One of my favorite songs back when I used to play.
Dreams guide us through time, and give purpose to our lives.
Traumerai is German for “dreams”.
At 7:30 in the morning, I wake up to the tiny hotel room that felt like an oven. We were pretty beaten from how much we walked yesterday. Kevin and Aho’s Achilles heels were getting swollen, but that wasn’t going to stop us! First, Kevin and Ann wanted to check into their hotel for one night at the Park Hyatt, easily one of the top three hotels in Tokyo. So we left our hotel at around 8AM to walk over there, but it was really far so Kevin and Ann went ahead while the rest of us got some breakfast.
In Japan, everything is excellent, including Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya back at home is like trash! The rice is stale and the meat tasted like cardboard splashed with teriyaki sauce. In Japan, it’s much different. You can probably tell form the pictures that this is delicious.
For a few bucks, you can get the regular beef suyaki bowl and a soft-boiled egg as a delicious garnish. The beef was tender and fresh, the rice was perfectly made, and even the pickled ginger was really good! Of course, everything in the restaurant was super clean and the staff was very attentive and polite. Yoshinoya is also open 24 hours a day, so it’s a good place to eat really late at night if you just want something quick and cheap.
Okay, we had to try a McDonalds. After all, what does a large multinational corporation have to say about Japan’s strict culture on quality? I got a sausage McMuffin and a small coffee for 200 yen. And what do you know, it’s delicious! The English muffin was fluffy and soft, and the sausage was anything but greasy. The food here actually LOOKS like it does in the pictures.
On our way to the district of Mitaka, I played around with Kevin’s awesome Nikon D90 SLR. I don’t really know anything about cameras, but its supposedly pretty top-of-the-line. There was a big sale on camera lenses online, so Kevin basically bought a bunch of lenses, resold them at a higher price, and bought the camera with his profit. He basically ended up getting a nice camera with 2 very nice lenses for completely free. Win!
I call this photo…”Routine”. This man is waiting for a train, and it seems like he has waited for the same train at the same time every day for a long, long time.
I call this photo…”Generations”. You can see the old-fashioned trench coat and leather bag of the man contrast with the fingerless gloves and styled hair and beanie of the teenager.
At Mitaka, there’s a big park that was nice to walk through. Here’s a lake where you can rent a paddle boat.
Sometimes, I saw photographers try to capture a special moment. I realized that with today’s cameras, like the one I was holding, everyone could easily become a photographer. In a way, it’s kind of cheating because it just makes good photography so easy. But it opens up the ability for people to capture not just events and figures, but the minute detail and subtly of emotion. You know, the things we consider to be beautiful.
I tried to copy that woman and see what the bush was all about. Maybe it has to do with how the snow reflects sunlight like a pearl, while the leaves let the sunlight seep in and permeate. Both parts glow like a little celebration for the holidays.
A picture of Aho tinkering with a large rope from this red temple in the middle of the park.
Kevin and Ann
I thought it was interesting (and when I say interesting I mean annoying, haha jk) how Ann always puts on this “cute” face/pose for pictures. I told her that she looks great during candid shots as well, because that shows her true emotion. Fake smiles and poses are kind of just like a stamp. If you have the same gesture for every pose, you make yourself a mere stamp so you can just prove that you were at a certain place or event.
But with candid shots, it becomes more than that. It’s more than your physical self being present, the candid shot ties your emotions with the specific moment, freezing that special combination of memory and feeling that is more valuable than “just a mere stamp.”
How many times do you see the best photos of Time Magazine come from people who just pose a general gesture?
It was cool to play with some of the simple functions of the camera too. A dead, dreary forest!
After walking through the park, we finally arrived at our destination, Ghibli Museum! This museum commemorates the Walt Disney of Asia, Hayao Miyazaki. If you can’t recognize his name, he is the guy who created My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Grave of the Fireflies, and many other very famous anime movies. Ghibli is the name of the animation and film studio that Hayao directed for.
The museum was really cool, actually. There was one room that showed the basic animation techniques that we’re kind of used to seeing; like a book flipping through pages of slightly changing figures or a wheel rotating through different figures. But this room still made these simple concepts that I thought were already boring to something that still looked amazing. You can see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVX_cSXIXig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybex-ujHHKA&feature=related
Besides the animation room, you could climb up to the roof of the museum to see a giant robot.
The museum felt pretty magical. I know that Hayao’s work touched a lot of people’s hearts, and you could definitely feel that in the visitors. One of the coolest parts of the museum was the theatre, in which we got to see a short animation about sumo-wrestling mice! I like Hayao’s style a lot. With just a few strokes, he captures the essence of human emotion extremely well. You could feel the life of the animated figures showing feelings of boredom, annoyance, or wonder.
We bused back to where we began near the subway station to grab some food! Me smiling creepily at Ann.
We didn’t really know where to go, and people kind of ignored me when I tried to ask where to get some good sushi, so I picked out a place that had a bunch of wood and Japanese characters written on it. Can’t go wrong with something that looks so local!
Here’s the restaurant on the inside
Our assortment of chirashi don! The salmon on these things were SO GOOD. Richard, hope you’re jealous :D
Salmon and salmon roe over rice
Maguro and spicy tuna with raw egg and thick and spicy sweet soy sauce over rice
Maguro and hamachi over rice
Maguro, spicy tuna, salmon and salmon roe over rice
Alright, I’m going to try to split up these few days in half. There’s a lot of content, and I don’t want you guys to just skip stuff just because I posted too long of a post. I’ll get back to you guys with part 2 of the second day in Japan!!
Rock, paper, scissors! The Hsu family (plus and Kevin) versus all of the others!
The Taiwanese dice game we played during New Years. Basically, there is a dealer and players. The dealer throws 4 dice until there is 1 pair. The other 2 dice make up your score. The other players need to beat that score, and bet either a drink, money, or a combination of both!
1. I’m grateful for the friends I grew up with, who still stick close to my heart. Even when I don’t talk to them, I think about them and I ask them what they would think. I get back answers from them, all in my head, that help guide me to be a better person. It’s wonderful to be able to confidently say that I will see them for the next sixty (hopefully a lot longer) or so years. My dad has done the same, and it is a beautiful thing to see him regularly hang out with the friends that escaped Vietnam with him on the same boat many years ago.
2. I’m grateful for the people who can sit down and talk to me for hours on end about deep topics you really have think hard about and peer into your soul. It’s really talks like those that change my current mindset.
3. I’m grateful for the friends I made in college; we are similar in a few ways but so different in many other ways. The differences in backgrounds among my college social circle is pretty amazing, and I’m glad to have that variety. When it comes down to it, I know many of you would give up a lot to help me out.
3 More Things I’m Grateful for:
1. I’m grateful for those animal anatomy books by Eyewitness that my parents gave me to read when I was really little. I feel like they have been a great way in developing my intellectual curiosity, which I hold close to my identity.
2. I’m grateful for my dad, in that he has always had an answer to any question I’ve asked of him; even when he didn’t know if his answer was right, he tried his best.
3. I’m grateful for all of those turn-based strategy games I played when I was a kid, such as Heroes of Might and Magic and Civilization. I think these types of games, rather than say 1st person shooters, really can teach you how to think about making optimal decisions.
Finally, get to blog about Japan!! So we’re flying to Tokyo for a 4 night trip with the six of us: me, Ann, Chin Wei (Ann’s brother), Doris (Ann’s brother’s girlfriend), Aho (Ann’s sister), and Kevin. I’m super excited for this trip. I’ll get to see my full Japanese cousins and check out the city where my aunt was raised in.
The airport was pretty empty, as you could imagine at 6 in the morning. I’m just on my iPad checking out facebook updates from my beloved friends back at home.
Oh great, what do you know? Remember that restaurant that supposedly created pearl milk tea? Well, they had a branch at the airport! They opened right when we got there, so we got some milk tea, daikon cake, and noodles for breakfast. Aweeesssooommmeee
Can’t wait to eat that daikon cake!
See ya in a few days, Taipei!
Hello, Japan!
Here’s the district we’re staying in…Shinjuku! They are known for large shopping centers, shops and restaurants that open late, and a pretty vibrant night life compared to the rest of Tokyo.
On our bus, we get a good shot of the Tokyo Tower, Japan’s version of the Eiffel Tower.
Damn…I’m in Japan! How cool
I noticed that Japan is…really clean. All of the buildings look like they’ve just been washed, and as colorful as they are, look like they are plastic toys. Something else I noticed, and half expected, it is FREEZING in Tokyo. There was some snow on the ground, and it was about 1 degree Celsius. For a lot of people, that’s probably not even that cold. But being born and raised in California, that was literally the first time I experienced that type of weather.
Finally got to our hotel, Hotel SunLite!
Here’s the lobby
And…our TINY. ASS. ROOM. Alright, so there’s the six of us, and 2 couples. So I get to room with Aho. The bed isn’t even as big as a full-sized bed. Oh well, she is a homie, so I don’t mind. Kinda funny I’m rooming with a lesbian though, haha.
Alright…what to do. No one can speak Japanese in our group, but luckily we meet up with Chin Wei’s friend who moved from Taiwan to Japan about a year ago.
He took us to this restaurant that specializes in tempura. Like Taiwan, we aim for restaurants that SPECIALIZE in a particular thing, and is excellent and renowned at it. I think it’s a good strategy to have a good dining experience, but sometimes it’s only sustainable if you have lots of people and can try many restaurants before getting full especially if your trip is rather short.
Tempura masters about to cook our food! These guys sure work hard. I’ll soon realize that EVERYONE works hard in Japan. They are aiming to be masters of their craft. Even the guy on the left; he chops onions with care and precision, and meticulously pokes a toothpick in each slice so that the placement of the toothpick is consistently identical. Amazing. Every time we went to eat, I made sure to watch the cooks do their thing. Achieving perfection.
Shrimp, eggplant, and squash tempura. The tempura had a lot less crust than I’m used to. It was pretty light, and not greasy at all. What stood out, and what will continual to stand out in Japan, is the sheer quality of the centerpiece ingredients.
A bowl of shrimp and shisito pepper tempura and rice, with a healthy splash of a soybean-based sauce
Maguro (tuna) and tai (red snapper) sashimi
Ann and Aho eating the meal. The meal came to around $18 a person. Overall, the food was great but there wasn’t much of it.
Crazy subway system!! Look at how many lines there are!
First stop of the day…Harajuku! This place is well known for the Meiji Temple and its alleyways filled with J-Pop culture and vibrant youth.
Here’s the entrance to the temple. That large wooden gate and the dark vegetation of Japan remind me of samurai horsemen riding through the forest from The Last Samurai.
A fountain for cleansing your hands before proceeding to the temple.
Here’s a closer look. You use the ladles to get the water and pour it on your hands.
Me looking at some beautiful calligraphy and admiring the Japanese architecture
Sitting down
You can take a piece of wood and write out a wish or a blessing, and post it on the wall. Supposedly the monks (I think they are monks?) take the notes and read them, or do something fancy with them. It’s a cute way of reminding yourself of something you appreciate.
Okay, now we’re at the busy alleyways of Harajuku, Takeshita Streeet! Most of the stores were just clothing stores that sold some outlandish clothing, lingerie, and accessories. Of course, I’m not very into that. I just went around the restaurants, haha.
Although I AM interested in discovering unique and quirky things. This secret alleyway featured a lot of contemporary street art that was cool to look at while the girls were waiting in line for something. I decided to do a picture for my Facebook profile here!
You see that bigass burger next to the BigMac? That’s a $10+ burger. Who would buy a $10 burger from MCDONALDS???? Well, it’s Japan. It must be pretty damn good.
Mmmm…crepes from Angels Heart
Ann eating her crepe
Not exactly Japanese food, but the local here suggested it! Basically your basic gyro, but this one was super tasty.
Next stop, Shibuya! This district is well known for its huge department stores, shopping outlets, and being just a large central hub in general. Here, I really got to experience the swarm of people that is a trademark of Tokyo and Japan in general.
Ann in the Disney store. She got really excited from this store, and probably spent like an hour looking through it, on the basis that this Disney is not like any other Disney store; it’s “different” in Japan.
Well I guess this was pretty cool
In our (the guys’) boredom, we resorted to watching a pop band of 15 year old girls performing live in the front of a department store. Ah…Japan
Ann finally buying her little teddy bear. Me: “…hurry….up….”
Later on, we kind of split up because Kevin and I weren’t very interested in shopping for clothes. We luckily find some WiFi (the WiFi infrastructure in Tokyo is pretty excellent), and search up this store: Western Arms Airsoft Store!!
The masses of people at the Shibuya station
Okay, we’re finally back to Shinjuku!! The next thing we have to do is get dinner! Here we are at our Japanese friend’s favorite ramen place. Ah, ramen, how quintessential you are to Japanese cuisine. This place, like many places in Japan, uses a machine ordering system. You pay the vending machine what you want to eat, and press the button of your selection. The machine yields a receipt, which you give to the chef for him to make the ramen. This cuts out the need for a cashier and register, which can significantly increase the efficiency of the constrained space that many Japanese restaurants experience.
Pork with rice – this was only $2!
My large-sized bowl of shoyu ramen! The best part was the noodles; they were pretty amazing. My mouth waters when I look at this picture. I’ve had better pork belly, but those noodles had the perfect amount of bounce and chewiness. Take me back!!
Ramen with soup on the side! Interestingly enough, I liked this even more! Because the noodles were cold, they were even more chewy.
The crew minus me in front of the ramen place
Finally, we explore the festive nightlife in Shinjuku. Ann said there are lots of “service” bars and sex parlors around here, as well as regular bars, night clubs, restaurants, and arcades. It was pretty awesome to walk around in. There was a lot to see.
A Japanese arcade!! Japanese, crazy with their video games, have some pretty advanced arcade games. This game here uses ACTUAL cards to play the video game, like a more realistic Yu-Gi-Oh! People fight against each other and have their own decks. It sounds pretty fun and engaging, but you’d have to buy your own deck first.
Your not-so-average massage parlor
A UCLA Bar! Random, haha. Okay, after all of this walking around, we are basically toast. We’ve walked around so much today from morning until night in pretty cold weather, everyone was dying. What a long day.
The key to life is happiness. I am a huge fan of intellectual talks, discussions, and lectures. A reason why I watch these things is because I learn from excellent people and inspiring ideas. Here’s a video that gave me a good idea: writing down 3 things I am grateful for every day for 21 days to train my brain to scan the world not for the negative, but for the positive. I hope you can find some time to watch this video, it’s funny and inspiring at the same time!
I often tell people that there are positives and negatives to everything, and that opportunities are everywhere. People oftentimes focus too much on the negative and overlook the positive, which fosters unhappiness. So I’ll start a new tradition here and post 3 new things I’m thankful for on my tumblr, starting with:
1. I’m grateful for my parents for working so hard for financial stability to enable me to pursue my dreams, and thus be more happy than if I were to work for money.
2. I’m grateful for Ann showing me such a great time in Taiwan; I know she worked very hard to plan a thorough itinerary to show me the best of Taiwan.
3. I’m grateful for my cousin Yosuke and his family for showing such great hospitality when they showed us around Tokyo and Yokohama, even though we have never met before. I am glad to know that they are a part of my family.
After taking that drive in the previous post, we got back to Taizhong city by 9AM and went exploring around some pretty local places. Ann led us through a broken fence that led to a rundown basketball court, which eventually lead to a brick house that some people were also walking towards.
It turned out to be somewhat of a tourist attraction – a small housing complex that a crazy old man painted on over several years.
Everywhere on the complex was a vast array of cartoonish characters, ranging from animals to warriors to Andy Lau. It was cool to just take some pictures around here. Here’s a more legit post about it: http://matadornetwork.com/nights/photo-essay-taichung-taiwans-rainbow-family-village/
Some graffiti sprayed on the bathroom next to that ghetto basketball court
A creek and the nearby area
Kevin, Ann and I then got some late morning breakfast at Chun Shui Tang, the supposed originator of all pearl milk tea! Here’s an article about them: http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/drink/inventor-bubble-tea-885732
The place looks really serene inside. Too bad my head is messing up the picture. Ann was saying how in Taizhong, people here take life down a notch from the typical fast life of Taipei. The pace of eating and general life was noticeably slower. People came here for coffee chats or to read a book, whereas in Taipei you would be pushed out the door if you weren’t burying your face in your noodles.
This rather small and simple, but light and very satisfying breakfast was like $2 bucks!
Hot milk tea! This store never uses powder, and never even SHAKES their drinks. They stir the tea and use a special receptor to measure the drink’s sugar density to your specific taste.
Peanut butter toast. Salty and sweet crunchy peanut butter on top of a thick slice of some REALLY good toast.
The original milk toast. There is a crust of sugar and sweet milky stuff on top of the toast, kind of like something you’d find on top of an Asian pineapple bun. This is something they are really famous for.
Spicy stir fried noodles. Light, with a bit of kick, and deliciously chewy noodles.
After the breakfast, we found a motel to get ready for the wedding. Basically, Ann and Kevin needed a place to shower and Ann needed to do her makeup. I could have been good by just throwing on my blazer. We rented out the place for 3 hours, and the hostess at the front gave us an awkward look as we proceeded into the motel. Remember, these places are primarily for sex, so we were coming in with two guys and a girl.
The bathroom had this nice, sexy shower in the middle.
Me chilling on the bed, flipping through channels and laughing at the shopping brochure of dildos and rentable Asian girls offered on the side of the bed.
Some erotic art pieces in the room.
Off to the wedding! So basically, the wedding was for Ann’s dad’s business partner’s cousin. The same business partner’s son, James, is an ex boyfriend of Ann, so I was interested in seeing this guy as well. The wedding took place outside James’ house in a huge, rainbow-colored tent. Upon entrance, you were greeted with either a piece of milk candy or a Mild Seven cigarette. Pretty funny.
The wedding came with a huge catering service that cooked seafood on the spot.
A platter of various sashimi
Tuna and shrimp hand rolls
Steamed fish
Sticky rice with pork and dried shrimp, and Chinese donuts
Fresh garlic shrimp fried on hot pan – they were raw when we got them!
Ann with James’ little girl!
Ann, Chin Wei (Ann’s brother), and his girlfriend, Doris, with the baby!
The bride and groom toasting to us, gam bae! Here starts another ridiculous day of drinking. I become adamant on drinking only 3 beers, since I needed to drive later. Ann, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. She was basically trashed by the end of the day, and so was her dad.
Cheers Ann’s parents! Ann’s dad basically funded the whole wedding as a gift, so he got a lot of attention. He went around every single table to drink, and he can drink a lot! It was fun just observing such a close and festive occasion, and also learning more about the business partner relationships that are pervasive in Ann’s family business.
Fresh abalone fried on a hot pan
James and his kid. He’s a nice guy, and was cool to talk to since his English was pretty good. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit him when I’m in Hong Kong.
This guy, forgot his name, but he is one of Ann’s suitors. “Watch this, Ann!”
“I’m the shit!” …not
Fried soft shelled crab!
Shark fin and abalone soup!
Me and Doris
Tycoons of Taiwan, drinking some scotch
Fried pork chops in black bean sauce
Ann’s dad with a very, very wealthy man.
Ann having to drink with the tycoons. Shi ning qui lu!
“Ahhh, drink more, daughter!!”
“That’s so much wine, dad!” “Muahahahah!”
The bride and groom and their family
Ann’s dad, pretty drunk and handing shots
Ann’s dad, cheering shots.
Ann’s dad, taking the shot away because the woman didn’t want to drink
Ann’s dad, taking the double shoot. The woman, secretly smirking
The ballers playing mah jong in James’ house. Supposedly, each of them could easily buy a large building in Taipei in a split second.
Soon after grabbing a little tea and chatting it up with James, we carry Ann into the car and drive back to Taipei. The ride back to Taipei was sure a long one…there was still plenty of traffic on the way up. When we got near Taipei, Ann still wouldn’t wake up, so we had no idea how to get back to her house. Here we were, in a foreign country, driving around a car trying to get to a house that lies in slightly suburban Taipei. Oh man. We eventually woke up Ann and discovered we had crossed through Taipei’s east side and completely missed her district. It didn’t take us too long to get back, and driving around Taiwan was still pretty cool, especially at night. We got home and packed up for Japan, and slept early to wake up at 4AM the next morning.
Excerpt from Taiwan, Day 10
Hope you enjoy this driving video I made! Notice how different the scenery, architecture, and people are from what you’re used to!
PS: watch in 1080P, and the song is deadmau5 - Arguru
Today, we drove to the middle of Taiwan, to a rather large city called Taizhong. Due to the reckless ownage that took place last night, we left rather late and got stuck in some pretty bad traffic because of the New Year. But, one cool thing was I got to drive! I took around Ann’s turbocharged C-class on the highways of Taiwan. The speed limits were pretty slow, like either 90 or 100 KM/H, which is like 60 mph…I was tempted to speed but there were speed cameras every now and then. I’d be pretty screwed if I got pulled over, but I hardly saw cops.
When I did see cops, I saw cars speed absurdly speed right in front of cops, and none of them did anything. Meh, better be safe than sorry. A couple of things about driving in Taiwan:
1. No one freaking yields to the right if they drive slow on the left!! I drove behind so many cars that just didn’t make up their mind what speed they wanted to drive. Some fluctuated as much as 20 km/h consistently. Pretty annoying!
2. Driving in local streets isn’t THAT bad. Well if you know me, most people consider me as a pretty nimble driver. Even with all of those scooters, I didn’t find it very troubling to get around narrow streets. Just gotta use your side mirrors!
3. Supposedly, you should not intimidate drivers around Taizhong. Ann’s friend tried to rev up and drag race against a BMW, and got his tires shot out by gangsters. Yeahhhhh, no one to help you here if that happens.
Sorry if I talk a lot about driving when I blog. I love driving.
So after TWO FREAKING HOURS of being stuck within like 10 miles of our destination, we get inside the city and get to a department store. Taizhong is much more spread out than Taipei, so it felt a lot more like back home. This department store looked brand-spanking new, and was filled with top line designers.
While Kevin and I waited for Ann to use the restroom and for Lulu to come meet us near the information bar, we tried looking for attractive girls. But to no avail.
At least the outside of the department store was attractive! Lots of pretty lanterns
We met up with Lulu and went to a famous night market in Taizhong. Here’s Ann, Kevin, and Lulu walking along an alleyway toward the night market. I forgot the name, but night markets especially in different parts of Taiwan are pretty unique from each other, as I’ve mentioned before.
This one was SUPER packed!! There were times were we could not move and had to backtrack and go another way.
A stand that fries an assortment of mushrooms!
Here’s ours – oyster, shitake, and those really thin mushrooms you find in hotpot
Chicken hearts! This came with a pack of seaweed cake, pork blood cake, and bean curd
Roast duck wrap! This was pretty yummy, just like having a bun with Peking duck, like from Great China, but the size of a falafel wrap. Why doesn’t someone make this??? Dojo Dog, this would be a great idea!!
A tray of deboned spicy chicken feet. Ohhhhh man. What an awesome dish. I love chicken feet, I love them even more when they are considerably spicy, and I love them most when they don’t have any bones in them!! Just pure delicious soft fatty tissue
Slices of fresh white guava! A refreshing snack to cool the mouth
Yeaaahhhhh, lots of chinks chinks chinks
Indonesian-styled beef and lamb skewers, yum
Haha, here it is again, those egg puff penises.
Failed photo…focused on the wrong thing.
Oh, nevermind! Guess the night market is called Feng Chia. Got a picture of the front sign.
Relative to our usual night market runs, we cut this one pretty short because it was just way too crowded. We ended our night with a famous taro dessert and drink.
Here’s the dessert; it has three different kinds of mocha (one kind is that yellow thing you see), and chunks of stewed taro.
Here’s the drink; it’s like a hot taro smoothie!
So, we don’t finish eating quite yet! Even though we’re pretty full, we go to a Schezuan hot pot place, since me and Kevin are obsessed with spicy food.
This is a free dish that comes with the hotpot. Spicy bean thread noodles doused in pepper and hot sauce.
Spicy and non-spicy soup! We used the spicy soup for the meat, duck blood, and tofu. And used the non-spicy soup for the veggies and mushrooms.
Here’s my little plate of hotpot goodness! In the front bowl, we have duck blood, lamb meat, and pig intestines (rectum?). On the right, a bunch of mushrooms and cabbage. In the back, a customized bowl of super hot sauce!
Here’s a shot of the interior of the restaurant. In Taizhong, restaurants are generally much larger and look much better in the inside than in Taipei. There’s a lot more room, and a lot of space to afford for decorations and design!
Ann, Kevin, Lulu, and her sister Chelsea
We spent our night at Lulu’s house. I’m grateful we got to stay at her house, because we looked a hotel room for like an hour and a half and there were no open rooms anywhere! Most of the occupancies were due to motel parties, and we couldn’t make any reservations because of the holidays. So we drove 30 minutes out into the suburbs to a quaint house with a warm Western styling.
Haha, this cat reminds me of Lulu, Amy Yu’s cat that used to live at 2612 Hillegass with us last year. Funny that the owner is named Lulu. Wow, I just realized that. This cat was pretty chill. At night, it actually climbed on my head and slept on my head throughout the night. It was really soft, so I didn’t mind. Thanks again for letting us stay, Lulu!
After celebrating the New Year with Ann’s father’s side last night, we went to visit Ann’s mother’s side and ate lunch with them. In Taiwan, the mother’s side is often marginalized against the father’s. It is still traditional for the mother to spend more time with the father’s parents, just like we learned in history and what not. For myself, how we spent the holidays was more based on geographic proximity. Well, if both my mother’s and father’s relatives were equidistant, I’d probably just switch spending new years with each family every year. Also, I don’t think it’s a big deal at all to celebrate after or before the actual New Year day. After all, what’s in a day? It’s the celebration and bonding time that matters.
Ann’s mother’s side comes from a pig farming heritage, interestingly enough. Their social class is dramatically different than that of her father’s side. We drove deep to the southwest of suburban Taipei, to town called Shulin and entered a house that seemed more like a hallowed out garage with cobbled stone as flooring.
As humble of an abode this was, the food was sure fantastic! The food was a significantly lighter than what we ate yesterday, which I definitely preferred. There were more basic dishes, allowing me to enjoy the pure ingredients by themselves.
You see the dish with the orange and red bell peppers? Straight up the sweetest bell peppers I’ve ever eaten. They were so sweet that I thought they added sugar to it. The dark purple vegetables in the bottom left were pretty interesting. They had a deep and powerful pigment to them; it looked like you could use it to dye clothing. The relatives grew their own bamboo shoots, so that was also really tasty!
Steamed fishhhhhhhhhhhhh
He’s sitting a little bit back, I’m not actually that much bigger than Kevin.
The relatives were very welcoming and looked at me and Kevin with admiration. They kept trying to feed us more, and I kept eating! Because of the lightness of the food, I could stuff myself more, and didn’t feel overly bloated.
After lunch, we picked up like 10 coffees for everyone at a nearby 7-11 and brought the kids along with us. It was really cute to buy them some candy and a couple of toys, which made the youngsters really happy. Hehe, they are learning to call my brother as their uncle. Cute.
We just chilled for an hour or so at the house; basically the family was preoccupied with Google Maps on Ann’s father’s iPad. They looked with great wonder and amusement how accurate google maps was, especially at street view!! We were able to show them my house in San Jose, one of my dads supermarkets in San Francisco, and a lot of other things that seemed to magically pop out in front of their eyes. These people don’t have much education, so their perspective of the world is kind of limited, with television and newspaper being the primary sources of information. Many of them have been working as laborers their whole lives, but seemed to live quite happily as one big family.
We left, driving deeper southwest to a town famous for its clay and ceramics heritage, Ying Ge. Pottery is still the main source of revenue here, so pottery was everywhere!
I enjoyed walking around and looking at some of the larger ceramic pieces, and especially enjoyed the more nature-oriented shops that sold things such as water fountains and plant ornaments. I really think in the future that I’d like my house to have a natural theme. I think there is a profound beauty in plants, streams of water, rocks, and the like. Whereas some trendy and modern pieces (say, a perfect cube as a vase) is defined by mathemical properties on the surface (okay, let’s make each side equal), nature figures that seem imperfect on the outside have a deeper mathematical relationship (branch and leaf systems that are a repeating pattern of itself - a (). Anyway, in short, natural has got billions of years on humans in terms of design coordination.
Festive robot dolls dancing to techno!!
Ann with a clay Spongebob!
The main activity of this trip…making some pottery of my own! For a measly 500 NT, or 16 bucks, Kevin and I got to make two pieces of pottery each on a spindle, add some designs to them, get them colored and glazed, and mailed to our home! So worth it.
Well, being the kind of “go hard or go home” type of guy I am, I tried to make something super intricate at first, thinking I could always just repack the clay into a ball and try again. However, you can actually mess up the structure of the clay, making it a warped piece of useless trash. Yeah, that’s what I did at first. You could see the warping in my piece of clay here…
Okay, I was more conservative this time and made this cup! Aho helped me make a handle for the cup. Who wants it as a gift????
Here’s my plate and cup!
And Kevin’s creations!
Both of us detailing our basic pieces.
Me with my customized plate. It still needs to get its glaze!
K&Y (K for Kevin and Y for Yinyin, Ann’s chink name)
Some works that have yet to be glazed by the workers; others ready to be picked up by their creators.
We left Ying Ge and headed back to Taipei for a grand banquet with Anns fathers side. Joining us were the grandparents, Anns fathers brother, three sisters, and their families. There were like 20 people in total, seated at the top 8th floor in a private room at a fancy Chinese seafood restaurant. We had a good amount of pretty high quality seafood, but that wasn’t the focus of the night, unfortunately…
Hamachi sushi, lobster and bean sprout salad, and jellyfish
Shrimp, water chestnut, and bamboo lettuce wraps
Stir-fried oyster mushrooms and abalone
Baked king crab legs, yummmm so juicy
Sea cucumber and shark fin soup
Crab sticky rice!!
Some sweet stuff, I dunno what they really are
Broiled cod
A few minutes into sitting down, the Blue Label gets busted out once again. And multiple bottles of red wine. A cousin yells, “ah-gong (grandpa), gam bei!!” The grandpa proudly downs his glass of whiskey, and readies himself for another.
Basically, the night turned into a mad drinking frenzy. The second to youngest cousin, a 16 year old girl, was drinking more than I was. The three aunts (Ann’s father’s sisters), tried to drink me and Kevin under the table. But we weren’t going to give up so easily. They want to fuck us up??? We’ll die fighting!!!
So the main drinking game was simple rock, paper, scissors. We discovered that when the aunts got more drunk, they would ALWAYS throw rock first, even if they just lost 3 times before by throwing rock!! It must be a psychological thing, since rock is the easiest move to throw at first because it is the position your hand is already in. We exploited this, but the aunts got too drunk and just passed their drinks to their children. My brother and I smile.
I ended up blacking out that night, and throwing up all of that seafood and most of the wine. Crazy family. It sucks drinking whiskey without chaser. I wish we could just drink soju or something, I’d be down with that. I woke up at 2AM in the house…and thought the clock said 2PM of the next day. I was really confused, and went into the living room. The aunts were still drinking and playing mah jong…ridiculous. They just kind of laughed at me and bid me goodnight. Back to bed!
