Two Quick Trips – and Christmas!

So what do you do after you’ve been moving from one city to another every couple of days for 2½ weeks?  Do it some more!  I spent a few days in Taipei and a couple of days in Yokohama before settling in Kyoto for a couple of months.  On the way, I discovered Christmas in Japan. 

Chiwen (Owl-mouth) gargoyle, Confucius Temple

I joined my New York friend, Joyce, In Taipei for a few days before she went on to Kaohsiung to give a lecture.  I found the city to be a study in contrasts.  It is a modern, developed country – think of all the labels saying “made in Taiwan” – but is also something of a backwater, somewhat ignored and forgotten.  Joyce said the Chinese have systematically had Taiwan “de-listed” from various global indices, so there’s little readily available information on a number of topics. 

Taiwan is predominantly Chinese, with brightly colored and elaborately decorated temples.  But it is also Taiwanese, an island of an independent people with their own style of Chinese food.  Because it was under Japanese control for fifty years until 1945, there is some Japanese influence.  But it is distinctly not Japanese in its behavior, which is louder and more aggressive.  In Taipei, people don't stand patiently in line; rather they push and elbow you away.   

Taiwan National Concert Hall

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Museum

I remember Taiwan as being the place where Chiang Kai Shek went after the Communists took control of China.  That is true, but what I didn’t realize is that the Taiwanese consider him to have been a dictator and were quite happy when he died.  Still, there is a grand, weighty, almost reverential museum in his honor, with the equally substantial National Theatre and Concert Hall on either side.  It was interesting to note the people who visited Chiang:  there were photographs of him shaking hands with Nixon, Johnson, and Reagan, along with the presidents of Nicaragua and other smaller countries, but none from Europe that I recall.

Taipei 101 (Google photo)

Like every city, Taipei is a mix of old and new buildings.  It has Taipei 101, the tallest tower in the world until Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai in 2010.  The bamboo-shaped tower is surrounded by new skyscrapers filled with offices, shops, restaurants and apartments.  Elsewhere, there are lovely little areas of galleries, shops and restaurants in well-kept low buildings.  I also saw more run-down areas, where concrete buildings looked unkempt, seemingly uninhabited, and ready to fall down. I was told that the buildings are left to decay, and when they collapse developers move in to redo the area. 

Taipei has a modern and efficient subway system that whisks its 3 million people around.  It is like the newest Tokyo lines:  sparkling stations, Plexiglas walls to prevent you from falling onto the tracks, and quiet, smoothly running trains.  And it’s cheap:  a ride costs about 70 cents, which you can’t beat.  For more local travel, there are motor scooters, seemingly one for every citizen.  The scooters move up to the front at traffic lights, and then buzz off ahead of the cars when the light changes.  They look and sound like low-flying bees.

Yokohama also has its new area, this one near the port, with its Landmark Tower, not nearly as tall as Taipei 101, apartment and office buildings, shops and restaurants.  I was there because of Yokohama Quilt Week, an exhibit held in the Pacifico Exhibition Hall down by Yokohama’s waterfront.  I’m a quilter, so of course I would go, just as I had gone to see the lovely Quilt Nihon show in Tokyo in the spring.

Quilt Detail

6-inch miniature quilt

The exhibition was similar to the larger American quilt shows, with traditional and contemporary art quilts, theme-based exhibits, and lots of vendors.  In size, it was about a third that of Houston’s International Quilt Festival.  Patchwork quilting is an American traditional craft form, and the Japanese have adopted it, using the same patterns, though often piecing and quilting entirely by hand.  The quilts varied in quality, with the prize-winning quilts being quite good and other “volunteer quilts” as they were called, being less so.  They also ranged in size from three gigantic ones that hung like banners from the ceiling to those that were 6” square.  The show featured exhibits by an Italian artist, Marian Fruehauf, that was quite interesting, and also the stunning Studio Art Quilt Association’s (SAQA) trunk show of 44 miniature quilts (Google “SAQA trunk show” or go to http://www.SAQA.com).

My Japanese friend, Shigeko, came to visit the quilt show with me and then we went back to her home in Kamakura.  There we went to her husband’s Polaris gallery, a small space surrounded by trees up the hill from their house.  Polaris had a felted art installation by Hinako SATOH.  Like other works at Polaris, it was an installation that was both inside and outside the glass gallery, incorporating the nature outside. Satoh-san, her husband, and some friends were there, so we celebrated with a sushi dinner in the gathering room upstairs.

Yokohama presented its own fun food experience at Cupnoodle Museum, which celebrates the work of Momofuku ANDO, the creator of ramen noodles in a cup, those ubiquitous Styrofoam cups of dried squiggly noodle meals where you add hot water, wait a few minutes, and eat.  I learned how Ando invented ramen to provide an inexpensive, easy meal for the working class, then marketed and expanded it worldwide, including creating ramen used in space travel.  Along with others, I got to make my own ramen, selecting my desired ingredients as the assembly line added noodles to the cup, sealed, wrapped, and delivered it with a smile.

As I headed back to the subway through the shopping complex near Landmark Tower, the lights suddenly went dark.  Power outage?  No.  Soon I heard music, and not just any music, Christmas music.  Next the large, artificial Christmas tree in front of me lit up, first with little red and yellow lights, then with a swirly flower, strings of lights, and finally the whole tree, to a tinkly rendition of the “Hallelujah Chorus”. When I asked Shigeko about this holiday in a Buddhist and Shinto culture, she said the Japanese love festivals and have adopted Christmas as another one to celebrate.  It’s also a time for giving presents, she said for children, though I suspect everyone participates.  So the season has begun in earnest, even here.