A case of the crabs

What do you do on a warm but overcast day, when the mist is hanging in the air and the skies are threatening to unleash a downpour? You go to the Kāo​měi​ Wetland 高美濕地 and look for crabs, of course:

And afterward you visit the T'ái​chūng Harbor Fish Market 台中港魚市場 in Wú​ch'ī​ 梧棲, where you check out the many kinds of seafood on display, some of which (like the pair of cuttlefish, or wū​tséi 烏賊  pictured below) are VERY fresh:

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One thing you can't avoid at the fish market is having to run the gantlet of aggressive touts trying to herd customers into their seafood restaurants:

You can read an excellent account of what it's like trying to eat at tourist markets in this country by following this link.

On the way home, we found ourselves following one of the more hard-to-explain-but-not-uncommon scenes of like on this island: the "spicy girl" (là​mèi) 辣妹 singing an enka 演歌 song from a stage that has been mounted at the rear of one of those ubiquitous blue pickup trucks. She belts her tune while the truck is moving, usually included in a Taoist 道教 festival (like this evening), but occasionally ​as part of a funeral procession. The presence of the "hot babe" (if your idea of sexiness was formed during the Eisenhower administration, that is) has been explained to me as a way of "pleasing the gods", but no doubt the local おじさん are also quite happy to see (and hear) these trucks go by:

Changes in plans

Due to a scheduling mix-up on our (read my wife's) part, Amber didn't have her regular Saturday afternoon swimming lesson today (she'll do a makeup class next Tuesday). Also, Pamela had a rare day off, meaning that for first time in ages, all three of us were free on a Saturday afternoon. So naturally we took advantage of the long (for us) weekend by going out of town, right? Um, wrong. It seems Mother Nature had other ideas. Rain or not, I would've gone ahead and gotten the hell out of Dodge, at least for one night (for me, T'ái​wān​ 台灣 is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Wait a minute...), but She Who Must Be Obeyed (because She Is Also Probably Right) decreed that we had to wait for sunnier days, and that was that.

Oh well, seeing as T'ái​wān is in the midst of its worst drought in over eight years, this rain is badly needed. And the three of us still had a pretty good day, beginning with one of Amber's periodic modeling sessions, and ending with an afternoon performance at the Chūng​yŭ Department Store 中友百貨公司 by the cast from YOYO TV. I don't normally approve of what's broadcast on YOYO (and on its rival channel, MOMO) - the performers are young and handsome/beautiful, and I don't like the subtle messages this fact is suggesting to the minds of their young viewers (in comparison, the entertainers on NHK's 日本放送協会 kids shows look more like real people). But Amber really enjoyed the show, singing and dancing for the better part of an hour, so curmudgeonly old dad is happy that his daughter is happy.

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The superstar model is seen to by her retinue of personal attendants. Amber's photos should up on this link from next Tuesday (May 17).

Because 三喜屋 just doesn't sound as cool when pronounced as Sān​hsǐwū​.

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(上 I couldn't understand the meaning of kikupan, until I realized I was reading くきパン the wrong way. Kukipan Bread 九鬼麵包, doh! (下) Hitola Sushi is a local conveyor-belt sushi 回転寿司 chain. The name appears to be a phonetic transcription of the Mandarin reading of the characters 喜多楽, Hsǐtōlè​ (Kitaraku きたらく in Japanese)​​.

Oh, my, it's a shop telling hand-rolled sushi, or temaki 手巻き. Lions and tigers and bears, おまい!

English: Welcome a top-class massage service.

日本語：いらっしゃいませ先クラスのマッサージのサービスする。

中文: ???

In the news

From Friday's online edition of Japan Today (300-strong Taiwan tourism delegation visits Hokkaidō, Kyōdō News 共同通信社 ):

"A 300-strong T'ái​wān​ 台灣 tourism delegation led by Wang Jin-pyng (Wáng​ Chīn-​p'íng) 王金平​, president of the island’s Legislative Yuan 立法院 or parliament, arrived in Hokkaidō 北海道 on Thursday to help rehabilitate Japan’s tourism industry, which has been hit hard by the March 11 earthquake, tsunami 津波 and subsequent nuclear crisis.

'I want to send a strong message to Taiwanese people that Hokkaido is safe and they can visit here at ease,' Wang told a news conference in Sapporo 札幌.

The delegation is visiting at the request of Hokkaido Governor Harumi Takahashi 高橋はるみ, who has been seeking to restore tourism in the northern island, as Taiwan is Hokkaido’s top source of foreign tourists, accounting for almost a quarter of all foreign visitors.

In fiscal 2009, the number of Taiwanese who visited Hokkaido came to around 180,000.

While in Hokkaid, Wang’s delegation will visit Sapporo, Kushiro 釧路 and Otaru 小樽.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization 国際観光振興機構, Taiwan accounted for the second-largest group of foreign tourists to Japan last year, totaling almost 1.14 million. The largest number of tourists came from South Korea."

Wang is a significant figure in local politics here. Not only does he hold the powerful position of parliamentary president, he is also the biggest rival to President Ma Ying-jeou (Mǎ​ Yīng​-chiǔ​) 馬英九 within the ruling Kuó​mín​tǎng 中國國民黨. Wang represents the party's pro-localization faction, i.e. those KMT members who were born and raised on this island, and can speak the Taiwanese dialect known as Hoklo (T'ái​yǔ) 台語. This often pits him against the "mainlanders" (​wài​shěng​jén​) 外省人, who still hold many positions of power and influence in the ruling party. Wang also has close ties to the Japanese political class, and he is a frequent visitor to Japan, often on missions to repair once-close ties that have been damaged in recent years by Ma's pro-China policies.

No wonder my Mandarin sucks...

...what with all these distractions around:

While having dinner at Yoshinoya 吉野家 on Tuesday, I looked up at a sign on the wall. Starting from the right were three vertical rows of Chinese characters, but it was the fourth column at the far left that caught my eye: 新朝食を食べましょう, "Let's eat a new breakfast". Am I the only one who notices this kind of stuff?

I'm not sure what to make of this sign. 竹風 in Chinese is chú​fēng, but according to the hiragana 平仮名, it should be read as takekaze たけかぜ. But what about 食堂, which is a common compound often seen in Japan (it can mean "cafeteria", "restaurant" or "dining hall"), and is pronounced in Japanese as shokud​ō? Seeing as there isn't any furigana 振り仮名 for this one, am I to assume that the name of this establishment is "Takekaze Shí​ht'áng​"?

I just hate it when I'm passing by an unassuming tea stand, only to notice at the last moment something unusual written in small characters in a corner of the sign. What's even more annoying is discovering that an important message such as the one here (that this one of a kind most original flavor will enable me to give priority to a lifestyle of environmental protection and human health) is buried deep in the fine print.

If I were a Taiwanese person who couldn't understand Japanese, I wouldn't know what was unique about J950 jeans. As an American whose Japanese isn't bad (but not great, unfortunately), I don't know what is special about these jeans, either. Oh well, they probably wouldn't fit me anyway.

Some signs don't care whether or not you can read what they say. They're just too big to ignore, confident that people will be drawn inside the premises to have a gander at what's on offer (for the record, it says "Perfect evolution", and obviously refers to the most advanced stage of development that has been reached in the evolutionary history of luggage. This suitcase most definitely has not been intelligently designed).

New traditions

Though it may be hard to believe from the poor-quality photograph above (taken in poor lighting on an overcast afternoon), these are pretty flowers. What you are looking at are the blossoms of the t'úng​ 桐 tree, an annual floral event that happens at this time of year in central T'ái​wān​ 台灣. A important part of the culture of the Hakka people 客家, Taiwanese poets of centuries past penned odes to the beauty of the tung blossom 桐花, while groups of people would gather under the trees when the flowers were in full bloom, to drink tea and engage in merriment…

…or so the tourist authorities would have you believe. In actuality, until about ten years ago, few people gave much thought to the humble tung blossom. The trees had always been there, but they hardly registered on the radars of most Taiwanese. What changed was that in the early part of this century (around the year 2002), the government implemented a five-day work week. This, in turn, triggered a leisure boom among the local populace. With the standard litany of sightseeing spots having been exhausted long ago, there was suddenly a demand for new places to visit, and new things to do, on the weekends. Some bright mind (or minds) took note of the beautiful tung trees flowering every April or May, and conjured up an image of the white blossoms that had fallen to the ground looking like a carpet of snow. On this island of almost-perpetual warm weather, snow is of great interest, and it wasn’t long before the tour buses and family cars descended on those areas blessed (or cursed?) with numerous t'úng trees. And, thus, a new tradition was born.

The above picture was taken on Tuesday afternoon in the hills of the Tà​k'ēng​ area 大坑風景區, but THE place to see the tung blossoms has to be Sān​'ì 三義​, in Miáo​lì​ County 苗栗縣. Sanyi itself has greatly benefited from the five-day work week. There was a time when the town was known only for its wood sculptures (and sculptors), and people would go there to browse in the shops, and perhaps come home with a nice souvenir. Back then, the disused Shèng​hsīng​ train station 勝興車站 was just that – an abandoned stop on a discontinued rail line that no one gave much thought to. At the turn of this century, when my wife and I first started seeing each other, she took me to Shengxing. I recall there being only a couple of restaurants and very few (if any) souvenir stands. It may have been possible that that we were the only two visitors there that afternoon. In any case, it was definitely a far cry from the present day, when even on weekdays, you can find a lot of people walking around, and doing what Taiwanese tourists do best – taking pictures of themselves, eating high-calorie snack foods and buying tacky souvenirs. If you go on weekends, be prepared – words like “circus” or “zoo” can’t begin to describe the way in which this part of Sān​'ì has “benefited” from the ongoing leisure boom.

(BTW, I was so intent on photographing the t'úng blossoms that I failed to notice the huge Formosan macaque [T'ái​wān mí​hóu​] 台灣獼猴​ sitting on a branch in that very tree…until it jumped over to the next tree, leaping with a loud crash, before disappearing into the forest before I had a chance to point the camera at it. A pheasant scurrying along the ground a few minutes earlier also eluded my attempts to get a picture of it. I’m not destined to be a nature photographer.)

Just when you think you’ve seen all the reminders of the past around here, something else pops up from history’s dusty drawer. While walking around the area near Sān​mín​ Road 三民路 in T'ái​chūng​ 臺中 this evening in search of a tea stand, I passed this building, which looked to date from the Japanese period 台灣日治時期. It turns out it did. According to a plaque on the outside, upon its erection in 1921, it served as the site of the Department of Food, part of the Bureau of Agriculture and Business in the Taiwan Governor’s 台灣總督府「台湾総督府」 Office. These days, the building is still a functioning government location, acting as the Taichung branch of the Council of Agriculture 行政院農業委員會. Kudos go out to those who not only elected to keep the structure intact, but to maintain it as an active workplace, as opposed to a dusty museum.

Let's Japanese in Taiwan

Look around anywhere you go in T'ái​wān 台灣​, and it isn't hard to spot something written in Japanese (just walk into any supermarket or convenience store, and peer at the products on the shelves, for example). Next to English, Japanese is the most popular foreign language studied here, the result first of a long colonial legacy (which left its linguistic imprint on the local dialect), and then by the close economic and social ties in the years that have followed. Despite the recent popularity of the "Korean Wave", "Cool Japan" still has a hold on Taiwanese both young and old. The island is awash with signs written in kanji 漢字, hiragana 平仮名, katakana 片仮名 and even rōmaji ローマ字. Here are some representative examples of the good, the bad and the ugly, all taken within the past week in the central city of T'ái​chūng​ 臺中​.

This is probably the most common example in that it uses three languages to get its point across (and no doubt to make a "local" product appear to be more "cosmopolitan"): the largest fonts are reserved for Mandarin, of course (fènglísū 鳳梨酥), followed by English ("Pineapple Shortcake") and Japanese (painappuru kēki パイナップルケーキ, with the Japanese translation itself being a loan word from English).

Compared to a tonal language like Mandarin, Japanese is easier to pronounce, but the grammar is much more complex. This label on a box of cakes is a good example of the difficulties involved - oishigeda is a case of an adjectival form being incorrectly used, resulting in an awkward meaning, something along the lines of "it has deliciousness". Forgivable, unlike the next example...

We've all seen some very strange spellings of English words here in Taiwan, and have wondered why the writer didn't simply take a few moments to look up the word in a dictionary, or have the material proofread by someone more proficient in the language before going ahead with publication or production. The same occurs with Japanese as well. The writing in the bottom left corner of the package above, ichigo kūki いちごクーキ, is either trying to say "Strawberry Cookie" (ichigo kukkī クッキー) or "Strawberry Cake" (ichigo kēki ケーキ), but has gotten it wrong on both counts.

There's nothing wrong with this sign for a Tōkyō 東京 (Shinjuku 新宿) tonkatsu 豚カツ restaurant called Saboten さぼてん. The name has been transliterated into Mandarin as Shèngpótièn 勝博殿. (Those of you who are unfamiliar with tonkatsu can read the Wikipedia entry on the subject. The word in Chinese is chàchūp’ái 炸豬排)

For a Taiwanese person, the name on the sign reads Liùpěnmù Square (Liùpěnmù kuǎngch’ǎng) 六本木廣場. For anyone who has spent time in Tokyo, the name Roppongi 六本木 conjures up a lot of different, and sometimes clashing, images: foreign ghetto; big-city clubs and discos; fashionable boutiques and restaurants; sleazy dives, meat markets and pick-up joints; yakuza ヤクザ and G.I.'s; stunningly beautiful women; and, in recent times, upscale developments. Like so many other transplanted young Westerners, I spent most of my weekends during my first year in Tokyo hanging out there, then avoided the area like the plague for most of the ensuing years afterward. In any case, the above picture is an example of a Japanese place-name being used to appeal to the young and the impressionable, er, fashionable.

Some signs are just plain strange. "Just&Love" followed by a heart sign ♥, and then the Japanese loan word shō (as in "show")...It's from a boutique located in a district frequented by university students, if that helps.

This final example shows a tendency among some sign-makers to get "busy" when it comes to the writing (the おいしげだ picture above also demonstrates this trait). Also commonplace with English signage, it involves cramming lots of small text onto the sign. The effect isn't to inform, as the words (in both English and Japanese) often make little sense, and contain lots of mistakes. Instead, the intent is to dazzle the passerby with lots of "exotic" writing, and attract their attention to the more important stuff written in Mandarin. Certainly, very few Taiwanese are going to stop in their tracks in order to try and work out what is written. No, that sort of thing is best to left to strange folks such as myself.

In this case, the words on the left are pretty easy to understand with a quick glance: オリーブオイルでパンを楽しむ basically just means something like "enjoy bread in olive oil". For all that writing on the other side, I was prepared to take some time after getting back home to figure out what all that was trying to say. It was only after I had uploaded the photo, and had taken a closer look, that I realized it was merely the hiragana script, one of the two syllabic alphabets used in Japanese (see here for a table of the symbols). It would the same as if I moved back to the States, opened a "Taiwanese-style" bakery, and then erected a sign out front plastered with the Bopomofo ㄅㄆㄇㄈ syllables and tone marks.

A note to the editors and translators at Compass Magazine: are you really sure 'Jing Tai Lang Japanese Cuisine" is the right rendering of the characters 金太郎日式料理? Yes, I'm aware that here is Taiwan, but wouldn't "Kintarō" better convey what kind of experience diners will have at that restaurant, especially as 金太郎 is the name of a Japanese folk hero? You should try Google sometimes - you might be surprised at what you can find out.

A short Kyōdō News 共同通信社 article from yesterday's Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ ("Ads thank Taiwanese for aid"):

"Advertisements paid for by Japanese citizens ran in two Taiwan newspapers Tuesday thanking the Taiwanese people for their support in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The half-page ads in the Chinese-language Liberty Times 自由時報 and United Daily 聯合報 say 'Arigatō, Taiwan" ありがとう台湾 beneath illustrations of a red plum blossom 梅花「ウメ」 — the national flower of Taiwan — next to a pink Japanese cherry blossom サクラ (樱花). 'Your support . . . is much appreciated and warms our heart. . . . We will forever remember your friendship,' they said. The ads stem from a campaign by designer Maiko Kissaka on Twitter last month to buy ads in Taiwanese media outlets thanking the Taiwanese for their support after the Tōhoku disaster 東北地方太平洋沖地震."

Banging those drums

Every year just before Mother's Day, Amber's kindergarten puts on a show. Each class performs for the assembled family members, lot of pictures and videos are taken and a good time is had by all, even if it does mean sacrificing the chance to sleep in on a Sunday morning (not that I get to do that very often. I live with a five year-old, after all). As they have in the past, Amber and her classmates set their routine to the sounds of pounding on taiko drums 和太鼓. One of the prerogatives of being a parent is getting to inflict images and sounds of our offspring on the rest of the world, so this one's for you 大家

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After the show, Amber unveiled her Mother's Day portrait, which also featured a barefoot Dad with what appears to be either an earring or a teabag dangling from my right earlobe:

Amber insists, however, that it's merely "dust".

Following lunch at the in-laws' house, the Kaminoge brood drove over to the Diore swimming pool, where I was happy to see that nearly five years' worth of water familiarization classes/swimming lessons has paid off handsomely. I also was glad to finally have the opportunity to give my prescription diving mask a workout - for the first time in my life, I was actually able to see clearly underwater. I'm definitely looking forward to utilizing it this summer in Okinawa 沖縄 (gods be willing).

About the only thing to put a crimp (albeit, a small one) on the afternoon's enjoyment was the couple of times when Amber went down the long, winding slide into the pool, only to be hit from behind as she reached the bottom by some older children who couldn't wait for her to get safely ahead of them before they launched themselves at full speed toward the water. Fortunately, Amber wasn't hurt, but as is sadly too often the case in T'ái​wān​ 台灣, complaining to those supposedly "in charge" and asking them to "do something" was a complete waste of time. The pool had a "lifeguard" who sat up on a high chair directly in front of the bottom of the slide, but who did absolutely nothing about preventing any potentially dangerous behavior. He flashed the appropriate look of sympathy when I complained about the older kids getting too physically close to my little girl on the slide, but that was the extent of his "supervision". It makes me think that perhaps the next time we go swimming, it will be to the beach, where there would more space for Amber play around in the water, and not to an allegedly "supervised" pool.

Taiwan​ is full of officials and persons of authority who look, but fail to act, the part. They run the gamut from police officers who do nothing while motorists drive through red lights at intersections, to restaurant owners who prefer not to intervene while an obnoxious diner ruins it for everyone else and apartment building security guards who sit in their small offices bravely watching TV most of the night until there is some kind of disturbance, at which point they are nowhere to be seen. It's no surprise, then, that for all the genuine kindness that has been remarked upon by visitors to this fair island, there is also an offsetting lack of simple acts of civility in too many everyday situations. T'ái​wān​ might be the libertarian's idea of paradise, but it just adds an extra layer to stress to the usual laundry list of things to worry about when trying to raise a child in this country.

Enough ranting (I'll blame it on Samuel Adams). We did have a pretty good day, and that's all that matters for now. I'll leave this post with a couple of links, both from today's Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ. The first is a nice letter from Feng Chi-tai, T'ái​wān's representative to Japan: "Taiwanese cheering for Japan". The other is an interesting article on an exhibition of Kyōto's 京都 modern architecture ("modern" as in having been built during the period from the 1920's to the 1970's). "Making Kyoto's modern architecture part of the city's heritage" shows a different side to a city known more being the representative example of all things "traditional" when it comes to Japan.