Tanabata, meaning “evening of the seventh,” is known as the Star Festival and is a Japanese festival originating from the Chinese Qixi Festival. According to legend, the Milky Way separates the dieties Orihime and Hikoboshi who are represented by the stars Vega and Altair. They can only meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.
His daycare has his class pictures posted. Forrest is the little shrimp on the top left!Part of the festival was the Ginza Market Jam where local bands played.
During the festival, five teenage girls became best friends with Forrest. They loved watching him play and dance. By the end of the festival, they were dancing with him!
Now in the middle of summer, blueberries are in peak season. We went to a local farm to go blueberry picking. For only about $4.50 you can pick and eat as many blueberries right off the tree that you want. They also had many varieties of blueberry trees so you can try them all and find your favorites. Forrest got tons of fiber here!
Forrest and Maggie looking at koi fish.Noodles and ice cream!
The local lake near us is Lake Ogawara. Every year there is a festival to celebrate the lake and pray for safety for the year. Forrest loved the shows, dancing, food, and kakigori or shaved ice during the hot day.
It’s Fourth of July, and we are celebrating with doing the annual Misawa Mud Run! This is an annual 5K mud-filled obstacle course! It took forever to clean off afterwards but it was fun and great workout.
After hearing so much about Taiwanese night markets and street food, we have been wanting to go to Taiwan. We will probably never live so close to Taiwan again so we decided to go!
The first day, we landed in Taipei and took the train from the airport to the city center. While on the train, Forrest started blowing kisses to a little girl sitting on the seat across from him. He is already a little player and he’s only 2! We checked into the hotel, got a little Family Mart dinner (tea eggs and braised pork instant noodles), and went to sleep!
Forrest gets his own seat on the airplane now!Four hour flight but still full of energy after landing.The view of Taipei Main Station from our hotel room.
The next morning, we ate Taiwanese breakfast. This is a traditional breakfast that involves soy milk, you tiao (or fried dough sticks), eggs in crepes, radish pancakes, xiao long bao dumplings, and all sorts of other goodies. Generally it wouldn’t involve all all these, but this may be our only chance to try all the amazing foods Taiwan has to offer!
Delicious hot soy milk!
Enough eating! Time for some sight seeing! We went to see the Chiang Kai Shek memorial, up 89 steps to represent his 89 years of life.
All that walking in the Taipei heat made us thirsty! Under the Chiang Kai Shek memorial was a huge exhibition and museum hall with some restaurants and a boba tea shop.
The museum was pretty great with wax models, robots, minatures, and lots of info about Chiang Kai Shek. He’s.. kind of a big deal in Taiwan.
Every afternoon, we went back to the hotel for Forrest’s mid-day nap. When he awoke around 3pm, our hotel had free snacks and drinks including hot milk (Forrest’s favorite!) and longyan jujube tea (my favorite).
The egg tarts are called “dan ta” in Chinese and Forrest learned this Chinese word very quickly. He requested “dan ta” every day!
In the evening, we went to a night market! There were around 6 big night markets in Taipei (and more smaller ones) and each had its own vibe, charm and foods. Some of them even had Michelin Guide street foods and we made sure to try them all. Food in Taiwan was exceptionally cheap as well, with a full meal from a night market costing around $3 USD.
This was our first night market, our last night market, and our favorite night market. Small and quaint, not too busy, but lots of excellent food. Also opens at 4:30pm so we can eat and still get Forrest to bed on time!
Every day we just found a new neighborhood to explore in the morning and another one at night (since we had mid-day Forrest nap breaks at the hotel in city center to break up the day). One of the places we found was the Bo-Pi-Liao Historic Street which was an industrial area built by the Japanese during their occupation of Taiwan that was renovated and is actively being used. We found this to be a theme in Taiwan where they renovate and use old buildings rather than demolish them.
Along our travels, we found a temple. In Taiwan, they have the same religion as in Fujian, China, since that is where most of the original people of Taiwan came from. Leanne was able to teach us a lot about the temples and rituals.
Forrest learned how pray at the temple from watching other people. He would then go to every prayer spot to pray!
One of the big hikes we did in Taiwan was Elephant Mountain. Forrest actually hiked up it quite a bit, but we mostly had to carry him. The view from the top was excellent and we could see the whole city.
Even better than the view at Elephant Mountain was the food at Taipei 101, the huge tower in the background.
A delicious tofu and peanut dessert!Taipei 101
Of course we went up Taipei 101 to check out the night view.
The next morning we had a Taiwanese take on the Japanese onigiri, or rice ball. One of the highest rated places near us was Master of Rice Ball, which had a huge line. These rice balls had tons of fillings inside, around 8 different items, yet somehow it really worked!
For a day adventure, we went up the Maokong mountain where the best tea in Taiwan is grown. We took a gondola ride to the top of the mountain and hiked at the top, stopping at tea houses, tea fields, and restaurants specializing in tea-infused foods on the way.
The tea leaves are all picked by hand.Forrest ate almost all of these!
One of the neighborhoods we enjoyed the most in Taipei was Ximending, known for its youth culture, quirkiness, and street performers.
The famous repurposed Japanese designed Red House Theater, now used for little crafty shops.Forrest loved watching the street performers!I’m not sure what a lot of these are but whatever we got was pretty good!
We did a tour of one of the geothermal areas around Taipei.
At night we of course went to another night market and tried more Michelin Guide foods!
This place had delicious herbal lamb soup.Forrest ate so so many clams.
Though we certainly ate a ton of street foods, we made the special effort to go to the world famous Din Tai Fung. We were able to score a table! Time to feast!
Forrest ate so many xiao long bao (dumplings)!! We actually had to order more because he ate so many!
Another tour we did was Yehliu Geopark, known for its uniquely shaped rocks carved by the ocean and wind.
We got Forrest to smile and look at the camera by holding a little rock next to the lens, which is why he outstretched his hand in so many pictures 😛
One of the coolest places we went to was Jiufen, a mountain village that felt like being in a Studio Ghibli movie. In face, this place is felt to be the inspiration for the village in Spirited Away.
After Jiufen, we went to Shifen, another village. This village is known for their lanterns on which you write wishes and send it to the sky. It is said the gods see your wishes and make them come true.
Forrest loved feeding the koi.
While wandering different neighborhoods of Taipei and hiking around, we stumbled into the famous Taipei Grand Hotel. This is where I want to stay when I come back!
We spent way too long in this hotel enjoying their very cool AC while Forrest kept running up and down stairs and slopes. At night we went to more night markets.
Having seen just about every neighborhood in Taipei and running around to new places everyday, it felt good to find one calm spot where we could sit and relax and spend the day. We found that at the Dadaocheng Wharf. They repurposed shipping containers into food trucks. We spent hours here eating, relaxing, and walking along the river. Nearby there was a small park where older women were singing karaoke. Forrest cheered at all their songs! The old ladies thought Forrest was so cute, they sang him “You Are My Sunshine” and gave him lots of candies and snacks!
Taiwan was such an amazing country to visit, and we hope to visit again!
Since Forrest was turning 2 and I was turning 35 just one day apart, we decided to spend 4 days at Disney together (two at Tokyo Disneyland and two at Tokyo Disney Sea). Forrest had an absolute blast!
To get Forrest hyped to go to Disney, we told him we were going to “Mickey’s house” (a.k.a. the Disney hotel). He got very excited by this, and at the airport, while looking outside the airplane window, off the plane, and in the bus to the hotel, he kept asking if we were at Mickey’s house yet. The next day, he got very excited to go to “Mickey’s park,” and then once in the park, to see the “Mickey show.”
When we were outside the park waiting to get in, he peered into the park and yelled “Mickey!”
Tokyo Disneyland HotelTokyo Disney Sea HotelEvery afternoon Forrest would come back to the hotel for a nap. Sleep hard and play hard!You have to have a turkey leg at Disney!Electric parade.
Forrest is almost 2 years old and this is his second easter. Every year at Misawa Air Base during Easter, there is a huge Easter egg hunt. Compared to last year, he is actually getting the eggs this time!
