Osaka, Kobe, Taipei!

We've been packing a lot into our days in Japan so I'm just going to give a rundown of everything we've been doing instead of trying to remember each day.

Things we're seeing

This is Meriken Park in Kobe. Kobe might be my favorite city in all of Japan. This park is huge, on the water, has a lot of shopping malls and very pretty. We ate pretty good Indian food here and walked around!

We went to a Hanshin Tigers baseball game! Everyone in my family and in Japan seemed really nervous about us doing this? My grandfather has been a fan for practically forever and has never actually been to a game. Despite the HUGE crowds at the game everyone insisted that no one goes to see the Hanshin Tigers.

We had a great time. The woman next to us lent us balloons so we could participate in the 7th inning stretch activities and the end of game celebration. The couple on the other side of us explained to us who the players were and who was a closer and stuff. It was very nice of all of them. And the Tigers won! They beat the Giants, their biggest rivals! Wooooo!

We went to the Osaka Castle. It was hot as hell that day. Which explains Zack's sweatspot. But, when we went inside the castle, it was air conditioned! So much for keeping things traditional...

Right before we went to the Castle we went to Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium. It was maybe the most crowded place I've ever been. In retrospect, we probably picked the worst day ever to go--it was the Sunday of a long weekend, so no duh there were a ton of people there! We saw some cool stuff, but kind of agreed that people never enjoy your pictures of aquariums. It never looks that cool in pictures. 

We were going to go to the Umeda Sky building after the Osaka Castle since we were in Osaka that day, but it was way too freaking hot, so we went home. In the end if was the right decision because we were able to go back a few days later and see it. 

So here's some crap. The Sky Building is this huge sky scraper and you're supposed to go up to see the "Floating Garden" as the sign above indicates. BUT when you get there this is all you see:

THERE ARE NO FLOWERS OR NATURE IN THE FLOATING GARDEN. Granted, I did think that we got a particularly bad day because it was raining pretty steadily and was super gray out. But for real. This is not a garden. AND they don't let you carry umbrellas up at the top because they're afraid it will blow away. So you just have to walk around in the rain if it's raining. What crap.

This is in Taiwan. Zack is afraid I won't differentiate enough between Taiwan and Japan. This is the Chiang Kai-Sheck Memorial. Chiang Kai-Sheck is a former Taiwanese president. His memorial included a lot of anti-Japanese propaganda inside. That was kind of cool to look at, but I don't really know enough about Taiwanese or Japanese history to get the significance of their words and descriptions.

It's very pretty, but we also went there in the rain, so I don't think we got the optimal experience. I was also very nervous I was going to slip and re-shatter a kneecap. Also I was a little crabby because we woke up at 4:45am, took a train, a bus, a plane, and another bus before we actually got to Taiwan.

This is the inside of that memorial. Very beautiful! 

This is what you see if you stand of the steps of the memorial and look out. Yes, I did use a filter. 

This is the 228 Peace Park. On 2/28/1947 there was a huge antigovernment uprising that resulted in many deaths, a lot of destruction and the beginning of 50 years of martial law. Taiwan has a very interesting history and we saw a lot of  propaganda and there is certainly a lot of contentious point in history. I don't pretend to know much about it, but if you need someone to go more in depth, tweet at @Zackymatthews.

This is the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial. He was Taiwan's first president and is like the father of the nation. We spent extra time in his memorial because he was a cool guy, but also because it was pouring outside and big dumb Bert didn't bring his umbrella.

Also there was a mini sculpture exhibit inside and a bunch of dancers outside. So we chilled there.

After it stopped raining we met Zack's friend Gino at a night market! Taiwan is famous for night markets. It's like if a farmers market, flea market, and a carnival all met up and joined forces every night. Lots of food, games, and trinkets for sale everywhere. 

This is a wind damper at the 101. I didn't know what one was until I went to the 101. I still don't super get what it does, other than help buildings not collapse during earthquakes, but you should know, this is a huge wind damper. So I've been told.

This is the 101 from afar. We went up to the top if it. This is the world's second tallest building, but still has the world's fastest elevators! It was a beautiful view from up there. It was a little crowded and kind of expensive, but I'd say worth it! Also you get to walk through a bonus coral museum no one tells you about until you there.

This is the ticket for the metro! It's a plastic coin! Weird.

This is the National Palace Museum! It's HUGE and has a ton of artifacts, that some people would argue are stolen from China. We saw a lot of cool pottery, weapons, jade, and historical documents. We did not look at the Jade that is shaped like a cabbage though. Because there was like an hour long line to do that. We were not feeling it.

This is Chiang Kai-Sheck's presidential residence.

This is also the presidential residence. It was also HUGE and very elaborate. Definitely did not feel like it belonged to a single person, even if that person was the president.

Zack's other friend, Laurent, paid for us to get 45 minute massages. We were kind of nervous since that's kind of a long time to have a stranger you can't really talk to touch you. My massage was kind of rough and was definitely sore the next day. I do think my feet hurt less though. For reference, in the past week we've walked 59.5 miles. So I guess we earned a massage.

We went to Tamsui, which is at the end of the metro line in Taipei. It was beautiful but so freaking hot. There was a British fort there. That was surprising.

After going to Tamsui, we went to the a Beitou Hot Springs. Remember how I said it was hot? It was even hotter at the hot spring.

People we're meeting

This and the picture below it are of my cousin Karin. She's 12, and was born in America. She's been going to "English camp" with us. She's pretty shy, but I definitely think she's understanding more and more English. She's very sweet and is very excited to go to Universal Studios Japan with us.

So I didn't actually meet this guy--I just made him take a picture with me because he's wearing a Princeton football shirt and I used to work with a guy that played football at Princeton. He was uncomfortable.

This is Laurent. He used to work with Zack's organization in DC. Now he lives in Taiwan again. He was very nice to us. He bought our tickets to the National Palace Museum, our lunch, our massages, and our dinner! He got us very drunk and took us to places we wouldn't have seen otherwise! 

This is Gino. He's hilarious. He speaks amazingly good English for someone who has never been to the US. He's sort of YouTube star in Taiwan and apparently had a small role in a movie! There was a billboard for his movie in our metro station so we took a picture of him with his billboard self! He also took us around, helped us order food and made sure we had a good time.

We're also obviously seeing my grandparents, aunt and uncle a lot. They aren't so much into pictures though. They never want to take selfies. Rude.

Things we're eating

 Most of this does not need an explanation. It's all delicious.

There was $5 beer at the tigers game! Too good! Also, it said you weren't allowed to bring cans or bottles into the stadium. Which we took to mean, you can't bring beer. NOPE. There was a line where they took your bottles or cans of beer and poured it into paper cups and you're allowed to have that! Can you imagine how insane that would be in the US?

My grandmother was super worried that we wouldn't have enough to eat so she packed us hard boiled eggs. As we were leaving she told us "It's hot, so be careful!" "There are crazy people so be careful!" "You're cute, so be careful!" And then "Sometimes eggs make you cough! So be careful!" What? So I ran that by my mom. And she was like "yeah! eggs do make you cough! You should be careful!" Is that a thing?

We didn't actually eat this. But it's very realistic penis ice cream in Taiwan. Why. 

This is the dinner Laurent got us. It was SO good.

We both super liked octopus mouth. I guess I'm more surprised octopus mouth is a thing you can eat that I am that I like it? How do you even get the mouth like separated? 

Mos Burger! Instead of a bread bun, it's rice!

That's it for now! We leave Saturday so we're wrapping up now, but I'm sure I'll have another absurdly long blog post to share!

Teeners isn't the only one doing cool stuff

I do things too...sometimes...

It's been so long that I posted, so I'm just going to share photos of stuff I've been doing and comment on them:

These are my coworkers at happy hour. We went to the bar that is literally underneath our building. It's German themed kind of like Heidelberg, but they actually have a woman walking around with an accordion. Accordion is far from my favorite instrument, but she's really sweet and makes up funny songs about who is in the room. Also, we always get kind of too drunk when we go there. It's German magic.

I saw Love and Mercy with Brie. There's this theater here where they sell alcohol while you watch! I realize now that the first two "cool things" I said I do involve drinking, but I didn't actually drink at the movie theater. But it does seem like movies are more fun knowing I could drink. Instead I just ate way too much popcorn.

Love and Mercy was actually a really great movie that I wouldn't have seen without Brie asking me to. It's about Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. The only thing I knew about him before came from the Bare Naked Ladies' song, but apparently he had like a complete mental breakdown and an almost complete recovery! And I guess it was pretty close to his actual life story, which was kind of a gripe I had with A Beautiful Mind.

I also ate maybe the biggest piece of carrot cake I've ever seen in my life right after the movie. It went with my huge bag of popcorn. It was at this really cool bar called Ted's Bulletin. They sell homemade poptarts too and a bunch of signature cocktails. If you guys ever come back/visit with me, we should definitely try to go here!

 

I went to Drag Brunch at the gay sports bar in town! It was definitely worth the money! It's $35 all you can eat with one drink, and a whole drag show. I went with Zack, my coworker Stephanie, her sister and her boyfriend. It just sort of ended up that Zack and Steph's boyfriend sat on the inside table, but I think that was for the best--the drag queens danced up on a lot of the men who were on the ends of tables and Steph's boyfriend for sure wouldn't have been okay with that. I think Zack would've been fine, but didn't NEED that kind of interaction. 

The food was pretty good, if maybe a little too varied. Like, who wants hummus, fajitas, grits and bacon all in one meal? The only other sad part was that we forgot to stock up on dollar bills to give out! They definitely deserved dollar bills! They were so great and beautiful. Also the MC of the whole thing told us how she volunteers with a bilingual multicultural LGBT shelter called Casa Ruby, which seemed like a great cause, and kind of brought a more real side to drag brunch. Like, it's one thing to enjoy all the fun stuff that the gay community brings, like drag queens, dancing, fun entertainment, but I do feel like it's a little too easy to forget about all the real issues a lot of people face.

Lady Gaga Realness.

Another arguably cool/fun thing I did was Convention. It was actually really terrible in preparation for Convention. Everything I needed to do was dependent on someone else's work/approval/input and everything was super behind schedule. So I ended up having to do a ton of work at the last minute when I would've gone a much more reasonable pace if I'd been able to. But whatever. I did it. It worked out.

Mostly once Convention started I just had to sit at the help desk and reprint name tags for people who lost them. That should've been low stress but someone took my box with all the supplies I packed myself! Like it literally just disappeared. And then my printer broke. So I really wasn't very helpful at the help desk.

Christen and I matched one day. That's a big deal in our office, so we had to take a picture together and sent it around so people could marvel at it.

One of the receptions was at the AFL CIO and they have a really great view from their balcony. This is a picture of my boss there. It was great, but super muggy that day. But more importantly I got to meet three Cornell Law Students! They were all super nice! And two were from the Midwest, which was kind of something I was worried about--that everyone at Cornell is from New York or New Jersey and that they'd think less of me for being from the Midwest. That was super nice. 

This is Max. He's a good dude.

Wendy Davis spoke at our Convention. The video is pretty interesting. She seemed really chill. No security detail or anything. Also, some law student really geeked out when she saw her and pulled out a pair of pink tennis shoes and rushed up to get a picture with her.

One of the two panels I actually broke away from the health desk to see was about reproductive rights and how poorly that fight has been going. Wendy Davis didn't actually speak at that one, but it was a very informative, if a little bit depressing. I did tweet a lot and got a few new followers! So I guess that's a success.

I also went to a panel on the death penalty. That had a way different tone. That's definitely a battle "we" ("progressives") are winning. It was mostly the speakers guessing when capital punishment will be fully abolished.

Also I got to meet another Cornell Law grad. He's also a Michigan grad and is an anchor on MSNBC. His name is Ari Melber. I only talked to him for a few minutes, but he was very nice, and willing to take a picture with me--and I'm pretty much no one!

I tried to organize an all staff picture. People acted like that was an insane request. It was surprisingly harder than I thought.

The highlight was definitely seeing RBG speak! She's very funny in person. And also so tiny! One of our former board members clerked for her so he interviewed her and they talked about feminism, gay rights, rap, and a ton of other stuff. Everyone at work was really nervous we wouldn't have a full house for her because she wasn't scheduled to speak until the very end of a three day conference. SO WRONG. It was so crowded! 

They told us that we definitely would not be able to take pictures with her, which was kind of a disappointment, but understandable. Not everyone can be like Sotomayor and take tons of pictures with staff. In the end, we got one single picture with her as a whole staff. Which, I mean, is pretty much good enough.

I was SO tired after convention. It's like working around 40 hours in three days, so it super sucks, but it's only once a year and is for a good cause, so you can make yourself do it. Plus I got Monday off.

On Sunday we went to Pride! It was really fun! We went last year too and that was also fun. Zack did not try on undies this year though. He just took a picture with the Shalom Felicia sign. I almost had to join a Queer Drum Troupe. Just like how I almost joined a sorority. The guy in the booth asked "Are you gay? Do you live in DC? Can you spin a flag?" And even though I answered no to all three, he still said I should come to try out. I def thought I had struck out. Other highlights include: A guy offering Zack many of the gold (big) condoms, seeing a Taylor Swift impersonator, and getting pretty bad tan lines.

On Monday I took it easy, watched 50 shades of gray while drinking sangria with my coworkers and played trivia at a bar. My team won though! There were 10 people from work, and they're all kind of used to me bossing them around, so no one noticed when I made myself a dream team! The only kind of sad thing was that the prize was $100 off your bar tab, which would've been great, but I had already closed my tab so I didn't get any of the money! I guess knowing we won is enough. Or something.

Now all I have left to do is 1) move into Steph's apartment for 10 days 2) send all my stuff back with my dad 3) fly to Japan 4) enjoy my last real summer, like ever.