台北,好久不見 - Taipei, long time no see

Got up on Saturday and despite having missed a flight already, we hurriedly finished packing, grabbed some food, and barely caught the train to Narita. I'm not sure why this always happens, but I don't think we've had a trip where we didn't manage to break a sweat before stepping onto the plane. The flight was pretty good as far as flights go. We watched Knight and Day as the in-flight movie. The movie was entertaining enough although the ending was pretty corny. We both felt like it was a piece of cake for Tom Cruise to act so crazy. Only during the parts when he has to be somewhat "normal" does it seem forced.

We landed at Taoyan International Airport and made it into Taipei in time for a huge family dinner. Actually, we got there way before everyone else did and waited for the party to show up. We had amazingly bought gifts for everyone there at Narita, and I had actually had to carry four duty-free bags onto the plane. What did we eat for dinner? Why, Japanese of course. It actually was pretty different from any of the stuff we've been eating in Tokyo. I guess everyone changes foreign cuisine to meet their tastes.

Dinner was a solid seven or eight courses long and took forever. Apparently there was another party with thirty people or so, and so there was only one server for our table and she was obviously a new hire. Our table was getting pretty fed up with the service and the poor girl had to deal with all this pressure. Dinner probably ended up being something like three hours long and we made a whole lot of amicable conversation including the ironic topic of Japanese beers. Everyone seems to think Japanese beers are delicious and Ba insists that Kirin is the best.

We eventually stopped eating and just called it a night. I'm not at all sure why we were so tired, but both V and I just passed out in bed when we got back and woke up around 6 AM with all of our clothes on and no blanket. We quickly washed up and I went back to sleep, but apparently V wasn't able to. So while I was up and alive at 10, V was probably just entering deep sleep.

True to my word, I ate a banana, a papaya and some pears for lunch. Bwahaha. It was great. V ate air and we set out for some shopping. Our first stop was the brand new department store, Uni-President Hankyu. It opened literally just four days ago. Hankyu is also home to the first and only Uniqlo in Taiwan. Oh man, there were sooo many people there. The Uniqlo line basically wraps around the front of the department store since there are just too many people for that store. The entire department store in general was totally packed, and there were personnel guiding people into line for every single escalator. The store itself wasn't really that special, but Uniqlo was obviously an enormous draw.

We didn't buy anything at Hankyu other than Mister Donut. Mister Donut in Japan has been a little disappointing without the flavor selection available in Taiwan. We got a chocolate and matcha flavored one but have only ever seen the regular one in Tokyo; which sucks, because I really like the chocolate one.

It became abundantly clear that the theme of our trip was going to be Japan as we saw a ton of Japanese chains. There was a Saizeriya, a Momi & Toys, and even a ramen shop. I glanced at the people waiting for ramen and sneered at them, haha. I've eaten ramen like three times in the past week!

An Eslite store is easily accessible through an underground walkway, and Eslite tends to carry brands that I'm more interested in. Sure enough, we were walking around and came across Superdry. I've avoided Superdry for the most part because it's way more expensive in both Taipei and Tokyo than it is in Chicago. However, I came across this sweet backpack, and I had been shopping around for a backpack lately. The sales guy offered to give us 10% off and after mulling over it for a while and some convincing from V, I decided to pull the trigger.

This ended up being an awesome idea since we did some online research later at a free internet terminal, and although it was cheaper on various websites, it was sold out everywhere! Extremely pleased.

Eslite was running a promotion where if you spend a certain amount you get a gift certificate and after the backpack and a card, we were a mere 338 NT short (~$10). So of course, we went to buy some bread. Now we have a 500 NT gift certificate which we can bring back to shop again in Eslite at another date. We got suckered into that one like proper savvy consumers.

We also got ten lottery draws that we split between opportunities to win some dinner or a vacation. I love lotteries!

The rest of Eslite was made up of the bookstore and a whole bunch of other little stores. There were a ton of interesting home goods stores that sucked up all of our time. The top floor was the coolest children's floor I've seen. They had places for children to build lego type things, a painting corner, and another place to build various crafts.

Here's a little girl building something. I swear I'm not a creep. We made our way to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi where V fell in love with a sweater but didn't buy it. There was this awesome performer that I'd seen pictures of before doing his act in the courtyard. He swings around on this ring, and it seems so simple yet so cool. Well, I thought it was pretty cool anyway.

After Mitsukoshi, we took a cab to Sogo where V fell in love with a coat and didn't buy it either. Sogo always has super sales on their top floor and what was the super sale today? A Japan special of course. We went to check it out and it turned out to be mostly food. We bought some mini taiyaki anyway. On our way out, we saw this ad:

Yeah ok Japan. We get it. I'm flying back tomorrow! Geez. Dinner with the rest of the family was Shanghai food. Back in the day I didn't know exactly what I was eating, but now I understand very clearly that I love Shanghai food. We ate it all before I could really take any pictures. In fact, V and I had planned to hit up a night market to eat some crap, but we kind of ate a lot of dinner.

Yeah, but we went anyway. Behind the grocery store we always go to is the winding path that makes up the local night market. I felt the need to get some bubble tea, and we found some sweet potato puff balls for V. V also found a place to replenish her lime green socks stock and got some headbands, too.

I know Tokyo wants us back, but Taipei treated us pretty damn well today. I get to eat more fruit for lunch tomorrow and then it's back to Japan with a brand new backpack.