Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Fireflies/LED's in Tokyo

Recently in Japan they decided to throw 100,000 floating solar powered LED's into Sumida river and let them float around.  It was supposed to invoke thoughts of fireflies, and maybe it does, but I think it just looks cool.  Check out the time lapse video below.  The tower in the middle is the newly opened Tokyo Sky Tree, the tallest building in Japan.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

100 yen buys 15 pieces of Bacon at Burger King

So, right now at Burger King they are running a promotion where for 100 yen more you can get 15 pieces of Bacon put on any Whopper.  When I saw this sign, I almost couldn't believe how something so great would be available for only 100 yen and questioned the girl working there to make sure I was reading it correctly.
I ordered the Whopper with the extra 15 pieces and it wasn't bad, you could really taste it more in the middle where all the pieces crossed.
This doesn't even compare to the Windows 7 Whopper but there was a guy on YouTube who made it exceed anything.  He payed over $70 to add over 1000 pieces of Bacon to his Whopper and tried to eat the whole thing.  It looked pretty nasty.  Check out the video below.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Disney ad in Shibuya


Noticed this ad for Disney Sea in Shibuya.  It has huge panels that are made of stuffed animal like material.  A lot of people were taking pictures with it and touching it.  Pretty interesting.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Good food and fun in Jiufen












We rode the bus to the gold museum.  It told about the history of gold in Taiwan and how it was mined by Taiwanese and the Japanese during the occupation.  The museum and the surrounding grounds had a Japanese style to it showing what it was like during the occupation and inside the museum they had a giant gold brick that you were invited to try and lift.  Since the brick was over 200 lbs., it was impossible to lift, but if you could lift it you would be rewarded with it's value in cash.

 Today we met up in in Zhongxiao Fuxing were we took a bus about one hour to Jiufen near the north coast.  There we visited a famoust street lined with shops and food vendors.  But, since it was a holiday it was busier than usual and the rain made it really difficult to get around.  But at a certain point we stopped at a restraunt for lunch which was carved into the side of a mountain and had a great view of the coast, assuming it was a clear sunny day.   After that we stopped at a soup place and then headed back to the bus stop.










From there we took a bus back to Zhongxiao Fuxing where Momo's parents went home and  went out for dinner at a really good place nearby.





Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Taiwan Day 02

Today I met up with Momo and we went to Wanlong where we got some good Taiwanese food and I met many people in Momo's family.  It's my second day in Taiwan and it seems like every meal is huge!  I'm always totally full after any meal here. 













From there we stopped back at the hotel so I could pick up my suit and then went to a photo studio in Minquan.  In Taiwan they have these professional style photo studios for family, wedding, or any other picture you want to talk.  It's famous in Japan to, so when we got there all the customers there were Japanese women.  We got there a little after 3:00 and looked through the book they had of clothes they had available for pictures.  Momo brought the black dress I got her for her birthday and I brought my suit for the first set of pictures.  For the second set she picked out a red china dress and I also wore "traditional" style clothes to match.  They started with Momo and did her make up and hair and then did make up for me as well.  From there we went into the studio which had around 20 different settings in which to take pictures in.  It was really cool!  The photographer was really cool and friendly.  After the first set of pictures in the dress and suit, we changed outfits, Momo had her hair changed and we went back into the studio for the next set of pictures.  When we finished we changed back into the clothes we came in and left around 8:00.

 At night we headed to Ximen which is a shopping area for younger people similar to Shibuya in Tokyo.  The main streets were lined with food vendors selling all kinds of food.  The crazy thing about it was that it's not allowed so whenever the police come down the street all the street vendors quickly move their carts to the side street so they don't get fined.  After the police pass through all the vendors move back to the main street.  It's actually really funny to watch.  We saw some interesting foods that had a very unique shape and had some good snack foods and bubble tea.


















Saturday, February 25, 2012

Taiwan Day 01



This morning I met up with Momo and headed to Haneda AIrport which is the smaller international airport but only 12 minutes from central Tokyo.  They recently did some renovations there and it's really cool.  We got on the plane and I noticed that more than half the people on the flight were reading newspapers.  Aparently Taiwanese people love newspapers.  After a 3 and a half hour flight we landed in Taiwan.  During landing they played the video below  which was like watching a movie trailer for the country I was about to visit which got me pretty excited.  




We landed and went through customs where Momo's parents met us at the airport and took us in a taxi to where I am staying in Zhongshan one stop from Taipei Main Station.    Taipei is a lot darker compared to Tokyo which seems more brightly lit, but the city itself was really cool.  I was really surprised how many Japanese brands, and companies have a base there.  Clothing stores like Uniqlo and even a Tokyu Hands, all in Taipei.  One of the cool things about the traffic lights here is that next to the red light they have a count down timer so every red light feels like the start of a drag race.  Another thing that I noticed right away was the amount of people driving around on scooters.  When a light turns red there is a spot on the road where the scooters can cut in front of all the cars and when the ligth changes green a mass of scooters lead the traffic to the next light. Once I got checked in an dropped off my stuff we went out for dinner.

The place we went was very similar to the department stores in Tokyo, where the bottom floor has many different kinds of food for sale and also some small places to eat.  We ate a ton of good food and then walked around the city for a bit before going to bed.

Also on a side note the people at Google are idiots and I can no longer position my pictures so it looks decent.