From one island to another

Taiwan is a place that‘s too good to be true. Fairly small, but still big enough to be able to spend weeks there discovering new spots. Fairly cheap, and yet very developed so you don’t have to lower your sights on hygiene or infrastructure. Fairly Chinese culturally, but extremely welcoming and very easy to explore, even without knowledge of the language. Full of people and yet never exhausting or too fast-paced. Not to forget the tropical climate, beaches, beautiful mountains, fantastic food and traditional culture and religion that is, unlike in China, still alive.

Big temples just pop up in Taiwan, even when you're in a small village
far from Taipei

The week was the most relaxed that I had in quite a while. It’s just very easy to have a laid-back lifestyle in Taiwan, with breakfast stores open until noon, night markets and 24/7 convenience stores. Pavel lives in one of the centers of Taipei, right next to a night market, in one of the semi-legal rooftop apartments that are typical for the city. In order to generate some extra rent, landlords build some extra rooms on top of their four- or five-storied, flat-roofed buildings. They’re usually illegally built, but tolerated. The disadvantage of having to climb all the stairs every time is offset by the rooftop views and atmosphere. Since I was arriving just in time for the semesterly swap of exchange students, there was an entirely vacant room in the flat where I could squat temporarily.

3 days after leaving, I already start to forget the details of what I was doing that week. Mostly it was visiting places I already knew and wanted to revisit for the feels (and because they’re great), like a bubble tea shop, a night market, a rice bowl place etc. As you can see, my travel habits have asianized considerably. While Germans would usually name landscape, sights, culture… as their major reasons to travel to a place and food as a nice side benefit, for Asians it can literally be the reason to travel. If you frown upon this, that’s clearly because you haven’t had enough exposure to East Asian food yet. Taiwan, with it’s historical ties to Japan and migrants from all parts of mainland China is a great place to try many different types of it.

Another thing Taiwan stands out for in East Asia is its contemporary art scene. While I was visiting, one of Asia’s biggest art events was hosted in Taipei for the first time, the Taipei Dangdai (Dangdai is the Pinyin Transcript of 當代, which means contemporary). While I didn’t make it to the fair, I made sure to visit at least one of the many art museums. Taiwan is not the only place in East Asia to have a flourishing modern art scene, but I feel like it has the most uncompromising, radical and innovative artists at the moment. Maybe that’s because the country itself is a very young democracy and people are experimenting with their newly gained freedom.

KAWS art can be considered gimmicky but how cool is it to put
his huge statue right in the memorial park of the Taiwan's (problematic)
founding father?

Cool filter, right?

Friday noon I then took a flight to the one country in East Asia that I haven’t been to before. I always told myself that before going to Japan, I was gonna wait until I had some money to spend without worrying and optimally until I knew someone there who could guide me a bit. Now luckily both conditions were fulfilled, thanks to Charlotte, a Japanese Taiwanese that I also know from exchange in Taiwan two years ago.

Tokyo is a global metropolis and it’s not hard to get around without a local, but then you’d miss out on all the local peculiarities (of which Japan has quite a few) like how to properly use a high tech toilet seat or find out about your fate at a temple (my fate is really crappy). Also, speaking to people. I don’t know why, after all it’s a rich country, but English proficiency in Japan is lower than even in China, let alone Taiwan. Chinese is also of very limited use. For conversation it is entirely pointless, because the two languages don’t share any phonetic vocabulary. However, Japanese has three different alphabets that are combined in its script. Two of them are purely phonetic, very much like our latin one, but the third is a limited set (I think about 2000) of Chinese characters. While their pronunciation is completely different here, the meaning of the characters more or less remains the same, though not exactly. In praxis this means I often get a vague impression of what signs or menus are about without really knowing it (e.g. I know a dish contains chicken and potato, but not in which style). It would be the same if I used my phone and wrote a Chinese sentence to show it to a Japanese person.

Pristine and serene, that's about it

A preconception that is very true is that Tokyo is a expensive place. Except for food, which can be a surprisingly good deal, things are easily 1.5 times the prices of Germany. You could probably travel on a budget if you wanted, but it really wouldn’t be fun. At this point I’m still on the fence if I should get the world’s best steak (Kobe beef, an “orgasmic experience surpassing everything I’ve tasted before” – according to a friend) for a ridiculous price or not. You’ll know about my decision next week.