Day 9 -- The flight home and forgot-to-mentions

Well I'm here on the 14 hour flight home. This has been a very typical flight home so far, other than our professor opting to stay in Taiwan, so we're doing this one alone. Rather than describe in excruciating detail the quality of airline food, or how great it is to sit for 14 hours, I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention some things that happened that, for whatever reason, didn't make it into my blog, but that were interesting or noteworthy.

The first comes from Japan. We were in a bus somewhere when we passed by a drug store called "Love Drugs." Of course, me and the guy beside me start laughing, and one of our Japanese friends asked what was funny. We then had to use his e-dictionary to look up viagra, which also lead to a conversation about roofies. This in turn lead to talking about drug use in general, which brought to light the phrase "death spiral," which he thought was hilarious.

This story is from when I came home from Akihabara. I was walking around the train station and a middle-schooler waved at me and, striking a pose, shouted "Hello! I am Bruce Li!" To which I laughed and responded, in Japanese "Oh? Well then I'm Tom Cruise." They like that, and it gave me something to laugh about when I was feeling really stressed out, and he thought it was great.

On day one of Taiwan, I didn't mention, but there are tons of shops here run by small entrepreneurs. They're the kind of place you can get a dress shirt for 3 bucks, or a themed phone case for 5. I never really got a chance to explore them too thoroughly, but it really was something to see.

Goodbye Japan!

This was pretty cool to see

Right at the edge of the day/night line

Hello some part of Canada!

My pack job, upon getting here. Everything is pristine. You'll notice, however,  there's only one bag...

Yep. They managed to lose my other bag. Luckily they found it, and it's on its way now, but man was I NOT happy to find out about that. >:| I'll see you soon, other suitcase!

Over and out!

Day 8 -- Taiwanese Students and the Electronics market

Today we met up with the Taiwanese students, who were all excited to show us around. They brought us through a local Buddhist temple, followed by places only locals would know about, like small art galleries and shows. There were several interesting pieces, and we all had a good times seeing everything. The doorways were pretty low, and we kept having to duck as we went through the doors.

I can't find my pictures from inside. Will upload if I find them.

I like this better than those rubber strips they use in offices

I seem to remember these from somewhere... COUGH!

We then went to a local sort of convenience store, followed by a popular local restaurant. It was exactly the kind of thing you can only get from someone who knows the area. Unfortunately that’s where my part of this comes to an end. Because all of these places were local, they all only took cash, which I did not have enough of, as it turns out. We tried an atm or two, but none of them worked, so I ended up going back to my hotel to get more cash. Since I had no way of contacting everyone to meet up, I decided I would make this time to go to the Guang Hua Digital Plaza. It was pretty easy to find, and I bought a lot of very cheap electronics. The one I'm the most happy about is a small speaker set I can use to prop up my small laptop (the one I'm using to write this). The speakers I bought can get stampede-of-rhinos loud, compared to my PCs speakers which get about as loud as the scooting noise a chair makes on a smooth floor.

This was on the way

I didn't take any pictures of the markets simply because I had no time. Sufficed to say, they were just small outlets jammed full of electronics. Some were below ground, which was pretty cool. If you really want pictures: here.

I then took the subway to the appointed meeting place for dinner that I had an absolutely terrible time finding. I had an address, but the address was a 5 story building, so the restaurant inside took a while to find. It ended up being on the top floor, and was absolutely incredible. I had shrimp tempura, sushi, and several other things, along with incredible desert. The food was great, and it was all you can eat/drink, so we all sampled a ton of everything.

Our view

The whole gang!

As we were walking out of the restaurant, I stopped  briefly to pick up a little souvenir from a street vendor. When I turned around, everyone was gone. All I missed was the night market, which I'm told is very similar to a day market. I'm staying up all night tonight in preparation for the flight home. I went out for a while to look around and see what was open at 1:30, which was basically nothing. There was a camera shop open though, and I bought a spare battery for my camera. 

Day 7 -- The Type-A Taipei Adventure!

The day started normally enough. Waking up fairly early, and heading next door for breakfast. We have free breakfast at a sort of café place. I had French toast with ham, cheese, and turkey, and also this amazing thing. They called it a "yogurt cheese pastry."

Toast!

We then ventured to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial via the subway. The public transportation in Japan and Taiwan are amazing. I don't understand why we don't have more widespread transit in the states. Anyway, the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial had a large open courtyard where many public events take place. In the very early morning, people apparently practice martial arts.

You can see how practicing Taichi here would be pretty cool

The memorial itself had two guards standing absolutely motionless. I have no idea how anybody stands like this for 10 minutes, let alone for hours.

After the memorial, we ventured into a sort of artist's alley where several different kinds of goods could be haggled over. I bought a few things, and drove some of the prices down, but I'm generally bad at that sort of thing. The art pieces were all pretty incredible, and I wanted to buy a lot more than I did, but I definitely couldn't have taken back a huge gold statue of Guan Yu holding his fabled Guandao. For myself I bought a little necklace with a stone drinking gourd on it. 

After the Jade market, we went to a 101 floor mall named Taipei 101. Everything in it screamed high class, that is, expensive. It's very hard for me to describe the enormity and swank of it all. I don't pretend to know anything about fashion, but I know this is where people who know fashion go, provided they have the money. We had lunch in the food court, which had everything from sit down restaurants to a McDonalds. We opted for fast food, since none of us really felt like going broke, though we all went different places. I'll admit, I went to McDonalds. I'm not exactly big on food, so even though we're trying lots of new food, I'm not exactly eager to step out of my comfort zones.

After lunch, we went and briefly spent time at the National Palace Museum. It was INSANELY crowded because of a certain holiday that made entrance free. We read a few interesting things about how certain tools were used, and some history about Jade use in tools, but it was very difficult to navigate with all of the people, and we shortly departed. Before we left, two of our group members invented the Taiwan bomb, which is a form of photobombing. You walk up, very obviously, next to someone, smile, and take a picture of yourself with them. It sounds like the kind of thing that could end badly, but the only one of us who can speak Chinese (Brandon) got something of a date out of it, which was very interesting.

For a while now, one of our group members has been asking about where to get a sword in Taiwan. We all kind of got caught up in it, and before we knew it most of us had swords. It probably seems kind of silly to most people, but now I have a sword that I can say "I got that while I was vacationing in Taiwan." We were all kind of worried about getting it through customs, but TSA guidelines say that you can transport a sword in your checked baggage, and we haven't been able to find anything about it in Taiwanese customs, other than the typical no transport of arms and munitions. Basically worst case scenario the swords are taken by customs. We all went alone, and Brandon helped us all ask questions and pay. The woman running the shop was very nice, and probably had a pretty good day, considering how many of us there were getting these.

Now we come to my favorite part of the day. This is where the real adventure started. As a preface, I speak almost no Chinese. Specifically, "Do you speak English," "excuse me," and "thank you." I also know the word "where." Well, being a fearless adventurer, I forged into the concrete wilderness, armed only with a desire to purchase a new phone charger and look at the electronics stores. In true adventurer fashion, I got extremely lost. Now it was never too bad, and I always could have asked someone to point me the right way, but there is absolutely no fun in that. But to back up a little bit, I did some exploring around our hotel and found an amazing bookstore that I highly recommend if you're ever in Taipei. I believe the name translates to "Stepping Stone Books," or something to that effect. They have very cool anime themed merchandise, reasonably priced electronics, and all manner of fun things. I actually ended up buying a portable battery that I can use to charge my phone for about 10 bucks. This was a lot more of an involved process than you might think. I was trying to ask the store clerks if the voltage would be okay for my phone. Try to imagine conveying that kind of idea without the use of words. Rather than play charades, I simply asked the clerk if he spoke English. He didn't, but he DID speak some Japanese. It was going very well, right up until the very end where he was trying to explain the difference between two different batteries. He was trying to say that one would hold more charge, but the way he described it sounded like there was a problem and that it wouldn't work. He resorted to getting a different clerk who spoke flawless English, who very quickly explained everything. After the bookstore I searched in vain for NOVA (the electronics super market), then finally gave up and attempted to go home. NOVA is very obvious by the way, and literally was in about the only place I didn't look. While I was walking around, I stumbled upon a street that had tons of camera stores. These stores have parts for pretty much every camera there is, as well as having most of the newer camera models, all reasonably priced. It was interesting, but didn't help me get back at all. In fact, I only got back on a pure whim, because I was trying to use landmarks near the hotel, but on an absolute "what's down this road?" idea, I ended up finding our hotel. There was a rather large KFC on our hotel's street that I had no idea was there, which totally threw me off.

Anyway, after a long night of meandering, I simply crashed.

Day 6 -- To Taipei

Today we say goodbye to our Japanese friends :( I have had a very interesting time with all of them, and they will be missed. Some of them are studying abroad in Boone soon, so I'll definitely see them there! They all wrote notes on and signed a kind of plaque as a farewell gift. It was really nice! I'm hoping to keep in touch using an App called LINE, which is kind of like facebook, emoji, and free texting rolled into one. Here's a picture of the AMAZING HAND-MADE present they gave me.

The front

The back

This rather melancholy post follows an extremely stressful morning. I woke up this morning wearing my clothes from Tokyo. I groggily looked around, as it slowly dawned on my that I had fallen asleep. Then there was that sudden realization: "I have under 30 minutes to pack all of my belongings, including all the new stuff still in the box, into my already mostly full suitcases, or I'm going to miss my flight to Taipei."

Quickly, I brushed my teeth, ran around frantically, packed ALMOST everything, double checked, triple checked, and still managed to leave my pillow, phone charger, and watch. That was all I lost though, so all in all not TOO big of a deal. I can buy a cheap phone charger in Taipei, and the pillow wasn't a necessity, though it was nice. My watch has been a pain to be without, and I may just snag a new one, though I'm not entirely convinced it's not just mixed up in my luggage somewhere.

My first impression of Taiwan is hot, humid, huge, extremely busy, and dirty. It's like the state fair and New York had a child. That said, the stores are awesome, the night life is exciting, and crossing the street is living on the edge (if you jay walk you're pretty much dead). I suppose that sounds bad, but I mean it in a kind of endearing way. I suppose I'm a huge sucker for big cities with flashing lights.

For dinner, we went to a toilet themed restaurant. Rather than try to explain, please observe:

After we finished dinner, we simply checked out the subways, then went to bed. I'm going to try to learn a little Chinese, but Dr. Chen says that a lot of people here speak English or Japanese, so I'm in luck!