Hsinchu

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

Hsinchu (pronounced shintshu in my book) Taiwan's Windy City is an hour or so north of where I live and the home of a good friend of my, Erin Shaw! We hung for the afternoon ;)

First lunch at this great Italian restaurant, yep it was fabulous!!!

Me with strawberry-kiwi frozen drink thing!

(actually I think it's an Italian Ice or something . . . it was good ;)

Erin and her coworker friend who took us to the restaurant

Erin and I

(check out the background to this and the last photo.

Rock the rod-iron and black-sheer curtains!!!)

After lunch we went window shopping

I failed at finding a good watch for the price I wanted :(

Then Erin told me about this great place with ancient bridge supports. Photo-op!

Me on former bridge thing . . . or I guess I would have been under the bridge if it was still there . . . logistics o.o

Me caught off guard (Erin does this quite a bit . . . )

This is the Hsinchu City Gate

A lot of young people hang out there and play music and decently dance to it.

(The next 3 pictures are at the gate)

Me caught off guard again . . . I like it . . .

It's the kind of artsy I like: stone + rod-iron :D

(we might have gone a little overboard with the sepia . . .

old stuff = sepia right?)

Well then you really do just get carried away. These were taken in a tunnel leading away from the gate that was lined with dingy mirrors so we took advantage of being able to see what the camera saw!

Erin Shaw and Me

. . . well I guess sepia wasn't the only thing we got carried away with . . .

Next is the story of the rose and sunflower:

The first thing that happened after I met up with Erin at the train station was a bunch of high school kids surrounding us (attempting to use their English skills) asking us to buy flowers for for charity for 100NT (3ish USD). Well the rose was just so cute, and it is my favorite flower. After that we were continually bombarded with other groups from the same high school. I would just show my rose and they would stop asking me, but wouldn't stop with Erin. I was the one who finally gave in and bought Erin a sunflower (it seems like her). So do you think they stopped asking? Why only one you should have two or three . . . . You gotta hand it to their persistence ;)

. . . and I was even wearing rose shaped earrings . . . can we say fate?

Then there was this great little park bench, just right for a photo of of smelling the rose(s) . . . I should have bought two!

Erin with her sunflower. It looked great with her purple shirt!

Yah, I don't know . . . .

Of course, a trip wouldn't be complete without random people asking you to take a picture with them . . . the thing that gets me is that they were foreigners too, they were from the Philippines!

Well I am in Asia, so I shouldn't be surprised when I see ads with celebrities I know, but three random Japanese ones in one ad . . . rock that on!!!

It was the sugar on top of a fabulous day :D

Miura Haruma, ? ?, Oguri Shun, and Eita