Hello everyone.
In Sakae, Nagoya’s downtown area, there is a place called Edion Square where events are often held.
On 4/11/2023, there was a ‘Taiwan Fair’. So I went there as soon as I could.
The relationship between Japan and Asian countries has changed a lot since I was a child.
Asian countries have been developing remarkably well recently, and Japan has no choice but to be aware of other Asian countries.
I have never been to Taiwan.
But many of my colleagues have travelled to Taiwan and said it was a wonderful country!” I would like to live in Taiwan if I could.”
I would like to go there once too. I want to see a place that everyone says is so wonderful.
So this time I happened to go to the Taiwan Fair that was being held at Edion Square.
Two large statues were on display as you entered through the entrance. They must be Chinese heroes or gods.
They are marked ‘San-taishi’, so I looked them up.
They appear to be Chinese deities. It seems that an Indian deity originally came to China with the acceptance of Buddhism, but why are there two? I couldn’t figure it out.
1 After a while, a person entered the “San-taishi” and started shaking hands and waving to people.
2 Long queues at tenants selling food! I was surprised at how many people were there. Taiwan is very popular in Japan.
3 Taiwanese tea shop.
According to research, semi-fermented oolong tea is more commonly drunk in Taiwan, whereas green tea is more commonly drunk in mainland China. Oolong tea is also drunk in Japan, but only in the 1980s. Until then, tea in Japan meant green tea.
4 Handmade accessories shop in Taiwan.
They also seem to sell items made by aboriginal people, but I was surprised when I saw the word ‘aboriginal’ written on them.
In Japan, the term ‘aboriginal’ is a term that nowadays causes serious political problems, and is often used to refer to ‘indigenous people’.
5 There was a shop called the Association to Support Taiwan.
The aim seemed to be to sell mascots in the shape of Taiwanese islands and to get people to know more about Taiwan.
6 This restaurant was relatively uncrowded, so I got in line at this restaurant.
I had never seen a dish called ‘ba-wan’ on the left side towards you, so I decided to order it. I also decided to order the dish on the right.
However, I don’t really know how to read the kanji characters of the dishes on the left side, especially as I have never seen the kanji of the dish before. I can only barely make out the kanji because they have Japanese reading syllabaries on top of them.
Incidentally, Westerners often say that Japanese people can read Chinese characters, so they should be able to understand the ones used by Chinese and Taiwanese people.
It is true that Japan accepted Chinese characters from China, but this was more than a thousand years ago, and the forms of the characters on both sides, Japan and China have changed since then.
Therefore, there are many Chinese characters in China that we Japanese do not use, and when we Japanese look at the Chinese version, we can only occasionally find Chinese characters that we know in the text.
We Japanese cannot read Chinese texts at all.
The Chinese characters on the mainland were changed to a simpler form by the communist regime during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, citing “one of the reasons why China is behind Europe is the lack of education, and one of the reasons is the difficulty of learning Chinese characters that are too complicated”.
Taiwan, which was ruled by the Kuomintang, who disliked the Communist regime and came to Taiwan, was not affected by this, so the Chinese characters in Taiwan are the same as they were before the Communists took over.
From a Japanese point of view, Taiwanese Chinese characters, which retain their old forms, are still more familiar, while the simplified Chinese characters of the Mainlanders are often incomprehensible.
7 This shop had a huge crowd. It seemed to be selling something sweet. The purple round pie on the far left was particularly popular and had long since sold out.
8 ’Bar－One’. It’s kind of a strange dish. What is it made of? In particular, what is this soft, spongy, greyish substance?
9 When held with chopsticks, it appears that the meat and vegetables were wrapped in rice cakes. It was soft and elastic. It tasted really good. Taiwan is very close to Japan, so I wonder why this kind of food has not been introduced to Japan.
10、11 Hotdogs wrapped in bread made of rice. Probably a recently created dish inspired by hotdogs.
12 Chinese hot and sour soup
13，14 I bought two pies for an after-dinner sweet.
13 was one with almonds inside and 14 was one with red bean paste.
Taiwan is a country that is very close to Japan and also very friendly towards Japan.
Japan caused a lot of resentment among people in many countries because of what our country did during World War II.
So it is really rare to have a pro-Japan country in Asia.
One day, I really want to go to Taiwan.
I would like to go to Taiwan and talk to the real Taiwanese people and enjoy their food.
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