some more details about the trip to taichung. taichung seems to be in worse economic shape than other cities in taiwan. we saw a lot of closed shops, one of which looked like it closed without paying its employees judging by the graffitti left on its windows. i'm not sure if it was our unfamiliarity with the city, but it was hard to find a decent place to eat dinner at(aside from vendor food of course) and there didn't seem to be a whole lot to do. we did see some interesting cafes, one of which was called marihuana(spelt that way with an h) and featured a big pot leaf on its sign.

waiting to be seated

the first place we went to upon arriving was this restaurant(pictured above) that is made to look like an old taiwanese town(we knew about this place because of this book i got in hsinchu). it's filled with old movie posters and other relics from the past. unfortunately you have to eat to see any of the exhibits. we had fried noodles that were a bit too sweet(they have different menus depending on the time of day, we were there for lunch).

the exhibits were interesting. there were some old posters, one telling people to walk a step behind their elders, and one telling people about birth control. unfortunately, my photos of those came out blurry. there were other interesting things too though:

old taiwanese opera records

old matchbooks and film advertisements.

of course, after seeing all this, i really wanted to buy a book with nice photos of everything, but they had none. they did have tin toys. this is where i bought the toy i posted yesterday.

one of the biggest surprises in taichung was running across this giant bob ross advertisement on the side of a building. i knew he was known here, as i'd seen him on tv, but still it's a bit surprising to seem him hanging on the side of a building like this.

we also went to the confucius temple. students often come here to pray. peter commented that every confucius temple looks the same. sometimes we'll see a distant relative of confucius on tv here. it must be odd to use your ancestor's fame like that. maybe he is famous for some other reason, but i doubt it.

on the bus ride back to taipei they were showing two different movies simultaneously. the monitors on the left side of the bus were showing notting hill, and the monitors on the right were showing fraility. i'm not sure if our seats gave volume for both films though, or if you were stuck with what side of the bus you sat on. i spent the ride back listening to goodbye tower volume one and two on my headphones while drifting from one film to the other.