Early mornin' out 'n' about

For one reason or another, I hadn't been able to get out into the hills and mountains to have a much-needed breather from the noise, dirt and general chaos that is life in urbanized T'ái​wān 台灣​. One Tuesday was a national holiday, which meant I was engaged in the waseigo 和製語 term "family service" ファミリーサービス. The following Tuesday my kindergarten class had a field trip to a "farm". Last Tuesday I needed to visit the psychiatric clinic at the local general hospital, part of a long, ongoing story that I hope to blog on once the mess has been finally settled. And this Tuesday I had to stay home and take care of my daughter, who unfortunately has come down with a nasty cold.

So it was that this morning I found myself free as a result of the above-mentioned "situation", and decided to take advantage while the window of opportunity was open. However, said opening meant having to wake up and be out the door by around 5:20am. This is what the streets of downtown Fēng​yuán​ 豐原 look like at half-past five in the morning:

It felt good to be out on the trails in the hills behind Chūng​chèng​ Park 中正園, and the one-hour walk will hopefully leave me in better shape for when I return the mountains of Tà​k'ēng​ 大坑 next week, weather permitting. However, I was far from alone this morning, for the hills were alive with sounds of Taiwanese talking and listening to music on portable radios. At times, the beautiful melodies of the birds singing in the early-morning air were drowned out by the cacophony of "hikers" enjoying the "outdoors". There's a good reason I usually venture out on weekday afternoons, instead.

Speaking of birds, I caught sight of this magnificent creature on the way back to my scooter:

Thanks to the efforts of my old college friend Andrea (via the modern miracle of Facebook), I'm pretty confident this is a Malayan Night Heron, or hēi​kuān​má​lù​ 黑冠麻鷺 (see here and here).

Later in the day, on the way home after picking up Amber from her kindergarten, I noticed something odd about the license plate on one of those ubiquitous blue pickup trucks you see everywhere on this island:

Why does it read "Shinjuku" 新宿 next to the numbers? Perhaps it's an attempt to look cosmopolitan, like those ridiculous European Union license plate frames that seem to be popular these days (for those who don't know, Shinjuku is one of Tōkyō's 東京 biggest and busiest districts). If so, it should be pointed out to the truck driver that Tōkyō-area license plates either read "Shinagawa" 品川, "Nerima" 練馬, "Adachi" 足立, "Hachiōji" 八王子 or "Tama" 多摩 (the districts where the prefecture's motor vehicle bureaus are located), with "Shinagawa" by far holding the top position on the coolativity scale, with Kanagawa Prefecture's 神奈川県 "Yokohama" 横浜 plate running a close second. 

Cats 貓

Hope everyone had a nice Easter 復活節. Amber was up early this morning, looking for the chocolate Kinder Surprises the Easter Bunny had hidden during the night in both her room and the living room. The weather was very pleasant today, so of course I took advantage of it by staying indoors the entire day, and giving the apartment a thorough spring cleaning from top to bottom. Our two cats were much smarter than me:

Happy 黑皮 (Hēi​p'í)

​

Momo

This caricature of Amber was drawn by the thirteen- or fourteen year-old daughter of one of my wife's friends, Watermelon Fish (yes, that is her English name). It certainly brings out the アニメ/漫画 side of my child:

According to legend, Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. Not many people know, however, that Christ actually escaped crucifixion and eventually made his way to northern Japan 東北地方, where he married, had kids and lived to be 106, almost as old the celebrated "Kinsan Ginsan" きんさんぎんさん twins. You can visit his grave in the Aomori Prefecture 青森県 village of Shingō 新郷, the "Home of Christ" キリストの墓. You can read about the story on Wikipedia or watch this video posted on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/RoninDave

Gray areas

For quite some time now, I've been using a combination of my Washington state driver's license and a valid International Driving Permit in order to drive legally (or so I thought) here in T'ái​wān​ 台灣. However, I was recently informed by the police that as I'm a resident here, I'm required to get a Taiwanese license (a fact which I knew, but I'm a firm believer in the concept of "plausible denial"). So this afternoon, my wife and I went to the local motor vehicles office to get the skinny on having my present driving papers changed over to the coveted Taiwanese chià​shǐ​hchíh​chào​. I cooled my heels outside while Pamela did the inquiring indoors. She emerged about 15 minutes later with a paper in Chinese that (according to her) says everything is hunky-dory with my current arrangement, and that therefore there is no need to get the local license. Apparently it has something to do with the principle of reciprocity, as the state of Washington allows Taiwanese drivers to use THEIR 駕駛執照 in conjunction with an IDP. Actually, very little is spelled out clearly, and the paper says nothing about motorcycles or scooters. Anyone who has been in Taiwan​ for a while can tell you it's not uncommon (in fact it's very common) to be told different things regarding laws and regulations by different officials working in different sections of the government. Now I need to keep the "explanatory" DMV document with me while I'm driving or riding just in case I end up being interrogated by a member of the local constabulary. TIT - This is Taiwan​.

This is also Taiwan - a car parked illegally outside the motor vehicles office:

A couple of signs espied this evening in T'ái​chūng​​ 臺中:

This food stand selling sushi 寿司 (shòu​ssū 壽司 in Chinese) and oden おでん (kuān​tūngchǔ​​ 關東煮 in the local lingo) is called "House" ハウス in Japanese. At least it thinks it is. Unfortunately, the characters 八咫屋 can't be read in this manner. Yes, this is also Taiwan​ :-)

This sign advertises full body and foot massages. For Japanese tourists, getting a マッサージ (legitimate and otherwise) is a popular activity in this country.

Close, but not quite

It's an easy mistake to make, and therefore a commonplace one here: using a full-sized tsu (つ or ツ), instead of the half-sized syllable (っ or ッ) when words contain double consonants. And so we get the nonsensical suritsupa スリツパ when it should be written as surippa スリッパ, the Japanese word for "slipper". If it's any consolation, my ex used to misread 日光 as Nitsukō rather than Nikkō, and she most definitely should have known better!

Why I don't want to buy a house in Taiwan

My wife often says we should buy a home in T'ái​wān​ 台灣, a concrete box that we could proudly call our very own. I'm very leery about doing this, for a number of reasons. Take the building below, for example...please (rimshot)! When first constructed, it probably looked very modern, but age has not been very kind to it. The pink surface tiles have become darkened and stained over the years, giving the building the look and feel of a New York subway station restroom. Add to that the lack of overhanging balconies, the bars on some the windows (even on the upper floors) and the fact that these rooms are facing north instead of south, and you've got yourself a dream home (or condo, to be more accurate) with all the charm of a disused mental hospital. And all for probably the same amount of money that it would take to get yourself a proper house (with a yard) back in your homeland. It's best to keep looking, darling.

Of Saturdays 星期六

Amber crosses over Ch'úng​té​ Road 崇德路 on the T'án​yǎ​shén​ cycling trail 潭雅神綠園道.

At the Hú​lutūn​​ Tourist Night Market 葫蘆墩觀光夜市:

Amber tucks into a bowl of catfish. My wife actually doesn't know the Mandarin word for this dish - she always orders it by its Taiwanese name 土虱, which sounds like "Tosa" to my ears, though Pamela insists I'm not saying it correctly.

Amber took this shot of me tucking into a cup of San Miguel beer.

Leisurely Farming

My kindergarten had a field trip today to one of this country's numerous "leisure farms", the Taiwanese version of a dude ranch. These places give Taiwanese kids, the vast majority of whom grow up in densely-populated urban settings, a chance to experience a little (with the emphasis on "little") of what life was like for their grandparents. Amber tagged along on this excursion, and for her and my students, it was a fun outing, with opportunities for cooking sweet potatoes in earthen stoves, painting stones, going for rides on ox-pulled carts, harassing pigs in enclosed pens and handling beetle grubs. I'm completely exhausted, but the little ones (my daughter included) all had a good time.

Amber crosses that bridge when she comes to it. It was a surprisingly flimsy structure.

The kids get ready to be taken for a ride.

I also got to sit on the cart. This is the view I had for the entire duration of the ride.  Tái​wān​ 台灣 for me in a nutshell.

Amber had no problem when it came to handling wriggling fish...

...or writhing insect larvae. That's my girl!

This shot was taken from the bus window on the ride back to the farm. I have to trust the hiragana 平仮名 when it says 緣份 means enfun in Japanese, as my Japanese online kanji 漢字 dictionary had no entry for yuán​ 緣. Enfun no kami えんふんのかみ apparently means something along the lines of "The Fate of Hair".

At the end of a long day, a visit to the Gordon Biersch restaurant/brewery was a welcome respite for Amber's dad.

You can have your cake and eat it too, as long as you can read the sign

Amber checks out some amber at a jade market.

If you can read English, I assume you can understand this sign. If you are able to decipher kanji 漢字, then 横浜洋菓子 is easy to comprehend - Yokohama yōgashi roughly translates as "Yokohama Western Confectioneries" or "Yokohama Pastry". But if you're limited to Mandarin 國語, this sign may pose some difficulty. The word kashi 菓子 in Japanese means "cake", "pastry" or "confectionery". However, if you run the characters through an online Chinese-English dictionary, a very different meaning comes out. Do an image search of kuǒ​tzu 菓子 on Google Taiwan, and this is what you get:

www.flickr.com/photos/swanky-hsiao/2529222925/

...which is certainly very sweet, but not exactly a cake. The actual meaning of 菓子 (or its variant 果子) is fruit, which isn't really related to pastries, either. So to a Mandarin speaker, 横浜洋菓子 could possibly be construed as a case of false advertising.

So how would your average Taiwanese know what is really for sale at this particular establishment? The short answer is, they probably wouldn't (and it's been my experience that most people in this country pay very little attention to the English used on signs, despite its prevalence). So why would this cake shop seemingly go out of its way to confuse, and possibly, drive away potential customers? According to my wife, it isn't. For the name "Yokohama" is widely-recognized in T'ái​wān 台灣​ (at least as Héng​pīn, going by the Chinese reading for 横浜, or its traditional variant 横滨), and Pamela feels that is enough to suggest to most locals that something Japanese is on offer inside, and therefore worth going in to have a look. ​So if you ever decide to open a business on this island, and wish to save some money on advertising, just give your establishment a well-known Japanese name, and wait for the punters to come in,  the cash registers to start ringing and let them eat cake!

Market Sweeping Day

One of the many perks of being married to a local is that come Tomb Sweeping Day (Ch'īng​míng​) 清明, we don't need to do anything. This has nothing to do with being a foreign barbarian, and everything to do with the traditional belief that when a woman gets married, she "leaves" her family and enters her husband's familial circle. As a result, she is no longer responsible for helping with the upkeep of her family's grave sites, and is expected instead to tend to those of her husband's various relations, like mine. Only in my case, my ancestors are entombed at scattered locations around the globe (well, in California and England, at least), and reside in cemeteries and memorial parks that are tended to by full-time groundskeeping staff. Ergo, it's a win-win situation for both my wife and myself on this particular national holiday.

My friend Steve, who is also married to a Taiwanese (and the father of two great kids) would probably agree with me, which is why he had time today to join me in an attempted hike of Huǒ​yán​shān​ 火炎山, in Miáo​lì​ County's 苗栗縣 Sān​ì 三義​. I say "attempted" because it seems the Taiwanese gods decided on a little payback for our not having tombs to tend to today. Not long after setting out on our triumphant conquest of the 602-meter (1975-foot) summit, the sole of my left hiking boot starting peeling off, having come unglued soon after we started climbing. That put an end to our hike, but it was still enjoyable for the two of us to spend some time together sans dependents, and I was able to get the boot resoled by a cobbler this evening in downtown Fēng​yuán​ 豐原, so I have nothing to carp about on this holiday. Here's Steve befriending an Alaskan Malamute that had been tied to a car and left behind while its owner presumably was also hiking on Huoyanshan​:

As mentioned above, Pamela, Amber and I went downtown this afternoon to have my hiking shoe seen to, and as we were already in the area, we killed time waiting for the boot to be repaired by snacking on Fengyuan's one-and-only tourist spot, the Miào​tūng​ Night Market 廟東夜市 food street. Among other treats, we sampled garlic rice (suànjòufàn) 蒜肉飯; spring rolls (ch'ūnchüǎn) 春捲; pork meat pie (chūjòu hsiènpǐng) 豬肉餡餅; and something called a "salad boat" (shālāch'uán) 沙拉船, a kind of long hot dog bun filled with meat and vegetables. It was quite tasty, though a little on the messy side. Munching this way ended up being far more expensive that having a sit-down meal at a proper restaurant, which is why we don't usually do this sort of thing, but Amber enjoyed the atmosphere. If you're looking for reflective patrons quietly sizing up the finer points of the various cuisines on offer, then food streets and night markets are places best avoided.

(上) Amber strikes a pose; (下) Kumaichi, purveyor of fine Taiwanese papaya milk drinks (mùkuā niúnǎi) 木瓜牛奶.

Which one do you choose?

A Happy "The Combined Holidays of Women's Day & Children's Day" to youall

On the third day 婦女節、兒童節合併假期 of this budget-conscious (for us) long holiday weekend, the Kaminoge family went into T'ái​chūng​ 臺中. The cold, windy weather put paid to the idea of throwing a Frisbee around People's Park, not to mention the late start we made in getting out there (around 3pm. Hey, it was a holiday - what's the rush?). So instead we had dinner at the Chūng​huá​ Night Market 中華夜市. It'd been years (literally) since I'd had a meal there (or even a walk around - the last time might've been when a revival of "The Exorcist" was showing at a movie theater in the area), and the market seemed to have shrunk in the interval. It wasn't much fun having to share the street with cars and scooters, especially in the company of an excited five year-old, and the oyster omelet 蚵仔煎 (é​tzǔ​chiēn, or ôáchian​, as most people use the Taiwanese 台語 word when ordering the dish) we had at a celebrated established-in-1968 eatery was OK, but certainly not as worthwhile as the photos of the foodie celebs and local politicians on the walls would seem to suggest. Methinks I'll leave this night market to the T'ái​k'è 台客​ and the gangsters (liú​máng​) 流氓.

Amber, at least, didn't seem to mind her rice omelet 蛋包飯「オムライス」.

Tomorrow, if the weather improves, I hope to do some hiking. We shall see what the gods have in store for us on Tomb Sweeping Day 清明...

Long lost weekends

A community center that appears to date from the Japanese period 台灣日治時期. Fēng​yuán​ 豐原 has a few such period-piece buildings scattered about town, some (like this one) in better condition than others.

It's the beginning of April, and a four-day weekend is looming for most people here, the result of the government having made Monday the 4th, The Combined Holidays of Women's Day and Children's Day 婦女節、兒童節合併假期, an official holiday to go along with the already-established Tomb Sweeping Day 清明 on Tuesday. There are several implications as a result of the government's action. First of all, it means that those Taiwanese who would spend the single holiday in the past sweating to clear away a year's worth of brush and overgrowth from ancestral burial plots (cemeteries being places to avoid for the rest of the year because, you know, they're full of ghosts) now have an extra day to recover from their exertions before returning to work or school on Wednesday. Many people have done the smart thing, and performed the ritual cleaning earlier, thus freeing up the entire four-day weekend for more enjoyable activities. Secondly, the long weekend will no doubt see all of the famous (and not so famous) tourist traps overrun with pleasure seekers. I wouldn't want to be on any of the freeways come the late afternoon/early evening of Tuesday, and I won't, because...finally, this extra day for us means more time spent at home, or in local parks. Not because we wish to avoid the hordes, but because we're still pinching pennies following our two-week trip to the States back in early February. At least we don't have any tombs to tend to.

The sign is supposed to be a come-on for the sweet snacks available from this food stand, but it would probably be more appealing if they had actually rendered the word for "delicious" in Japanese correctly - "oishii" おいしい instead of the meaningless "oishi" おいし (and, yes, that extra i does matter). Also, "oden" おでん doesn't consist of a cup of black coffee with a side order of nuts. For confirmation of what exactly Kuān​tūng​chǔ​ 關東煮 is, stop by your local 7-Eleven (or follow this link)

In conjunction with the four-day weekend mentioned above, it's finally beginning to feel like spring has arrived. And just in time, too, after what has been described as one of the coldest winters in T'ái​wān 台灣​ in decades. Of course, what passes for "cold" here would feel downright balmy to my friends and family in the Pacific Northwest and northern California, where there has been snow as recently as just the past week (and I won't even mention what the Midwest went through this winter). The forecast calls for mostly sunny skies over the next few days, so my daughter can look forward to getting outside and having some (free of any charges) fun, like hitting some plastic balls with her plastic bat. And speaking of balls and bats, today was Opening Day for Major League Baseball, when teams like the Pirates and Royals can still dream they have a chance of competing for a postseason playoff spot, a dream which should last as long as the first week of the new season. The Mariners kick off their schedule tomorrow, and it'll be interesting to see how many games they will manage to lose this year with their anemic offense, despite having the reigning A.L. Cy Young Award winner on their pitching staff. Play ball!

A billboard for a laxative drink. The use of the hiragana 平仮名 no の is necessitated by the fact the product comes from Japan. Of course it is.