Rich and Strange Aeons

Guess what I've seen two of in Taipei: Trader Joe's shopping bags. My host brought some kitchen stuff in one, and tonight a woman on the escalator had one (bright pink logo), a bag with end pockets. Is there a TJ in Taiwan, or anywhere outside of the USA? No. Are people bringing them back from the US? Yes, at least somewhat: my host says her friend brought that one back for her. Is someone making knockoff bags locally? Wouldn't surprise me... An 'askai' web page said TJ is 'hip' in Taiwan, with imported products and people asked to bring stuff; it's obviously unreliable but I suppose something might have fed into that.

Makes me wonder if I could sell my bag for anything. It's very very old, possibly back to the 90s, with no structure -- it's just a sack, great for stuffing in my backpack. Don't particularly want to sell it, and I doubt an ugly old bag has much value, but it'd be amusing.

A few days ago I got looking into traffic mortality statistics. Wikipedia, World Population Review, World Life Expectancy, Our World in Data. The weird thing is that some countries have wildly different numbers across these sites: Vietnam is 30.6 deaths/100,000 people, 17.7, 29.8, 23.4. Granted the years are different -- 2019, 2021, 2020??, 2023, but still a big swing... though I guess 2021 being really low could actually make sense (covid lockdowns?). OTOH, the 2020 is high.

(Our World lets you examine earlier years, but doing so still doesn't match the other sources.)

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Guess I haven't had a Major Outing since the museum visit of the 11th. Keep dithering and getting out late, or having an online social event in the morning, or (yesterday) actually waking up after noon because I guess my body needed it. I've been out, but it's been small things like reading in the nice park, or going out for sushi... actually, I guess the 16th did add up to an Outing; I went to the Sushiro east of me, then walked north through a wet market, then a not-yet-open night market, to the river. ( Read more... )

I looked at more bicycles today, and saw some with Japan's over-wheel center kickstands. At first I thought they had O-locks too, but I didn't see any more, and now I wonder if I mistook rim/caliper brakes for an O-lock. I saw two bikes that were locked to something, but most are freestanding; maybe half have a cable lock through a wheel, so someone can't trivially ride off with it; the rest have no visible lock, maybe just counting on low crime and looking like rusty pieces of shit.

I went to a pho stall and pointed at a photo that looked nice. It turned out to have "duck blood tofu", blood coagulated into big cubes with a consistency like that of tofu. I ate one cube and part of the other. It was not deeply repulsive; if I hadn't known it was blood I might have eaten it without blinking. Knowing... I decided to stop and see if my stomach would revolt from new food or a surplus of iron.

I forget if I've talked about it in the travel series, but a distinctive feature of Japanese housing is balconies. I think basically every unit above ground level has one, even if it's shallow, a space (1) to hang your laundry outside and (2) so someone can install and maintain your heat pump compressor without risk of death or needing special safety equipment.

I haven't been looking up much, distracted by traffic and shops, or blocked by covered walkways, but today I did look up (starting from a park.) Album. And no, balconies are not ubiquitous here, and compressors are often just extruded from walls, with no obvious access.

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Went to the Taiwan National Museum. I failed my research, I thought it was going to be a big art museum. It's a natural history and anthropology museum. Big hall on Taiwanese butterflies and moths, one on fossils especially rhinos. I went to skim-mode after that: 2nd floor has an indigenous peoples hall, and more fossils + geology. 3rd floor is "Discovering Taiwan", the history of local natural history studies, with a lot of Japanese role there. Basement is children's section, which might have stuff worth checking out; also has the normal toilets, vs. the squat toilets above.

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I decided it was time to leave my walkable radius. Took train to Taipei Main, as that seemed quick and promising. Main is rather large and confusing but I eventually made it to the surface. Walking south a bit took me to 228 Peace Park; the '228' refers to something in Taiwanese history that I should look up. Park includes the National Museum, which is said to be really good and is cheap (NT$ 30, basically US$1) but I need to get up earlier for it. Park was nice. Album! ( Read more... )

I made the previous, grumbling, entry this morning. I could have mentioned that despite various noises, I got passable sleep 2 nights in a row, but didn't think of it.

This afternoon I got out, and had a pleasant time, perhaps because I mostly avoided traffic. ( Read more... )

In the US, small apartments are divided between '1BR' (one bedroom, separated from anything else especially the kitchen) and 'studios' (one big room, apart from the bathroom; fridge noise and cooking grease can waft to your bed.) Japan has finer grain: '1R' (studio), '1K' (door between bedroom and kitchen; kitchen is probably a kitchenette in the entranceway; you take food to your bedroom or eat standing), '1DK' (the kitchen area is big enough for a dining table), '1LDK' (I suspect blurry boundaries, but notionally an even bigger common area -- room for a couch? -- and maybe a counter walling off the kitchen.) I had the impulse to classify my housing. No promises of this being interesting to anyone but me.

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Album. Long day. Uphill outh of me to Yamate, train up to Kannai, walking south through a park and then Chinatown. ( Read more... )

I walked up and down through much of Chinatown, had a meat bun, various siu mai, a fried chicken cutlet or "dekatsu". None of the food blew me away, honestly. Oh right, sat down at a place with outdoor seating, ordered various dumplings; the soup dumplings were good.

Guess I'm doing these out of order... Album

Took the train to Katase-Enoshima, to test my post-Odawara hypothesis of "see snow on Fuji if you get out early enough." Success!

(Yeah, so this happened before my Fuji-Ofuna entry, oops.)

After that I decided to walk to Enoshima island for the second time and see if I'd missed stuff. (Yes.) ( Read more... )

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