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...