#nt of akihabara???

[r26yz]

how to use a phone

[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 4)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

Day 5

Day 5 ended up as a free day when we were planning this trip. Turns out we do have things to do. Since we didn’t manage to play with the guns last night, we decided to squeeze that in this morning before we left for Taichung.

But before that, my friend wanted to walk along the river that’s near Ximending, so off we went!

The river is alongside a pedestrian, cycling, and motorbike road. No cars allowed. Pretty cool.

Anyway there’s not much to the river, so we decided to walk back. We still haven’t eaten our breakfast yet, so we went in search of food.

We came across some graffiti while looking for food.

No idea what’s Grand Fleks Oner, but SprayStation 5. Heh.

There some some concert that’s waiting to happen. Apparently by Pets Tseng. Never heard of her.

We finally came across a 7-11, and I bought two pieces of bread. 

I keep forgetting to take pictures of my food before eating it. Ah well. Anyway, this one is really nice. I think it’s some honey cake.

A simple ham and cheese croissant. It’s quite nice.

Anyway, to the arcade! It’s finally time to shoot the gun.

That’s me. My fat stomach is kind of visible 😭

We could choose the type of gun we wanted. It’s all in Chinese so I don’t really know what they are, but there’s rifles and pistols(?). I chose the rifle and it came with 15 pellets. The types of guns come with 10 to 20 pellets, depending on what you chose. I didn’t really know how to hold the rifle properly at first, so the person in charge had to teach me. 

I got a perfect score of 150. It is pretty easy to shoot, so I got bored halfway in. They allowed us to bring the target sheet home, so I did.

11am now. We planned to check out of the hotel, then visit MagFreak nearby. It’s a store similar to Animate, but in a much smaller scale.

But plans don’t always go according to plan. My friend took 30 minutes to pack up all the stuff lying around the hotel 🙄 , so we were at MagFreak at 11:40am. I was a little hesitant to even go to MagFreak because the train tickets were for 12:31pm and there was still quite a walk away. We told ourselves to do a quick walkthrough and leave by 12pm.

Artbooks are so pretty. Everything’s so pretty. Ahh why doesn’t Singapore have an Akihabara clone. What a boring country.

Anyway, we kept on schedule and left the store at 12pm, but it wasn’t really enough. We had to walk fast. And really fast. We made it to the station around 12:25pm, and we were all sweating and feeling really hot. Terrible.

We reached Taichung at 1:18pm, but that was just the High Speed Rail (HSR) station. We still had to go to Taichung Train Station.

One thing that really stuck out to me was the sheer number of South East Asian people around Taichung Station. I’ve censored the faces, but in the image above, more than half of the people visible are South East Asian. Why? Are they on holiday, or is there some enclave nearby? What’s happening?

Anyway, we wanted to have lunch at a certain teahouse my friend pointed out (Wu Wei Tsao Tang Teahouse), so we went to the bus terminal to try to find a bus there. At the same time, we decided to look for the place to get the bus to Puli, our next destination. But alas, the bus terminal didn’t have either of the buses. We had to go out to a random road to catch a bus.

It was a 30 minute bus ride, but we finally reached the teahouse. It’s now 4:30pm. Another late lunch.

We decided to sit in a place with tatami mats. 

Anyway, we ordered tea, I ordered Hakka Smoked Duck, and my friends shared a bowl of steamboat. 

The shop people just carried the tea set to our table and left us to our devices. We didn’t really know how to brew the tea and use the cups, and they just assumed we knew how to. Ah well.

The duck is really bad. It’s hard, it’s chewy, and the skin doesn’t come off easily. I don’t eat the skin unless it’s really delicious (that usually only ever happens for fried foods). Well, at least there’s quite a bit of side dishes, bamboo soup, and tea jelly, so it’s not too bad.

You could bring up a chess board and play it. It seems the teahouse is a place you just sit and spend your whole afternoon in. It’s calm, quiet, and peaceful. Too bad we don’t really have much time to just chill.

Anyway, the method of brewing tea seems to be putting the leaves into the brown teapot, then pouring hot water in to brew. Then, you pour it into the bigger pot with the strainer once the brewing is done. This is done to prevent the leaves from brewing too long. When you want to drink, pour the tea into the tall cups, cover it with the short cups, then overturn it. Lift up the tall cups to release the tea into the short cups, and smell the tall cups to appreciate the fragrance of the tea. Drink from the short cups.

But we didn’t do this, because we didn’t know how. We weren’t too far off though. The only thing we did wrong was that we poured the tea from the tall cups into the short cups, rather than doing the covering and overturning thing. Good enough, I guess.

The tea is really good. I guess that’s expected. There isn’t really supposed to be any stray tea leaves in your cup. There’s one in the photo above because I skipped the straining step and just poured the tea into my cup directly 😅

It’s 6:30pm now, and the skies are already dark. Time to make our way to Puli. To do that, we had to take something called the Nantou bus. Apparently it’s a little south of Taichung Park. We managed to get the 7:15pm bus. But while waiting for it, there was a figurine shop two shops down. So we decided to explore it. 

Figurines for NT$390 (SGD$17.27)? That’s actually pretty cheap, I think. But how would I bring it back? I already had quite a lot of stuff. Not to mention, how would I bring it back without damaging the box?

An hour later, we were in Puli. Our next lodging is called J House. The owner apparently messaged us on the Agoda app, and offered to pick us up from the station and drive us to the lodgings. Awesome. 

The owner dropped us off and got someone else to take over. He led us to our rooms, and then told us there was another room and we could choose. The first room had a cigarette smoke smell, and we picked the second one. Then he brought us to the roof, because that’s where the washing machines are. And the roof had bunnies!

Entrance to J House. Not much to look at.

There were also meal coupons for our breakfast. We each got a NT$50 coupon, and they were usable at three different stalls in Puli. We ended up with seven coupons though, yay!

It’s a pretty big room and it’s very cozy. The beds are also the most comfortable in this trip. It’s not all good though. The WiFi is pretty bad because we were almost at the end of the corridor, and the router was at the start of the corridor. I think they really need to mount it in the middle somewhere. They also gave disposable towels instead of proper towels, which aren’t very absorbent. I guess it’s guaranteed to be clean since it’s always new, so that’s a plus.

They have giant hangers. Wallet for scale.

It’s 9:15pm, and we still haven’t had our dinner. Another day, another messed up meal timing 😅

We walked for about five minutes, but the whole place was dimly lit and most of the stores were all closed. This is similar to Hualien, being another rural area. The person who picked us up did point out a store along the way that was open late at night (it opens from 4pm to 11am), so we decided to go there. The store is called 上禾味永和豆漿大王 (Yonghe Soybean Milk King).

My dinner. Pretty oily, the taste is okay. The thing in the middle is like a Subway sandwich, except that it’s wrapped with an egg instead of bread. The drink is interesting though. I think it’s a peanut drink. It tastes very similar to the peanut soup dessert you can get at hawker centres here (image below).

I also ordered a black sesame ball. But it turned out to be a bun. They told me they had to steam some new ones, and I said I could wait (I was going to eat there anyway). When the bun finally came, I kind of regretted ordering it. I was already quite full. I bought the bun back and ate it the next morning. Come to think of it, I never tried their soybean drink. 

After dinner, we decided to wander around. We came across another supermarket. They were selling Yakult at a really cheap price (10 bottles for NT$80 (SGD$3.54)), so we got one.

Hello, your childhood called 📞

End of day 5.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei).  Part 3 here (Taipei).  Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 2)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

Day 3

Morning, we had a train to catch to Taipei at 10:26am. We woke up at 8am and had breakfast at the lodging again. This time, they had a burger for us.

Also fruits and pudding. The pudding is really nice, I think it’s a piece of dragon fruit inside.

The view from outside Hualien station. 

We bought and paid for most of our train tickets and lodgings before the trip, so we had to go to the counter to get our tickets. The person at the counter said we didn’t pay for our tickets yet, which was very distressing. But apparently it’s just because the passport number entered into their system didn’t match the actual one because of website limitations or something.

We reached Taipei around 12:50pm. Our lodging this time is a hotel, right in the heart of Ximending. Ximending is known as the Akihabara of Taiwan, with video games, anime, maid cafes, butler cafes, arcades, and night life all packed into one district. It honestly felt better than the time I went to Akihabara, which I did say was rather underwhelming and overrated. Maybe it’s because the “otakuness” of Akihabara isn’t that obvious and in your face? I have no idea.

Anyway, we spent about three hours exploring the Taipei City Mall first. It’s an underground walkway right beside Taipei Main Station, and a sizeably large portion of it contains nothing but video games, figurine shops, and gachapon machine shops. 

Red, blue, and green are prevalent colors in this mall. Well, not so much green.

I have to say the gachapon machines in Taiwan are pretty badly overpriced. They didn’t even take off the Japanese Yen prices on the machines, so you could see the difference in prices. Something that was originally ¥300 (SGD$3.92) could be NT$200 (SGD$9.09). That’s just ridiculous. Some gachapon machines could go as high as NT$300 (SGD$13.29). I’m sorry but what the heck?

I bought four items here. I recently got a PlayStation 4 from a lucky draw, so I’m on a lookout for some games. Most of the games on sale here aren’t cheaper than on the PlayStation store, and I did manage to find Horizon Zero Dawn for NT$450 (SGD$19.90).

I also bought two items from the gachapon machines for NT$60 each. Here they are:

I wanted Alisaie because she’s bae, but I guess Aymeric is good too. He would be my second choice. The other possible ones are Nanamo, Kan-E Senna,  Merlwyb, and the Manderville guy. I’m quite disappointed with the quality of the keychain actually. It’s not something you’d expect out of Square Enix. It looks like a cheap knockoff since the printing is so faded and blur.

The last item I bought was a Rem figurine.

I got pretty unlucky for this one. It was those boxes where you wouldn’t know which design you would get. I think this is the worst design available. Standing on my table now, she’s looking down and her body is tilted downwards, so you can’t see her very clearly. 

I also paid too much for her. I paid NT$280, and I saw some other shops selling her for less than NT$200. Ah well.

Anyway, we spent too much time exploring and it’s now past 3pm and we haven’t had our lunch. I’ve always wanted to try a maid cafe, and since there’s maid cafes in Taiwan... why not?

I didn’t actually know where the maid cafes were, but we saw a maid walking about (to the toilet, I guess), so we followed her when she was on her way back.

We went to this maid cafe. There’s not many photos of it since they had a no photo rule, but I think it mostly applies to the maids.

The cafe has a concept of being in a train, which explains the hand grips hanging from the roof. There’s quite a few figurines standing around too.

It seems that each meal comes with soup.

I ordered omelette rice, which is obviously what you should order at a maid cafe 😆. The maid asked what I drawing I wanted on my omelette, and I asked her to decide 😅. We decided on a cat. The maid seems to make it a point to have some conversation with each customer, which isn’t really that good for me because my Mandarin isn’t that good. So, it was a little bit of an awkward and difficult situation. Not really the best environment to really enjoy a maid cafe, but I guess it would be better than in Japan. There wasn’t really anything outstanding though. You might have heard about weird chants or actions you would need to do when you got your food in maid cafes, but there was none of that here.

Anyway, there was shelf containing manga and books for people to write and draw on. Here’s some of them.

We added some stuff to the book. I drew the crab.

Some of the people writing on the books are repeat customers, constantly coming back to write on the books.

Anyway, done with lunch, and off to Ximending to find our hotel.

On the way there, we saw a rainbow. It was the brightest and boldest rainbow I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s awesome.

It’s not the faint crap you always see in Singapore. This is the real deal.

We also stopped to buy some matcha drinks. I had a matcha drink with ice cream. It’s not bad, but there was no way to eat the ice cream. I had to go back to the hotel to find a spoon.

Anyway, welcome to Ximending!

Our hotel is called ECFA Hotel Wan Nian, which is in the Wan Nian building.

Donate some blood for your waifu!

What I love about these places is they don’t shy away from such otaku and cutesy advertisements. These things would never be seen in Singapore. Singapore has to be bland and proper and boring. 

One of my friends wanted to visit the bookstore nearby, so off we went. I wasn’t very interested since it was mostly Chinese books, so I didn’t do much other than play with my phone. There was a jigsaw section and I found it interesting that they had jigsaw that wasn’t flat.

After the bookstore, we wandered around Ximending.

Then, we headed off to Animate! I’ve never been to an Animate.

There was a Mystic Messenger shelf OMG OMG.

I made away with two of the cushions. Ray and 707. Each one cost NT$500.

They even came with some bookmarks. Oh yes oh yes! I think they’re given for every NT$300 you spend.

Animate is really otaku heaven. There’s no end of the manga and merchandise you can get. Badges, figurines, files, posters, wall scrolls, keychains... almost anything you could ever want.

The King’s Avatar. Highly recommended. 

The BL section. They really don’t hide it. Some of the cover images are pretty NSFW. 

We spent a little longer than we wanted here because I decided to buy some merchandise back for some of my family. I bought two Boku no Hero Academia badges and one Haikyuu badge. It was a terrible NT$600 in total. One of the badges cost NT$400 (SGD$17.72). What the heck is the pin made of gold?

It’s about 10pm now, and we haven’t had dinner yet. Our meal times are so skewed 😅

We decided to eat at Saizeriya. We entered around 10:15pm, and they closed at 11pm. Good enough. We ordered three pizzas to share. 

Phew, what a long day. Back to the hotel to sleep.

Here are the places we visited.

The bookstore isn’t marked, and is just beside the hotel. 

End of day 3.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).