Snow

It snowed a few weeks ago in the UK and this caused mayhem in most of the country.

On the heaviest day of snowfall in London I had the day off so I made a short film showcasing my back garden.

The snowfall obviously didn't compare to Iwate but it did give me a feeling of nostalgia.

Music also composed for film.

Taiwan Delights - Part 2

August 2011 - Taiwan


So, last week I talked about my time in Taipei and my obsession with a particular CD store. This week I'll go further into my trip and talk about my time in the south of Taiwan.

After a few more days in Taipei, we took the THSR (Taiwan's version of the bullet train) down to Tainan - Taiwan's second city. 

It didn't take long at all to arrive at our destination but it did take a while to get into our hostel.

Upon finding the hostel it didn't seem like anyone was home. There was however, a note on the door with the owner's name (Bryant) and two telephone numbers on it.

Now here's where it gets tricky, we had a hard time trying to contact Bryant for a long while because we couldn't read one of the numbers on the note. I don't have a photo of it unfortunately but I'm going to draw it using paintbrush so that you can see.

Any ideas? We still don't know what it is! It kind of looks like an alternate reality 9 but there were some normal shaped nines already on the note.

Luckily one of the phone numbers didn't have this wacky number so we were able to get in touch with him eventually and he sent his father whizzing down the road on a tiny scooter to open the door for us.

The hostel used to be their family home and was incredibly narrow but had a really nice atmosphere to it. 

Inside we met an Italian guy who looked like Sideshow Bob, a boisterous Japanese girl, and a Korean guy who could have been easily mistaken for a puppy and it took nearly over a week for us to discover that he couldn't really understand English (his use of "ums and ahs" were first class). We only spent one night in Tainan, the next day we went through Kaoshiung down to the bottom tip of Taiwan to the surfer capital of Kenting.

Kenting is a bit of a tourist paradise and with that, comes a lot of full hostels and not many places to stay. Whilst in Tainan we did some frantic searching for any hostels with availability and could only find one in a good location - The Awu Hostel. Unfortunately, the hostel description page was only in Chinese but we could still reserve beds.

The options weren't very promising. "4 bed private suite, 6 bed private suite" but one did manage to grab our attention.

"1 bed mixed dorm"

I'll admit we were confused. Even more so when the scroll down menu for number of people in this bed went up to 6.

We then had a look at the reviews page for the Awu.

Here is a direct review from the page itself:

“If you stay here, I recommend travelling in a group of 3 (or 6)
because the beds are one large bunk for 3 people. It would be strange to sleep next to a stranger!"

As a pair of travellers this was going to be interesting.

Upon arriving in Kenting we witnessed the amazing beach and found our way to the hostel directly next to it.

After checking in the girl at the front desk showed us to our room and sure enough this is what we got.

One of us was going to have a mystery bed mate.

Coincidentally, we managed to meet our Japanese and Korean friends from Tainan in the same hostel (hence why it took us a week to realise our Korean friend couldn't understand us) so we dropped our bags and ran out to the water together.

I had an amazing life moment whilst in the sea where it started raining very heavily. All of our clothes and items on the beach were drowned but we didn't care. It was one of the most memorable moments I've ever had.

After trying to dry off we made our way back to the hostel and noticed that someone's bag had been put on the empty "bed" next to Erica. "Do you know who's here?" we asked someone else we had met earlier in the room. " I think a guy called Kevin". 

We had a name.

I asked Erica for help on detailing parts of this trip and she explained the next part perfectly so I'll showcase it below:

"Later in the evening we were walking around the lit up night tourist

streets of Kenting. The vending stalls sold brightly shining tropical
fruits, ice creams, smoothies, and any kind of roasted animal part
imaginable. I really felt like I was in a foreign land, as obvious as
I know that sounds. On our stroll we ran into Casey, and some other
guests from our hostel. We met Craig, an interesting indie-type fellow
from Kansas, and a lot of really annoying American girls. One guy with
a scraggly beard and kind of half-closed eyes was standing off to the
side holding a can of beer. His gut was hanging out of his T-shirt a
little and hair was poking out from the neck of his T-Shirt. He
offered me a sweaty hand: “Hi I’m Kevin.”"

He snored incessantly.

One night whilst walking with Erica down a street across from Kenting beach, we came across a Taiwanese family having a BBQ. They seemed to be on vacation which is exactly the same thing they thought when they saw us.

The quite tipsy heads of the family were gesturing to us to join them in their fun times. "Why the hell not", we thought and sat down with them all.

After a few failed attempts at communication we managed to explain via one of the daughters (a high school student) in English that we lived in Japan.

"Japan!"- cried the father.

He held up his beer..."kanpai deshou!"

Floods of laughter. This became a catchphrase for the next hour.

After much drinking the men started chewing on betel nut and offered me some in the process.

We'd seen a bit of this during our time in Taipei. Men and women with glazed expressions on their faces and horrifying teeth.

If you type betel nut into Google and look at the images you'll understand.

For the second time in less than an hour I thought "Why the hell not" and started chewing it.

Here's what I felt:

-mild euphoria

-increased alertness

-increased heart rate

-self conscious about the many pairs of eyes staring at me (not an affect of betel nut...)

After 5 or so minutes the father of the family gestured that I should spit out the juice from the nut and showed an example - a perfect showing of a Western Tobacco spitting sketch, arcing it in such a way as it fell a far distance from the BBQ.

I leaned over and gobbed all over the floor (betel nut included) next to my shoes.

After about 10 more minutes of pleasantries and free beer (!) the father looked at us both and said in a tired fashion... "sayonara".

Awesome people!

A Music Shop With Unexpected Results And Other Taiwan Delights - Part 1

Early August 2011 - Taipei, Taiwan

In my first few days of being in Taiwan I discovered two key things about Taipei:

1. It had the most humid atmosphere I have ever experienced.  I felt like a sponge trapped inside a giant sub-woofer. There were times when I actually had to run from cover to cover to escape the sun.

2. Every shop vendor from one end of the city to the other had at least one piece of homemade Angry Birds merchandise they were trying to sell.

One thing I didn't know until later was that Taipei has the most stoked music shop I've ever seen.

About three days into the trip we were taking photos of Taipei 101 in front of a department store. 

Nearly got it

I've tried finding this store on Google Maps and I think I've finally found it.

The other side of the above photo

It's called Eslite (www.eslite.com) and is a huge, six story building with the usual posh shops - perfume, a food village, boutiques - the works.

But on the 4th floor there is a music shop (on the Eslite Mode floor of course) and it has the greatest collection of music I've ever seen in a shop. Vinyls and all! There were CDs from bands that my old band supported that I could never find anywhere in the UK. 

My mind was blown, I spent hours looking through the aisles for anything I could take. I had a limit of CDs I could take due to a lack of space in my backpack.

Different day, same store

After painful decision making, I bought Joan of Arc's new album and a Frog Eyes album with a pretty disturbing cover. I also wanted to buy some Taiwanese stuff that would be quite difficult to find anyway else. Here's what I found:

i. 柳葉魚 - hereweare

柳葉魚 (The Capelin) are a Post-Rock band with all the usual bells & whistles. It was the artwork that really attracted me. It's good, but not great. Have a listen here:

ii. 傷心欲絕 - 我愛您

Now these guys are amazing. 

傷心欲絕 (Heartbroken) are a punk band from Taipei that remind me a lot of a similar Japanese punk band - Husking Bee.

I bloody love this album and listen to it a fair bit when I get the chance.

Here's a video of one of the songs from the album:

Overall a pretty good find!

Just a short post this week. Next time, we're going to delve deeper into my experiences in the south of Taiwan.

These include trying areca nut and betel leaf (a local, legal high) for the first time and sleeping in a three person bed with a large man named Kevin.

Also, as a leaving gift to you all, here's that Frog Eyes album cover:

Have good nightmares!

Home

I made a short film over the new year showing a bit of the area where I live.

The music was also composed for the film.

Have a look and let me know what you think.

You can watch it in full res on the Youtube link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Uo4IF_YL64

Crime City

Saturday 15th January 2011 - Kuji, Iwate


I had been back home and back at work for a week after a short stint around the more southern parts of Japan with Erica.

The snow piles up in Iwate if you don't keep an eye on it.

I remember driving back home from Kuji High School on the Friday and listening to "Maps and Atlases" on my iPod via the car CD player. It was snowing very heavily as I parked the car. Kuji can be a beautiful place in the snow but on this occasion it was a bit of a nightmare.

Friday night I spent in my house playing games and maybe recording stuff, I can't remember.

Saturday morning and the snow had built up so much around my car that I had to dig my way to the door.

I looked inside and my iPod wasn't there.

I checked all around the inside and outside of the car but to no avail.

The crime scene (minus snow)

I can't remember if my car door was open or locked the night before so I'm still not sure whether my iPod was stolen or just fell out into the snow drift.


A bit miffed, I decided to go to the police station to report it missing just in case. It was a Korean iPod so it would have stood out if it was found.

Bringing along Erica for translation help (and general moral support in this troublesome time) we drove to the police station. Inside, a mild mannered, middle-aged police clerk asked us standard questions about the incident:

"What's your name?"

"What kind of iPod is it?"

"Please show me on this map where the car park is."

"What country are you from?"

Ok, mostly standard questions.

A few more questions later we were asked to sit down whilst he finished some paperwork.
After about five minutes of waiting, four policemen walked through the entrance and into the same office as the guy who gave us the questions. They carried briefcases and all wore large winter coats and warm smiles. Each one greeted us separately as they passed.

When they left the office these men - all four of them - came up to us and said that they were here for the investigation and would like us to take them to the crime scene.

With us in front in my little car and them following in a car of similar size (four fully grown men don't fit comfortably in a car like that unless they're training to be in the circus) we went to my house.

The victim

In my house, I was asked the same questions as before but by a younger, more embarrassed policeman. I remember vividly having to write down my home address in Kanji for their paperwork (Erica wasn't allowed to do it). This took much, much longer than expected.

After my second questionnaire we went down to the car park where two of the police officers had opened their briefcases. One produced a camera and the other a measuring tape.

They individually began performing various tasks like a habit. Measuring the length and width of the car park and the car itself, inspecting the drainpipes and gates, taking photos of the landscape, the car and the other cars around, it was wonderful to witness.

When the investigation was nearing it's end, they had one final task for me. Positioning me next to the open door of the driver's seat, they asked me to point to where the iPod was the last time I saw it,a photo was then taken of me -quite confused- pointing at the floor of my car, trying not to smile. They even showed it to me after to check that I looked OK.

Once this had been done they all bid adieu and left the way they came in their tiny car.




My iPod was never found.