Taiwan for the First Time

My parents have been visiting us in Japan every spring the past few years. The ironic thing is that they are not the type to travel just to see the cherry blossoms, and they are baffled by the crowds. Since we just visited the U.S. a few months ago, my parents came to us and we decided on Taiwan as a place to visit together. 

Flying into Taipei

Traveling with three generations is no easy feat. As the middle generation, H and I require the least attention. My mom is another matter - picker than the kids (by a long shot) and not a fan of spending one more second outdoors than necessary. We couldn't be more different. The thing about Taiwan that we hoped would united everyone is the excellent food. 

After some research on good places to eat and the necessary reservations, I realized that eateries are tightly concentrated and don't require reservations unless it's relatively formal. Living in Japan has left me with an instinctual need to make reservations in advance. Tired from work and looking for a casual family place to eat on a Friday night? Forget it unless you've anticipated this moment by making reservations days in advance. Japan is reservations for everyone for everything. Yes it promotes order and predictability, but it really is exhausting having "plan" all the time. 

This was one of the things I really appreciated about eating in Taiwan. There are lots of casual eateries but there are also some nice casual restaurants that set aside a good number of walk-in seats. You will not miss out on good food for lack of a reservations.  

We arrived on a Friday night. By the time we had checked into our hotel, it was peak dinnertime. I look up a couple of restaurants that are part of a nearby shopping complex not expecting much. The restaurant we went was so so good - far exceeding my expectations. Chinese food that is well-seasoned, not too oily, incredibly flavorful, and with lots of options. The place had different variations of rice - black and white mixed, quinoa rice, and red mixed rice. Unfortunately we were too hungry to take photos. Here are a few photos of other delicious things we ate. 

Taiwan is known for its breakfast foods. They are for people who love carbs and savory breakfasts. There are breakfast joints literally everywhere, but the most well-known ones are Fuhang Soy Milk, Sihai Soy Milk, Ding Yuan Soy Milk. We had every intention of trying all of these. Instead, we went to a small scale neighborhood place our first morning in Taipei and ended up going there every morning thereafter. My typical order was cold slightly sweetened soy milk (you can take it hot or savory) with shaobing filled with egg. We also tried the steamed buns (with either vegetables or sweet adzuki bean paste) and a breakfast burrito-thing made with rice instead of tortilla. 

One note about eating out in Taipei - it is incredibly easy, even for big groups. Restaurants tend to be small, but they are so highly concentrated that it was never difficult to find a place that could accomodate a party of 6 during mealtimes. In Tokyo, it would be a big challenge to find a decent place to eat without reservations. This more laid-back dining culture really suited us and our needs. I could go on and on about the food, but we didn't just eat. 

Taiwan is not a big country, but we wanted the trip to be slow-paced, so we made Taipei home base and stayed close with only a couple of day trips out of the city. 

Taipei Zoo/Maokong Gondola

Taipei Zoo has some of the nicest animal enclosures. Despite also being an island with a sizeable population, Taipei feels open and spacious compared to Japan, and this is true of the zoo as well. At Ueno Zoo in central Tokyo, you could easily wait for an hour to catch a glimpse of the pandas. We were lucky to see numerous pandas in action - running, climbing, eating, playing. I've really never seen so many active pandas anywhere. 

We rode the scenic Maokong Gondola from the zoo to a village called Maokong. What is in Maokong? Cats, we heard. There wasn't much there. Maybe we were just tired, but it was a bit underwhelming (lots of tourists, not many traffic lights or sidewalks). 

Dihua old street 

This was one of my favorites. It's an old neighborhood where you can see some colonial style Japanese architecture in the low, red brick fashion - architecture that is now rare even in Japan. We went on a hot day, but the line of shops are all covered, so it wasn't bad at all. 

I bought the most souvenirs here - dried fruits (mangoes, Chinese dates), nuts, pineapple cakes, tea, postcards, and other nicknacks. Some of the shops are repetitive. For instance, there are a lot of dried fruit/traditional Chinese medicine shops. But there are also unique shops selling artisan goods and cafes/restaurants. The culture center itself had some lovely exhibits, not to mention one of the few toilets in the area. 

Raohe Night Market

We could not leave Taipei without going to one of its famed night markets. But which one? We went for one of the most well-known: Raohe. Even though we arrived just an hour after opening, it was already quite crowded and got more so as the night wore on. The food was exceptional. We left the kids at home and were very happy we did so with the crowds, smoke, and lack of places to sit. We also shared almost everything, though the portions weren't big; we just wanted to try as many different stands as possible. 

Beitou

On our last full day, we took another day trip to Beitou, only half an hour away from Taipei by public transport. Beitou is known for its hot springs and Japanese-style public bathhouses, as well as its history. We visited the Beitou Museum, a restored historic bathhouse, which presented Beitou's storied history under and after Japanese rule. 

Beitou had some lovely parks and stunning views. 

Hot and sulfury all along this path.

It seems people used to be able to sit along the banks and dip their feet in the spring water, but sadly no more

The museum, originally built as a hotel in 1921 under Japanese rule

The beautiful inside. After falling into a state of dilapidation, it wasn't fully restored until 2008

Despite it being April, it already got pretty hot midday with the sun. That did not stop our kids from playing at a local park for hours in Beitou. These spacious parks had such nice structures - swings, slides, climbing towers, even a zip line. 

We really enjoyed our time in Taipei. It's a city with lots of nature and space. The people are warm, and the food is excellent. We never had the time to get that last bubble tea we promised, so now we've promised our kids "next time we go." 

New year ramblings

It has been hard to find time to write about things as they happen. This year one of my resolutions has been to write more often, even if I don't write much. I would like to share more thoughts when they are fresh and unfiltered. 

When we first moved to Japan, I wrote a lot about how we were settling in and how I felt about it. It was easier to write about those things then because we had just moved, and so these reflections were not only predicable but expected. Now that we are nearly four years in - negative reflections, uncertainty - these feel more like complaints and character flaws. 

It takes so long to adapt to living somewhere new. I thought the first months or even year would be the honeymoon period. In reality, this took two or three years, and I might even change my mind about that in the future! The homesickness set in last year, and with it came a lot of negative emotions about our life here. Why is there no electronic health record system? Where are women's equal rights and social gains? Why are so many things regulated by culture rather than policy? How can people be so rude on the metro when they are world-renown for being polite everywhere else? The list goes on because my thoughts begin spiraling when I go down this line of thinking. 

At the same time, my memory of all the things we didn't like about the U.S. is not as intense. It's not fading (just a few glances at the news will do the job) but strangely the memory of good things has gained ground. Is it human nature to remember the bad now and the good before? It sometimes feels like a struggle to stay positive in the moment. Maybe I'm just a pessimist. 

For me as an individual, the biggest push factor was the prevalence of guns in the U.S. After having children, I just couldn't normalize living with the risks. No pull factor matched the impact that this one push factor had on me. The tension was always between my career and a safe environment. Japan was the natural choice because at least one of us could function at full capacity here. Not that my other half was not sacrificing anything - he is but at least he can still do what he was trained to do. In fact, the U.S. is probably one of the best places to build your career if you are the ambitious type. On the other hand, leaving the rat race by virtue of being significantly less employable in your profession of choice was almost a relief. 

I got lucky in a way. I stumbled upon a job that offered some reprieve from staying at home full time and an opportunity to engage more with local society. I work for a Japanese company as a non-lawyer. To be honest, it has been one of the most eye-opening experiences and one of the biggest challenges of my life. It takes time to understand the nuances of every society that you were not raised in, but this is especially true of Japan compared to the U.S. I plunged myself into a world in which everything (I am exaggerating a bit here) worked in the opposite way to which I expected. Details in favor of big picture, wordiness over conciseness, heirarchy over efficiency, appearance over substance. It wasn't just American culture vs. Japanese culture but also public sector culture over corporate culture (but Japanese corporate culture at that!). 

As I get older and make more major life decisions, I am left thinking about the parallel possibilities, the what could have beens, sometimes the what should have beens. I know, conventional wisdom mandates us to leave the doubts behind and look forward! Sometimes I am able to, but the sharp divide of starting life in another country places reality and possibility in stark contrast. As I see friends moving through the familiar milestones I had grown up to anticipate, I find myself grasping at some familiar milestone in my own life that I can look to and think, ah at least I have achieved this. Being American, that milestone is usually career-related. And having given up much of that career, I wonder about my own decisions. 

This is not to say that I regret moving to Japan. Any creeping ideas about returning to the U.S. were dispelled in November of last year. Human emotions are complex, and toggling between cultures and societies amplifies those complexities. Some people would say that you come to understand yourself better this way. 

This year, on this blog, I want to share these some of these challenges and thoughts. 

There and Back: Part 2

I fully meant to finish writing about our summer trip, and now six months has flown by. It's 2025 - happy new year! 

One of our main missions during the August trip was to sort out our driver's license issues. I never thought it would be easy - trips to the DMV rarely are - but the problems began even before our prescheduled appointments. Rolling into the parking lot, we see a big crowd of people looking frustrated. Not a good sign. The beleaguered DMV employee tell us that there is no electricity and so all appointments for the day are canceled until further notice. We will be notified by text if and when appointments resume, by noon she assures us. 

This and most locations are by appointment only and all appointments are filled up for the next few days while we are in town. What to do? Nothing except wait. We go home, eat lunch, and wait for the text update. Noon comes and goes. No text, no update. We drive back to the DMV to find that appointments have indeed resumed. Few experiences are more quintessentially American than a trip to the DMV. 

Our kids loved the Children's Museum Houston the best. The museum has several sections for a wide range of ages. One of their favorites was the "kidtropolis" area, complete with a bank, vet, hospital, post office, bicycle store, art factory, among others where kids can engage in different roles and earn money. There are even toy ATMs that allow withdrawal and deposits of "money." Another favorite was the climbing tower, a vertical maze of nets. 

In Japan it would have been "DO NOT wear shoes in the Tower"!

There was a short performance of a musical about mad scientist and AI gone rogue - this was my favorite. The quality of the performance way exceeded my expectations for a children's museum production. I also liked that there were very local touches to the exhibits that paid homage to Mexican culture, which is such a significant part of Texan culture. 

During our three and a half years (almost four!) in Japan, I've become strangely attached to the idea of buying a few things that I can, in fact, buy in Japan. Some things I've found acceptable substitutes for while for others I've found even better counterparts. But for these few - it's just not the same. I've always liked to travel light but to satiate my "need" to bring back these items, we do not travel light on the return. 

On my must bring back list: a tub of Cerave lotion; deodorant; bandages; adult and kid toothpaste; floss;  hypoallergenic, oderless, and highly concentrated laundry detergent; kosher salt; tampons; tomato paste; English books and games. 

On my would be nice to bring back list: peanut butter; dried fruits snacks; pretzels; random TJ snacks; teddy grahams; dried beans (black beans, cannellini beans, kidney beans); candy canes and other holiday-specific goods; spices; Funfetti cake mix. Lots of food-related items basically. 

Of course with all that extra luggage space, we bring a few things from Japan too! On the top of my list are skin care items for my mom (lotion, hydrating face masks, facial sunscreen), eye warmers; snacks; seasoning; dishware; dried noodles; chopsticks. It is funny how it is ingrained in human nature to covet what we don't have. 

Until next time. It"s been real. And big. 

It is time for us to return all too quickly.