Coming soon to a department store floor near you

I took Amber out for a walk in the hills above Chung-cheng (Jhong-jheng) Park 中正公園 this morning. Actually, I did all the footwork, while my daughter happily sat in the child carrier perched on my back, but we both had a good time. The carrier is designed to bear weights up to 22 kilograms (48.5 pounds). Amber is currently about 12 kilos (26 pounds), so she's going to be spending a lot more time on my back in the months to come:

On the way home, I noticed these banners strung along the circle road that loops around central Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原:

The local Pacific Department Store will be hosting a Tottori Week from September 5-10. For those of you for whom the name means nothing, Tottori 鳥取 is one of Japan's 47 prefectures (in fact, it's the least populous one, with only 620,000 residents). I'm assuming the store will be featuring food products from there (Tottori is apparently known for nashi pears ナシ, nagaimo yams ナガイも, an edible plant called rakkyō ラッキョウ, negi or welsh onion ネギ and watermelon スイカ). There also appears to be some kind of connection to a manga 漫画 artist, according to the banners. I made my first visit to Tottori-ken 鳥取県 back in June, when I stayed a night in the city of Kurayoshi 倉吉, and used it as a base to visit the Nageire-dō 投入堂. I also climbed Mt. Daisen 大山, which sits in Tottori (the prefecture's most famous sightseeing spot is the Tottori Sand Dunes 鳥取砂丘, but I didn't go there). I intend on visiting the department store next weekend to see what Tottori Week is all about.

Fengyuan is a small city in central Taiwan, with a population of 165,000. By local standards, it's a nice enough place to live, with convenient transportation connections (bus, car and train) to places up and down the west coast of the island. The presence of the Pacific Department Store, combined with a street called Miaotung (Miaodong) that is lined with food stands, serves as a magnet for people living in the smaller cities and towns of T'aichung (Taijhong) County 台中県, but most city residents head to nearby T'aichung 台中 city in search of excitement. Basically, not a whole lot goes on in Fengyuan, so Tottori Week is actually something you could almost get excited about, along with the MOS Burger モスバーガー and Carrefour outlets due to open soon.

In other words, T'aipei (Taibei) 台北 it ain't. But Taiwan 台湾 it most certainly is.