It's small. It has to be. Or well. That probably depends on what you compare it to. I still have another 6 months here, and I'll have to pack it down with all my other stuff once I get to go back to Denmark. Not that I think packing is going to be much of a problem. I didn't pack much when I went here and still don't have a lot of extra stuff to take back home, even though I had to buy a few more clothes to get through the Taiwanese winter (which is short, not really cold, yet terrible because of the sheer lack of insulation in houses here.)
I'd just like to be on the safe side. Also because these little things might just take damage if I don't pack them really carefully. Besides, I might actually decide on wanting to take some rice cooker with me later on and than one is going to be expensive in space.

Took this photo on Monday. The day before, I had been adding 3 more pieces to the collection. At that time, there had been a very long period in which I didn't visit the Japanese entertainment shops I like to casually drop by. (That's only likely to be caused by my winter vacation and me therefore not going to the area near Taipei Main Station as much.)

I bet you're tired of me whining about getting better cameras. These two girls from the ToHeart2 series are a rare sight in the secondhand stores. Only a few times before did I see the red uniforms from this series, and I didn't really feel the figures were true to the drawing style of the Anime that I watched a few episodes of. This time I thought the two figures here as aesthetically pleasing and coped with their low price.
Actually, I liked the original series of ToHeart more. That's why I only saw a few of the episodes for the second one. It's kind of a different story and even the drawing style seems slightly different, but the young girls from ToHeart2 all make for pretty nice merchandise.

And then they also provide some extra fanservice that you usually don't get so much of from other figures.
This makes me think of the ToHeart franchise actually having started out being love simulators (hentai games), but then developed into the more innocent stories in the visual novels that spawned the manga and anime. Never saw any of those games though.

This one is somewhat more special. First of all, it's the biggest and most expensive of the figures I collected so far. It's also the first figure I buy without knowing what character it's a depiction of. Found her in two places that Sunday. At one shop selling a bunch of different stuff, I could buy it in it's original package for 1800 NT$. The package probably showed her identity, but I could only make out the sounds of a few of the japanese characters and read she was some kind of princess.
At one of my favorite stores - those stores where people can rent a box to sell their used stuff - one could buy her secondhand for 700 NT$. I think it's a just recently released model, and the secondhand figure was at least very new. I can buy secondhand figures here without fearing much for their quality, as people preserve these things pretty well. This one seemed unused. It even still has some plastic remaining between the upper body and the legs. Usually you'll remove that, as it's only to protect it against shocks during shipping.

Finally, as promised yesterday, my as of now latest addition to the collection: Len Kagamine. That'd be the first male character in my collection. What a lucky boy he is.

Went to this annual event in Taipei, where a bunch of books and lots of other stuff is exhibited and, most of the time, sold. You pay 100 NT$ (students: 80 NT$) for a single entrance - which isn't an enraging price. Look out for lots of 2D gals.

TiBE. Sounds like the name of a Danish city, doesn't it? And about the i - there's apparently no real reason for it to be tiny and colored retro-apple-logo style.

Oh yeah. I didn't write much lately did I? Sorry about that.

The exhibition is split across 3 different locations, all located in storage houses around Taipei 101. There's one for childrens books and one for international books (i don't know exactly to what measure, but most of those were English, and there would be Korea-, Japan-, USA-, Federated States of Micronesia-, Afro-Asian Publishing Company-, and what-not stands).

And then, there's the one with all the people: The comic-book department.

By the entrance, (actually, I think that's the less official one), the first thing I ran into was this wall where people can draw stuff on as they like. The above was taken about 5 pm, as I entered, which is quite late as the exhibition closes 6 pm.

I bet this is a pretty good warning to what this place is all about. I didn't get an idea of it as biggest comic con evah, but I bet it's going to be more crowded in the weekend. Today was a rainy day, and students still go to school, even though they have winter vacation now. I'm hoping there'll be cosplayers on Saturday or Sunday (it'll end by then), but I have no idea if there's a chance or not.
I put the photo above here mostly because of the drawing right above the head of that little girl in the middle.

This is a photo I took just before the exhibitions closed on the 28th February. I wonder how it will look by Sunday.

Just found out I photoed something with cosplay written over it. Should probably go back there and ask someone to translate that one of the coming days.

The vampire lives eternally, for it was promised so.

Let's not forget that this is Taiwan, so with everything Japanese, you have to mix some Chinese into it. (And just by the way: It's going to be Chinese new year pretty soon, so better keep your heads up.

Finally decided to go into a stand. Or store. Or whatever. Full of people. And I even had to stand in a line for somewhat less than a minute.

But where's the books???

Heck, who cares? They have pillows with onelegged hamster/cat-hybrids and stuffs.

Let me just tell you before it becomes too unmistakable: One piece is probably the biggest anime/manga/merchandise franchise in Taiwan while a bunch of goth stuff is competing about the relatively big market of young people who hate the world. (The size of which should be no wonder with such shitty high schools.) Stuff that's popular, or at least more or less known where I'm from such as Naruto, Dragonballz, Bleach, Haruhi with more, is less visible. Stuff such as pokemon, digimon, yu-gi-oh and other crap is apparently extinct here. Which is good. I bet people never bothered to write a manga for those?

Lot's of pillows for anyone in desperate need of a franchised bed. (Look elsewhere in this building and you'll find blanket and bed covers too.)

Long time since I watched Bleach. I wonder if they bad guys are finished explaining their German-named fighting methods yet.

Finally managed to find books. Had already bought some stuff from Hot Dog Toyz, but after I bought some heavy books from Kadokawa here, they gave me this lovely bag to carry stuff in:

You could, (and probably still can the next few days,) see lots of young people in the MRT's and nearby the exhibition buildings carrying these bags.

And there's the stuff I bought.

The anime for these books, called ご愁傷さま二ノ宮くん (Goshūshō-sama Ninomiya-kun), was one of the series that got me really hooked to that kind of stuff. (Although I must say, My Neighbour Totoro, which I believe I saw during my very early childhood, was probably the one planting the initial seed for my attraction to Japanese entertainment.)
Bought one, probably as a tribute, as I don't have much hopes of being able to read complicated Chinese soon.

I have two of these Lucky Star Books that I'm trying to study once in a while, but usually give up on within less than a minute. Also translated to Chinese, of course.

I am suddenly reminded of 4Chan, and the absence of influence from their internet memes on people here. I bet if someone here gets rickrolled, they probably don't have a clue. It's not like they rule Denmark either, but at least there's still a handful of people who know what longcat is there.

This place looks so awesome from the exit that I feel like going back in.

Suzumiya Haruhi reaching out for you there. I bet Kadokawa, with it's Japanese sounding name, is more into the stuff that's mainstream in Japan. Found much more stuff I could recognize there.

Too bad they don't even sell any of the posters they stick in the top. There was at least a few of them I'd have liked to see the price off. Oh well. There's other stores for that.

I never knew much about Spice and Wolf before I got to Asia. Saw a few episodes of the Anime, but didn't realise it was really popular before I visited some of Taiwan's Japan-dedicated areas.

Yup. There they are. Posters for sale, and for Chobits even. I don't know if it's because the franchise was never super popular or just 9 years old. I'd put my stakes on the latter. I love Chobits.

Seems to be the last picture at the exhibition. Sorry for my total un-Otakuness. I'm not a person attracted much to mainstream, but when it comes to this stuff, it just gets me. I should probably dig some more into K-On sometime soon, before it's not totally the new thing any more.

Will open this nendoroid box tomorrow. Have absolutely no idea what this stuff is all about, but I bet Google will yield me some results on "Vocaloid" or something. Right now it's kind of late. I have winter vacation of course (and there's no way I'm going to school as everyone else, but still need to walk around town with my Chinese teacher and look at stuff while practising. Like this again, perhaps.

I hope this post can make a little up for the recent lack of content. Goodnight.

The H1N1 panic reaches new proportions.

Seriously, it's bordering to mass... you know what? It is a mass psychosis. And I am just wasting your time stating the obvious. Sorry about that. Actually I am going to write a bit about my ventures today to Taipei 101. Now the worlds second tallest building. Stupid Arabs or Emirati or whatever.

On the 85th floor of Taipei 101, you can eat at the restaurant with the worlds best view. That's for people who like cityscapes, and I would be one of those persons for sure. If you don't like urban sprawl it's probably not an awesome place to you.

We went up here because Selina, my host mother, wanted to hold a birthday celebration for her grandsson who turned 1 last saturday (that day I went to make cakes).

And that's the first clear photo with people in it. To the right is Uncle Water, my host father. The uncle is because of him being a rotary member. Male rotary members are (always) old, and old men are usually referred to as the Chinese equivalent of uncle. Unless they're so ancient you can't get around calling them grandfather in Chinese. (Yeah, really, these people can get really, really old.)

The one in the middle would be my host mothers sister, so effectively my 'host' aunt. That would be 阿姨 - pronounced Ai (pinyin: āyí).

Just if you didn't figure it out yourself already: While we in the western world usually would only refer to our relatives with sister, brother, uncle, granny, etc. without being somewhat informal, it's polite to talk to people you aren't related to, or even people you don't know the name of, using the chinese equivalents of these.

Eating here is probably not something I am going to ever do again. It looks incredibly expensive.

To work up here must be a little like working on an airplane. The tower doesn't take off or move around as such, but the light up here is completely different from down on the ground.

What a decadently long menu card. Get ready for some food snaps. These are all Taiwanese specialties of course. Or, at least something you'd never be able to get outside of east-Asia at least.

Tomato, sweet potato, lobster and some mayonaise-like taiwanese dressing. A decent starter.

Clams obviously. This is some of the really expensive stuff. It tastes really well and is full of fatty-acids that will make you fat without increasing your chance of contracting heart-diseases.

This should be much more costy. Mullet Roe. It's a special kind of fish eggs that I don't dare ask the actual price of. You can usually see shops sell them on street markets around about 4-5 digit NT$ prices for what would probably be adequate for making this. I very much like fish eggs, and tt is good, but even though I'm not paying, I'd feel much happier muching low quality caviar or other fish eggs.

It's the same thing with this dish. This is Buddha Soup, which you usually eat on special ocassions such as birthdays, events in a company or such things. They use sharks fin in this dish, which tastes really delicious. That is, it has a really lovely texture that I haven't tried in other food. But for every sharks fin, a shark has had to die as they cannot survive without their back fin. The people collecting these fins are usually not interested in the meat, so they'll just take away the fin and throw the shark back to avoid having to save lots of monies and fishing quotes. I'd feel bad to order this kind of thing, but I can enjoy it knowing that whether I'm eating it or not, I'm not making a difference, as the dish is already made.

If this dish had a Danish name, it'd definetely be "nudler med smadret krabbe". The way the crab was opened seemed rather crude and random, as if two people has worked together about it - the one with a butchers knife, and the other with a hammer. The noodles underneath were absolutely delicious.

Finally, heart shaped cakes/cookies. According to Maxine, pies. I love pineapple cakes.

Selina would be the lady standing with the little guy in the middle. The little one doesn't have an english name yet. His father in the left part of the picture is my host brother Lee Mark. His wife is just next to Selina.
People from my first host family are also invited. In between Mark and Selina is Joni's mother, and E. Fu. Ku., Joni's father, is sitting next to Uncle water. Joni's parents are "ancient" enough to like being called Agon and Ama, Taiwanese for grandfather and grandmother. They're however not old enough to not drive like they own Taipei city and run up stairs. In Denmark, people this age would probably not be able to hold a drivers licence or even leave their nursing home or eldery residence more than every few weeks. Agon is still to be seen in his office on weekdays.

Maxine is not the only daughter in the family. She has a sister that's married and have two kids. This is a not so good picture of her and her husband. They do not live in the house as Mark though, as it is tradition for the woman to move to her husbands residence when they get married.

And well. That's the last photo, actually. I wanted to take more, but my battery died so badly I could not turn the camera on for long enough to take a picture after this. Goodnight.

I didn't really make an article on my first host familys house now tahat I think about it. Only wrote shortly about my room in Joni's house back in the days when I hadn't used half of my time here in Taiwan. But today has something more to cover. The whole building in the top of this post is belong to my host family. For Joni it was only one floor with plenty of room for one person. Here it's almost the same. There's 5 floors and 6 people living here normally. Then of course it's 7 with me, but it's not like I don't get a few floors all to myself now and then anyway.

The family business is water. Or that is, water dispensers and anything related to water in that way. Also that is why my host father has the nickname Water in my host club. (In Banciao Rotary Club, and many other clubs it seems, (almost) everyone has an english nickname depending on what their business is in. All of the clubs members are more or less heavy guys when it comes to money and that results in many charming names such as Ocean, Gas, Printer, Car, Money, etc.) Oh yeah, and if you're an upcoming YEP Student, bound for Taiwan, you're probably going to live mostly at rotary members houses. My current host parents are both rotarians, and so was Joni, whose father is also rotarian. Actually, Joni is going to be the only host family at which my host father wasn't a member of Panciao Rotary Club.

All around the area, and sometimes even really far away, my host family members can spot water dispensers that's from this company. Especially my host brother and sister, whom I use most of my time with, both being members of the Banciao Rotaract Club just by the way.

Someone living in this house is possesed with these little things that shake their head or makes some other movement with the help of tiny solar cells.

A lucky toad to bring in good business.

And an arsenl of highly advanced japanese missiles ready, should China decide to start an invasion.

Apart from a feature that I can't tell you about because of the chance that China might be spying my blog, this ion technology-based machine can also give you pure water with any pH-value you like.

I recommend you use a pH somewhere up in the 13's. Aim for the eyes. Remember to collect the acidic water coming out of the small pipe to the left. You might be able to use it in crafting usefull toxic gasses.

Having a good relationship to the god(s) of business is never a bad thing either. They are in acute need of C-vitamins and like burning stuff. Especially if it's money, so people will burn ghost money on the street by their shop every few weeks. Everywhere.

These are not part of the family. Hired here on part time, but can take me to eat dinner outside nonetheless. Taiwan rox. The guy talking in the telephone works part time as a butcher too. And no, I'm not talking about the one walking outside. That would be the guy that makes stinky tofu right next to our house.

The house has an elevator. Mostly because second floor is for storage and it would be troublesome to move water dispensers up and down a stair all the time. There's an office where my host mother likes to sit and spy on people through the security cameras, but it's not of much interest as I've only been there two or three times and didn't take any pictures. As you can see, there's no fourth floor.

On third floor there's a few rooms where half of the family lives. That is the two rotarians, Uncle Water & Selina (my host parents), Maxine (host sister), me and this little rodent that's gotten itself a reputation for being stupid - or even slightly mentally retarded. Which I've concluded that together with it's also rather retarded looks makes it charming, but annoying. Her name is Jili.

That's my host parents room in there.

Maybe hello kitty is not as big where you live, but here they have dedicated multifloor stores. You can get virtually anything with hello kitty. Telephones, cars, houses, Weddings, dog accesories or vibrators, they're out there somewhere for sure. Here in this house it's not completely crazy, but I'd say, a bit of a different experience.

Actually I kind of like this Japanese style insanity.

And that's the door that leads into my room. Actually, it's almost soundproof, so it's kindof hard to communicate chinese to people that they can enter if they want. Hafta go over at open it myself and cant keep it open because of the dog.

That's where I use those few treasured 6-7 hours of daily break I have. Can you see which book is lying next to that hello kitty lamp?

Of all these devices, there's only one that I don't use, and that's the telephone. Actually they're everywhere in the house, but I'd have no idea how to operate nor see if people are calling me or any other phone in the house. It's kindof broken anyway and makes some sound every few seconds that drove my host parents crazy every time they got into my room, so we just unplugged it. The other stuff is: Mew / Pink Floyd player, water heater (heated water in my room is totally awesome), electric heater (they've never heard of insulation nor warm water heating here in Taiwan), and finally a Mitsubishi Dehumidifier to prevent tiny rainclouds from forming near the windows during night.

And that's the view from my room. Well, there's a little more to it, but it's not an enormeous improvement. I'm not complaining of course. I can go for a walk and find myself a good view of a lot of city anytime I want. I am, nonetheless, super jealous of some of those exchange students that get to live on 10th or 20th floors near rivers, parks or stuff in central Taipei or Tokyo.
There's a somewhat better view from Marks home on the sixth floor from which you can see a monstrous office building on top of Banciao MRT and bus station.

But that'll have to wait for now. I've written a lot, and I should go to bed now. I can cover the last two floors and hopefully get some pictures of the crew in that one. Here's another building that you can see from my room if you stand the right place:

Went on mission with the rotaract guys today to look at cakes in a big cake factory.
One of the core values of this rotaract club is to search and gain the knowledge needed to create a better society in which you can improve life for everyone.

And I mean: What's more logical than anything if that is what you want? Methods of regulating the population of the upperclass obviously. Without much explanation of what is going to happen, I delve into another day of randomness in Taiwan. And this happened during Sunday 10th of January.

A lot of comrades were to be seen around the factory. So many in fact, that I was beginning to wonder if there were other than rotaract visitors.