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[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/mcraohearcade-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
By: Maggie Greene
My first tourist experience in Taipei: Jetlagged, homesick, and entirely out of my element, my friends decided that Raohe night market would be a good place to spend the evening, and besides - you haven't really seen anything of Taipei unless you've been to a night market. We packed onto a crowded bus, and dark streets - save for the bright fluorescent tubes in fan-like patterns that mark betel nut stands - slipped by. Unlike the most famous, or most touristy, night market in Taipei, Shilin, Raohe is a bit off the beaten track: no easy access via MRT. It may have been the first tourist night market created, but it's not the most visited these days.
We arrived, walked into the masses of people, bought food, wandered from little store to little store. We said hello to the arthritic and cataract ridden Shiba Inu hanging out at a toy store. We looked at bag knockoffs, 300NT pairs of cute shoes, clothes with wacky Engrish scrawled across the front, 100-in-1 game systems, handhelds in colors I'd only seen on blogs like Kotaku previously, and ... vintage video games?
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/raohevintage-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
Taiwan is hardly a place people think of as being a video game mecca. Off the radar for most big companies, off the radar of most people - but there are little gems tucked around the island, and especially tucked in Taipei. Where else can you eat your way through some of the best snack foods the world has to offer while checking out the latest offerings from Japan and vintage video games and more capsule toy machines than you can shake a stick at? There is the double-edged sword of shopping or browsing in Taipei: you never know what you're going to find, either because the stock is constantly changing or the store has moved (or closed up shop permanently).
There are few physical traces of the Japanese occupation left in Taipei. The old quarters full of traditional Japanese architecture were leveled to make way for modern high rises that were supposed to be temporary, but wound up being permanent. There's still Ximending, though, which makes up for what it lacks in a visual Japanese look in a pure onslaught of painfully hip culture, a lot of it originating in Japan. Along with that comes video games, anime - wall scrolls and figurines and the latest and greatest games and systems.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/mcjapanhouse-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
There are the famous stores in the underground malls that snake along beneath Taipei Main Station, specializing in vintage stuff. A little less hit or miss than Raohe, a lot more expensive. The machines where you can play to win a DS for a mere 20,000NT - I guess the fun is in the gambling, not in the system you could pick up cheaper elsewhere. The unassuming 'malls' that hold a jumble of perfume stores, clothing shops, stands selling bags and shoes, and video games - lots and lots of video games. Gundam Base Taipei, where even those of us who aren't into Gundam at all can be impressed by the row upon row of models and the numbers of people drooling over them.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/gundambasetaipei1-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
It may not be a gaming mecca, but gaming is out there. Kids congregate in public walkways with their handhelds. Nanjing East Road MRT Station has a little branch of Hot Dog Toys. Even my neighborhood, which is full of swanky lounges and boutiques catering to alternative aesthetic sensibilities, has three or four toy stores within a block or two of each other. The waiters' shirts at my favorite restaurant boasted a ton of logo patches, among them the PSP.
Bootlegging isn't as serious a problem in Taiwan as you'd find on the Mainland, but you can still catch glimpses of it - people saying the right words and getting to look at a print off that lists all the bootlegs available for purchase at a given store, police stopping in to ask a few pointed questions, and the 100-in-1 systems that I'm sure are violating just as many copyrights. There are stories about why Nintendo has held a grudge against Taiwan, having to do with bootlegging a few years back - one has to wonder about the truthfulness of such stories, but the absolute lack of Chinese language localizations do make a statement of some kind.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/mcximenpolice-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
There are a lot of things one takes for granted living in a city like Taipei: the availability of common snacks like runbing (a burrito-like rollup that I could happily eat every day for the rest of my life), the sound of fireworks coming from somewhere nearly everyday of the year, the fancy capsule toy machines and merchandise that are frequently just a 7-11 away. The fact that it just takes a short ride on the bus or the MRT, and you too can be eating buns stuffed with meat and spices, shaved ice covered with fruit, waffle cone-like pancakes spread with chocolate - all while taking a step back in time and adding to that Super Famicom collection you'll be selling on Ebay someday.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/xMmfengjia-thumb.JPG[/IMG]
[photo credits: first, third, fifth, sixth, MC Horng; final, Katherine Wai]
galleryPost('taipeitravelogue', 21, 'A Slice of Taiwan');
[IMG]http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/kotaku/full?i=rCPZOv[/IMG]
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By: Maggie Greene
My first tourist experience in Taipei: Jetlagged, homesick, and entirely out of my element, my friends decided that Raohe night market would be a good place to spend the evening, and besides - you haven't really seen anything of Taipei unless you've been to a night market. We packed onto a crowded bus, and dark streets - save for the bright fluorescent tubes in fan-like patterns that mark betel nut stands - slipped by. Unlike the most famous, or most touristy, night market in Taipei, Shilin, Raohe is a bit off the beaten track: no easy access via MRT. It may have been the first tourist night market created, but it's not the most visited these days.
We arrived, walked into the masses of people, bought food, wandered from little store to little store. We said hello to the arthritic and cataract ridden Shiba Inu hanging out at a toy store. We looked at bag knockoffs, 300NT pairs of cute shoes, clothes with wacky Engrish scrawled across the front, 100-in-1 game systems, handhelds in colors I'd only seen on blogs like Kotaku previously, and ... vintage video games?
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/raohevintage-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
Taiwan is hardly a place people think of as being a video game mecca. Off the radar for most big companies, off the radar of most people - but there are little gems tucked around the island, and especially tucked in Taipei. Where else can you eat your way through some of the best snack foods the world has to offer while checking out the latest offerings from Japan and vintage video games and more capsule toy machines than you can shake a stick at? There is the double-edged sword of shopping or browsing in Taipei: you never know what you're going to find, either because the stock is constantly changing or the store has moved (or closed up shop permanently).
There are few physical traces of the Japanese occupation left in Taipei. The old quarters full of traditional Japanese architecture were leveled to make way for modern high rises that were supposed to be temporary, but wound up being permanent. There's still Ximending, though, which makes up for what it lacks in a visual Japanese look in a pure onslaught of painfully hip culture, a lot of it originating in Japan. Along with that comes video games, anime - wall scrolls and figurines and the latest and greatest games and systems.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/mcjapanhouse-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
There are the famous stores in the underground malls that snake along beneath Taipei Main Station, specializing in vintage stuff. A little less hit or miss than Raohe, a lot more expensive. The machines where you can play to win a DS for a mere 20,000NT - I guess the fun is in the gambling, not in the system you could pick up cheaper elsewhere. The unassuming 'malls' that hold a jumble of perfume stores, clothing shops, stands selling bags and shoes, and video games - lots and lots of video games. Gundam Base Taipei, where even those of us who aren't into Gundam at all can be impressed by the row upon row of models and the numbers of people drooling over them.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/gundambasetaipei1-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
It may not be a gaming mecca, but gaming is out there. Kids congregate in public walkways with their handhelds. Nanjing East Road MRT Station has a little branch of Hot Dog Toys. Even my neighborhood, which is full of swanky lounges and boutiques catering to alternative aesthetic sensibilities, has three or four toy stores within a block or two of each other. The waiters' shirts at my favorite restaurant boasted a ton of logo patches, among them the PSP.
Bootlegging isn't as serious a problem in Taiwan as you'd find on the Mainland, but you can still catch glimpses of it - people saying the right words and getting to look at a print off that lists all the bootlegs available for purchase at a given store, police stopping in to ask a few pointed questions, and the 100-in-1 systems that I'm sure are violating just as many copyrights. There are stories about why Nintendo has held a grudge against Taiwan, having to do with bootlegging a few years back - one has to wonder about the truthfulness of such stories, but the absolute lack of Chinese language localizations do make a statement of some kind.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/mcximenpolice-thumb.jpg[/IMG]
There are a lot of things one takes for granted living in a city like Taipei: the availability of common snacks like runbing (a burrito-like rollup that I could happily eat every day for the rest of my life), the sound of fireworks coming from somewhere nearly everyday of the year, the fancy capsule toy machines and merchandise that are frequently just a 7-11 away. The fact that it just takes a short ride on the bus or the MRT, and you too can be eating buns stuffed with meat and spices, shaved ice covered with fruit, waffle cone-like pancakes spread with chocolate - all while taking a step back in time and adding to that Super Famicom collection you'll be selling on Ebay someday.
[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/07/xMmfengjia-thumb.JPG[/IMG]
[photo credits: first, third, fifth, sixth, MC Horng; final, Katherine Wai]
galleryPost('taipeitravelogue', 21, 'A Slice of Taiwan');
[IMG]http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/kotaku/full?i=rCPZOv[/IMG]
More...