Japan: Ganbate!: Four months in: There are waterfalls in my shoes and I have no idea what I'm eating...I must be on vacation.

The bowls of ice cream, Chifaja

Hisashiburi everyone, and welcome back to my second to last blog about Japan, and definitely the last one while I'm still in Japan. I can't believe I'm saying that, and I can't even think about that right now or else I won't be able to write this, so let's get started.

On Tuesday I finished my last final, Japanese, so after completing a bunch of stuff we had to do in the beginning of the semester, we went out for a celebration at Chifaja again (the tabehoudai meat place). It was a lot of fun, with seriously delicious food again, and this time even more ice cream. My friend and I requested, as our final order (before the 90 minute time limit expired), for three bowls of the three flavors of ice cream each--and please note that what they give are just a few spoon fulls of ice cream--and they looked at us like we were insane. They had us repeat it several times, before asking if we wanted three total, or three between the two of us...and when we insisted, they started reminding us that we have to eat it all or pay the fee. We assured them of our ability to consume mass quantities of food, and as we gulped down the three massive silver bowls they brought out to the two of us (I suppose so they could have less to wash?), the manager and a few waitresses peeked over our booth to see us quickly, painlessly polishing off the bowls. I'm sure we just changed their lives forever. Good times.

Wednesday I watched a movie and ordered pizza with my friend from Dominos, and it came out okay, but like I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before, it is both expensive and kind of bland--the cheese isn't super flavorful, and neither are the other ingredients. We got one with bacon (which comes in huge square slices instead of the little bits like ours are), and a pepperoni one, one of which had a cheese crust instead of mozzarella sauce. Kind of odd but not bad. Thursday I hung out with my friends and RAs at the dorm, and went out for drinks at night. I stayed up wayyy too late (until 4:30) when I had to meet my friend the next day at 7:40 am to leave for Taiwan, but it was worth it.

My tasty meal on the way there

So on Friday we headed for Kansai airport at 7:45, taking the bus and then the train and then the subway and one last train to it...yeah, it's pretty far. Immigration and security has, in the times I've done it since I've been here, always been very short and easy, without too much hassle--it's really efficient and more relaxed (yeah, I know, they haven't been attacked before). I took EVA Airways and it was actually really great. I got a meal even though the flight is less than three hours long, and it was good food. On the way there I got pasta salad, BBQ chicken and rice, a delicious warm roll with butter, and an apple croissant dessert thing. They offered all the regular juices and soda, plus coffee and tea. They had blankets and pillows available, and the flight attendants spoke Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese and English so they were very accommodating. I had a stupid kid behind me, unfortunately, who kept kicking my seat and shouting though, so I didn't get the sleep I wanted to on my way to Taiwan, but I did have a really nice Taiwanese business man next to me, so that was cool.

With our ice cream and delicious drinks

When I arrived, there was a long, hot wait in immigration, where I befriended a couple of Japanese guys behind me and had a nice conversation in Japanese (proudame). And then the waiting game began--her flight arrived three hours after my flight did, and I waited at immigration for her because I figured she'd have to get funneled through it, but I didn't know that there were two terminals, and I couldn't connect to the wifi and my phone was dying. So after getting hit on by a creepy Taiwanese worker who spoke English ("I heard there is a magical boulevard in Florida where there are clubs and girls wearing bikinis. I hope to go and see you there in your bikini." -face palm-), I abandoned and was eventually able to find her.

Longshan Temple

We, confused as the dickens and now past the time we were supposed to be at our hostel by, took a bus--possibly one of the scariest rides of my life, because he drove SO FAST on every curve and up to places and just...so terrifying--and then these young people on the bus who spoke English helped us get a taxi at one of the stops to our hostel. The taxi was very cheap, and really nice, because our hostel didn't have a sign out front so he called on his phone and had us wait in the car until the owners (who had thankfully waited) came out to greet us. By this point it was already pretty late, so we grabbed food at the nearby 7-Eleven and called it a night. The hostel was pretty cute, and clean (which is really all I care about), plus it was convenient and cheap--so if anyone wants to go to Taipei, it's Banana Hostel.

The next night Saturday it was drizzling all day, so we went to the nearby major areas, like the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (pretty), the Taiwan National Museum (kinda boring), Longshan Temple, and a few other famous temples while just exploring and walking around Taipei. The metro system is amazingly clean and way more simple than the Japanese system, plus it's dirt cheap (like most things I found in Taiwan).

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall Entrance

We met up with a Taiwanese girl who had studied abroad at my university when Mari was as well, and she took us around one of the bigger night markets in Taipei--it was, by far, my favorite thing we did. The food was cheap, delicious, and so interesting. I had a pastry-like thing filled with pork and egg and cheese, a Taiwanese sausage thing, amazing fresh cranberry juice...so many things. They eat this stuff, popularly known as stinky tofu, and it legitimately smells like a dog just took a nice, warm poo on your shoe. They boil it and oh my dear Jesus it smells horrible--apparently it tastes delicious but I can't even imagine getting past the smell long enough to eat it. After this we went to a place that serves this famous ice cream thing--it looks like shaved ice, but it's just called "ice", and it's actually like a frozen milk or ice cream block, topped with fresh fruit and condensed milk, and it was incredible. Seriously one of the best things I've had in a long time. I wanna start one in the US. Anywho... Then our friend showed us how to do the Daoist temple style, which is much different than the Buddhist one. We lit 10 incense sticks each and then prayed to each various God of/Spirit of person all around the temple, counter-clockwise, and finally you stop at the main one of the shrine, where you can ask for advice. You must be very specific, give information about yourself, and then you throw down these little block things (they look like wooden fruit) that, depending on how they land, tell you yes, no, or try again essentially. After getting a yes, you go pick up a stick, then you ask if it's the right stick, and once you get a yes you go get the slip of paper that corresponds to the stick. My fortune was pretty spot on, actually, and I absolutely love things like this so I thought this whole process was really cool. After that, we looked around at all the shops and stuff, and then headed back to our hostel for the night.

Famous little...thingies, tastes like mochi kind of.

Sunday we woke up early to head to Jiufen, which is a place that the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away is based on. It was about an hour and a half away by train and bus, and despite the typhoon-like rain, it was actually beautiful still. There were tons of shops and foods and souvenirs, and I got some cool things I'm excited about. It was super foggy though, so some of the places that you normally see the mountains and sea in the background in you couldn't see more than five feet in front of your face, unfortunately.

My Taiwanese friends we were with made me eat so many different samples of foods, and while I flat out disliked some of them, there were some that were all right, and even one or two that were okay. Pictures to be posted, but I'm not entirely sure of what I ate most of the time, so be warned. We, now completely soaked through to the bone, headed to Taipei 101 and wanted to see the view from the top, but visibility was at zero percent so we didn't go. We ate their version of karage, and then after shopping for a while longer, we headed to a famous dumpling restaurant in the city, actually just a few blocks up from our hostel, and the line was nuts. Luckily we had a reservation and one of the Taiwanese girls' knew a guy who worked there, and we got in within 30 minutes. The dumplings were crazy good, and we got a variety of flavors, like pork, beef and crab, plus we ordered shrimp fried rice and a pork cutlet thing, and then a taro bunch for dessert. It was insanely delicious, and I'd seriously recommend this place, it's totally worth the wait. And then her friend paid for our entire dinner, which was amazingly sweet, and always makes every meal taste even better.

Night two of the "ice" thing. SO GOOD.

After this, went out to eat more dessert at a different night market. We hung out, saw some more Japanese people who were friendly and fun, went shopping around the grocery store, and just enjoyed the fact that it had finally stopped raining. We all had to get up early the next morning, so our friend booked a taxi for us at 4:45 am (Mari's flight left at 7am), and before we knew it were flying home. I had Burger King in the airport at Taiwan, and holy crap, it was the best whopper I've had in years--huge, well-cooked, good toppings...it's a shame you have to leave America to get a real whopper, but whatever. My flight back was also really nice, actually one of the huge airplanes, and it had a bunch of new movies and music, pretty decent food--pork fried noodle things, some weird pork mushroom thingy, a roll with butter again (they are SO good), and a cup of strawberry yogurt. The staff was even nicer on this ride, and it was an enjoyable flight I managed to sleep through most of (including take off).

Sad at Taipei 101

Taiwan, overall, was really pretty even in the rain. The people were friendly, clean, and polite. The young guys were fairly good looking. The tourists, especially the Chinese ones, were the only unpleasant people I met the entire trip, actually, and since you can't control your tourists, that means Taiwan was kind of awesome as a whole. I'm sad because there's a lot of "normally if"'s in my trip ("normally if it wasn't raining we could do..." "normally if these clouds weren't here..."), but that just means I definitely want to go back to Taiwan and really see it, and stay for longer to see more of it as well. It was nice just from what I saw, so I can't imagine how much better it is when the weather is nice.

This week I've been packing and trying to spend as much time with all the amazing people I've met since I've been here. I'm going to be so heartbroken leaving them even though I'm excited to come home, and all the goodbyes I've already had to say have been so hard. I leave this beautiful, incredible country in just one day, and I am so, so sad. So I'm going to spend as little time on here as possible and just enjoy tomorrow. I leave at 4:40am to walk to the station, and then take two trains down to Itami Airport, and it is going to suck with all my luggage, but you gotta do whatcha gotta do.

Okay. So on that note, I'll see you guys next week for my final recap of Japan. Until then, mata ne.