Hiromi Usagi!

I wrote how much I love coffee before. I worked at Peet’s coffee and loved the work and enjoyed esspresso all the time. I think that they have the best coffee in the U.S. But among my friends I am know as a tea crazy! I went to Taiwan mainly because I wanted to go to tea houses. I read a book about Taiwanese tea and tasted high mountain tea at the Ten Ren tea in NYC a few years ago and loved it. I moved to Chicago and found Ten Ren tea in Chicago too! That was very exciting to me and I have been buying tea from them since. Ten Ren tea is a Taiwanise tea shop which carries other Chinese tea and Japanese tea as well. I love their Rose tea, but not the rose we see everywhere, but a different kind. It is good for women because it warms you up and helps circulation. It tastes great!

Ella from Taiwan contacted Harper when his website was shown in a Taiwanese TV show. They become friends and talk online all the time. Matiss’s friend from high school, Chad and Chris moved to Taiwan to teach English. I hang out with Chad a couple of times in Chicago before. He studies Japanese too. So since I know a few good people in Taiwan and love Taiwanese tea and always wanted to go there, I did! It was January 2004. I went back to Japan for Winter vacation and went to Taiwan for a week while I was in Japan. In that way, airfare is chearper than buying a separate ticket, like buying a round trip to Japan and a round trip from Japan to Taiwan. Instead, I bought one round trip ticket to Taiwan and stop-over at Japan. I stayed at Chad and Chris’s place. It was fun and they showed me around every night and the weekend. I really thank Chad and Chris!

Of course, I hang out with Ella too. Harper never met her, so it was very exciting to both Harper and me, and of course Ella too. I remember that I called her when I got to Taipei, she sounded very excited on the phone. We met a few days later and she brought her friend Selena and we all hang out. They took me a nice area by water front and a night market. We had a pink tofu stuffed with some noodle which my guidebook didn’t include. We also had sour plum juice. I think it was a little bit smorky too. It was refreshing. We had a crab apple which I never had before. We took Pri-cla–a sticker picture thing, which is on my fridge now. It was so much fun, and they were super super sweet. I want them my sisters!

There were a bunch of yummy snacks. They are all tasty and healthy. It was definately vegan friendly. I loved ??Tofwa?–I don’t know how to spell it in English– It is a tofu pudding or soy milk pudding which comes with toppings you can choose and a sweet ginger syrup. I love ?? for a topping (looks like a clear jello chips?), but it is actually a kind of mushroom or fungus, I think. I don’t even know if I spelled it right in Chinese character). Ella shows me a vegetarian word in Chinese-??, so I wrote it on my memo pad and showed it every where I go to eat. Thank god, I know Chinese characters! When people did’t speak either English or Japanese, I just wrote some Chinese characters, and they understood. That was amazing to me. I could read some of the signs or guess what they are. It was funny one time when I was talking to Chad over the phone to decide where we should meet up. He fist told me the place in Chinese and I didn’t understand because I don’t know Chinese, but we both know Chinese Characters, so he said some subway stations, and I asked like, “what are the characters?”, and he said like ‘west’ and ‘gate’ in English and I got it. Neat huh? Subway was very clean and convenient and easy. They announce 4 diffrent languages, including English. I think English, Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Hakka.

It was warm in Taiwan, although the owner of the tea shop told me that it was very cold that day. I just wore a long sleeve shirt and was fine. I went to at least 2 tea houses every day. Taiwanese tea houses are amazing. Interior decoration is very nice, not too showy, but very clam and minimal. One place has a nice garden. All of the tea houses are quiet. Price isn’t cheap, but you can make at least 5 or 7 cups of tea from one tea pot. Many people were quietly reading or chatting, simply enjoying their tea time. I felt okay to go there by myself and I always had a lot of questions….I am such a dork as far as tea goes…

There are so many different kind of tea, and I tried many kinds and I wrote down how they tasted like. This blog is getting a long, so I will write about tea in my next blog.