Trip to Taiwan

This week's installment should be called "Big Stupid Laowai." That's because I spent last week in Taiwan, where gaijin are called laowai. I left on Saturday the 8th at 10:00am and arrived at 11:30am. It's strange after my recent spat of 12 and 13 hour flights and jet lag, it was odd to take a two hour flight to a foreign country. The flight was lovely - mostly because it was short and had an excellent meal. China Airlines has, in case you were wondering, the best meals accompanied by the grumpiest and perhaps frumpiest airline staff.
Judy met me at the airport, though there was a bit of a delay because it was the weekend of Double 10 (October 10th), Taiwan's national holiday. We took a bus into the city and met up with Dustin, my old roommate, Eva, my Chinese teacher, and Charles (whom I call Che Che), another friend of mine. We all hung out and had dinner together at a restaurant that served tremendously good Peking Duck. Later in the evening, Charles and Dustin headed back down south. Judy and I stayed in Taipei the next two nights, hanging out and shopping a little bit.
We traveled to the north east coast and saw Yilan and Jiaoxi. Like most of the trip, it was quite relaxing. We got lost a bunch trying to find the hotel and various sites, but it was all fun. The strange highlight was going to Dongshan River Park, which was either cool 5 years ago or will be cool in 5 years. Either way, it was definitely not cool when we were there. We were very nearly the only people in the huge park and a good half of the employees were sleeping. The other half were sitting in chairs looking like they wanted to be sleeping. Still, we had a good time laughing about it.
That night we drove up into the hills and stayed at a cool backwoods resort at the top of a large plateau. We picked some fruit and took in the nice scenery, even though it rained intermittantly. The next day we headed to Jiufen, where we stayed for two nights. Jiufen is a little touristy, but still very cool. The main attraction are the many tea houses where you can pay a reasonable few and then while away the hours sipping tea and looking down on a rather majestic view. There are also some good food stalls and various shops. Mostly, it was cool just to hang out in a relaxed setting. After Jiufen it was back to Taipei for a night and then back to Japan. Overall, it was an absolutely wonderful trip and even though it made me miss Judy more, it was worth it.
Now, I'm trying to get back into the groove at work. Still playing tennis and starting to win a little bit more. Speaking a lot of Japanese and trying to make the best of my experience. More on that next week.