Taiwan: my new love

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This blog has been long since updated because I've been sooo lazy to do anything after returning to Australia. Well I'd like to get started on my unexpectedly awesome trip to Taiwan with my good Japanese friend, Mishan. With the connections and all we stayed here for 5 nights at our Taiwanese friend, Andrew's apartment. He was an awesome host to take us around all these places (by car!). Honestly, I didn't expect much from this place, but everything was so fun! I pronounce Taiwan my new love.

Siaoyoukeng. It's a geyser and if you haven't been to one before, these big bad boys smell like a hundred people farting in an enclosed room.

Uphill. In HEELS. Dammit. I had no idea we were gonna hike.

After a good half an hour walking uphill, we found ourselves at this lovely lake in the middle on the mountain.

A good hike deserves a foot bath! A natural and free foot bath just a short drive from the trail.

Dairyland/Farmland? Cows and poop. The grass looked so soft and green that you could roll around in it. This was our last destination in these mountains.

A one hour descent down from the mountains to the markets. These pan-fried steamed buns filled with leek (or cabbage or pork) were one of my favourites!

Stinky tofu. I knew I'd like this. A specialty of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Night markets. A place full of crunchy seasoned veges sold as snacks and a million more other snacks. I love these markets, they're festive and very cultural and heaps intriguing once you get used to pushing your way through the crowd.

To be continued...

KONY 2012

Let's snap back to reality for a sec. Here's a vid about something that should be important to us in 2012. If you haven't already, clickclickclick now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc or visit the website http://kony2012.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/.

When you're 20 in Japan

You have a celebration called 'Seijinshiki' where everyone who has turned 20 for the year come together to a venue to socialise with friends of the same age. My host sister, from 5am, got her hair done, was fitted in her grandma's kimono, and by 7 she was ready for the photo shoot at the studio. 10am left to the venue, and once that's done 2 after-parties. Busybusyday. What I really liked about this celebration was that all girls wear kimonos! Very traditional. And pretttyyyy.

Kagoshima: new years family trip

Kagoshima, located at the most southern part of Kyushu, feels like a lazy city to do some good chilling and catching up with friends and family. We drove down to Kagoshima from Kumamoto for 2 hours to enjoy our new years family trip here. We had this spectacular view of Sakurajima from our hotel window! FYI, we stayed at Castle Park Hotel, which was a very very nice hotel located above the city.



One of the famous shochu (Japanese rice or potato alcohol) of Kagoshima up for free sampling! A nice sweetness to it compared to other shochus.



Mochi-making in the courtyard of our hotel.



Fresh soft mochi with kinako (soybean powder) after the guys in blue punched the crap out of it!



Cute kids running around the fountain :)



I think we got a good shot of us jumping in front of Sakurajima. (Left to right: Misa, me, Mama)



Tunnel to the hotel.



Peace.



Ten Park St - shopping arcade.



Fluffing up to get warm.



Kagoshima at night.

Osechi at Ueki

We had osechi (the new year meal normally eaten for three days) with my Papa's grandma who lives in the countryside called Ueki. This is a photo of my host family with my host grandma with all that delicious osechi cooking! She made most of it, such a genki grandma! You may notice my host brother and dad is missing from the photo because they arrived late after running/walking from our house to hers...which took about 5 hours!




This is possibly the biggest variety of food I've had at once. We had food from fried chicken, sashimi, egg rolls, to marinated lotus roots! The list goes on!



Crab filled with macaroni cheese. So good!



Cute corner of the house. Everything you see (the bucket, owl, fan) is made from catalogues.

We stayed the night and headed out to the hot springs at around 5am in the morning. I know. No, but it was worth it. 5am+countryside+hot springs=umph!

Okay my new year hasn't ended here yet, I will try to keep posting but I'm falling behind lots. I still have to post more about Japan and Taiwan, but I'm in Korea now! Busybusybusy. Until then, keep the awesome year rolling in!

Kumamoto: toshikoshi

Here I spent the new year with the my first host family. The new year tradition in Japan goes like this: eat soba, visit the shrine, pray for a good year, buy a lucky charm, head back home and sleep. All this takes place in the course of 31st Dec -1st Jan.

For dinner, we basically slurped down two bowls of soba. We, after a long day, were lazy and opted for instant dashi as base for the soba. Nice and simple.

We just made it to the entrance of the shrine at 12am, but oh how crowded it was!

Stuck in the crowd trying to get to the end point to throw in any coin with a hole (5 or 50 yen coin), into this wooden box and pray. I swear this process just takes 1 minute. And we were stuck in the crowd for over 40 minutes.

After praying, we headed to this side to buy our lucky charms. Mama chose it but my host grandpa bought me a lucky charm for travelling (as I will be travelling to Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong before uni starts again for me! ).

What I really looked forward to was the pathway to the shrine filled with food stalls buzzing with a festival-ish atmosphere. We had taiyaki (custard/chocolate/anko etc filled pancake-like hot things), okonomiyaki on a stick, toffee strawberry and fairy floss!

In the process of making okonomiyaki on a stick.

Cute! Toffee (strawberry).



The night spent wonderfully with Mama (middle) and Miyu (right). We've become closer than ever before :).

Happy new year!

Kumamoto: New Years preparations

I headed down to Kumamoto, a country-like city south of Fukuoka, to visit my host family after my few days in Osaka, Nara and Kyoto. It felt so good to be home again with the fam, all exchange memories sort of came rushing back and I began reminiscing about how good Japan was.

I spent the new year with my first host family and here's some of the preparations for it.



My host mum changing the paper for these paper doors. Everything is usually replaced with something new for new years. Preparations for the new year is sort of like spring cleaning...of course I tried to avoid as much cleaning as possible! In our home, we have a tradition of always changing into newly bought underwear for the new year, though I'm not sure if all Japanese households do the same.



Decorating the home with a hand made wreath.



You cannot believe how many postcards my host dad wrote and sent to his friends and employees....over 200! Writing postcards to people you know to wish them a happy new year is a definite must-do for all Japanese.

There was like an adrenaline build-up to complete everything before the new year began!