The family spent the afternoon at the Pacific department store in downtown Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原, eating lunch and doing a bit of window shopping. With four hours of free parking at the store, we certainly made good use of the time. Afterwards (but still with time remaining for parking), we walked over to the Fengyuan branch of a well-known Taiwanese bakery. You would think that a store in Taiwan using the characters 小林 as its name would be called "Hsiaolin (Siaolin)", but then you would be wrong. The name is actually "Kobayashi", the Japanese reading of the same characters (and a common surname in Japan). You might think then the company is Japanese in origin, but apparently it started in T'aichung (Taijhong) 台中. Whatever the background, they make some pretty delicious cookies and pastries. We picked up a box of one kind, the name of which escapes me at the moment - it's a soft cake shaped like a hanging bell with custard cream on the inside. Here's a picture of Amber doing her best imitation of an affluent Japanese shopper:
On the way back to the car from Kobayashi, we made a brief stop at the busy Matsu (Mazu) 馬祖 temple downtown. The shrine-style lanterns 灯籠 in the front, and the stone torii 鳥居 in the back lead me to believe the current Taoist temple occupies a site that used to be a Shintō shrine 神社 during the Japanese era, but I haven't found anyone who could corroborate this.
After getting home, Amber and I went up to the rooftop of our apartment building, where we caught the last rays of the setting sun, while bats were flying about on their evening hunt for insects.
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