Japan: artem’s oriental adventure

Now that you’ve heard my first impressions, time to get to the meat of the trip. Stories from around Taipei. And so it begins..

We went to Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall on our first full day here - a memorial to the man who fathered Taiwan, so they say. In front of this hall is the memorial square: basically a large paved area with a few buildings symmetrically placed around it, little parks, and a fancy huge gate. The very cool part, is that standing in the middle of this square and clapping produces a weird squeaking sound, because of the way the sound reflects off the buildings. We tried to video-record this phenomenon, but failed miserably: the camera didnt pick up the squeaky sound. As a result i have a video with Ivan and I clapping and stomping like retards in the middle of the CKS square. Fun stuff. After that we watched the changing of the guards, which is a lengthy process with a very traditional and formal approach. I think the videos will speak for themselves:

On another day we visited the Taipei 101 tower: the tallest building in the world they say. The CN Tower still beats it in height, but it doesnt have enough floors to be considered a ‘building’. 101 is a very beautiful structure. Too bad it was cloudy on the day we went up. At the base of it, there is a very high-class shopping mall, with italian-brand names left-and-right. On the top floor there was a coral statuette display & sales centre. I took some nice pictures, and a brief video:

After 101 we ended up in a shisha bar experiencing some south-western asian culture. Somehow walked into a friend’s of a friend’s birthday in a VIP room. Free food and drink!The Saturday was the biggest highlight so far. Originally we planned to play with BB-guns, but that game was canceled, the evening turned out great nonetheless. In the morning we went to a museum to see ‘the cabbage’. Some say it is Taiwan’s most popular exhibit - a cabbage crafted out of jade. I didn’t see the hype. The 17 self-contained ivory spheres were something else though.. Very cool. The museum is surrounded by beautiful landscape. Take a gander:

After the museum we headed to the Chiang Kai Shek square again, to see a free show. It was awesome. The band: ‘Eastern Legends‘, the style: chinese traditional + rock + electronica? Very interesting. Their opening was with 1000 people playing the urhu (chinese violin-like instrument) in front of the stage. Many of these were children, and the sound was very powerful. The rest of the show, the 15-or-so member band gave it their all with occasional pyrotechnics and prancing around onstage. I stuck around after, bought a cd and got it signed. Here are some clips.

After this show (yes Saturday is far from over) we went to a dance club - MoS. A friend of Joe’s was able to get us free tickets as he worked with some promotional company, so there was another upside. Once in there we saw alot of people just nodding their head to the music, standing on the dancefloor. Joe and i put our combined energy together and just did the most ridiculous dances including the chainsaw and the workout routine. I think it worked well - people became more energetic afterwards. I met and danced with some pretty girls that night, and even hung out with one afterwards, all adding to my awesome Taiwan experience.

Currently i use facebook to dump my pictures to. I will make a photogallery for this site soon, but until then you can view the Taiwan photos here:

http://uwaterloo.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2081854&l=5108a&id=122602552

And thats only the first half of the trip!!

Taiwan is awesome.