From Snake Alley to a Palace Lounge

Like most cities, Taipei is crazier at night. We witnessed the full extent of its craziness at one of its many night markets. I was intrigued by their name, but the one we went to managed to deliver well beyond what my imagination had conjured up.

Hwashi Night Market was bright. It was raucous and pungent. We turned down our first street, hoping to find a snack. Our hunger was chased away by the many roasted and stewed things spread amongst a legion of white carts – hooves, birds’ heads, frog legs, innards, and parts we couldn’t even identify.

Another overflowing street served up fuzzy pjs, tea, baby clothes, CDs, shoes, porn, winter hats, purses, potpourri, irons, homemade candy, squealing radios, bright sweaters, pet crabs (?), whimpering puppies (!), roasted corn, fresh fish. The sheer amount of stuff was crazy enough, but there were demonstrations too. A lot of vendors wore mics so they could shout over their competitors, emphasizing their products’ merits to passers by.

We chose Hwashi over the other night markets because of Snake Alley. Having taken too quick a look at lonelyplanet.com, I wrongly thought we were going to see snake charmers. The alley was all about snake handlers who wanted to make us snake EATERS. According to the old, but still vivid pictures plastered around, snake bile and ground-up gall bladders can cure extreme herpes. Or maybe that was the claim of the neighbouring, grey-faced acupuncturists. We couldn’t decide.

We passed a few cobras in storefront windows. Then I saw a woman standing, addressing a small group with her requisite mic. When they suddenly left, I found myself four feet away from her and the mammoth yellow python laying between her feet. Being the whimp I am, I had to stifle a scream as I jumped back. Further down the alley we saw a glass-tanked boa. As it slept, two oblivious baby chicks hopped on top of it.

Two nights later we had another vivid, though much less barbaric experience. After dinner with some other conference folk, Colin, Jared, Laurie, and I hopped in a cab in order to go for drinks at one of Taipei’s landmarks – The Grand Hotel, the oldest hotel that’s styled like a Chinese palace.

Somehow we passed through the red-carpeted, yellow-lanterned, ornate lobby without anyone noticing us. We were convinced there had to be a lounge at the top of the building, overlooking the city. When the elevator stopped at the deserted tenth floor, we didn’t take the obvious hint. We clambered onto some back stairs and instead found an old storage room. Its fading bulb showed us old mattresses and desks, but not the rooftop deck we wanted. I felt like we were the only four people in the whole place. It was oddly quiet, no one was in the hallways, and an old smell followed us wherever we went. Finally, we gave up and re-emerged in the lobby, where we found a beautiful but ground-level lounge beside thick red pillars and Chinese tapestries.

Dining with Taipei’s Locals

Taipei is so many things. Scooters, their intense exhaust, their kamikaze drivers, lofty palm trees, gritty sidewalks, efficient subways, the friendliest people, colourful apartment blocks speckled with dirty fans, rusting balconies topped with tropical plants, the nastiest people, baking sun, clandestine street sellers…. I loved Taipei, especially because it let me taste an Asian city that isn’t Japanese.

We got into town on Saturday evening. Because the Flash conference was going to be at the Westin Taipei, that’s where we stayed. I loved our lush, boutique room but I also felt guilty because the hotel was so opulent compared to its surroundings.

We ate dinner at a local place right around the corner. We shared our rickety sidewalk table with some parked scooters and couldn’t stop looking up at the indigo night sky. (At least nasty pollution lets the day have an impressive finale.) The restaurant’s owner wanted to practise his very good English and his wife, who is Japanese, wanted to hear about Tokyo. They were wonderful. And thoughtful. He gave us his cell number in case we found ourselves needing help.

The next day we headed to the area around the city hall. The woman at the hotel said it was good for shopping, but we weren’t impressed with the mall’s American stores. Our crazy lunch-time experience didn’t help either. We decided to eat in the food court because it was unlike any other we had seen – massive, crammed full of noodle and hot-pot places. After walking around and around and around, we both chose what we wanted. Then, with our trays in-hand, the real fun began.

A table looked free. We walked up to it, only to see bags sitting on chairs to hold places. Onto the next one, all expectantly – a long table with people only at one end. Good potential, we naively thought. As soon as we approached, they started waving their hands furiously, guarding their find and shooing us away. Sometimes someone would gesture that there was room only for one of us. Great. And it kept happening! After a while, I had to rest my heavy hot-pot tray on a garbage-can box because my arms were actually aching. A friendly girl gestured for me to join her and her mom. But there was no room for Colin. He and I switched trays (His was lighter.), and started to scour around some more. We searched and got shooed for at least ten more minutes. So we headed outside and luckily got the last table, probably because of the noon heat. Just as we settled, my hot pot’s fuel died. Fitting. I had missed prime cooking-time while searching for a table. That killed what was left of my appetite after food-court hell.

The mall and its unbearable food court were right beneath the Taipei Financial Centre’s skyscraper. While we were there, we admired its pagoda style. Only when we got back to the hotel did we find out that it’s the tallest skyscraper in the world, albeit because of its spire (which doesn’t seem fair). Its size was hard to gauge because it was the only skyscraper around.

Taking off for Taipei

Today we’re off to Taipei. Hope we have Internet in our hotel. If not, won’t be blogging until the 12th.

Generosity

On our last day in Kyoto, while Colin was with Kawase, I headed to Nijo, my first Asian castle. It was so different from a Western one. No furniture, because it would have been all tucked away in cupboards, and just simple screened room upon beautiful screened room. All of the paper screens, painted with rock powder and gold leaf, have been preserved so the light source is the same as it was when the castle was in use – the white-paper-covered windows running along one complete side of the castle.

Walking along the castle’s floors in my socks (just like at a temple), I could feel the grains of the immense, dark slabs of wood. They made me very aware of how old they were and how many other pairs of feet had been on them. The floor actually has a name – Nightingale Floor, because it chirps like a bird when anyone treads on it. Any castle intruders would have been heard instantly. Quite the inventive use of some nails, clamps, and good ole gravity.

When trying to find the subway so that I could get to the castle, I took a shortcut down a back street. I passed an older parking attendant. He smiled, nodded, and waved. Then I happened to make eye contact with the smiley-eyed man coming the other way. His mouth instantly matched up with his eyes and he asked, in very good English, where I was from. I said Canada and he got so excited. He’s been to Quebec, Ontario, and also to Saskatoon. He travelled those places because he works in the automotive industry and had been stationed in Detroit for six years. Then he was off with another smile and a wave. And all that friendliness was just within a matter of five minutes. Over the four days we were there, we got loads of kind attention. Maybe it’s because Kyoto is smaller.

The school kids! They were so great. Colin and I were waiting at the bus stop near our hotel and looked up when a school bus stopped in front of us for a light. All of the kids on the bus starting pointing and waving at us. Then they got really excited when we waved back. When Colin started making faces at them, some were actually jumping in their seats. And by the time they pulled away, even the teachers were waving at us. Pure fun. Another time, when we were in a subway station, two little girls boldly ran over to look at us and say hi. But when we looked up from our map at them, they turned all shy and hung onto each other, willing themselves not to run away so they could say hi again. Too cute.

And Kawase, a guy Colin had met only two weeks before at the Tokyo Flash conference, was unbelievably sweet. Right after we arrived, he picked us up at our hotel to show us around. He took us to see Kyoto’s oldest Shinto shrine. Then he took us to his favourite café, called Efish. After that, we met up with his friend, Kosei, and they took us out for dinner. They wouldn’t hear of us paying for it. So kind and generous!

Templed Out

Kyoto has piles of temples and shrines, making it really difficult to decide where to start. We went to four. Two of them ended up being my favourites.

Sanjusangen-do was incredible. We had to round a couple of corners of the enormously long, dark, dusty, 700-year-old temple hall, before we got our first peek at them – 1001 somewhat tarnished, yet shimmering golden statues of Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. There they were, with the heavy beams above, the wide floorboards below, and the thick, musty, incensed air all around.

The statues looked like they were emitting their own light rather than reflecting it from the paper-screened windows running down one entire side of the hall. We slowly walked (crept?) past the first five hundred figures to the gigantic one in the middle. That was amazing enough. But we still had another five hundred to pass. Each one is individually carved from cypress and covered in gold leaf. And each one has its very own expression. Awe inspiring.

Another morning, we boarded a bus that crawled up the twisty roads of Mount Hiei in order to drop us at magical Enryaku-ji – a complex of mountainside temples that have been around for over 1200 years. Being high up on the autumn-clad mountain, away from the noisy crowds, in the chilly air was so peaceful, so beautiful.

With only an hour to spare before the bus returned for us, we decided we’d hurry and do the one-kilometre hike to the Sai-to temples, nestled in the forest. Our effort was rewarded. Sunlight beams filtered down past the tall heads of the thick trees. New bamboo stretched out onto the path, which a couple of monks were calmly sweeping with thresh rakes. Luscious moss spread everywhere, skirting the forest’s gnarly legs.

We got back into Kyoto at sunset and headed to the Path of Philosophy, where all of the locals go to see the cherry blossoms in the spring. Instead, we got to see the canal-side maples kindling their first red leaves. Plus a cute café was still open so we could rest our aching legs.

Set at the top of cobble-stoned streets, with a massive wooden terrace overlooking the city, and a pretty stream running through its hilly grounds, Kiyomizu temple, although not one of my top two, was very pretty and definitely worth seeing.

Although, even as I write this, I’m still templed out.

Gion and Its Geiko

One of the guidebooks said that Kyoto underwhelms on the surface. It really does. The buildings are laid out in a grid and, at a glance, everything looks the same. But we found Kyoto’s heart by moving from the main roads to the back streets, some of them cobble-stoned and filled with wonderful wood houses.

I loved those houses. They looked like newly baked bread in the morning sun. I also loved how many shades of brown met my eyes on one street alone. The golden wood of a fence, the chocolate wood of a door, the once-green bamboo-wood of a blind.

Walking the streets of Gion, where the old wood houses are, I realized that I don’t feel like I’ve really been to a city unless I get to stroll around its streets and get to know them. I did that on our last morning in Kyoto, while Colin was with his friend, Kawase. (They were trying to find the top-secret Nintendo headquarters – a mission I was happy to miss.) The other days, Colin and I had mostly taken the bus or subway around, because we were both weary from our colds.

While strolling and taking pictures of the houses, I looked down one of the morning-quiet, narrow side streets and saw a scene from a book. I almost couldn’t believe it. At the other end, a geisha was bowing to a group of women she was passing. There was no mistaking her. She had exquisite grace, ornate hair and wore a refined, yet regal kimono.

Suddenly–I’m almost embarrassed to admit–I became paparazzi. I started to jog while putting my zoom lens on my camera. I saw where she had turned a corner, and I followed. Although she paused to cross the street, it wasn’t enough time for me to get a picture. I kept following at a distance. Then she had to stop at a red light. The look she threw over her shoulder at me! She threw out her charm. She posed for a rare instant, seeing she was being photographed. She was demure, yet strong, and glaringly pretty, especially without her white makeup on.

After, I felt a little frazzled. I guess there’s a rush from capturing what you hunt. And I guess that’s what fuels the real paparazzi. The funny thing is that she wasn’t the first geisha (pronounced gay-sha, I’ve learned) I had seen. (Actually, Kyoto geisha like to be called geiko.) But she was the first one I witnessed just doing her own thing. Having now seen them, I’m utterly fascinated. They’re enchanting to look at, but they’re also repugnant. They’re keeping alive such archaic feminine ideals. Colin and I guessed that most Japanese women would dislike geiko; Yai says that’s true.

Geiko entertain their clients in teahouses in a few Kyoto districts, but Gion is the most famous one. It’s where the Ichiriki teahouse stands. Laura and Christine, here’s a picture of it for the two of you. Sorry, no digital photos of a geiko.

Kyoto Bound

We’re off to Kyoto today. Will post lots of updates when we’re back on the 3rd.

Happy Halloween!

Errands

Running errands yesterday was fun. Amazing how the mundane transforms when you’re in a new place. I subwayed to Shinjuku without consulting the subway map, and I wandered around and bought film etc. for our Kyoto trip without referring to a street map. I felt like a local.

The locals, though, are much more adept at looking up. I’m still grasping the concept that what I see at street level isn’t all there is. There’s soooo much more. Sometimes there are six or more stores stacked on the floors above.

Finally took myself into the Gap to see if it really is the same. No real surprise – it is. I liked that the size range is skewed towards the svelte Asian rather than the beefy American. Never had seen a XXX Small before. And the largest size seemed to be Medium.

Everyone had assured me that Tokyo would be a guaranteed culture shock. Well, it’s incredible, and overwhelming at times, but not shocking. I have to say that Prague was way more different. But that was six years ago. Maybe Tokyo was that way then too. Certainly not now…with the Gapification of the world going on. Think that also explains why, thankfully, I’m not getting the attention that I was also forewarned about. (Just lots of stares.) Tokyo’s ubiquitous ads are chock full of North American women.

Think culture shock will hit hard when I go to the rural areas – to the Buddhist temple and to the national park near Nagano.

Today’s errand wasn’t as much fun. My mission was to get Colin some drugs for his cold and for my sanity. He’s been keeping me awake with his hacking cough.

I spent most of my time simply locating the American Pharmacy. After matching up the north-facing, one-street-name map from Lonely Planet with the south-east-facing (?!) street-corner map, and walking around the supposed area in tight circles, I finally discovered that, yes, the pharmacy really should be where that construction site is. Good enough reason to give up! But then, on my way to the subway, I recognized I was right near the tourist info office. I found it, asked them, got the pharmacy’s new address, and walked there. Success. Got to talk with an English-speaking pharmacist who gave me a bottle of extra strength cold and flu pills.

Mullets, Cell Charms, and Photo Booths

More things I’ve noticed. Again, in no order.

The Personal Towel. All I kept hearing before I got here is that public toilets often don’t have toilet paper. Make sure to grab the free tissue packets handed out near subway stations! I duly collected some. Yet I still haven’t found a toilet without paper. However, I have found many bathrooms that don’t have hand dryers or paper towels. While I’ve been shaking my hands above a sink or wiping them on my jeans, I’ve noticed that women simply pull their own little hand towel out of their purse or bag. I also saw a man on the subway grab a small towel from his bag to wipe his brow. There’s no need for tissue, but a definite need for the personal towel. I’m quite happy with the one I bought yesterday.

Umbrella Checks. Granted, I’ve never carried around an umbrella as much as I have here, but I still think I would remember umbrella checks if I’d seen them before. I wonder if they’re only in Japan? They’re perfectly positioned in front of museums, galleries, and hotels. Many times I’ve happily exchanged my large umbrella (a travel one just won’t do in a typhoon!) for the wee key that goes in my pocket. Brilliant.

Honeymoon-Suite Hair. Much to my utter dismay, I’m noticing more and more young Japanese guys parading the coiffed, effeminate mullet of the headbanger 80’s. I have yet to get a picture. I will, don’t worry.

Left of Way. People drive on the left in Tokyo, so it would seem to make sense that the left side is the one to favour when walking down the street, going up and down stairs etc. Uhn-uhn. Only sometimes. According to Dan (a friend of one of Colin’s friends), who’s from California and who’s lived here for three years, the correct side to take depends on where you are. There are arrows on the steps of subway stations, showing which side to take. The arrows constantly switch in order to try to help direct commuter flow. It’s very perplexing, especially with an army of dark suits descending upon you en masse. The fun thing was that Dan immediately understood why we were asking him the question. The same thing had confounded him.

Combustible vs. Non-combustible. Unbelievably, that’s how we sort our garbage. No recycling. No composting. Paper and food scraps go in the combustible bin. All the plastic goes in non-combustible. Sure, beside some drink vending machines, I see the occasional recycle bin. There’s one in our lobby, which I’ve started taking our plastic bottles down to.

No surprise that with all of that garbage burning going on, Tokyo is known for nasty air. So Colin and I were surprised that the air has been smelling better here than in Toronto. Dan set us straight. Because of all of the typhoons, the air is the cleanest it’s been in a long while.

Sleepers. You were so right, Nicole! People sleep on the subway all of the time. And not just the occasional napper, here and there. I’ve sat across from an entire row of people sleeping. I’ve seen small groups sleeping as they’re standing, holding onto the gymnasium-like hand grabs, which hang from the train’s ceiling.

Then the other day, I saw this couple flaked out in the main hall of the National Museum. According to what I’ve read, people have to grab sleep any time they can. Tokyo is a city full of tired commuters; Japan is a country of overworked people.

Immaculate Seats. Colin gets full credit for noticing this, and I was just as amazed once he pointed it out. The velour seats on the subway are pristine. They look like our living-room couch. No gum. No stains. No food bits. In comparison, Toronto’s subway seats look like they came from a garbage dump.

Japanese TV. It’s very entertaining, even if I can understand only a word every so often. The cut from a show to a commercial is often insanely abrupt. But the advertisements are great! Very theatrical, tonnes of singing, and lots of exaggerated expressions. Colin loves the news because the on-location reports always act as if they just luckily happened upon the typhoon or the earthquake’s damage rather than searching it out for the broadcast. I watch MTV during breakfast to get a dose of English. The first time I heard a Japanese rapper I almost choked on my cereal. Kind of akin to Vanilla Ice. I wonder what Japanese city is the equivalent of Detroit?

Photo Booths. Bright white photo booths with pastel curtains are everywhere, usually full of giggling teenaged girls. Whole stores are full JUST of photo booths. For about three dollars, you get an ID-sized picture of whoever crammed into the photo booth, set on one of many elaborate backdrops – bright pink flowers, shooting stars, cartooned landmarks, etc. Girls collect the cards. I’ve seen them shopping for photo-booth albums and looking at them on the subway.

Cell Charms. No surprise that everyone has a cell phone. If a row of people on the subway aren’t sleeping, they’re text messaging on their cells. Most females’ cell phones are laden with charms, which look like mini key chains. Thanks to the charms, young girls can have groups of tiny stuffed animals hanging from their phones.

Size M. When shopping in Canada, I often find tops are too big for me. Here I thought most would be too small, but that some would fit. Turns out that the smallest size for the majority of tops is M (Medium). ??? Most are too big. Plus some stores allow you to try only bottoms on, not tops. I can’t figure out why some stores let you and others don’t. I’m still looking for the telltale sign.

The Shady Side of Sunshine City

I spent yesterday afternoon at Tokyo’s Sunshine City. Its claim to fame? A city within a city. And what an insane city it is.

Shopping arcades, a hotel, a theme park, a 60-floor office tower with an observatory, a convention centre, an aquarium, an ancient orient museum, and God knows what else span across five buildings and are connected through a confusing maze of paths. One time I stepped away from screaming children and neon signs onto an elevator, hit the button, and then stepped out onto a completely deserted floor of silent grey halls and locked offices. Just one of the many wrong turns I took.

At times I felt like I was in one of those big, awful American malls because suddenly there would be the Gap, Eddie Bauer, Columbia Sports, and Nike. But then I hit the basement of the World Import Mart, where little shops with crazy names like Skinny Lip, were all squeezed together. The colour. The glare from the fluorescent lights. And the noise! Teenaged sales-girls clad in the latest Guatemalan-surfer craze were shouting “Welcome” every three seconds, which is pretty common. But music hammered from each store. Since none of them had a ceiling, it was impossible to make sense of the jarring cacophony until I would get near a rack of jeans or a table of tops. Duran Duran became OMD became Suede became ZZ Top (??!!). Too bizarre.

Of course there were a few gems, like this…? Hmmm, guess it’s a high-end dollar store. Love its name.

I went to the aquarium. What was I thinking? Guess I wasn’t. I had in mind the last one I had visited, the Chicago aquarium, about 10 years ago. It had struck me as a humane aquarium (if there can be such a thing), because it offered lots of information about the environment and caring for species, etc. Well, the Sunshine International Aquarium was the antithesis.

At first it didn’t seem too bad. There were tanks and there were fish, and they seemed to have lots of room to swim. But wait…that’s not real coral. It’s a painted stone. Those two dolphins are in a tank the size of my living room. My Tokyo living room. How horrible and wrong. How dreadful and depressing.

I honestly gasped when I looked at the plastic trees above the Costa Rican tank and saw two real toucans. They barely had enough room to hop between the fluorescent lights, from painted branch to painted branch.

Something (like the need to look at a train wreck) compelled me to go to the “zoo” area. Adorable squirrel monkeys were behind all of this chicken-wire fencing. Although they had a really big plastic tree, they preferred to swing from the ceiling’s lights and pipes. Awful! But the clincher was the last—how appropriate—exhibit: a group of what were probably once playful penguins, languishing on some concrete around a fairly small pool. Behind them? The lights of a soaring skyscraper.