The horror that is Taiwan Beer

The photograph above is the second half of my Father's Day present, a Belgian golden ale called "Biere du Bouranier" ("Buccaneer Beer" in English, or ビール　ドウ　ブカニエ in Japanese, according to the label). With an alcohol content of 11%, it certainly has a bite, but the taste is pleasing, and not overpowering. My wife purchased the bottle from a liquor store in Taichung 台中 that mainly deals in imported wine, but occasionally has specials on foreign beers as well. Enjoying what's left of my gift has started me ruminating on the sad state of beer, and the effect that has on beer lovers, in Taiwan...

With the exception of a few establishments in Taipei 台北 and Taichung (that I'm aware of, anyway), the microbrewery industry in Taiwan is almost non-existent. Specialty supermarkets like Market Place by Jasons and Capita'n do carry a few pricey imports, but for the most part, the selection available island-wide in convenience stores and supermarkets is limited, and thus pathetic. There are decent brews such as the major Japanese brands (Asahi アサヒ, Kirin キリン, and Sapporo サッポロ), and Tsingtao 青岛啤酒 from China, to go along with Busch, Corona, Miller and every Taiwanese drinker's idea of a sophisticated import, Heineken. But towering over them all is the local mistake, the imaginatively named, and boringly packaged, Taiwan Beer 台灣啤酒:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/princeroy/2395782710

Just how bad is Taiwan Beer? If you like Coors or Budweiser, you'll enjoy a smooth, frothy mug of Taiwan Pijiu. How weak is it? My wife can drink a couple of tall cans (through a straw!) in a single setting without any noticeable effect (though lately she's been shunning the local product in favor of Asahi). If you're after a beer that is both cheap and tasteless, just head down to your nearest コンビニ or スーパー, and you won't have any trouble satisfying your desires.

Considering the fact that the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation held a monopoly on the Taiwanese beer market until 2002 (when Taiwan entered the World Trade Organization), it's understandable why most Taiwanese drinkers appear to be satisfied with A-mei's 張惠妹 favorite brew. What is harder to fathom, however, are those Westerners who claim to enjoy Taiwan Beer. No doubt some just don't know much about beer, in the same way as there are people whose CD collections consist almost entirely of Top 40 artists, yet they still say they love "music". But what I can't understand is what drives those who wouldn't dream of drinking Bud or Molson back in their home countries, yet are proud to be seen with a glass, bottle or can of Taiwan Beer in their hands here. I put it down to one of two reasons: 

1.) Either they have been here too long, and have forgotten what a pleasure it is to enjoy a well-made craft beer; 

or 2.) they force themselves to down the Formosan urine in order to fool themselves into thinking that by doing so, they have fully acclimatized to the local culture. If that's the case, why stop with Taiwan Beer? Why not go all the way, and smoke Long Life cigarettes, chew betel nuts, listen to Shining 3 Girl CD's and get a stenciled tattoo of a Taoist god to cover their backsides? Only then will they have truly embraced Taiwanese culture! 乾杯！

Now that I've finished my Buccaneer, it's time to stop ranting. I'll leave you with a couple of pictures taken in Fengyuan 豐原 this afternoon on my home from work:

An art deco-style bridge that I was told dates from the 1930's, and beyond it, an old Japanese-era building that has recently been converted into a Western-style restaurant.

Looking back from 2018:

Of all the blog posts I uploaded when I was using LiveJournal, this one generated the greatest number of comments, which you can read here (the original comments didn't migrate when I moved my old posts to Blogger). 

Happy Father's Day

This might come as a surprise to those based in Taiwan, but, yes, today is Father's Day, at least in those countries that observe the occasion on the third Sunday of every June. On the island of Formosa, however, dads have to wait until August 8 before they can receive their once-a-year recognition for all the hard work they put in taking care of their families. Why the eighth day of August, you may wonder? Well, the words for both the number "eight" and "Father" sound like "ba" in Mandarin, and with August being the eighth month, 8/8 can be read as "Baba" 八八, which is a homonym for "Baba" 爸爸, or "Dad". All of this sounds pretty nifty at first, until the realization sets in that the Chinese cultural obsession with auspicious signs means that in five years out of seven, Father's Day in Taiwan falls on a weekday. And as the day is not a holiday, most of the time Taiwanese dads have to work on the day set aside to honor them.

When it comes to self-serving holidays, I'll take the good ol' American way of doing things every time, and so while today was just another Sunday in June for most people in Taiwan, the Kaminoge household thanked Dad. There are fewer pleasures in life than to be awakened in the morning by one's daughter bearing not one, but two bottles of imported beer - a German brew called Krombacher Weizen, and a golden ale from Belgium, with the English name of Buccaneer Beer (11% alcohol volume!). I suppose not receiving a necktie in appreciation of my efforts to try to be a good father reflects the fact I don't have a professional, white-collar occupation (and the income that goes with it), but I'll take the beer anyway. This year's Father's Day may fall on a Saturday, but I won't feel left out while the rest of Taiwan celebrates on that day.

I had planned on spending Father's Day at the beach, but an approaching typhoon put a quick end to that idea. So instead, Amber and I did the next best thing, and enjoyed an afternoon at Diore, an indoor pool in Fengyuan 豐原. Joining us was my friend Steve and his two children, Zoey and Eli. The best present of all on this was getting to see my daughter thoroughly enjoy playing in the water with her two good friends.

On the way home following the afternoon at Diore: a rainbow spotted in the sky while getting out of the car, and a quick trip to the apartment building's roof to check out the sky as the edges of the typhoon passed by.

At home, the Krombacher awaits consumption:

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

It was back to Dakeng this afternoon for the first time in about a month. Three weeks ago I was in Japan (has it been that long already?), two weeks ago my feet were too sore from all the walking I had done in Japan, and last week I stayed home to tend to Amber, who was suffering from a fever. Today, though, the planets were in proper alignment, and I was thus able to get out and into the mountains. The weather remained sunny most of the time, and the only thunder heard was when I was walking back to my scooter along the road (the best time to hear it IMO). Compared to the six and a half hour trek up, down and through Hiko-san 英彦山 at the end of last month, today's two-hour fifteen-minute hike up the No. 3 Trail and down the No. 2 felt like a stroll, though the high humidity ensured my clothes received a thorough soaking of 100% pure Kaminoge sweat. The lizards didn't seem to mind:

A few observations after a weekend in Taihoku

Having some business to attend to on Saturday morning in Taipei 台北, we decided to turn it into a family weekend in the big city. I arrived first, on Friday night, and checked into the Keyman's Hotel. At NT1940 ($60/￥5800) a night for a "Japanese-style" double room (in Taiwan, "Japanese-style" usually means wooden flooring and a mattress on the floor), and in a very convenient location close to Taipei's main train station, Keyman's was definitely a good choice - it also had a nice inner atrium, and breakfast was included in the room rate (Chinese-style, alas).

Pamela and Amber took the train up from Fengyuan 豐原 on Saturday morning, and I met them at Taipei Main Station 台北車站 just after 1 pm. Before going to the station, I took a walk around the area surrounding the hotel, and took this picture of the National Taiwan Museum 國立台灣博物館, dating from 1915, and one of a number of Japanese-era buildings to be found in the Zhongzheng 中正 area of Taipei. This, plus the fact that the interior of the Taipei Station building, its underground shopping malls, and the streets surrounding it outside are full of Japanese restaurants, shops selling Japanese goods and signs written in Japanese led to me observe the following: Taipei may be the power base in Taiwan for the "superior mainlanders", but deep down inside, the city wants to be nothing less than a minor-league version of Tōkyō 東京. China may be on a higher cultural plane than the southern part of Taiwan, which is supposedly where all the island's "rednecks" live (debatable), but Japan is definitely cooler. The delicious taste of irony! Oh, and having come back from a week-long stay in Fukuoka 福岡, I think I can honestly say that Taipei still has a long way to go before its dream can be realized.

After resting for a while in our hotel room, we headed out in the late afternoon, taking the MRT 台北捷運 to Longshan Temple Station 龍山寺站 in the Wanhua District 萬華區 (it didn't take Amber very long to figure out how to use the tokens - in that regard, she was much quicker than some adults!). We first visited Longshan Temple 龍山寺, Taipei's most famous temple, a fact reflected in the sheer number of people worshiping there early on a Saturday evening as the skies threatened to unleash buckets of rain (a threat which was soon carried out). Walking into the courtyard facing the Main Hall, we came across hundreds of people, many dressed in black, chanting in unison. The effect was nothing short of creepy:

Longshan Temple

The temple is certainly very colorful, and the Rear Hall was also very active, but all the incense smoke irritated Amber's eyes, so we didn't linger long.

Escaping from Longshan Temple, we walked over the start of the Huaxi Tourist Night Market (aka "Snake Alley"), which led me to make Observation No. 2: Taipei may be Taiwan's highest-class city, but it contains arguably the island's lowest-class night market. Though we were there before things had gotten into high gear, the sleaziness prevalent in some of the businesses (not to mention in some of the denizens, as well) gave me second thoughts about having Amber there. When you take into account that the market's main claim to fame is the several stalls that slaughter snakes in "shows" for the benefit of tourists, it's probably best that we didn't stick around long (the latter stalls all had signs in English and Chinese forbidding photography. No doubt their owners are aware that, in this day and age, killing animals in the name of tourism isn't considered to be as entertaining as it might have been in the past).

The shop in the photo on the top claims to sell Fengyuan-style noodles. It's a pity we didn't try our luck there. The food couldn't have been any worse than the greasy fried rice I had at a small eatery across the road from our hotel!

The rain that plagued us on Saturday evening also came down at times on Sunday (though not as hard, fortunately), which leads me to my next observation: if Taipei is ever suffering from a serious drought (which it sometimes is), the city fathers ought to pay for me to come up and visit, because almost every time I've been to Taipei over the years, the weather has been rainy! This didn't stop us from taking the MRT out to Taipei Zoo in order to see the pandas. The unfortunate pair were given to Taiwan by China last December, and Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan ("Reunification") have been dragged ever since into the muck that is Taiwanese politics. As political symbols, they are repulsive, but in the eyes of a little girl only three and a half-years old, they are just cute, and Amber eventually returned home on Sunday evening the proud owner of a panda pen and some panda stickers, not to mention a panda sucker she happily consumed just before we left the zoo in the middle of the afternoon.

Panda mania appears to have run its course, judging from the fact that we didn't have to wait in any lines before being allowed inside the special exhibition area. Nevertheless, zoo personnel didn't tolerate any lingering, and while the Tibetan bears (chuckle) were up and about this morning, the best I could do when it came to recording their images can be seen in the photo and video below:

Taipei Zoo Pandas

As for the rest of the day at the zoo, Amber was interested in the iguanas, snakes and tortoises in the reptile house (that's my girl!), but curiously immune to the appeal of penguins. She did perk up in the African animal display area (especially the giraffes and monkeys), and was also quite happy with the koalas, which we saw at the end, before returning via the MRT to Taipei Station.

The two photos above, Amber on the MRT and the view from the platform at Zhongxiao-Fuxing Station, have no relation to my final observation, which is that while Taipei may be Taiwan's cosmopolitan center, judging from the fashion tastes witnessed during our stay on Saturday and Sunday (not to mention my previous visits as well), the capital city isn't that far ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to what people are wearing, especially the young. Or to put it another way, even the dedicated followers of fashion in Fukuoka are leaps ahead of their counterparts here in terms of what is hip and stylish. I'm not passing judgment one way or the other, but I do find it curious that the southern part of Taiwan, with its legions of "Taimei" 台妹 seems to be setting the pace in this regard (I have a feeling that had we visited Tianmu 天母 or Ximending 西門町, I would've just been reminded of things I'd seen in Tōkyō years ago).

For the return trip to Fengyuan, we took our inaugural ride on Taiwan's high speed rail system 台灣高鐵, traveling from Taipei to Wurih 烏日, which counts as "Taichung" 台中 to the High Speed Rail Corporation. Having ridden the Shinkansen 新幹線 on numerous occasions in Japan, I was very curious to see what Taiwan's version was like, and I was quite impressed, both with the system, and the speed and comfort of the ride. The boarding announcements at Taipei Station felt more like what would be heard at an airport (in Japan, there is never any doubt that you are about to get on a train), but the views from the train window were very similar to what can be seen riding the Tōkaidō Shinkansen 東海道新幹線 from Tōkyō to Shin-Ōsaka 新大阪 - the same scenes of rice paddies and factories, though the boxy, concrete houses and the numerous Taoist temples (big and small) left no doubt as to what country we were in:

Taiwan High Speed Rail

Wurih is a rarity among HSR stations in that it connects to a Taiwan Railways Administration 台灣鐵路管理局 station (New Wurih 新烏日車站) - arriving at most of the other stations entails long bus rides into the respective downtown areas of the cities they serve. It was only six stops on a local train to Fengyuan, and by 6:45 we were all home. Having left my scooter parked downtown on Friday evening, I discovered that while I was away, my bike had served as a convenient rest area for a couple of people, judging from the empty tea containers on my machine. At least it was still there, and in one piece, so I should be thankful for small favors.

All in all, there are a lot worse ways to celebrate one's birthday than our trip to Taipei.

When in Taiwan...

I'm back in Taiwan now, and so it's only natural that my activities take on a Taiwanese hue. Which is perhaps why today we took our daughter to the Taichung Folk Park. Though small and charging an entrance fee (NT50 for adults - $1.50/￥150), this park is one of my favorite places in the city. There is a reconstructed traditional Taiwanese-style courtyard home, and a small museum in the basement that has interesting displays of everyday artifacts from days gone by. There are also several shops that offer traditional toys in addition to the usual tacky souvenirs. When you include the fish and turtle-stocked pond, and the open, grassy spaces, it's no wonder Amber always has a good time here.

 

Taking my new Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks 福岡ソフトバンクホークス cap out for its first spin today.

I don't know the English name of the toy that we bought for Amber today (come to think of it, I have no idea what it's called in Chinese, Japanese or any other language, for that matter), but it didn't take her long to master. Who needs things that beep, talk, flash and/or move, and require batteries in order to do so? My daughter doesn't, it seems.

Trip to Japan: Day 8 - Farewell Fukuoka ５月３１日

My last day in Fukuoka 福岡 was a short one - my flight to Taiwan departed before 11am. Walking through Nakasu 中洲 around 6:30 in the morning on my way to picking up some breakfast at Mister Donut ミスタードーナツ, I made the following movie, filmed on the same street as the two videos from the evening before. At this early hour, Nakasu belonged to the crows, taxis and casualties of the night just finished (check out the woman at the 2:34 mark):

Walk through Nakasu Part 3

It should come as no surprise to say I really enjoyed myself in Fukuoka and some of its environs. I've heard nothing but good things about the city from various people over the years, and I saw nothing during my short stay there to question anything that I'd been told. While I wouldn't go so far as to rate Fukuoka a "must see" on a typical tourist's Japan itinerary, it certainly doesn't belong on a "places to avoid list", and if I am ever offered the chance to live and work there someday, I would certainly give it some serious consideration. However, in the meantime, there is the rest of the island of Kyūshū 九州 to explore. Is it too soon to begin planning for my next trip?

(上) A last breakfast at Fukuoka Airport 福岡空港 before departure; (下) The Tonkotsu Rāmen とんこつラーメン souvenir that I picked up at the airport - opened, cooked and ready to eat!:

Trip to Japan: Day 7 - A Town of Hawks ５月３０日

My last full day in Fukuoka 福岡 was one of those dreary, overcast kind of days that result in lousy photographs. It began with a short subway ride from Nakasu-Kawabata 中洲川端 to Ōhori-Kōen Station 大濠公園駅, and Ōhori-Kōen 大濠公園 park. The park was created on the site of the old Kuroda 黒田 lords' castle, and is dominated by a large lake. It's a pleasant place, full of cyclists, joggers and walkers enjoying the quiet, green oasis.

The main attraction in the park is the Fukuoka-shi Bijutsukan 福岡市美術館, the city's art museum. The upstairs gallery has an interesting collection of Western art, displayed with contemporary works by Japanese artists, much of it also in the Western vein. Included in the collection were "The Madonna of Port Lligat" by Salvador Dali; "Elvis" by Andy Warhol; and "Seascape with Clouds" by Roy Lichtenstein. The painting below that I was able to sneak a photo of is by a Japanese artist named Sumio Gotō 後藤純男, and is called "Fresh Snow" 新雪 (1977):

The downstairs gallery is made up of early Japanese and Asian art, with the best pieces being the statues of the twelve guardian generals 十二神将 of Buddhism, each with a crown depicting an animal from the Chinese Zodiac calendar.

Leaving the park, I got back on the subway and rode it a couple of stops to Nishijin Station 西新駅. I then proceeded to walk about 15 minutes or so to Fukuoka Tower 福岡タワー, a thin, 234-meter (768 feet) communications tower which includes an observation deck. Even on an overcast day, the views of the city and Hakata Bay 博多湾 were fabulous:

Fukuoka Tower

Feeling satisfied that I could now say I had seen Fukuoka, I left the tower and went to the nearby Fukuoka-shi Hakubutsukan 福岡市博物館 local history museum. Northern Kyūshū 九州 seems chock full of excellent museums, and this one was no exception, helped immensely by the free English-language audio guide. The highlight of all the displays was undoubtedly the Kin-in gold seal 金印. This National Treasure 国宝 is a 2.3 square centimeter (0.36 square inch), 109 gram (3.8 ounce) gold seal presented by the Han Emperor of China to the King of Na 奴国 (a local kingdom during the Yayoi Period 弥生時代) in 57 CE (and rediscovered in a grave on a small island in Hakata Bay in 1784).

From the museum, I walked about 800 meters (0.5 miles) to the Hawks Town ホークスタウン area. The district consists of the JAL Resort Sea Hawk Hotel (with a high atrium facing the sea), the Fukuoka Yahoo! Japan Dome ヤフードーム (home of the Pacific League's パリーグ Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks 福岡ソフトバンクホークス baseball team) and the Hawks Town shopping mall.

I had hoped to go to a Hawks game while I was in Fukuoka, but my preference for weekday night games could not be realized as the team was on the road until Saturday. There was a game going on in the afternoon when I arrived on the scene, but I had to content myself with a visit to the souvenir store, which was showing the game on closed-circuit TV (the Hawks would beat the Chūnichi Dragons 中日ドラゴンズ that day by a score of 9-5). I left with a SoftBank cap (I had already bought Honey, the Hawks' female mascot, as a present for Amber the previous night at a Sports Authority スポーツオーそりティ outlet in Canal City キャナルシティ博多), and after walking through the mall, I got a bus for the scenic ride over the Aratsu-Ōhashi 荒津大橋 suspension bridge, and into the Tenjin 天神 area.

From Tenjin, I walked back to my hotel, and passed a demonstration against the transfer of a children's hospital to an artificial island:

After a short rest in my room, I ventured out again, and did the tourist thing in Hakata 博多 - eating a bowl of rāmen ラーメン at a street stall 屋台. I was surprised to find the yatai decked out in Saitama Seibu Lions 埼玉西武ライオンズ banners, but the friendly cook explained he had been a Lions fan since childhood, back when the team played in Fukuoka as the Nishitetsu Lions 西鉄ライオンズ, before moving to its present home in Tokorozawa 所沢. Though he had spent some time working in a Yoshinoya 吉野家 in Los Angeles back in the 1980's, we spoke in Japanese, and he was very interested in Taiwanese cuisine (as are many Japanese):

On my last night in Fukuoka, I walked back to Tenjin and soon found myself at the International Bar インターナショナルバー, where I had my only conversation with a Westerner during my entire visit, in this case the Albanian bartender. One draft beer and two Moscow Mules later, and feeling pretty good, I stepped back into the night, and on the way "home", paused to take a picture of the Akarenga Cultural Center 赤煉瓦文化館, erected in 1909 as the home for a life insurance company:

As I passed through Nakasu 中洲, the entertainment district built on a sandbank in the middle of the Naka-gawa River 那珂川, I decided to record the moment for posterity. The shaky camerawork in the first video was due to my attempt at being discreet. After reaching the end of the main road, I crossed over to the other side of the street, and walked back in the opposite direction. This time I made no attempt to hide the camera:

Walk through Nakasu Part 1

Walk through Nakasu Part 2

翌日台湾に戻ってしまった。

Trip to Japan: Day 6 - Life isn't always a Beach ５月２９日

Before leaving for Japan, I had packed a swimsuit in the hope that the weather would be warm enough in Kyūshū 九州 to allow for a dip in the ocean while I was there. Well, things don't always turn out as planned. In fact, the day I went to Karatsu 唐津, a city of 130,000 with a long stretch of beach (about 70 minutes by train from Fukuoka 福岡), was the worst in terms of weather during my trip. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring along a jacket as well as swim gear, because I needed one on this cool, overcast and windy day.

Karatsu is first and foremost a pottery 焼き物 town, and I visited a couple of kiln-galleries, as well as purchased a pair of small, inexpensive items from the Karatsu Ware Federation Exhibition Hall next to the train station. Although I'm hardly a connoisseur when it comes to ceramics, I could appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the pottery (and gape open-mouthed at some of the prices being charged!). The galleries I went to were also attractive buildings in their own right, especially that of Nakazato Tarōemon 中里太郎右衛門窯:

After lunch at a kaiten-zushi 回転寿司 restaurant (a must when in Japan), I went to Karatsu-jinja 唐津神社, in the center of Karatsu:

The shrine was OK, but better was the Hikiyama Festival Float Exhibition Hall 曳山展示場 nearby, containing 14 floats used in the city's Karatsu Kunchi Matsuri 唐津くんち祭り every Nov. 2-4. The festival has been held since 1592, and looks like it would be a spectacular sight, judging from the video of the event shown at the hall. The floats are big, and come in designs including samurai helmets, a dragon, a chicken and a bright red fish:

Next, I walked to Karatsu-jō 唐津城. I'm not usually a fan of reconstructed castles (this one was built in 1966), but the hilltop location overlooking the sea was certainly picturesque. Inside were the usual displays of archaeological finds, ceramics and samurai armor and swords, but the view from the top floor was the drawing card. As you can hear in the video, it was pretty windy up there!:

Karatsu-jō

From the castle, I made my way towards the forested area seen in the background of the second photo above. Crossing the bridge, it was all I could do to stand upright! The wind continued to blow in from the ocean as I walked along the beach, as you can see in this self-portrait:

Even if the weather had been good enough for swimming, the Niji-no Matsubara 虹ノ松原 Beach was in a terrible state (I assume it gets cleaned up before the start of the "official" swimming season in July). Reaching the pine tree area, I turned back towards the city, and took a long walk back to the train station. Had it been a nicer day, I would've taken advantage of the free bicycles available for tourists, but I didn't really feel like pedaling into the wind all day. I returned to Fukuoka in the late afternoon, and following dinner, relaxed with a pint of Bass at a British-style pub near my hotel before retiring to bed in preparation for my last full day in the city.

 

On the way back to Karatsu Station 唐津駅

I had actually passed through Karatsu back in 1990, pausing long enough to rent a car and drive to Yobuko 呼子, a fishing port on the Higashi-Matsuura Peninsula 東松浦半島, where I stayed a couple of nights (the town merged with Karatsu City 唐津市 in 2005). Despite the less-than-ideal weather, I enjoyed my visit this time. If I were living in Fukuoka, I could imagine myself spending time there in the summer months swimming and biking on the weekends. Pottery and surf make for a good combination!