in comic book form. Jeff pointed out a similar book on Sartre to me and spoke highly of another one that he had read (on Logic, I believe), so I figured I’d give one a try.
We made a quick stop over at Shaowen’s parents apartment, then went to another bookstore (Chinese only, so Shaowen could get a book that her sister recommended). After this, Jeff took me to a cheap video store—as in you can get a DVD for $3 and it is totally legit. He said he didn’t understand how it worked, but he was right. He bought a few BBC performances.
While we were doing this, Shaowen and her sister were meeting up with their cousin and bringing her over to their parent’s apartment for dinner. So when were all rounded up, we went back to the apartment. We had chicken, fish balls (pretty much exactly what you would expect them to be, they’re pretty good), rice, and veggies. Shaowen’s sister had also bought us another Onion cake (which we had had some day past for breakfast). Jeff and I agreed this one wasn’t as good as the one we had had before.
Sometime after dinner, Shaowen’s mother had brought out lychee fruit. It is a very sweet fruit, but protected by a hard spiky shell. It probably is very rare in the states but it was very tasty. It was a difficulty opening up the outer layer but was definitely worth it.
Finally, Shaowen, Jeff and I stopped at a tea shop. Because of all the noise that Jeff had been making about milk tea, I decided to try it without sugar. It actually was pretty good. Jeff had the same but chose the one where there was pudding in the bottom. And Shaowen had a certain tea that was flavored by a certain type of Chinese flower—it was definitely an acquired taste.
Finally, we went back to the apartment again—because Shaowen left what we would have for breakfast there for tomorrow. And then we went home. |
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| Taipei Day 2 |
[Jun. 5th, 2006|07:17 am] |
Today we didn't spend much time doing much exploration. We mostly spent time at Shaowen's parent's house. We had discussed going to a temple, but in the end did not go because there just wasn't enough time.
Shaowen and her sister found an Irish bar to go to. They took Jeff, their cousin, and I. It was a bar called the Shannon. It was named after the river Shannon and I found that quite interesting. As it turned out, it was quite an authentic place (ok, given the fact they had to augment pathetic Irish cuisine with non-Irish foods. Galway Grilled Shrimp, I mean, come on). But there was Irish there, which was spelled and used appropriately (unlike the Irish Lion--a bar in Bloomington--where they augment the Irish language with Scottish Gaelic).
We had a good time though. I was on a Guiness kick. So with the exception of ordering one Nutty Irishman, which was not what I ordered but whatever--I'll take it, I was drinking Pints of Guiness all night. We also got dinners there. Only Shaowen and I got traditional Irish dishes. I got Coddle and Shaowen got Shepard's Pie. It was good. We spent a good bit of time there drinking and talking. Shaowen's sister kept accusing Jeff of having had too much to drink, which Jeff denied (I guess that's why he was the first to fall asleep when we got back to the hotel room :)).
Shaowen's sister and cousin had to leave (her cousin had to be up by 6:30 to commute to school). So we stayed and finished our drinks. Jeff gave me the check so that I could pay for a portion of it. Shaowen quickly lifted it from me and didn't let me pay. That was very kind of her. She and her family have really been taking care of me ever since we have gotten here.
Afterwards we headed home. |
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| Taipei Day 1 |
[Jun. 5th, 2006|07:16 am] |
Our time in Taipei will be a little bit different. Since Shaowen is here visiting her family, we spend a lot of time with them a good portion of it at there place and will squeeze in sightseeing (since I’m the only one who really hasn’t seen this place before) in between. Her family is very colorful and hospitable. I really feel like they are going out of there way to make me feel welcome (despite the culture difference—but I’m sure they are getting accustomed to it somewhat with Jeff having married their daughter). I like them.
Today, it was just Jeff & I doing sightseeing. We didn’t spend all that much time doing it at that. We did visit the Dr. Sun Yat-sen memorial. He was the person responsible for converting China from an empire (that had succumbed to many of the imperial forces of the west) to a democracy that got China and Taiwan looking towards the future and competing with other western countries. Not sure if I remembered all that correctly but it was something like that. It had a large memorial building, with a surrounding park and garden. The park and garden were nice with a lake and section devoted to the flag. Jeff explained to me that patriotism is much greater in Taiwan than in Japan out of a common need. We explored the building and it had videos and exhibits based on this man. Unfortunately, I could only read the little bit that was in English. Before we left we got to see the changing of the guards that surround the statue of him. The guards in much the same way as the guards that guard Buckingham Palace do not move. They stand before the statue motionless. When the ceremony occurred we watched the precise, practiced movements they made to get in position. At one point they stopped and everyone ran out to stand and take pictures with them. Jeff and I stood aghast, but apparently it was alright and part of the performance. We found it humorous that they actually built this into the ceremony.
We then briefly visited National Taiwan University, which is the Harvard of Taiwan universities. We walked around and saw that today was actually the day when many of the students here were graduating. We got a call and were told that we needed to get back for dinner so we left.
Shaowen, Jeff, and I accompanied Shaowen’s mother and father to dinner at a Thai restaurant. Supposedly, it was a Taiwanese take on Thai food (just as General Tso’s Chicken is an American take on Chinese food). Nonetheless it was very good. The parents ordered all the food in Chinese so I had no idea what we ate. The most interesting part was the filet of fish that they ordered which was the entire cooked fished prepared in a sauce (minus some of the innards), it looked impressive and probably not something that everyone would be used to eating. After dinner we walked back to our place and did laundry. We only had enough clothes to get us here to Taipei. |
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| Transit Day (6-2-06) |
[Jun. 4th, 2006|11:26 pm] |
Kyoto to Tokyo to Taipei
Nothing more to say |
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| Kyoto Day 3 |
[Jun. 4th, 2006|03:24 am] |
Our last day in Kyoto. We had some loose ends to tie up. First Jeff had looked up the temples that appeared in “Lost in Translation.” One of the temples was one that was closed at the end of “The philosopher’s walk” when we got there. We were going to see these, then maybe head out to west Kyoto for a bit. We would also try to finish up some shopping, catch the performance that we missed the night before, and have a traditional several course Japanese meal—all in one day. We strive for efficiency.
The temples were both worthy of being glamorized by Hollywood. We first went to Heian Temple. The temple itself was impressive with its massive size and attention to detail, but the garden behind it was even more magnificent. I think there was a stream that grew larger & larger becoming a pond & then a very small lake This paralleled with how amazing the garden became. The first small path & stream actually led us to believe this would be as disappointing as we had found elsewhere but when we first saw the small pond, we changed our thinking, Top this off with the fact that the irises were just starting to bloom & it made the experience even better. We found some stepping stones over the pond that were used in the movie. Finally , we found a beautifully carved bridge that crossed the lake to the exit. Jeff commented that the praise of Japanese gardens is well-deserved, just not in Tokyo.
We next went to Nanzen-Ji. While there we visited a small garden, which was nice but tiny in comparison to the last garden. It had a waterfall; I like waterfalls. After that we visited a rock garden. It was interesting but I found nothing of not to say about it.
We decided to scrap West Kyoto because we wouldn’t have time & instead ate lunch (at the same place as when we first got to Kyoto—we liked it) & shopped. I got some neat things for myself and others but ran out of cash on hand & a surprising amount of stores don’t take credit cards. The shopping experience was themed by the attempt of Jeff & me to find as many “Engrish” t-shirts as possible. Engrish basically means English that is just completely absurd (I might have mentioned this before). We found many examples of which I took a few pictures. Later that night, we visited www.engrish.com to spend the night in hilarity.
We then went to the performance, which was about one hour log. It was a sampling of many different Japanese cultural arts. It performed a tea ceremony, koto music, flower arrangement, gagaku (which is a traditional band performance), Kyomai (which is a dance by a Geisha & peculiar to Kyoto), Kyogen (which is a humourous one act play), and Bunraku (which is a Japanese puppet show, but the puppets are very elaborate requiring 3 stage hands to move it). I was not happy with the performance, but I think the reason was that everything was squashed together. Although you got to experience a lot more at once, you didn’t get anything in a very deep or meaningful way. I really only appreciated the koto music, with the bunraku a distant second. This needed to have been longer for my taste.
Finally we looked forward to our late Japanese feast. When we got to a restaurant that does that sort of thing we found out… you guessed it... we needed to get reservations for it in advance. After cursing at the guide book for once again not sharing this information with us, we had a very nice & still pricey meal nonetheless. Jeff & I got Shabu Shabu, which is a very tender and delicious cut of meat that you cook in boiling water (that is provided with the meal), dip in a special sauce, & eat with rice. It also had miso soup, and some other side dishes (which were foreign to our tates) and a squid appetizer which I liked. Shaowen got every kind of tofu dish the place had to offer ( a series of side dishes)—so I guess she had her multicourse feast after all. We all had sake with our meal. After dinner, we wet to our machya one last time. |
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| Kyoto Day 2 |
[Jun. 3rd, 2006|11:23 pm] |
We had an ambitious Plan today. We would visit Nijo Castle, the imperial palace, & the philosopher’s walk. Then we would take in a show at the Gion Corner. Jeff’s feet were in bad shape & it was a long walk so we took cabs all day. After seeing how far we drove, I’m glad we got the cabs.
Our trip started at Nijo Castle. This castle was created by Shogun Tokagawa in the late 16th century. It wasn’t a castle in the western sense, though it did have rather thick walls. It seemed more like a palace. Furthering this notion, it was used as a sign of wealth & power as the center of 16th century government. An interesting phenomena of these structures are that the floors creak when you walk on them—this was to allow the emperor to know when someone was walking around whether friend or foe. We were next to several school kid tour groups. So naturally they were all jumping around. Making a lot of noise. But I didn’t mind, they seemed to have more fun then all the grown-ups who were not doing it.
Outside the castle a couple kids came up to me & asked me if I spoke English to which I replied that I did. I notice they had a script & so I played along. One small boy asked me some questions that I answered. For my answers they would all talk to each other to figure out what I said. For instance, I was asked where I was from and said “Indiana.” They didn’t understand me, so I spelled it. As I said each letter, the kids would take a minute to register it and then would yell it out to the scribe who was asking me the questions. After answering the questions, Shaowen asked fro them to take a picture with me.
We then went to the imperial palace, which yet again we apparently had to make reservations for. But this could be without much notice, we just had to wait for them to open after lunch. So we got lunch ourselves at the cafeteria nearby. (This however was a Japanese food cafeteria and we each got a Don dish, which is a bowl of rice with some sort of meat). The only thing of note on the tour (on not only did we need to get reservations but they had to lead us around, we couldn’t go off on our own) was the very strangely intoned English of the Tour guide.
We went on the “Philosopher’s Walk” after this. This was a very serene walk in more secluded portion of Kyoto. I was not feeling so hot (not sure why in retrospect—just felt like I had no energy) so I don’t really remember what we saw. I think we saw a garden & a couple of shrines, but I don’t remember any details just that there were two French men visiting one of the shrines we were at.
After that we searched for dinner, this is when I really felt out of energy and we went in one of the first places we found, which was a Japanese-Italian pasta place. It was getting late & we wanted to catch a show at the Gion Corner, which we though started at 8:40. When we got there, we found out the guide book lied to us: they had shows only at 7 & 8. So we just decided to call it a night & come back the next day. |
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| Kyoto Day 1 |
[May. 31st, 2006|10:00 am] |
The first leg of the day involved catching the bullet train. First we had to take a train from Shinjuku to Tokyo station. It was rush hour and everyone was crowded on the train to get on. It was worse than our prior rush hour train experience. We actually had to wait for another train because we couldn't all get on this the first train. Once we figured out what stop we had to get off at (Things aren't marked well in tokyo) we got off and boarded the bullet train.
The bullet train is quite interesting. Before our boarding, they actually reveresed the direction of the train (including flipping the direction of all the seats). It supposedly is the fastest train in the world. We didn't experience this until outside tokyo. Also you can supposedly see Mt. Fuji from the train, but yet again we missed it. Just our luck!
We got into Kyoto station & realized we had about a 1 mile walk ahead of us. I had the two heaviest bags (because I'm such a nice guy) and they asked if we should just get a cab. If they were up to it, I said we should just walk. So we started our trek. We got to a block from where we were going and couldn't tell exactly where it is, so we start asking for directions. It turns out we were like 10 feet away from it. So the check in place walked us to our Machya (a little traditional Japanese style house that we were staying in).
The house was amazing. We had two stories connected by the most narrow staircase, I have ever seen. We had a kitchen (no real appliances though, only little things), two living rooms, one with a table, bathroom, a small bamboo garden, and a sleeping area complete with a couch and internet access. it was perfect. The beds were unusual but nice. We literally were sleeping on a futon directly on the floor, but it's actually pretty comfortable. We all agreed that this was much better than the Star Hotel, our previous living arrangement.
After getting settled in, we had some daylight left to spend. We took a stroll over to the Geisha District of Kyoto. We went to the Yasaka Shrine at the end of the district. This shrine had a few more people than some of the others (or than I would have liked), about 50 or so, but it was still rather quite due to its size. As always, it had a collection of different temples in it. Jeff commented at this point that the number of gringos had increased since we came to Kyoto.
We continued on walking around the district after visiting the Shrine. I started to notice how irritable I was getting. I was getting annoyed by little things and just generally being impatient. I don't know if my traveling partners noticed, but I'm sure they could guess something was amiss with me. I am always like this after traveling--I think (but only leaving somewhere--not really on the initial trip away from home). I had to just stop talking and compose myself becauseI didn't want to act like that. I wanted to will myself to behave differently. For the most part, it worked.
We expected to find some actual Geisha somewhere in the district, but only Jeff saw two momentarily. Shaowen and I saw none. Geisha are traditionally dressed Japanese women. They were a kimono, walk on wooden shoes (I guess), wear wigs, and have face paint on. Jeff did point them out when they went inside a building that had bamboo blinds, which you could see through. I still couldn't see them however.
We spent some time wandering around a stream we had found. We had some pictures taken together and of course reciprocated the favor of for the people who took photos for us. We then went to find a bank, which is not an easy task in this town. It took us 30 min to find an ATM that was international and had english. We finally got our money after being directed halfway across Kyoto (in the figurative sense). We then ate dinner at Star Restaurant. We likened it to the Japanese version of Steak & Shake. 80s pop, tons of teenagers, and serving rather junky food. It was a nice breakd & the price was right. Plus the dishes it servered were sort of Japanese style. After this, off to the machya.
Ok, got some more photos up. As always go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/81509384@N00/. As a note, these include a few pictures that were taken today, which I have not yet blogged about (I'm a day behind). |
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| Tokyo & the Ligers |
[May. 30th, 2006|10:52 am] |
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During one of our many excursions through the streets of Tokyo we encountered a closed road. We thought that some sort of festival or performance was happening. We investigated this scene. We found out that it was only one block and it was some random high school cheerleaders. Their name: The Ligers. They had completely appropriated everything they could about American high school cheerleading. They yelled, "Go...fight...win" in English. They even said, "Give me a ##japanese character##" I mean come on appropriate away, but at least use Japanese. Well it was a worthwhile sight at least. Especially since they were playing a dancy version of the Flinstone's Theme Song. |
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| Tokyo Day 7 |
[May. 30th, 2006|10:18 am] |
Well, I thought we weren't going to have internet access in Kyoto but apparently we do. I am going to catch up with our last day in Tokyo.
After being denied our opportunity to go to Hakone & Mt. Fuji, we had to resort to a Plan B. We grabbed a tourism book from the hotel lobby & thumbed through it. We found a list of potential tours we could do. We found a list of potential tours we could do. We found one for a fraction of the price of Mt. Fuji, that showed older Tokyo (when it was called Edo) so this would be 18th century style Japan--a precursor, perhaps, for some of the stuff we would find in Kyoto. We only had to go to the goverment building and hook up with a tour there. that was a quick 10 minute alk into East Shinjuku (the less flashy side of shinjuku where we had our $15 cocktails).
When we got there, Jeff spoke with the information desk abou going on the tour. He said, "I've got some bad news & a whole bunch of good news. First, the bad. We needed to book the tour 3 days ago." We've been getting screwed like this the whole trip :). "But, the lady said what train exit to get off at for the tour, there is a station just below us, she showed me all the spots on the tour, and she said that there is a free observation deck at the top of this building." I responded, "So, it's like we get to go on the tour for free." Let's call this breaking even with Tokyo, which charges you an arm and a leg for your presence there.
We went up to the observation deck & were able to see pretty much all of tokyo on a day with better visibility we could even have seen Mt. Fuji. I saw many places we had been the Meiji park in Harajuku, Shinjuku, the park hyatt, akasaka. We stayed up there for pictures and afterwards began our tour.
We took the metro out to the location the Lady gave us (some 14 syllabal place which I cannot not remember) & went to the Edo Musesm. Not sure what to expect we paid 500 yen for admision. Although it was small, it was actually very interesting. They had recreated a small city block of what Edo looked like at the time, comlete with ambient sounds, weather conditions, and an animatronic cat. We walked around it & took pictures of the buildings. There were also video clips, pictures, & diagrams giving more information--but they didn't help us any because I only speak the Northern dialect of Japanese and these were all southern dialect of Japanese (Despite the $32.50 I payed for Berlitz' book on the Northern Dialect, I have found out that there are only 2 people who speak it on Sakhalin Island. Advanced Capitalism.) I finished a puzzle of a bird :). Not sure why that was there. Although it did remind me of how much I like puzzles.
After the museum, we were starting to get hungry. We looked for restaurants but could find none (or at least none that we could tell--we have come to depend on plastic food displays as being indicators of the essence of being a restaurant). We eventually just gave into our hunger & went to a convenient store that we called "Sunpus" because it was written in English Letters but we could not figure out what the 'P' was supposed to be. We got drinks & some food items--I got 3 Maki rools, a friend potato sandwich, and a meatball kebahb-like thing, Jeff got two fried potato sandwiches and a kebahb, Shaowen got a rice dish and a kebahb. In Jeff and my defense, we thought the potato sandwiches were actually pork. It was to our dismay that we found out they were potato. We decided to go to the park, our next stop, for a picnic. We paid 150 yen thinking this would be worse than the Meiji park, which was 500 yen complete with mythical gardens (also known as not worth its weight in yen). To our suprise, it turned out to be a phenomenal experience. We ate our lunch under a small pavillion and saw the entire park from where we sat. As we ate, Jeff began to sing a song he had just made up called "Gringos in the Garden" because he saw a white guy in the park with a backpack on his stomach and was amused. We made jokes about him and his camera. We said he was making all us gringos look bad. After lunch, we wandered around the park. I sat down on a bench next to an older japanese man, he was playing with the pigeons and he began to croon a Japanese folk song (i guess). I felt the breeze & just sat there. I felt at peace again. These are the kinds of moments that I enjoy the most.
We left the park and visited two shrines. They were nice & less crowded than I expected, which was nice. the second one actually let you walk in & look around. It had several statues of Buddhist figures. We decided to leave after this second temple.
We decided to return to the Irish bar & then go get dinner after. We had several rounds. The drinks were stiff (more so than last time) & we soon felt it. We decided to just get dinner at the bar because we didn't want to worry about trying to order food (or get there) with how we were. Shaowen and I got our food almost immediately. Jeff had to wait a while, but that was ok because a muse struck him and he decided to start making up words such as residugous. Used in a sentence, "The cistern was residugous." After dinner we went home, packed, and zoned out. |
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| Tokyo Day 6 |
[May. 28th, 2006|08:36 pm] |
Well there will not be much to this day. The first half I had to work on my paper to get it done in time. Wonderful way to spend a vacation, huh.
After the paper was finished, Jeff and Shaowen came back in pretty upset. They had gone shopping and went to a store. Apparently for nearly the entire time they were gone (which was about 5 hours) they had been shopping at this one store, or at least trying to. There credit and debit cards weren't being accepted. They came back to the hotel to inquire about it of their bank but no one seemed to know, because the bank already knew they would be out of the country. Later that night, Jeff and I went back to the store and even though the guy Jeff had talked to on the phone had force the computer to accept the transaction Jeff was trying to send through, it wouldn't work. Finally, the store just took down the information and gave the stuff to us.
Other than that ordeal and jumping back to when Jeff and Shaowen got back, we decided to go to Harajuku again down Takeshita street. We actually went in a lot of the stores this time. We were looking for Engrish sayings on T-Shirts, but there were not that many good ones. The best one we found was like, "pleasure equals music + cat. This is his favorite spot. . STUMP." and on the back it said, "we need bonbons." It had a picture of a cat listening to a ipod. Jeff searched alot of the punk stores and I was just amused at some of the stuff that people wear.
After shopping we went to dinner at a Vietnamese/Thai/Korean/Indian restaurant. They had really bad English and could barely understand us. First, we try to get the waiter's attention to take our order when we are ready but he takes forever to come over. Then, we order and on a few of them we were trying to make them not spicy. The waiter couldn't understand us. So he went and got someone who spoke just as little English as he did to finish the order. After the order they brought out water and some breadsticks, which we each ate. Then we got our food and began to ate. I got Beef Pho (prounced 'F'), which is Vietnamese. It is a soup dish that has beef and noodles and somewhat spicy sauce. Jeff and Shaowen then told me that one of the dishes that was brought out for them was not what they ordered. But since it was not spicy, we just let it slide. Then we got the bill. We were looking at it and it said AMUSE 3 for 900 yen. We concluded that amuse were the three breadsticks but did not even ask for them. Rather than put up a fight that they would not understand we just said whatever and paid 300 each on top of our meal for that (that is like $3 for this little breadstick).
We then came back to the hotel to schedule a tour to Mt. Fuji for today. When we called we found out that the tour was already full and we could not do it. Ok, plan B. Well as of right now we still don't have a Plan B, so who knows what we're gonna do.
Finally, we decided to go to the Park Hyatt for a drink. This is the Hotel from Lost in Translation with Bill Murray. It took us 20 minutes to get there then 20 minutes to find the entrance to the hotel (it was a very confusing building). We got on the elevator which had only 3 stops 3, 39, and 41. Jeff commented that 41-39=2. We went to the bar on floor 41 which was the top floor. We sat down and looked at the menu. The cheapest thing on there was a tea for approximately $10. We didn't expect prices to be quite this high, but they were. I ordered a Spica, which was Citron Vodka, Starfruit Liquor, and Grapefruit Juice for $16. Jeff had an $18 glass of Scotch (nothing special at that) and Shaowen had a ribbon which was a fruit drink for $13. We all got glasses of water to allow our stay to extend pass the 1 round that we were getting. The view really was nice although we sat on the worst of the three sides--pointing away from the city. The waitress brought out some snacks which we wondered were going to be added to our bill as AMUSE again, but it wasn't.
After the drinks we talked about going to another cheaper bar, but I was getting tired and asked to go home. And so we did. |
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| Tokyo Day 5 Addition |
[May. 27th, 2006|08:42 pm] |
I just remembered a few things from last night.
First, the one thing we saw in Shibuya that had meaning was a statue of a dog. The statue was off a dog. The story behind it was that every day the dog would wait outside Shibuya station for his master to come home. And every day the master would find him and go home with him. One day, over the course of the day the master died. The dog though continued to wait outside the station. It waited day after day until it too died. Some time after the district erected the statue to commomemorate the loyalty the dog showed to his master. I have not read it but supposedly it is talked about in Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicle and is in fact a true story.
Secondly, I remembered that Shaowen treated us to tea in Ginza. It was in a nice department store and I am really appreciative.
Also, I'm about to put up more photos. The link again is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/81509384@N00/ |
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| Tokyo days 4&5 |
[May. 27th, 2006|09:50 am] |
I'm going to squeeze two days today into one post, as I missed yesterday and it would be just as easy to do that.
Ok so yesterday, we had an early start. We saw the Miyasaki museum. For those of you who do not know him, he is the creator of many animated films. Most famously he is known for the film "Spirited Away." It took a while to get out to this museum because it was not in Tokyo but rather in the suburbs. We had to take the subway then transfer out to the museum by bus.
The museum itself was interesting, but not as interesting as you would have expected. It housed many conceptual artifacts from the various movies he has created. The first room, we all agreed, was the most interesting. using various lighting effects such as strobe lights, they were able to make a series of spinning plastic models appear to be moving as if they were animated. It was a fascinating technique. It also showed examples of cell layering, where you make many different layers to give the illusion of depth of a scene. It was kind of funny because we noticed the Japanese have a knack for anti-climax. They always seem to want to show you the most interesting thing first-and then everything cannot live up to that first thing. This museum was no different. Everything else here was somewhat interesting, but nothing spectacular. We got to see some original storyboards and sketch work. After this we ate lunch (which I can't remember but was probably Tempura and noodles -- we had it so many times in a row at one point that we started to get sick of it).
We took the trains to Harajuku. We first visited the Meiji shrine, which was a nice relatively secluded shrine (as I would find out the following day). There was a wedding that was occuring there between a White man and a Japanese woman. It was interesting to see the two halves of the family there. The shrine was just one part of a larger park which we walked around. We went to a garden that we found, which we had to pay 500 yen to get into. There was a really serene pond in there but everything else was not worth the 500 yen including the mythical Asalyea garden (we saw signs for this, but we past where it was supposed to be without seeing anything--we surmised that it was one bench that had been errected on the way to the exit since it could not have been anything else.)
Following this we went into the more urban area of Harajuku and visited a good asian goods store. I bought some stuff. I'd prefer not to say what it is cause some of it is gifts ;). Then we stopped at a coffee shop, after resting we walked down (I'm not making this up) Takeshita street. As if the name of the street was enough, the stores themselves included mostly clothing that was geared towards goth, punk, hip-hop, and any other kind of sub-culture you can think of. I felt like I was exploring a mall in "Second Life."
Today was in my opinion, much less interesting--but when you're with friends it seems to not matter all that much. We began the day by taking a long subway ride (it was our first time on Tokyo Metro!) out to Senso-ji temple. When we first got there, we walked down a long sequence of shops selling cheap gawdy merchandise. Jeff kept calling it cruise town--because its sole existence was to give people who didn't know any better something to buy on the way to the temple. The temple itself was better. It was very noisy however. It reminded me more of a park than a temple. There were several small temples and a much larger one located on the grounds and there were nice gardens surrounding them. The smell of incense filled the air. I enjoyed this portion very much, despite the construction.
We then went to Ginza for lunch (today we were doing everything we could to avoid Tempura). So we ended up at a mall and had Korean. I forgot what Jeff and I got was called but it was essentially a very thinly sliced marinated beef dish that they cook right in front of you. It was very good--but more pricy than anything we had so far. But whatever, when's the next time I'll be in Tokyo--might as well live it up now. After that, we wandered around Ginza for a while. We started to get lost from the map until we found another map to compare it to and realized that the map was printed upside down. Even though, we fixed the map problem Ginza didn't prove too interesting. We did, however, find a traditional Japanese (which wasn't on the stupid map) that we tried to get tickets for. They told us that they weren't currently showing any productions, but there was another theater that we could go to to see Japanese puppet show or dancing. We'll do this later in the week.
After this we went to Shibuya, which we had high hopes for. But it was no fun (maybe this was because of the rain who knows). We wandered around again, and got lost again. At some point, we went into another arcade-same old, same old. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Shibuya to avoid the traffic (experiencing the crowding we did 2 days ago was enough for us once). One person there spoke fluent Chinese so we were able to finally order food with confidence for once. After a short trip home, we called it a night. |
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| Tokyo Interlude |
[May. 26th, 2006|09:37 am] |
No post this evening. Bug problem. Huge bug! Ugly Bug! Walking all over the bathroom mirror. Guy at front desk didn't know the word bug, or insect. But he did know the word 'insecto'. Drew picture of a bug so he'd understand. They had us move rooms. And still need to prepare for my DIS paper re-submission. Nighty night.
Good Luck to those giving presentations today. |
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