Welcome back to Taiwan! Today we are coming to you from Beitou, a very popular day trip
destination from Taipei, known for its Hot Springs. We're here to explore the influence
of the Japanese on local architecture, and we do not have to look far to find our first Japanese
influenced building. This train station is as close to an original building as you can get!
It is comprised of 82% of the building's original materials, which is really amazing. This is the
Xinbeitou train station, the original train station that served the Beitou Hot Springs
back in the early 1900s. It was built by the Japanese, but interestingly enough,
this is not the original location. The building was actually moved to a cultural park in Taipei
for preservation. The city of Taipei negotiated with the landowners in order to move the Xinbeitou
train station back to its original home here in Beitou. It's just outside of the more modern
Xinbeitou train station, and the first thing that you come across when you visit this town.
The hot springs here in Beitou are Green Sulfur Springs, and they are so rare that
they're only found in two places in the world. Here in Beitou and in Japan - so
another Japanese connection. Can you just imagine how excited the Japanese were when
they discovered that incredibly rare Hot Springs were located here in Taiwan? No
wonder they developed this area to be such a resort experience. To be honest,
I kind of thought it would smell a little bit more like rotten eggs but it barely smells. Maybe we're
here on a day where there's enough of a breeze, that it takes the smell away? It's beautiful.
Well, I'm on the other side of the lake now, and now I smell the sulfur, the sort of the
bad egg smell that sometimes Hot Springs give off. It's kind of fun to be standing here with the mist
kind of washing over me though. The hot springs really have curative properties, and I'm wondering
if the mist also has that, or if you have to be soaked in the water. I don't actually know.
It's really kind of warm, too. It's nice. I like it. We are on our way to
the next destination and we're taking a shortcut. The shortcut seems to involve
like a hundred stairs, so maybe we should have just gone the long way around. Great!
There's so much of this hot spring water, it's just going everywhere in this town. In the
gutters, as you walk above them, you get warmed up. It's just running beneath our feet everywhere.
This is where we're going.
After a long lovely walk up a hill, we have reached the Beitou Museum.
This Museum was actually a hotel, and it was created and run by a Japanese family,
so the architecture is incredibly Japanese. In fact, this is where a lot of kamikaze
pilots would spend their last night, so it has a little bit of a somber background,
I guess you could say. But it still looks beautiful! Let's go take a look inside. All right.
Well, that was really unexpected. They have the kitchen closed down,
so we weren't able to eat there for lunch. Instead,
we got a preview of musical performance for some VIP thing happening later on.
That's fantastic. We hear the lunch is really good, so that's too bad.
I don't know. The trade-off might have been worth it. To be able to see that performance
was just so unexpected and cool. Now we are headed to the Spring City Resort where we
are going to take the waters, which we probably can't film, but that's where we're headed next.
That was a fantastic Japanese lunch. We didn't know what we were going to order.
We just pointed at things on a menu and lo and behold, I ended up with chicken nuggets.
But they were delicious! They were so tender and juicy and I loved them. It was a fantastic lunch,
and then we went to the spa. We went to the spa. We're not able to show very much because
cameras aren't allowed, but it was pretty good. They make you wear swim caps and we
have these kind of strange robes you had to wear (we think they're strange anyway), but yeah. It
was kind of fun. Very relaxing, so the rest of the video is going to go a lot more slowly. No,
I'm just kidding. We still have a lot that we need to do before things close. We spent a little bit
longer here than we expected, so that's what we're headed to next - and maybe to hydrate.
This is Puji Temple. This Temple is really unique in Taiwan, and since this is a Japanese
influenced video, you might have guessed that this Temple is a Japanese Temple. Puji Temple
actually is over 100 years old and is one of the few remaining Japanese Buddhist temples here in
Taiwan. It's a Shingon sect of Buddhism. This is so fascinating to us, because it's the Shingon
sect of Buddhism which we first encountered back in Koyasan in Japan. To run into it here
in Taiwan is really unexpected and kind of cool. I don't know. More Japanese influence
in Taiwan! Really neat. It is so interesting to find so many Japanese influences here in Taiwan.
We know that there is this period of time back in the early 1900s, that lasted for about 50 years,
commonly referred to as the Japanese Colonial Era. Japan really focused on expanding the
infrastructure of Taiwan, and that created a lot of the rail system that you see today.
That's how Beitou became really popular. Prior to the Japanese Colonial Era, there wasn't really a
great way to get to Beitou. Once Japan developed the rail system, then people were able to make
it here much more easily. I'm really glad that they did, because the architecture here is so
beautiful and unique and very different from what we've seen in Taipei so far.
We made a quick pit stop by Plum Garden, which is a beautiful Japanese building with some fun
photo spots inside, and lots of explanations in a language that we don't speak or read.
It still was a lot of fun to stop by there and take some
photos and kind of goof around for a little bit. This is a little weird.
We admired the building, which is beautiful. In case you thought all
of the buildings here in Beitou are Japanese, I can assure you they're
not. This is a beautiful Museum behind us that unfortunately we ran out of time for.
We passed by this building this morning on our way to the Thermal Valley,
and we weren't able to stop, but we're back now, and it's beautiful. This
incredible three-story building is actually a library. I love libraries when we travel,
because they always manage to make them such unique buildings. This one is even more unique
than many of the ones that we've seen. It is completely designed to be green. It has solar
panels on the roof. It has a rain water capture system that's used in the bathrooms inside,
and to water the gardens. This library has won a ton of awards for being one of the first buildings
here in Taiwan to have a very high level of Green certification. Not only is it incredibly
eco-friendly, but it's beautiful to look at. Well done. Well done, Taiwan. We like your library.
This has been pretty fun so far, looking into Japanese influence in Taiwan, but we are not done
yet. We have some Japanese restaurants chosen back in Taipei, where we are looking for some of our
favorite dishes that we had in Japan. That's where we're headed next, so let's get going. All right.
We are back in Taipei and we are headed to our first Japanese restaurant. We're planning to
go to two. We'll see if it happens, because our first choice is an okonomiyaki place,
which is really filling, but we are super excited, because we really enjoyed this in Japan,
and that's where we're headed to now. We'll see if it tastes as good as what we remember.
So we're here, and you might notice this is not okonomiyaki. They had a huge line and
we're actually going to go back there later. Until then, we're going to try
takoyaki. What is takoyaki? Well, it's a Japanese specialty that's got octopus in it,
with some batter and some different sauce and toppings. We've got some with Benito Flakes,
and then some with green onions. We're going to give them both a try,
see if they're like what we remember from Japan. Let it cool a little bit. Here, it looks great.
It's a little bit charred on the outside, and if it's good, it's nice and soft on the inside.
Octopus is nice and fresh. It's got a nice sweet sauce on it. We had some really good Takoyaki in
Osaka and if you haven't watched that video yet, click the link. This is pretty much what
I remember. It's delicious. You destroyed that ball. Yep! We loved the Takoyaki in Osaka.
That is not bad.
The tastes are just a little bit different, but the texture is perfect. It's really good.
That was delicious. Now we're off to Okonomiyaki.
Our final stop of the day was Okonomiyaki, where we were seated right in front of the chefs,
and it was really loud because there was lots of chopping going on. We discovered when we
were in Japan, that we loved Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, which is made with noodles instead
of an egg batter. We were in luck because they have one of those places right here in Taipei.
This is Hiroshima style okonomiyaki,
which means that it has noodles in it instead of being an egg batter, and it looks just like
the one that we had in Hiroshima, so we're really excited to give it a go.
It is really similar to the one that we had in Hiroshima. The flavors are just a
little bit different, but again, the textures are perfect. Just like what we had we were in Japan.
This was the perfect end for understanding a little bit more about how the Japanese
influence culture here in Taiwan still today, and now I'm stuffed.
I'm going to roll myself home. See you in the next video. Thanks for watching! Bye!