Song of the Traveling Daughter

A New England lass travels far, gets lost frequently, and moves to Taiwan for a year.

[reneeinasia]

An update!

I’ve been back in the states for 10 months now, so I thought it was about time for an update.

UNM gave me my scholarship back, and I’m now half way through with my degree.

I’m still traveling, but mostly in the US. If you want to read about it, I’m now dabbling with another travel blog here.

[reneeinasia]

On NTHU

What follows is a long post  with no pictures. Sorry, folks. My intention here isn't to rant. It's to provide more information to curious friends, as well as students who are considering NTHU for exchange.

Perhaps some of the issues I’m about to discuss are new problems or may be solved in the near future, but last semester was one frustrating experience after another. 

You should know a few things up front: first, I'm attending UNM on a scholarship that requires I take 15 credits a semester with at least a 3.0 GPA, for eight consecutive semesters. You should also know that Computer Science is not my original major, and that I'm also double majoring in Languages, so I’m a little behind schedule in some spots.

That said, let’s start with a brief overview. 

The Basics

The following is how I explained the situation to my study abroad counselor at UNM: "I constantly had communications issues with NTHU. For instance, we weren't told how or when to pay for our dorms, yet we were locked out for late payments. All dorm staff spoke only a smattering of English, and all memos we got were in Chinese. Two of my classes were rescheduled without notice, and the only English language calculus class was canceled, also without me being notified. Support staff we had to meet with for things like internet permissions and mail didn't speak any English, and most of the required paperwork was in Chinese only. Due to NTHU's special class registration system for exchange students, we weren't officially registered until weeks after classes started, which meant we weren't on attendance sheets, weren't assigned lab space, weren't able to log into homework submission systems, etc. While professors used English in class, the tutors and TAs were mostly unable to communicate in English. NTHU assigned me an adviser from my department, and while she was very helpful, NTHU never told her she was assigned an exchange student. Things actually look worse for next semester, as websites that used to have in English switched to just Chinese, and English course offerings for computer science are more limited. Essentially, compared with Taiwanese students, exchange students at NTHU have many extra hoops to jump through while getting much less support." This leads us to a less-but-still-relevant...

...Short Rant About NCTU and Calculus I also had issues with NTHU's partner school, where I took calculus. Honestly, that's putting it lightly. This calculus class was the bane of my existence. When NTHU's fall classes came out, they weren't offering calc. That was a problem, as I'm behind in my math sequence, so I was relieved when they added an English calc class. I registered and showed up for the first day of classes...and no one was there. They canceled the only English language calculus class, required for the huge majority of students, without notifying me. NTHU runs very small classes sometimes, and I know there were at least two other foreign students registered for this class. Why they canceled is beyond me. 

Anyway, I decided to take calc at NTHU. They offered more than one English calc class, but because other classes were moved and I had to join late, I only had one option. This class, I soon realized, was moving deep and fast, sort of an honors-and-intensive rolled into one. We finished our coursework almost a month before students in the regular classes and moved right on to calc 2 material. The homework was almost all proofs, difficult proofs. I found the answers to one of the problems on an answer sheet for a different class, one that listed Linear Algebra as a prerequisite.

I took my homework to tutors, but that was only some help. They spoke very little English, so if I didn't catch something, they couldn't explain it to me. Sometimes they couldn't even work out the answers. There was one problem early on in the semester that five tutors spent twenty minutes working on, only to tell me that they couldn't answer it without more advanced techniques we weren't allowed to use. I asked UNM's online tutors for help then, to try to get explanations. I've only had good experiences with CAPS (UNM's tutoring office), but the poor tutors were stumped by these homework problems, and astonished that they were only for calc 1.

Couldn't I have just dropped? Nope, not exactly. Remember that 15 credit requirement? Yep.

Spring Semester

The NTHU Department of Computer Science is only offering three courses in English Spring semester for undergraduates, one of which is “English Listening and Speaking”. The other two don't correlate to any classes required for my major and/or require NTHU-specific prerequisites. This means that a second semester at NTHU would not have brought me closer to finishing my degree, and I would have returned to the US too late to enroll in summer courses. Coming home allows me to take relevant classes this summer at the local community college. In addition, my roommate and closest on-campus friend had moved to Taipei, I had pretty much used up my travel opportunities, and I wasn’t enthralled with the thought of pushing through a semester that would be essentially useless.

What now?

I appealed to UNM for a leave of absence for the spring semester. Most schools (including UNM) grant these exceptions for serious illness or injury, family situations, missionary work, and military orders. Documentations and letters of support are strongly suggested. My only documentation was the NTHU school calendar and a few screenshot emails, but somehow, it worked. My leave of absence was accepted and I’m returning to UNM in the fall, scholarship intact. 

In hindsight...

I wish there was more information on NTHU online. Non-university, English language websites are practically non-existent. No blogs, no vlogs, no review websites, zilch. When I started this blog, I couldn’t find a single relevant blog. Now, this little blog is on the second page of Google search results for the third result and first non-NTHU result for  “national tsing hua university blog exchange student taiwan”, and is the only blog Google returns in the first five pages. So maybe this will help others out.

Update, January 2016: This post is now the third result and first non-NTHU result for “national tsing hua university blog exchange student taiwan”. The blog’s homepage is the fourth. There is, however, another blog post within the first five pages, which is pretty good reading. You can get to it here.

 NTHU is a well-regarded technical school in a beautiful country, and I hope the adjust their systems to better support exchange students. Do I regret going? Nope. But I don’t regret coming home, either. I took a gamble based on the information (and vastly reduced application time) available to me, and it didn’t work out this time. But trying new things, meeting new people, and traveling while I can was kind of the whole point of this adventure. 

I may make one more post on Tokyo, but for most intents and purposes, this blog is being retired. It will still be up for reading, but I don’t intend on posting regularly, if at all. If you found this blog because you’re considering NTHU, please feel free to message me! I’m still on Tumblr, just not this blog, and I’d be happy to answer asks or fanmail.

Thank you all—friends, family, random denizens of Tumblr who stuck around—for reading. 

Happy adventuring!

[reneeinasia]

Tokyo: the last few days (part 1)

Oh, Japan. It's been over a week since I left you, and I'm not gonna lie, I miss you.

Yes, it's true, I'm home in New Hampshire, safe and un-jet-lagged and sitting in front of the fire. But I still haven't written anything about my last few days in Tokyo. They were weird and unscheduled. I spent lots of time in Starbucks, seeking internet for sending Important College Emails and writing the last few posts for this blog. I often cooked my own dinners, a welcome change from cold soba or wandering around for an hour in search of a particular pizza restaurant. 

I stayed in a hostel near this big shrine, which was surrounded by long rows of shops. Plum season had just started and sakura season was still a few weeks off, but the store fronts were decorated with blossom-laden branches.

By this point I'd seen many shrines and temples and they were starting to lose their exciting luster for me. This one had a huge pair of shoes hung on the wall, though, which isn't normal. Touching the shoes is said to bring you good luck--if you can jump to reach them, that is.

I also hit up a nearby cat cafe. Remember that pattern I said was becoming apparent? Yeah. Anyway, I'll let the pictures do the talking here.

[reneeinasia]

Rabbit Island

Lots of things make me happy. Absurdly dark chocolate bars. Senior citizens going about their business with bright, unnaturally colored hair (unexpected trend of the century). Rock music with violins. Lemon bars. Bunnies.

"Japan has a rabbit island?" said I, many months ago. "Where all the bunnies eat from your hands and hop in your lap? Of course it does. It's probably like 20 hours from Tokyo or something."

It's not? It's an easy day trip from Hiroshima? Well that's cool.

It's covered in abandoned buildings that you can explore? Shoot, I have to go!

And so I did.

Ōkunoshima or "rabbit island", as it's also known for obvious reasons, is a bullet train ride, then a local train ride, then a ferry boat away from Hiroshima. The travel instructions scare some foreigners away, but it's really not that difficult. I went on the weekend, when it's busier. Even then, it's easy to find lonely parts of the island to explore.

As long as you have food (100 yen at the ferry port), bunnies will run up to you and stare at you like they haven't eaten in four months, even though you totally just saw them mooching off that Chinese couple a few hundred yards away. They don't mind pictures, but they like to get close.

Oh hey there!

Are we sensing a pattern in my travel habits? A pattern involving friendly, fuzzy animals? Yes. Yes, we are.

Can you really blame me?

When I wasn't getting mobbed by greedy bunnies, I was exploring old buildings. Ōkunoshima housed a poison gas factory way back when. Some of the buildings were re-purposed later, but some were left to loom over tourists. (And everyone's a tourist. Almost no one lives on the island.)

Many of the larger buildings were blocked off. There wasn't any security and if you wanted to explore after the last ferry left on a week day, you could probably get inside with no problems. I stayed behind the barrier because a) I could see what was inside fine and nothing interesting begged to be discovered, b) there were people around, and c) it was previously a POISON GAS FACTORY. Poison.

 Seriously, I'm not going to go wander around an abandoned poison gas factory unless I know explicitly that it's safe. I still got some shots that show the scale and style of the ruins, though.

Lunch was a challenge, as neither of the two restaurants had English menus. I managed to get sustenance anyway, wandered around and visited more rabbits, then sat down for coffee, people watching, and my latest obsession.

The coffee was really good, and pretty to boot.

Rabbit Island was my last trip outside of Tokyo. The next day, I headed back for the big city. A few more updates are pending and then I'm coming home! I announced it on Instagram and Facebook a few days ago without going into much detail. If you follow my personal blog or we keep up via IM, you probably know what's been going on with UNM and NTHU. I think I owe it to students considering NTHU for a year or a semester an explanation, which will be forthcoming.

[reneeinasia]

Hiroshima

Hiroshima is three hours away from Kyoto and  five hours away from Tokyo by shinkansen. It's far too long to make a day trip out of it and not near too much of interest, and yet thousands of foreigners still stop by when they're in Japan.

The bombing of Hiroshima by the US is modern history, but after the bombings, Hiroshima the city slowly slid out of the Western mind. The bombings were behind fifty years of growth, healing, and history when I was born, but even then, all I knew of Hiroshima was the destruction and enormous casualties. A lot can happen in 70 years, though. Hiroshima is now bustling city that reminded me of Boston with its waterways and green spaces. Most of the memorials to the victims of "little boy" are centered in the Peace Park, built over where the worst damage occurred.

This is the A-Bomb Dome. Once an important meeting place and source of pride for the city, it is now the most well-known icon of bombing. It's only one block away from the hypocenter, the point directly below the bomb when it detonated, and everyone inside was killed. Somehow, much of the building remained, and it's now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Heritage Site status was declared in 1996 against the wishes of the US and China, who voted against granting the special historical designation. Pro tip from Renee to the US government: If China is the only other country voting "nay", you should seriously reconsider your position. That's not good company to be in.

Usually, the A-Bomb Dome doesn't look like my picture above. When it's not undergoing conservation, it looks more like:

(Picture from WikiTravel.)

The Peace Memorial Museum is an absolute must-see for understanding both the immediate aftermath of the bomb and the city's healing process. It's also nauseating and heart wrenching. This is coming from someone who's read books about forensics and watched vlogs about mortuary science for fun. From the girl who went to the Museum of Death on spring break, where visitors frequently pass out.

This was worse.

But it was worth it.

Part of the shock was that I simply didn't expect to see removed keloids or deformed fingernails in museum boxes. I was also a little concerned about the number of small children I saw with their parents. History is for everyone but not all ages. Most kids seemed either a bit shell shocked or like they were trivializing exhibits to process them.

Little Boy, actual size.

The museum covers the events after the bombing thoroughly, until after the effects of atom sickness began to appear. Then it switches to a long, elevated hall with a clear view of the A-Bomb dome out the window on one side and posters detailing other bits of history on the other side. I stood in front of the poster that explained how the bomb was tested in New Mexico for a long time. In Hiroshima, the atom bomb destroyed upwards of 100,000 lives. In New Mexico, we named our baseball team the "Isotopes".

You're probably getting the feeling that a day visiting Hiroshima isn't fun. And it's really not. So after I left the museum I got ice cream (from Baskin Robbins, because Asian ice creams are terrible) and sat next to the river.

Visiting Peace Park only takes one day, but I planned for two days in Hiroshima. My second day, I took a day trip to a unique island a short train ride out of the city. It'll prove much lighter and, uh, fuzzier than this entry, I promise!

[reneeinasia]

Kyoto Daytrip: Nara

(Wow, internet for my computer has been really spotty. It won't connect at all to hotel wi-fi, and Starbucks likes to randomly cut out. Thus the short last post.)

Suggestion: While reading this post, listen to Nara by E. S. Posthumus, an epic instrumental album where each song is named after an ancient city or kingdom. Go on, it's at the link! I'll wait.

Alright, then. On to Nara.

Nara is one of Japan’s earliest capitals, founded by Empress Gemmei over twelve hundred years ago. Nara is mostly a historical site, home to a huge park that makes for prime wandering, a mind-numbingly huge buddha, and lots of traditional architecture. It’s also home to hordes of tame deer. The story goes that they were the messengers of the gods, and thus were given special treatment. Now, they cozy up to tourists.

I mean, they get really cozy.

If you buy a small stack of deer crackers for 100 yen, they’ll be all over you. And in your pockets. And knocking over your small children. And butting you in the legs with their mercifully trimmed horns. They rarely hurt humans, although lots of tourists seemed disproportionately scared of the nudging and butting.

I accidentally took the slow train, so I got to Nara in the afternoon. I wandered around for a while, feeding deer and taking pictures of anything that caught my fancy while blazing through an audio book my mother bought me for my birthday.

Not a giant toilet bowl plunger, as my mother so vividly described it. A statue based on a structure in India, built by a group of devout Japanese Buddhists 

I then stopped into an Indian restaurant for lunch and wandered out to the “big Buddha”. It is impressively, monstrously large, and it's not even the biggest in Japan, not by a long shot.

Home of Nara's largest Buddha. It's hard to get an idea of how big the actual Buddha is because no people can really stand next to him, but he takes up the whole floor-to-ceiling space in the center of this building. Yes.

One of the smaller statues that flank the main one.

The main statue, which I could not get a good picture of from any angle because of the darkness.

After visiting the giant Buddha, I headed back to Kyoto to pack up for the next stop: Hiroshima. 

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After Tokyo, Kyoto is the next big to-do on most peoples’ Japan to-do lists. It wasn’t quite that high on my list, as in my mind not much could top Harajuku and snow monkeys. Once I got those out of the way and completed my marathon trip to Hokkaido, I headed to Kyoto, one of Japan’s old capitals and home to beautiful scenery and geisha.

I took one day to visit Kyoto and one to visit Nara, a short day trip away. If I wanted to, I could have easily taken an extra day to see Kyoto, but eventually shrines and temples and such blend together. You’ve got to limit your intake. I hit up the Golden Shrine and an old castle.

The Golden Shrine was beautiful, although I thought the entrance fee was over priced. It took maybe half an hour to see my fill, and I payed around 6 USD.

Next, for a change of pace, I went to a castle. Up to this point I'd seen lots of religious architecture and some modern versions of traditional living spaces, but nothing old and majestic but non-religious. Don't think about European castles, though. This old castle was sprawling but mostly one level, with lots of tatami. We had to remove our shoes to wander through the insides. Unfortunately, no inside pictures were allowed, but here's the outside:

Inside there were some signs in English, but most were in Japanese. I still picked up some trivia. For instance: the floors squeak, purposefully. They’re called “mockingbird floors”, and they're built to alert the shogun's guards to intruders before they got too close.

Kyoto is a large modern city, and traveling from hotel to sights can take quite a long time. Luckily for us English-only tourists, the bus system is easy to use for foreigners. I bought a day hop on/hop off pass and had no trouble. I also managed to listen to more than half an audio book in a day, which is something I haven't done since middle school.

Next up: Nara!

[reneeinasia]

Sapporo: Snow and a Snow Festival

Lots has happened in the last few days, but a lot of that has been me spending time on trains. And in train stations. Before getting on another train.

My first marathon trip was from Nagoya to Sapporo. Ninety minutes on the shinkansen (bullet train), then three hours, then an eight-hour overnight ride. I got to Sapporo at 6-something, before even Starbucks was open. I stashed my backpack, tried to wake myself up, then called my brother to wish him a happy birthday. (He's 16! Isn't that crazy?)

I didn't go to all this trouble for kicks. I was determined to see the Sapporo Snow Festival, one of the most famous in the world. Sappporo, one of the biggest cities in Hokkaido, is an excellent city for a snow festival because Hokkaido is cold. COLD, I tell you. Next to where most of the sculptures were located there was a huge clock that alternated between the time and the temperature. In the middle of a sunny day, with no wind chill, Sapporo was -22 degrees Celsius. That's -7 degrees Fahrenheit. Did I mention that this was without windchill?

An official Star Wars sculpture.

The sculptures themselves were pretty awesome, especially after dark. Certain sculptures had lights features, and would play lights shows with music. Here's a video, if you're interested.

Hey, Taiwan! Missed ya!

A different sculpture, this time at night.

The park that held a lot of sculptures was like a multicultural food fair. There was traditional Japanese, Hokkaido cuisine, and food from half a dozen different countries. I had some darned good paella, although there wasn't nearly enough to justify what I payed for it, and some majestically huge but strangely tastless fries.

Yep, they're as long as my forearm. No, I don't think they were cut from actual potatoes.

Because of the way my schedule worked out, I had about 16 hours in Sapporo. Most of were spent in a Starbucks, that international bastion of warmth and electrical outlets and internet English menus with caffeine on them. The others I spent shopping (my purse finally bit the dust so hard I was afraid to carry it) and wandering in the cold.

The new purse+my little snow fox friend.

After I took in my share of snowy sculptures, I headed back to the train station to catch a 10pm train that was scheduled to arrive at the transfer station at 5:37 in the morning. Yay. I can usually manage to sleep on trains, and I did OK, but this train was the loudest I had ever been on, period. And old. Oh well. Eventually I made it to Nagoya for two down days, and promptly slept for 13 hours.

Upcoming: Renee feeds deer out of her hand, wanders through Hiroshima, and talks about seeing a geisha but doesn't actually post pictures. Sorry. Hopefully you'll read anyway!

[reneeinasia]

Snowy Adventures

You know them: the monkeys that live somewhere in Japan, spending the cold winters soaking in natural hot springs with snow piling up on their furry heads. When I was little, I only knew these creatures from magazines like National Geographic and Smithsonian, so I assumed that the possibly-mythical monkeys were accessible only to intrepid wildlife photographers who trekked miles through the snow.

Not so!

All you need is a heavy coat, a pair of good shoes, and some patience. 

Seriously, the good shoes bit is really important. I wore sturdy hiking boots and took a fall. The whole left side of my body was sore for a day, but it was entirely worth it!

I feel rather misled by the wildlife photographers. It’s not their fault, of course, that they get paid to take pictures of animals looking wild and natural. But the truth is that snow monkey park looks like this when it's open:

And that's not a third of the people who were there.

In the words of my mother, “They must wonder about us humans.”  I’m sure they do, but they really don’t seem to mind. This trip I’m armed only with my nexus, which takes decent pictures in broad daylight but doesn’t have an actual zoom function. Pictures like this, then, aren’t zoomed in at all:

The shot below gives you a better idea of how chill (no pun intended, I swear) the monkeys were with people. This particular monkey sat and posed for a good long while.

If you haven't guessed from the general snowiness of these pictures, this part of Japan was chilly. Not super cold, but cold enough that I wished I didn't have to take my gloves off to operate my touch screen camera. Also cold enough that I tried to warm up my gloves after lunch, and promptly burned them to crispiness instead. Oops.

I stayed in Yamanouchi, a teeny onsen town about two and a half hours outside of Tokyo. The hotel I stayed at was lovely, but practically empty. It also didn't have heating. Yep, you read that right. Fortunately, I had a powerful space heater and a kotatsu that I never wanted to leave.

As Yamanouchi is an onsen town, the hotel naturally had an onsen, which I used. Certain Taiwanese friends were right: it was much more pleasant than the hot springs in Beitou. As I've mentioned, the hotel was pretty much empty, and I had the whole women's section to myself. (No pictures, for obvious reasons.)

After Yamanouchi I took half a day in Nagano, which was unexciting, before heading up by train to Sapporo. Yes, those two places are far, far away from each other. But as it so happens, I have time and a Japan rail pass, and thus no need to fly. I'll have a post up on Sapporo and the snow festival hopefully within the day. For now, there's a pic and a video up on Instagram.

[reneeinasia]

The Ghibli Museum

Although anime and manga still aren’t quite “mainstream” in the US, if you haven’t heard of Studio Ghibli, you must have been living under a rock. You’re also probably new to this blog, because I’ve posted about Ghibli films twice: here, in a general post, and here, in a post about  the studio’s Academy Award-Winning Spirited Away.

Anyway, I’ve been a fan of Studio Ghibli and the works of Hayao Miyazaki for years now, so when I planned my trip to Japan, a stop at the Studio Ghibli Museum was at the top of my “to do” list. The museum, also known (for some reason) as the Museo d'Arte Ghibli, is in the town of Mitaka on the outskirts of Tokyo. It’s inaccessible by car, and visitors are strongly encouraged to take public transit all the way or walk part of the way.

It’s easy to find the museum from the train station.

No pictures are allowed inside the museum, so you can fully experience it without the distraction of the camera. I appreciated the rule for a different reason: since I had no idea what the inside looked like, everything was interesting and surprising and worth exploring.

Waiting in line.

The museum was designed by Miyazaki himself, and his fingerprint is on everything. I’ve been to plenty of theme parks before, ones that look nice but are a little too shiny, or where you find that what you thought was wood is painted on or the cast iron is hollow in the middle. At the Ghibli museum, everything feels real. The museum treats children like individuals, and everything is child safe. Exhibits have steps in front of them, so that children can see the exhibits without their parents’ help. I actually had to bend down quite a bit to see some things, as they were set up at a six year old’s eye level.

This creature from Laputa: Castle in the Sky resides on the roof. Pictures are allowed on the roof, so here, have some more!

There were dozens of people in a small space. How I managed to get a picture without a single one of them is beyond me.

Also from Castle in the Sky, if I’m remembering correctly.

When you enter the museum, you get a ticket to see a short film. There are nine films on rotation, each one only available at the Ghibli museum. Each guest can only see one film. Everyone understood how special this was, because as soon as the movie started, everything was completely silent.  The movies are completely in Japanese, but that hardly mattered. That’s the beauty of cinema, after all--it’s a heavily visual medium. I saw The Day I Harvested a Planet, which was magical.

Each ticket is special, too, with a few frames from a Ghibli film. I think these were from Spirited Away, but I haven’t checked.

It’s hard to do the museum justice in a short blog post, and I think that’s intentional on Miyazaki’s part. It’s designed to be an experience, so writers are left in a catch-22 because if we do it justice in words, we take away from an eventual experience.

This, then, is where I end my post. Hopefully, you too can one day take a trip to the Ghibli museum and experience it the way it's meant to be experienced.

[reneeinasia]

Akihabara and The Tokyo National Museum

Akihabara is a city inside a city, part of Tokyo that’s packed with electronics stores and theme cafes. The day I visited Aki (or Akiba as it’s also called) I had accidentally stayed in bed until noon and had headed out elsewhere in the afternoon for sightseeing. On the way back I had to change trains at Akihabara, and because I was feeling guilty for spending the morning in bed, I dragged myself out of the train station and wandered around in the cold. Even a short visit was fascinating.

As I’m not really familiar with the hows and whys of why Aki became “Electric Town”, let’s bring the discussion towards something I can talk about: food.

You should know that Japan has this thing with themed restaurants. Weird, over the top, and utterly bizarre to lots of Westerners, theme restaurants are all over if you know where to look. Some, like cat cafes haven’t made the hop to the west because of regulations against animals in eating establishments. The rest--ghost and vampire restaurants, maid cafes, butler cafes where only white men serve food, zombie cafes--seem to be a Japanese phenomena. Cat cafes came from Taiwan and Taipei has a few interesting restaurant, but Taiwan’s got nothing on Japan.

Akihabara is home to lots of maid cafes, probably the most famous type of theme restaurant.

In this picture, you can see a large ad for a maid cafe on the middle building.

When I first arrived, I meant to start my first day sightseeing at the fish market. Then I decided that, no, I wanted to sleep off a layover and time change, and I would go to the Tokyo National Museum instead. After I made this choice, of course, I learned that most museums in Japan close on Mondays. So I ended up at the museum several days later.

The Tokyo National Museum is in a large park that’s also home to a zoo and a natural history museum. It was chillier than I expected the day I visited, thus my huddled stance in the below picture.

Thanks to the woman who took the picture for me and showed concern for my lack of jacket.

I started on a section with non-Japanese art, which was nice but lacked English explanations for lots of artifacts and included many things I had seen before. (Seriously, I’ve seen lots of mummies. And literally a whole city's worth of Khmer art.)  Eventually, I made it to the Japanese art building, which was both more interesting and more educational for someone who only reads English.

Ueno park itself was quite pretty, but I'd rather go back on a warmer day (or one where I'm fully prepared for the weather). I'll be back in Tokyo at the end of this trip, tying up loose ends on the sightseeing side of things like visiting the palace and catching up on blogging in a cat cafe.

Up next: a trip to the Studio Ghibli Museum on the outskirts of Tokyo, and up close and personal with baby monkeys! Thanks for sticking around.

[reneeinasia]

Tsukiji Fish Market and Wandering

It's proving a little difficult to write posts about Tokyo as I haven't done grand day trips that fit into easily blogable boxes. I go one place, I end up somewhere else on the way, I go back to the same areas multiple times to explore back roads or shop.

So. This post will be about a few of the things I've done in the past few days.

First: the Tsukiji fish market! The fish market starts every morning long before the sunrise with a tuna auction that draws curious tourists. I, however, skipped it. Look, I didn't come to Tokyo to wake up at 2:30 in the morning to watch people argue over tuna in Japanese. Lots of things fall under my idea of "fun", and that is not one of them.

Fresh sushimi is definitely on my radar, though. I really don't eat much meat anymore, only partaking occasionally. I eat seafood sometimes, though, and I've eaten a lot recently as the shrimp dishes are frequently the closest things to vegetarian. 

The sushimi was incredible. I had to stand in line in the cold for a long time and then fork out 20 USD, but it was totally worth it.

The stripped stuff is fatty tuna, the pink stuff on top is regular tuna, the bead-looking things are actually salmon roe, the sludgy stuff on top of the leaf is sea urchin. I'm not actually sure what that triangle thing is. (Sea urchin, by the way, is incredible.)

Sometime after the fish market I headed to the Tokyo Skytree. I thought about heading up to the viewing platform, but it's expensive. Also it (the platform) is half the height of the one at the Taipei 101, and I was kind of underwhelmed. But the trip was totally worth it because I stumbled upon a shop completely dedicated to Studio Ghibli.

Want.

WHAT.

It's a whole basket of Totoros!

I've done other things, of course--got lost a lot, spent lots of hours on public transit, worked on editing a novel that I'm determined to start querying by the end of this year. And it's been great. I've got more Tokyo stuff to post and tomorrow I head out for Yamanouchi to see the famous hot spring monkeys, then off to the Snow Festival in Sapporo!

[reneeinasia]

Tokyo Post 1: Harajuku

I did it!

I successfully made it to Japan!

After an overnight layover in Shanghi where I made friends with an Indian toothbrush mogul and inhaled enough second hand smoke to last me a lifetime, I made it to Tokyo.

The only picture I took in China. Visible: garish seats, government-controlled media.  Not visible: five dudes smoking a few tables over, my weird noodle breakfast, sleepy Renee face.

I planned to hit the ground running my first morning and go to the Tsukiji Fish Market, but 7:30 rolled around and I decided I wanted to catch up on sleep. When I rolled out of bed I wandered into the public transit system and eventually made it to Harajuku.

Takeshita street, the main drag in Harajuku for crazier styles and tourists alike.

The public transit system here, by the way, is terribly confusing. Hands down, it is the most difficult subway system I have ever tried to navigate. You can get pretty much anywhere, but...it'll take you a long time and a good handful of money.

Anyway, I've wanted to wander through Harajuku for a long time. I love Japanese street fashion, particularly Lolita (which shares nothing but the name with that book about a pedophile and is actually a typically mature and modest style) and a darker style that draws from Mori Kei and Dolly Kei*.

Closet Child, a lolita thrift store I've considered buying from online. Except that even the used clothes are expensive. Eeek.

I wandered around for a while, happily wandering through all sorts of shops. Even though I look like a college student on a micro wardrobe (which I am), the shop ladies were friendly, which I appreciated.

I was also surprised at how many older fashionistas and mothers I saw. I keep up with the biggest English language Tokyo fashion blog, and they typically post street snaps of young Japanese students, male and female. But I saw a woman in full lolita with an infant in a carrier, and a well dressed Japanese-style goth couple with an equally well dressed child, a woman old enough to be my grandmother, and several westerners in what were originally Japanese styles.

Wonder Rocket caters to a different style called "Mori Kei", essentially "forest style". It's soft, light, uses lots of layers, and is usually much cheaper than lolita.

I got hungry and braced myself for the high cost of eating in Japan. Surprise! It's not really as bad as it's cracked up to be, at least if you're patient and wait until you find the right spot.

Lunch! I was thrilled by this place. It's on Takeshita street, it's got an English menu, affordable prices, served a darned good salad to boot.

Harajuku's crepes are famous, and salad can only get you so far, so I got one.

Ohmigosh it was incredible.

After lunch I wandered to the park on the opposite side of Harajuku station. It's expansive and nice for rambling. It's also home to a huge landmark of a shrine, the Meiji Shrine.

Pictures at the shrine were restricted confusingly, and the day was bleak and not good for pretty pictures anyway. I looked around and wandered back to my lodgings.

That's all for now! I'm terribly frustrated with a tumblr update that makes editing text posts kind of tricky, so hopefully I'll get the hang of it by the next post.

*If you're curious, it's called "strega fashion". It's very new, not at all Japanese, and I love it.

[reneeinasia]

Spirited Away to Jiufen

Jiufen is a quaint little gold mining town that is now held together by the tourism industry. Lots of things bring people to Jiufen: the feeling of "old Taiwan", seeing sites in classic Taiwanese film A City of Sadness, spectacular views, or, in my case, the legacy of Spirited Away.

When planning Spirited Away, director Hayao Miyazaki reportedly spent a lot of time sketching in Jiufen. I say "reportedly" because, oddly enough, I haven't been able to find any proof. In Taiwan and on the internet it's kind of an accepted fact. I'm not going to quibble, though, partly because of Miyazaki's famously low-profile personality and partly because Jiufen's influence on Spirited Away is obvious.

Elly told me that Jiufen was rather touristy and that she was disappointed when she visited. She was right: it is pretty touristy, as in packed with tourists. But I wasn't disappointed at all. You just have to venture off the beaten path to enjoy Jiufen.

The first thing I'll say about Jiufen is that it's like 85% stairs. Steep, twisty stairs everywhere. (This is a Spirited Away parallel, if you're counting.)

I like this photo because the stairs look like they lead into a magical world.

All the stairs were tempting, oh so tempting. I have a strict "explore it" rule, AKA "when in doubt, check it out". This means I wandered up and down many enticing flights of stairs that led to nothing in particular. In two cases I landed up on someone's back porch.

So. Tempting. I did not go up these, though, because they gave me a "grave yard" vibe and I don't know how to behave at Taiwanese grave sites. My exploration policy does not extend to offending locals.

Other times I ended up wonderful places. Take this tunnel, for instance.

Must...explore...

Yes, ok, if we're looking at Spirited Away parallels, exploring strange tunnels is a VERY BAD idea. But I did it anyway. It was surprisingly long and a bit of a tight squeeze.

Some fans visited.

"How long is this thing?"

The tunnel spat me out at a quaint tea house that didn't seem to be accessible from anywhere else. Inside, the menu was all Chinese, written on wood slats. A ancient woman sat inside, yelling "DRINK TEA, DRINK TEA" in Mandarin. When I tried to ask if she had an English menu, she just kept yelling. Meanwhile, I met a nice Romanian gentleman who lived in New York, and we chatted and talked about how expensive tea was and what we were doing in Taiwan.

Speaking of tea, take a look at the main tea house and tell me it doesn't give you a Spirited Away vibe.

This might not be a coincidence, as apparently Miyazaki spent quite a bit of time sketching the tea house.

Can't go to Jiufen without getting tea, even though it'll cost you an arm and a leg. Well, it seems like it on paper, at least. Tea for one will run you anywhere from 10 USD to 50 USD. Yes, you read that right. No, mom, I didn't get the 50$ tea set.

(Pic from here, unlike the others, which I screenshotted.)

The view from the tea house.

Tea included a tea lesson, enough tea for fifteen or twenty small pots (the terracotta colored one below), and desserts. Also the most stunning view I have ever had the privilege of dining in front of.

I'm not sure what the green thing is, but it was good. The dish with the toothpick is dried fruit, the funny-looking bowl is Taiwanese oolong, and the thing on the green plate is brown sugar mochi. Somehow, brown sugar mochi is 1000% better than regular mochi. It was incredible.

Making tea feels like working a spell. There's certain things to do at certain times, and you have to count through the whole thing, and it works differently if you're using new tea leaves or old ones. It takes practice, too, and I didn't get it exactly right until something like the third try. Perhaps I'll make a post on proper tea making later, because it will definitely take a whole post.

Jiufen is a teeny town, and it takes less than 10 minutes to walk from the touristy section to the other side of the mountain.

Jiufen by day.

Jiufen by night.

The absolutely stunning view from the tea house.

The bath house from Spirited Away.

I ate tea and watched the sun go down, then went exploring again. This is when the place started to get packed. I had heard that there was some tunnel somewhere, and so, following the adventuring rule of thumb, I went off to find the tunnel. Turns out, I had already walked right by it in broad daylight, but I didn't find it until after dark. Sorry about the crappy picture.

Found you!

Look, this can't be a coincidence.

I tried to look in through the gate to see how far back it went, but I couldn't see the end even with the light of my tactical flashlight. Spooky. I also had a coughing fit and got dive bombed by a bat, so maybe approach the spooky mining tunnel with caution.

This turned into a very long and picture-heavy post, but I can't leave it without talking about food. There are two main roads in Jiufen that are pretty much perpendicular to each other, and they're both packed with food stalls. All sorts of enticing smells--almond powder, fresh fruit, noodles--and some not so great ones, like stinky tofu.

...chicken feet?!

Super yummy giant mushrooms.

Use caution, fellow travelers.

Jiufen could be a boring trip spent fighting crowds, but it wasn't, and it doesn't have to be. If you go, get tea around 3:30, watch the sun go down, explore a little, and then catch the bus right away. Possible pro-tip: get on a bus going the opposite direction of Taipei (as long as the driver nods when you say "Taipei?"). They'll let you off at the next stop where you'll get on another bus going the other way. It's an extra fifteen or twenty minutes on twisty mountain roads, but if you can take that, you get to skip the long lines for the bus that goes directly back to Taipei.

[reneeinasia]

Yehliu and the Gondola

It sounds like the name of a bizarre indie folk band, but it's not.  Not yet, anyway. Yehliu refers to Yehliu Geopark, where I went on my second travel day in Taipei, and "the gondola" is the Maokong Gondola on the outskirts of Taipei.

If you spend any time in Taiwanese gift shops (or on travel websites), this is a familiar figure:

Picture from Wikipedia, for reasons that will soon become apparent.

Yehliu is a sleepy port town about an hour and a half outside of central Taipei. I took a bus and binged on podcasts while watching the scenery. Even on a grey day, there were some great views out the windows.

I did not take pictures of the views, though. Sorry.

A short aside: Podcasts are my new addiction. They make good use of dead time while letting me look out the windows. Unlike books, they do not encourage motion sickness, which is a big plus.

Moving on. Yehliu is home to a fantastic rock-scape. If there weren't so many other tourists, it would be like walking on a different planet.

Part of the park from a viewing platform.

It doesn't come across well in the pictures, but all that brown stuff?  It's not sand, it's solid rock. Which, by the way, has lots of prehistoric critters lodged in it.

My hand for scale:

Yehliu was packed, but mostly with what seemed to be Taiwanese tourists and a few from elsewhere in Asia.* It took me a long time to hear any snatches of English. This makes sense to me, as the Queen's Head is the real draw of the place, and I'd never heard of it until I landed in Taiwan.

The Queen's Head itself can only properly be viewed from one angle...which you have to line up for. Twenty or thirty people lined up for pictures, which I didn't care too much about.  Below is the only one I snapped:

Look at all those people...oh, and the Queen's Head!

Outside of the tourist-packed park, standard fishing town business proceeds as usual. In Taiwan, this includes laying seaweek out to dry.

Drying seaweed.

After I had seen my fill (and successfully gotten food from an adjacent market using only Chinese, go me!) I hopped back on the bus to Taipei. I had hoped to see the zoo, because I really want to see the pandas, but I got very lost trying to get to Yehliu and the trip itself took longer than I was expecting, so no zoo. Right next to the zoo is the first station on the Maokong gondola, which I did have time for.

The Maokong gondola has two types of cars: regular and "crystal". As in the classic sense of the term, not meth. They both cost the same, but crystal cars have glass floors. I, of course, had to ride the glass-bottomed one, because regular gondalas are just so passé.

In the gondola.

Crystal cars can hold five people, and as I was a solo rider, I got shoved in where I fit.  Which was with a group of four Taiwanese ladies who asked me in Chinese if I spoke Chinese ("a little") and told me I was cute, then took pictures of me, because I'm obviously more impressive than the view or something.

I kid, I kid.  This is the actual view.

The top of the mountain is mostly little tea houses, which I had a blast exploring. I finally found one with expensive dishes but affordable sides, and ate a ton of fried sweet potatoes and tea while shivering. While Taiwanese people will tell you it's cold as soon as it gets below 70 F, they sort of have a reason. No one really likes to close the windows. I shivered and ate my potatoes and was very glad for a whole two pots of hot tea.

On the way back down I was the only person in my car, again a crystal cabin. My first thought was, "I'M SO SITTING ON THE FLOOR!"

So I did, and I took this fantastic picture:

Um, yes.  Black cab, black outside, black sweatshirt...not much to see. If it helps, that void by my right cheek is the view out the floor.

I wish I was able to take pictures that really expressed how quaint and mysterious the top of that tea house mountain was. It was a little bit like Jiufen, though, which is coincidentally what my next post will be about.  Stay tuned!

PS: For pictures that are slightly more recent than my blog posts, see my Instagram. (You don't have to be on Instagram to look!)  You can also comment on pictures there!

I also successfully made it to Tokyo! I did Harajuku and took a peek around Shibuya today, and those posts will be up as soon as I finish my post on Jiufen.

*Taiwanese tourists seem like everyone else around here except they carry cameras and take more pictures. Mainland tourists have a different accent and will push against you en masse. Japanese and Korean tourists don't speak Chinese, so they're easy to spot.

[reneeinasia]

Yehliu Geopark, Taiwan.

[reneeinasia]

Beitou

I've been to Taipei several times by now, usually for a break from school and one or two sight seeing excursions. Now, between semesters, I decided to do some easy day trips from Taipei.

My first side trip was to Beitou. This wasn't a very long trip--maybe twenty minutes on public transit.  But as soon as you get on the special Xin Beitou line (new Beitou), you can tell something's different.

The tourist train?

A different car on the same train. No, not all Taipei public transit looks like this.

Beitou is a hot springs area. The springs weren't used for bathing until the Japanese brought their bathing culture with them during the occupation. Then Beitou became a swanky cultural center, with public and private baths and apparently a budding film industry.

Today, everything people come to Beitou for is inside an easily walkable park with a hot spring creek running through it. At some points, steps lead down to the water and you can soak your feet.

The creek.

One of the biggest old bathhouses has been converted into a museum. Apparently it's free, or at least no one tried to get me to pay anything. You do, however, have to remove your shoes and put on these classy slippers. They're not uncomfortable, but they don't really like to stay on your feet.

They call them "slippers", but they're really flip-flops. Or sandals, maybe, depending on where you're from.

Another shot of the inside of the museum.

There's an area at the far end of the park called Beitou Geothermal Valley, or Hell Valley. I prefer the second one. It's steamy and hot and smells of sulfur, but the water is a beautiful blue.

Hell Valley.

Last, I took a soak.  There's a small public bath where, for about 1.50 USD, you get access to hot springs, showers, and changing facilities. The hot springs, by the way, are HOT.  There are three tiers of hotness, each with a range of hot-cold instead of a set temperature. The lowest one?  The one with murky water and children and scalded tourists who just wanted to relax? It gets up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. In the US, that's what experts consider the maximum safe temp for soaking. 100 degrees is "considered safe for healthy adults".  (Details here, if you care.) Soaking in water 106 degrees Fahrenheit is hot enough to get heat stroke--in America, at least. In Taiwan, that's the "medium" pool's temperature. I didn't even check to see how hot the hottest pool was, because I was already dizzy from the middle one. (It's a no-picture zone, by the way, so I can't show you what it looks like. Sorry about that.)

Half-hearted soaking is not allowed. If you dare put only your feet in, or any part of you that's less than everything waist-down, the man in the red jacket will blow a whistle and gesture at you aggressively. I did not get in trouble with the whistle-blowing man, but plenty of overheated folks did. Why this rule? I have no idea. If you know, please enlighten me. It seems like it could quickly lead to over heating and passed-out pool patrons, but maybe I'm missing something.

My afternoon was unexciting. I started binge listening to podcasts to pass time on public transit and headed to Page One Books in the 101 to get a book on survival Japanese. We'll see how far it gets me. I know I'm going to be saying "xie xie" to everyone for at least a week, just like when I came to Taiwan I kept using Spanish when I wanted to use Chinese. (I still use Spanish crutch words, which is a hard habit to break.)

I've got a few day backlog of Taiwan posts, but the real excitement starts tonight. The day is here! I leave for Japan tonight. I've got a 12 hour layover in Shanghai (yay budget travel!), and then four weeks in Japan. Thanks for reading, and I hope you stick around for the next month!