Sakura of DOOM

And finally, I have gotten to the last of my pictures!

Anyway, this is New Year's day proper and the following day. We ate lunch on New Year with my mom's family (well, her older sister and husband, given that everyone else is elsewhere), at a nifty Taiwanese place, which might have been nicer if they hadn't completely altered their menu for the new year. So alas, everything my uncle wanted was out. Luckily, they had the peanut mwaji bits that are the best thing ever (rachelmanija and telophase, sort of like the black sesame mwaji that we had at the Chinese place during YaoiCon). And then we had Shanghainese for dinner with a whole bunch of family friends, which was nice. And wow, everyone is so much bigger now! I'm perpetually surprised by this.

We had everyone over at our place for snacks and talking first, and I arranged lovely snack plates that I forgot to take pictures of =(. But they had the traditional watermelon seeds and peanuts and milk candy (very tasty... I took two packs home, and they were incredibly soft and chewy and not brittle at all), along with chocolate and cheese for that whole mix of cultures and whatnot. And so there were Chinese snacks and tea and coffee and wine for all. And lots of fruit, of course.

The next day, we had lunch at this very nice Japanese place, courtesy of some other family friends, in which I ate my fill of good sashimi. Ahhhh, sashimi.

Then for dinner, we went up to Beitou to a hot springs place, where I got to soak for a bit. Of course, this is where we had a fancy Italian dinner, which I really wanted to take pictures of. Unfortunately, just as I was passing off the camera to my mom to take pictures of me and my dad at said hot springs place (very pretty place), the camera slipped to an untimely death. So I have no pictures of the fun two-colored soup (half green something and half pumpkin, I think) or of the very tasty beef or of anything I ate. It is sad. We mourned the camera. The hot springs were very nice though! They have pools of varying temperatures and a steam room and a sauna, as usual, but some of the pools were special mineral water. So some were opaque, and there were two that were brick red. Also, Taiwan people must be slightly more shy than Japanese people, because they actually had individual showers for you before getting into the pools. The Japanese ones just have everyone showering in the same room.

Yeah, no swimming suits allowed in the pools. I was completely freaked out by this the first time I did hot springs in Japan, and so completely missed being able to soak in outside pools in Hokkaido while it was snowing (supposedly the best hot springs experience). Grrr. When me and the rest of the kids finally decided that being naked was ok, we had missed all the traditional hot springs and only got to soak at the last place, which wasn't the full-blown tatami room, futons, everyone dressed in yukata, giant traditional dinner experience. So sad =(. But yes, I have discovered that if I take off my glasses, I can't actually see anything, so I have the false impression that no one can see me as well.

Also, they are just so relaxing!

And then after that, my vacation was over =(.

As usual, all personal pictures are friends locked and won't display.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

( Giant pictures )

Part 1 has me going around Hsinchu, with much random food commentary.

And now, I am picking up on 1/27 (Fri), which is when my mom and I headed off to Taipei for New Year preparations! My dad joined us the day after, because he had to work =(. Poor dad. We went up to Taipei a day before New Year's Eve (that's when the big family dinner is) because my aunt invited us along to go grocery shopping with her! I was pretty interested in cooking the last time I visited, even though I never cooked anything. But yes, we ended up going to Nanmun Shr Chang (South Gate Market -- the old city gates for Taipei are now markets or shopping places), which is an extremely traditional market.

It's funny that I was so excited to go this time. One of my very first memories of moving back to Taiwan is going to a traditional market and being scared silly by the live foods and meats and smells and noises, but this time, I found myself getting excited about the seafood and the hunks of pork and chicken. Someday I should probably write an essay or something about this.

Anyhow. The market was really fun, although the decapitated pig's head disturbed even my mom and my aunt. My aunt is quite a cook, so me and my mom were just following behind her and ooh-ing and aah-ing over how she picked out the best vegetables and seafood and etc. I think my mom was feeling sort of bad about not being quite so professional a cook, but I think my mom is still quite good!

We also scored some live shrimp for lunch, which my mom and I later steamed with scallions and ginger. Fresh steamed shrimp is the best thing ever. Yeah, shrimp scampi and cocktail and whatnot is good, but nothing beats fresh and simple, when you can get the texture of the shrimp and the meat is still sweet and clean.

Then we headed off to Di Hua Street, which is where they sell a whole bunch of traditional New Year's food and I sampled pretty much everything. Yay samples! After that, a lovely dinner at Din Tai Fung, and new clothes and books for me ^_^.

Again, I friends-locked pictures with my family or me in them, so those won't load for some people. But all the interesting stuff is viewable!

ETA:
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4

( Ginormous pictures )

1. I got to see the Nana movie on the airplane!!!! Longer report to follow, but general notes are that it looks very weird because everyone is 3D and Japanese, as opposed to manga-style!

2. Jet lag is now hitting, and I just realized that I'm taking the red-eye to Houston tomorrow. Good lord.

3. I saw Fearless when I was in Taiwan (a Jet Li martial arts movie on Huo Yuanjia), which wasn't Oscar-quality any way you look at it, but had fight scenes and wasn't about a subject that was too depressing. It was also interesting because it's a highly, highly fictionalized biography of Huo Yuanjia and how he was famous because he defeated some Western boxers or fighters or some such in combat during the 1910s, when China was under much foreign occupation. It's very nationalistic, and it's very odd to see the large, brawny Caucasians being thwarted by small Jet Li and people in Qing dynasty-style clothing cheering while the Europeans and Americans in somewhat period clothing are basically scowling and villainously twirling their mustaches.

There's also a subplot in which of course the Japanese are teaming up with the Europeans and Americans to defeat Huo Yuanjia (probably because Japan was the only non-Western country to also occupy China during this time), but Japan is Asian and is thus portrayed as slightly better. The Japanese gambler plotting against Huo Yuanjia is dressed in Western clothes and is Ev0l, but Huo Yuanjia's martial art competitor is Japanese and dressed in a gi and etc. And he is portrayed as very honorable and later tells off the gambler for being un-Japanese.

Anyhow, it is nationalistic in a much less subtle way than most US movies I've seen seem to be... though I may be watching totally different demographics, given that I don't watch movies like The Patriot. It's also odd seeing the West villified so much and so openly after watching movies with less open racism of a sort (the Magic Negro, the Mystic Asian, etc.).

4. Manga has moved on without me! What a concept ;). Aka, I realized I was hopelessly out of date while visiting assorted comic book stores. KareKano is finished! Angel Sanctuary is finished! HanaKimi is finished! Good Morning Call is finished! (these are all series I was reading back in high school) Also, One Piece, Bleach and Naruto are incredibly popular in Taiwan. Sadly, Saiyuki doesn't seem to be, and I couldn't find Saiyuki Gaiden anywhere! And I only got one Minekura artbook, and I suspect there just isn't that much demand. This makes me sad.

On another note, Nakajo Hisaya (the mangaka of HanaKimi) has a new series out called Sugar Princess. I also wanted to get the manga of Genji Monogatari and something that looked like the Onmyouji series, but I had already gotten so many books that I didn't.

I also spent a lot of money on Yazawa Ai's new postcard collection for Paradise Kiss because I am a complete sucker and want all Yazawa Ai art. They are beautiful postcards, and I really need to scan them.

5. In knitting news, I went to a Taiwan knitting store and ended up with more yarn, because I have no willpower whatsoever. I also got a Japanese knitting magazine and a Chinese knitting book! The Chinese one will be especially neat, because it's all circular sweaters knit from top down, which makes me extremely, extremely happy. And it was cheaper than most knitting books here. However, this means I will need to learn knitting in Chinese. Also, the charts are very different from the charts that I'm used to, but that will be interesting to pick up as well.

I spent Chinese New Year with my uncle's family (my dad's brother), and his wife's mom (technically totally unrelated to me) was the one who had first taught me to knit. So I brought my crochet over, and she had entirely forgotten that she had taught me and obviously inspired an obsession ;). But the fun thing was that she was teaching my cousin to knit, so the three of us sat in a room, and I gave my cousin advice too, and we all played with yarn. Yay generational craftiness!

6. I got to go shopping with my aunt and my mom for groceries in a traditional market. Meat everywhere. Fish everywhere. Pretty veggies. One of the first places I went to in Taiwan when I moved here was a traditional market, and as a kid, it scared the hell out of me. They were selling frogs! To eat! And there was gross raw meat everywhere! And live fish!

This time, I had a lot of fun looking at all the stuff and admiring the pretty fruit and all the meat and live seafood. Also, my aunt is a cook, so following her around and having her explain how to pick the best pickled vegetables or fish or whatnot was quite fun.

I also helped make spring rolls for New Year's Eve dinner! And I learned how to kill crabs, yay?

7. I got to brush up on my Chinese a little more. I always forget it because I don't speak it much here, but thankfully, it seems like if I'm around people who speak it a lot, I pick it up fairly quickly. I am desperately hoping that my Japanese is also not permanently lost. But yes, this was nice, given that I am incredibly paranoid about my Chinese, because I swear, I always get laughed at for mispronouncing things and for having an American accent.

I think my mom is trying to encourage me positively, because she kept telling me that my Chinese was actually pretty good, comparatively. I'm not sure what it was being compared to, but it's always nice to hear (see above re: my extreme paranoia about speaking Chinese).

8. I got a book on shoujo manga! Alas, the book is in Chinese, so it will probably take me forever to read it. I almost wasn't going to get it because of the taking-forever-to-read factor, but I figured... shoujo manga scholarship! I'm not actually sure how scholarship-y it is, but when I flipped through, it at least had overviews of current series. I am not against manga from the 70s and desperately want to read them, but it's nice to have references and critical studies of things I actually have read.

I also saw a book on doujinshi and cosplay, but I ended up not getting it because reading one Chinese book a year is probably already very ambitious -_-;;.

1. I forgot to bring my camera. Of course, I realized this while I was at the San Francisco airport, because I saw some vending machines that sold iPods and Gameboys and audiobooks (!!) and wanted to take a picture. That may qualify as the niftiest vending machine that I've seen in the US! I miss the totally random Japanese vending machines, but iPod vending machines were pretty cool. Alas, you will all have to suffer the lack of my camera with me.

The good thing is that my dad is letting me steal his, as I have been inspired by other LJers' trip photoblogging to try and do my own. The bad thing is that I'm not quite sure what to take pictures of, outside of the food, because things that I think are normal aren't necessarily, and things that I think are nifty may indeed be very boring.

2. I opened the in-flight magazine, only to discover that they were showing Nana the movie.... but on the way back. Woe! Hopefully I will get to see it on the way back. Or find a DVD or something here.

3. Taiwan bookstores are really crowded. I ogled over manga and restrained myself, given that I will be going to the comic book store later, and it's cheaper over there. However, I did get myself two Chinese cookbooks! One is just on assorted pancake-like flatbreads (bin) and what you can do with them, which totally excites me, and another is just a fairly normal-seeming vegetarian one. I only hope that I don't get too confused by figuring out the instructions in Chinese, and the names of assorted ingredients.

4. I am now in the hospital getting a very thorough physical, courtesy of my mom, who is, shall we say, extremely concerned about all things healthwise these days. All the doctors keep asking me why I'm doing this when I'm so young (all the other people here seem to be in their fifties or so). It's very cold. But the good thing is that they feed you lunch (unagidon! whoo!) and that they are providing me with internet access! They are also frighteningly organized.

The bad thing is that anytime they tell me something or ask me questions, I'm very puzzled, given that my Chinese medical terminology really sucks, to say the least. Also, it's freezing in here because Taiwan doesn't believe in indoor heating and the building is made of concrete, and I'm in a robe. At least they gave me an outer robe.

5. Further plans for this afternoon include a haircut, at long last!

6. I have already had beef rolls (beef flavored with some sauce and green onions wrapped in something rather like a scallion pancake), noodle soup, dates, wax apples, strawberries, and Asian pears. And watermelon. Whoo fruit! How I have missed you! I will make my mom go out and buy me lots more, but I have to remember to bring said camera so that I can show everyone pictures of fruit stands and such!