Letter 16: Taipei Game Show, the Trip to Taichung, Chinese New Year, the Trip to Tokyo

Greetings, Tim! Long time no see!



It's been about a month since last letter, and I had a nice winter vacation. What did you do during this period? I had done four major activities: Attend Taipei International Game Show, Travel to Taichung with senior high school classmates, Had meals with my family and relatives on Lunar New Year and Travel to Tokyo with junior high school classmates.

First of all, attend Taipei International Game Show on January 20th and 21st. I want to introduce this great event to you first. Taipei International Game Show is an annual international exhibition of video game industry, including mainstream and indie game companies that is often held in Taipei World Trade Center. On this year's TGS, some famous game companies like Playstation, Sega, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco Taiwan, MadHead, YouTube Gaming, Google Play Games, and e-sport equipment or virtual reality device companies like HyperX from Kingston and Vive from HTC, and of course, the world's largest live streaming video platform company, Twitch Interactive Inc., had attended this event. Among these company's stands, my favorite is Twitch. Watching live streamers streaming (especially playing games on Twitch) is my main hobby. I think it's quite hard for you to understand this because I don't know if people around you know or are doing this activity too. Twitch joined Taipei Game Show last year, and because of its success, they expanded the scale of their stand and there were more activities such as merchandise store (must queue to buy), live streamers' session with fans (must queue to meet), live stream everything (including introducing new games, chat, interviewing foreign game developers and even eating lunch) that is hosted by famous live streamers in Taiwan, English live streaming and Japanese live streaming. Here are some pictures:

A corner of merchandise store.

This is live streamers' rest area. It's basically like a small zoo.

With no doubt they are famous live streamers in Taiwan, if you want to meet each of them you have to take at least an hour queuing!

Live streaming lunch time.

The other thing I want to introduce to you (though it takes lots of lines) is a Taiwanese survival horror historic video game, Detention (返校, literally "Return to School"). It's a 2D atmospheric horror side-scroller game that is developed by a Taiwanese indie game company, Red Candle Games. Its story is set in 1960s Taiwan under martial law. People at that time don't have the freedom of speech, assembly, and can't even read some of the foreign and domestic books. The main character, Ray, went on a journey of finding her inner voice, her real identity and her power of love after going through many serious events that had affected her crudely. This game was so success that it receive "overwhelming positive" feedbacks (2759 reviews) on Steam within just a month. I myself like this game so much because the story combines only a little horror content, but more Taiwanese traditional Taoism elements and historical events of Taiwan under martial law and also precisely expressed how did people that time face the situation and how did they act. What's more, this game brings a lot of players back to high school memories. This game has English edition, and it only cost 10 USD to own it. Click this for more information including trailer. Below are some pictures.

I went to TGS for second day only for this. Besides, she is so charming and I don't know why, I think only the players know what I feel.

Are you waiting for entry or getting a ticket to hometown in China?

YouTube Gaming stands, them and Google Play Games' stand host some live streamings too.

Basically, where there are live streamers, there are fans.

Playstation's stand. There are people playing games on VR, new game advertisements and other games that can be demoed.

They looked like they are doing some evil experiments. By the way, I forgot to mention that this is my third time attending Taipei Game Show.

And that's basically what I did in Taipei International Game Show. Secondly, right after I went to TGS, I traveled to Taichung with William, Candy and Melody for two days on January 23rd and 24th. Actually we didn't have much plan for this trip because all of us just wanted to chill and walk around this city that we have less chance to visit. Since we didn't go to many attractions, I'll just put pictures by sequence and tell their stories.

He wanted to be a model, but I guess he failed.

Tasty noodles we had on Yizhong (literally means First High School) Street, which is a very famous shopping area in downtown Taichung.

Sugarcoated fruit on stick.

Below are some pictures we took in Taichung Park.

Imitation game.

He must do handstand anywhere.

 Unknown meaning No.1.

 Unknown meaning No.2.

I put my camera on a rock then I set a 15-second-timer and ran for 20 meters to take this picture.

Romantic?

Then we headed for 台中第四信用合作社(Literally "Taichung Fourth Credit Cooperative") for ice cream,

And went to the famous Fengjia Night Market.

And on the morning of the next day, we went to Taichung Folklore Park.

Then we had lunch at "for Farm Burger".

 

And then we returned to Taipei in evening. Basically it's very fresh because I traveled with my senior high classmate but at the same time it's not fresh at all because this isn't the first time I travel with only friends.

The next activity coming up is Lunar New Year. Because my grandma(Father's mother)'s house is about 1.5 km from my house and my grandpa and grandma(Mother's father and mother)'s house is about 20 km from house so it doesn't take long time for us to visit them. I stayed at my grandma(more close one)'s house on New Year's Eve and the first day. According to tradition, the dinner of New Year's Eve is the most important, but less relatives came to my grandma's house (only me, my mom and dad, my uncle and aunt (my dad's older brother and his wife), my grandma.), so we eat less too. But there were about 20 people in my grandma's house the next day, so we ate a lot. Now let's take a look at our meal.

New Year's Eve's dinner.

New Year's day's lunch.

I didn't take picture when I had dinner with my mom's family because we ate outside.

The relatives and my family members' entertainment is to sing karaoke, and I'm not interested to it, so I played with laptop and surfed the net, still. Basically the main activity during the six days of  Lunar New Year holiday is eating and eating.

Right after the holiday passed, on the sixth day of New Year, February 2nd, I started my journey to Tokyo with three of my friends, who are also my junior high classmates. This trip to Tokyo is not focused on visiting attractions, but shopping, because travelers are four high school students(without any adults). The trip lasted for six days and five nights, It sounds long, but time flies. I wish I can share the story to you as detail as possible because the due date is tomorrow(Thursday) and it's already 21:40 now.

First, the flight is on 9:00 at Songshan Airport (Not Taoyuan, this airport is a downtown one), so we have to leave at six and take MRT to there.

Me and my friend's luggage.

Our boarding passes.

Our airplane of the flight to Tokyo.

This is the train station near our hotel, Uguisudani.

 We (four people) booked two rooms like this. It's super small and we have much luggage. But it's quite cozy, though.

 On the first day, we went to Akihabara first. Akihabara is the holy land of "Otaku"(Literally"The home" in Japanese, people who are very interested in ACG-Anime, Comic, Games.) from all over the world. This shopping district sells all stuff you can think of related to the Otaku culture and often holds many activities of hot video games and anime, there are even many "Maid Cafe"s in this district!

 We had Ichiran Ramen then. It's also very famous in Japan and all over the world.

Literally means " This drop (of ramen soup) is the best pleasure." Ichiran thinks you enjoyed the soup because you finished it all and had this drop left.

On the next day, we originally planned to go to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha in Koutoku-in and had seafood at Enoshima, but we slept until 10 and didn't have enough time to go there, so we went to Sensou-ji right away.

Sensou-ji is an ancient Buddhist temple, and it's Tokyo's oldest one, was established in 628.

Snack's fair.

This is Hozoumon, literally means the Treasure Gate, is the second gate of the temple.

This is Kaminarimon, literally means the Thunder Gate, is the first gate and the more famous one.

And we visited the tallest structure in Japan, the 634-meter-tall Tokyo Skytree, that is across from Sumida River.

Tokyo Skytree with Yoshino Cherry blossom.

We went to the Tenbo Deck on the height of 350 meters first, and the admission fee is 1,540 yen, approx. 13.55 USD. And this is the view.

Then we got the access to the Tenbo Galleria on the height of 455 meters then, it took us extra 820 yen (approx. 7.2 USD) each person.  By the way, we purchased high school student ticket. The shadow of Skytree might be the biggest shadow that I've ever seen.

We went to Akihabara again that night so I won't introduce further more. On the third day we went to Ningyocho, where is famous for the Japanese TV Series "Shinzanmono" and the sweet treat Ningyouyaki.

These are Ningyouyaki, "Nin-gyou" is literally "Human shape" in Japanese.

We walked around a while and we headed for Ginza, a large fashion shopping district.

This is the world's largest Uniqlo, and it has 12 floors. We spent about one and a half hour to finish visiting it.

Nissan Vision Granturismo that I spotted at "Nissan Crossing".

We went to Omotesando and Minami-Aoyama in evening, Omotesando is a hustling road whose sides are filled with luxury brand shop. In contrast, Minami-Aoyama is a more quiet neighborhood, many fine and trendy stores are located there.

This is how Minami Aoyama neighborhood looks like.

And this is Omotesando.

In the night of the third day, we went to Roppongi Hills, a office, residential tower complex for its observatory, Tokyo City View, and of course, night view.

The observatory is 52 stories tall, so I can see what's going on on the ground with my 50x optical zoom camera.

Time flies, on the fourth day, we first went to Meiji Shrine. Meiji Shrine is also very famous and I like it very much, its public walking area is very large and people can walk around there for a long time. Meiji Shrine is established in 1920, eight years after the death of Emperor Meiji and six years after the death of Empress Shoken, whom the shrine dedicates to. This shrine is the most popular in Tokyo and was also visited by many politicians, such as George W. Bush and Hilary Clinton.

 The long, quiet passage.

 The big Torii, literally bird abode, is a Japanese traditional gate that is often found at the entrance of a Shrine. It marks the transition from the normal world to the sacred place.

The main shrine. You can throw some coins into the slot and make some wishes to god.

We went to Harajuku and Omotesando again after Meiji Shrine, basically shopping. And we went to Ikebukuro and Shibuya in evening. 

 Harajuku's Takeshita street.

Ikebukuro's Sunshine 60 street.

Shibuya Ekimae(Station front) pedestrian crossing. This is the largest pedestrian crossing in the world, each day there are 500,000 people crossing here and 3,000 people cross each green sign.

Actually we went to Ichiran for the second time in Shibuya. And after Shibuya, we went to a wholesale discount mart at Setagaya Ward, a residential district to satisfy our addiction of shopping in a supermarket.

On the fifth day, because we didn't go to Kamakura and we got up late again so we had to find a farther place to go, and we chose Yokohama. Yokohama is a important harbor city near Tokyo. 

 Yokohama seaside.

The famous Yokohama Chinatown, though restaurants there still speaks Japanese.

Then we went to Akihabara again later that day, and we went back to Taiwan on the sixth day. That's basically what we did during this trip, but I didn't mention all the funny and silly thing happened in this journey, there are a bunch of them! Of course it was really tired traveling with three friends and I even caught cold on the fourth day, but it's still an unforgettable trip. I posted a post when I was on the plane to Taipei and I wrote "Challenge: Come back in half a year." I hope I can make it, go back to Tokyo before July! And that's basically all major activities I did in this vacation (I didn't do anything after I came back because I'm sick). Writing this is tiring and it took me hours. Though it's super long and you might want to ignore all of them but I suggest you to read this nice and slowly. I guess the picture of the week will be cancelled this week because the picture is way too much.

Why I took whole day doing nothing and took off at evening? It's a mysterious question.

Sincerely,

Melvyn Chou, 16/02/2016.