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Poagao's Journal
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Journal on an ex-American Taiwanese, stories of filmmaking, Tai-chi, band shows and just walking around.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'walking around'
Hualian and Jiaoxi
Over the past week, Chenbl has been showing a group of his friends, three from Malaysia and one from France, around Taiwan. Bored with their continual hot weather, the Malaysians were eager to experience low-temperature traveling, and they tossed asi...
A Saturday jaunt
As it was raining in Taipei this morning, Ray, Chenbl and I headed south in search of blue skies. We found them in Miaoli, where the weather was brilliant. Our first stop was an old unused train station that has become a tourist attraction. We ignore...
Ueno and Roppongi
I took the JR to Nippori this morning, walking up the hill to the west side of the station to find the “Suzuki” guesthouse. Overlooking the rail station is convenient and all, but the constant trains and announcements must get really irri...
Yokohama
I walked through the brilliant streets this morning to the big Shinjuku JR Station, which, with the smells of restaurants starting up and the rush of passengers on their way to work, reminded me somehow of the first day of elementary school. I was pl...
Shibuya and people who hate it.
I slept in this morning, puttering around my room and posting the previous day’s journal before finally heading out at noon. This time I walked around the other side of the park, through the alleys that skirt the edges, past old wooden houses a...
Flea market and Asagaya
The remaining donut in the box had gone stale yesterday morning when I got up, so I threw it out. That’s the last time I do the Krispy Kreme box thing, I think. It was Saturday, and I was meeting Louis near his house at Sendagaya Station, on th...
A camera museum, a river cruise and the Ginza
The sun was out again this morning. My destination was the JCII camera museum near the Imperial Palace park. I got off the subway at Kudanshita and walked through the mostly deserted neighborhood, taking pictures of construction crews lifting beams i...
Galleries
The cloudy weather today gave the city a different character, more somber and business-like. The colors were muted, the shadows gone. I walked eastwards from my hotel this morning, with no particular destination in mind. I came across a temple with a...
A day of photography
There were some clouds in the sky when I got up this morning, but they were gone by the time I made my way outside around 10am. I walked to a nearby free wifi spot I’d found online to upload a rather mediocre picture from my phone to flickr to ...
An evil lair and the other end of the webcam.
The weather was much improved when I woke up this morning, a cold yet cloudless blue sky greeting me when I set out for Yotsuya Station. I’d worked out on the map that it was the closet station to the New Otani Hotel, which was featured as the ...
My first time
I went to my first gay pride parade yesterday. For a long time I sniffed at the idea, in the opinion that such parades did nothing but hurt the image of the gay community. However, last week’s anti-gay demonstration in Taipei shook the complace...
A couple of shows
Our first show last weekend was at Amuse in Taichung again. Much like last time, it was crowded, smokey, noisy and fun for the most part. When I wasn’t on stage I had to cower in a little corner trying to avoid the waiters rushing back and fort...
A rather frantic weekend
I had to catch a bullet train down to Chiayi on Saturday afternoon for a gig with the Muddy Basin Ramblers that night. I was the first person on the platform at Taipei Main Station, even though the train was leaving in 15 minutes, leading me to wonde...
A boat trip and Ennio Morricone
I didn’t want to go home immediately when I arrived back in Taipei from Tainan; it was too nice a day, so Chenbl and I walked up Dihua Street, which was much less crowded than I recall it being before Chinese New Year, and over to the Dadaochen...
Tainan trip, part 2
The first thing I did on Saturday morning was take pictures of the curtains. The air outside was smoggy, but the sun was out. We walked from the hotel back downtown, passing a construction site. I took some shots from the sidewalk as a guard walked o...
Tainan trip
I took the high-speed rail down to Tainan on Friday after meeting Chenbl at the Taipei station. The Tainan station is far away from the city, of course; all of the HSR stations, apart from those in Kaohsiung and Taipei, are seemingly out in the middl...
A fortunate detour
I didn’t feel like walking up the usual hill this morning. It was kind of gray and cool, and I felt I should walk up Yongye Road instead, dodging the cars as there’s no real space for pedestrians to walk due to its narrow width. I turned ...
A Day in Madrid
I slept ok despite the more or less constant laughing and singing in the streets below my balcony. The hotel breakfast consisted of some cereal, milk and fruit bars laid out on the counter by the door. Gordon was busy trying to arrange his flight to ...
Sick in Seville
We’d arranged a trip to Tangiers in the morning, though it was raining and blustery. It was worth a shot, and all the travel agents said it was ok, though these were of course the same travel agents who said Gibraltar would be ok. As soon as we had...
The Sunless Coast
It was raining yet again when I opened my balcony doors in Malaga. I’d been awakened by singing downstairs that was either remarkably drunk people sounding like cats in heat, or just cats in heat. I hadn’t even unpacked, so hauling stuff back dow...
Sitges
We got a happy waiter for breakfast this morning on La Rambla. He was talkative, said “Thank you” about 37 times and let us know that he understood us perfectly. I don’t think he was crazy, as he is productively employed, unlike the ranting guy...
The good and bad of Barcelona
I awoke to a brilliant blue, cloudless sky outside my room yesterday. The air was cold but clear as we headed out down La Rambla towards the harbor, stopping for breakfast along the way. Ordering for Gordon, who was getting his laundry done, I very q...
Leaving Paris
I must be the only person in Paris wearing red, I thought as we walked down to the metro through the crowd of people dressed in blacks and browns yesterday morning. Eventually I did spot another, but it was a bike courier in uniform. We took the subw...
Notre Dame and Monmartre
On the way to Notre Dame, I noticed that the Paris subways often require the passengers to open the train doors. I realized this about five seconds after I should have after staring dumbly at strangely non-opening doors of a train on the platform, on...
Paris: the Louvre and the river
I was feeling tired and a little cranky as we walked out of the metro and onto the huge courtyard of the Louvre palace yesterday morning. It was cold and unexciting. I snapped a few shots, but my heart wasn’t really in it. Paris is already beautifu...
Back and forth
Breakfast was on the top floor of the hotel this morning for some reason. Better views, but colder eggs. Despite the cold weather, I decided to go back to Kyoto once more before I leave. The weather was clear and bright when the train departed from J...
Christmas Day in Osaka
I arranged to meet another Internet friend, Taku, at Namba Station at noon. It had been raining earlier but the sun eventually shone through the haze. I’d thought that noon would give me plenty of time to get up and running after my late night ...
Wednesday: Kyoto
The weather yesterday was brilliant, the sky a clear, bright blue, and I decided to spend the day in Kyoto. I got on one of the gleaming trains (Taiwan can’t even keep its bullet train clean, much less other trains; here every train, taxi and d...
Tuesday in Osaka
I decided to make due without wearing long underwear this morning when I left the hotel this morning after a mediocre breakfast. Although I could feel the cold through my jeans as I dodged bicyclists on one of the many bridged over the Yodo River, I ...
Three degrees of photography
The fact that I’m currently uploading pictures I took the day Sandman’s son was born over two weeks ago got me to thinking about different levels of photography. The birth, by the way, was amazing; I’d never seen anything like it, t...
