Taipei!

I went to Taiwan! It was probably my last trip out of Japan, so I’m very glad I went. It’s the cheapest place to get to from Japan (even cheaper than most domestic flights/trains), and I ended up spending very little money there (like under 100 dollars, including meals and transportation). I think a large part of that was because we spent like 70% of our time at night markets, which were really fascinating and awesome, so most of my full meals were around a dollar. Prices there are just amazing! Whenever I travel outside, it’s so painful coming back to Japan and the high prices. The night markets had all kinds of interesting and tasty foods (I think Taipei is known for being one of the best cities in Asia for food). I had a ton of dumplings and other popular Chinese food, but also a lot of weird stuff I’d never heard of before. Lots of strange new fish and fruits. I am really a big fan of bubble tea as well, which is basically this cold tea-like drink that has hundreds of squishy tapioca balls at the bottom, and you suck them through the big straw. Really tasty. Anyway, I’m just happy I didn’t get food poisoning or anything from the street stalls (which smelled really grotesque at times). China is kind of notorious for getting people sick, but I’m not sure about Taiwan.
Another big highlight of the trip was our hotel room, which was super swank, but cheap! It was only slightly more expensive than the hostel I stayed at in Korea (where we had to straddle the toilet while showering, and shared all the facilities with like 20 other people). We got over 100 TV channels (for all my bad Asian TV desires), and also really nice facilities. I took away the condoms they put in the drawer every night, and they were always replenished immediately (they must have thought we were having crazy threesomes or something).
I didn’t get as much interaction with Taiwanese people as I would have liked. The people weren’t as outgoing as in Korea. I did get some stares, though. When I passed this one little girl, my Taiwanese friend who I went with told me that she shouted to her mom “Look mommy, a foreigner! He’s white!” Or something to that effect. There were VERY few other foreigners there, I must have only seen a couple over the course of my trip.
The weather was really nice while we were there. Taiwan is sub-tropical, so there were palm trees and everything, as well as extremely hot weather. We didn’t get to go to any beaches, but we went to some nice places. There was this onsen place, which was very beautiful and smelled strongly like sulfur.
Another highlight was going to Taipei 101, which was the tallest building in the world until pretty recently. We got to go up all the way to the top in the fastest elevator in the world (my ears almost exploded). The view was kind of shitty though, because of all the smog.

Yesterday I went up to Yokohama to see Kyoko and Nu again, which was a lot of fun.
We went to the 150th anniversary of 開国, the opening of Japan to the rest of the world. And what better way to celebrate, than with a fucking giant robot spider? I’m sure it made sense in someone’s mind. It was pretty interesting, to say the least. People came from far and wide to see that thing move and make hissing noises. The crowds were once again ridiculous (I went to Harajuku the day before, and to get into the station took about 25 minutes, just to swipe in at the counter). There were thousands of people lined up for every event, and some of them had wait times of over an hour and a half. Oh, Japan. Because of that we didn’t get to see TOO many things. But we also saw this weird anime movie project which was interesting and pretty cool. The line was like an hour long, though, and the theater fit about 1,000 people per 20 minute viewings, so there must have been a TON of people waiting. The next day, we went to a 動物園 Zoorashia, and saw lots of cool animals. Their main attraction was this weird giraffe/horse/zebra looking hybrid thing called okapi.
Picture: Some fruit in Harajuku.

Here's a video of the spider robot.

Kagaya - Puppets!

It's been a while since I updated this. I guess I've just fallen into a daily routine that isn't terribly interesting unless you're me. I'm still having a lot of fun though, and funny/weird shit happens constantly, I wish I could document it all, but alas...

Anyway, here is something I thought was note-worthy.
I went with some friends to Shinbashi, where we had some coffee at McDonalds (for free!) and then headed to a restaurant for dinner. Getting there was a challenge in itself. I printed directions off of the website (which was basically the owner’s drawing on a white-board, and of which he took a photo of).It was the fucking weeeeeirdest place I’ve ever been. Basically, it was in this basement, and when we got there it was completely deserted except for the guy who runs it and one cook who’s right there. So it was INCREDIBLY awkward at first, because it was dead silent, so we didn’t really talk for a while, just kind of laughed awkwardly. The owner then went to his little closet, and brought out this robot animal, and put our napkins on it, and remote-controlled it to walk to us and bring us our napkins. And he was basically screaming weird shit the whole time. He proceeded to put it in my friend’s face. Then, he brought us the drink menu, which was a little play book with crayon-writing and prices next to it, and he sang the whole menu to us in English. We chose apple sake (which was delicious, but strong at the same time). Then we had to choose a “country style.” We went with America. Which basically entailed him singing the national anthem while using a puppet to carry our food to us. Our drinks were pretty hilarious, too. Karyn got a regular glass, but her refill was this statue of a little boy with a tube-dick, so whenever she pushed down on it, it shot out his dick. Then my friend Liz got this mug that burped incredibly loudly when she put it down. Mine was the best though, because whenever I picked it up, it started violently vibrating, making it VERY difficult to drink. I basically got it all over my face. That never got old.
Then the owner gave us our own little puppet show. He asked all of our names, and somehow managed to get every single one wrong (I was “Uriya,” Karyn was “Karulina,” Liz was “Bez” (I don’t know how, but I thought it was hilarious). He would often just take his puppets and be like “OHHH KARULINAAA, SEXUAL FEELINGS” and then start screaming sex noises and rubbing her with toys. He also demonstrated the doggy position for us.
At one point during his puppet show, he was behind this board and was using a frog puppet above it, so we couldn’t see him at all. As the puppet, Jack, he was like, “You want to see my brother, Dick?” We weren’t sure if we were supposed to interact or not, so we were quiet. The puppet screamed “HEY! BEZ! You want to see Dick!? Or no!?” Then she was like “Yes, I want to see dick!” And the puppet was like “Okay, one second, I’ll go get him, everyone wants to see –“ And then the owner burst out from behind the board in this ridiculous frog suit and climbed on our table. We didn’t even make noise, we were just kind of in shock. It was pretty hilarious, though. He also made me scream my main course order, and take the check with my teeth from a barbie’s boobs. SUCH A WEIRD EXPERIENCE.

Not sure what else to say here. New semester has begun, classes are going well. Not really culturally related, though, so I won't go into it...

For my next post, expect Taiwan! I'm going next week.

The photo here was taken at the restaurant, he just handed us the glasses and it made us hideous. Especially me.

Here are some videos, I don't know if just my description can do it justice.