Tienmu Flea Market

Florence says I should show what she got for 400NT(about $12 US) at the 2nd hand store. There is a reluctance to buy used stuff but we're way beyond this viewpoint now.

Buying all this stuff new would cost at least 3 times as much. We all have to struggle with buying new versus buying old. Once you've make the choice life is cheaper and simpler.

The Buddhist second hand store we go to actually is on the web. I found it by accident walking the streets of Taipei, but I could have done the web search beforehand.

http://ilovericesociety.com/blog/cool-shit-in-taipei/the-buddhist-second-hand-store-you-wish-you-knew-about-in-taipei

For Christmas in Taipei there wasn't much going on officially associated with Christmas so we went to the Flea Market in Tianmu, a suburb of Taipei. It was pretty much like the Sunday market in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle where we live.

There are a mix of professional sellers and amateur sellers, very few posted prices. You should have a list of what you want and what is a good price before you go. Impulse buying is always wrong.

 The weekend market is Saturday and Sunday from 3 to 7, it's best to get there before the sun goes down.

Xmas in Taiwan

Today, December 25th,  is "Constitution Day" in Taiwan. If it wasn't on a Sunday the whole nation would have the day off. Christmas couldn't be an official holiday in Taiwan or China because neither nation is a Christian Nation. December 25th is a national holiday in Taiwan because Chiang Kai-sek, the leader of the KMT, was a Christian(baptized as a Methodist) and so designated December 25th as "Constitution Day".

So like the US more and more, Taiwan has Christmas without much of the religious stuff but plenty of the buying stuff. And Xmas lights.

Everybody likes Santa.

Here is the Santa from the Christmas party at our apartment complex. I recognize him as one of the security guards.

The Santas in US all look similar but you can always improve on a classic.

But anyway we here in Taiwan wish you a Happy New Year.

Sidewalk Sentinels

In every city there are 4 flows of traffic:

pedestrians
bicycles
motorcycles
automobiles

But there are only 2 or 3 paths for the flows:

sidewalks
bike paths
roads

How do you keep everyone safe? You have to restrict the flows to particular paths. One rule that almost everyone would agree to is that cars should stay off the sidewalks. It would seem too dangerous to have 2-3 ton vehicles competing with the delicate sacks of fluid called people.

This difficult task of restricting cars from the sidewalks falls to the army of "sidewalk sentinels".

They come is all different colors and shapes but their task is the same: Keeping the pedestrians safe.

Like all soldiers they sometimes have a mission that requires them to array in formation.

And sometimes, they need to assemble visibly in their parade dress uniforms.

But like all soldiers, some bear the wounds of confrontation with the enemy.

And some soldiers have fallen on the field of battle.

Scaffolding

I thought the days of bamboo scaffolding were gone, but I was wrong. In my neighborhood there are two projects using the old bamboo scaffolding.

 In Taipei, where there seems to be constant building and remodeling, the newer buildings use the modular metal scaffolding.

This exactly the type of scaffolding as in the US.

But in the older parts of town, where space is at a premium because of the narrow roads, the bamboo frames are in favor.

Here a single layer frame of bamboo is doing the job. The workmen must do with the old seafarers rule while working on the ship's rigging:

"One hand for the ship, one hand for yourself"

Where is OSHA when you need them? Oh yeah, I remember, needless regulation.

The Cheapest Math Book I ever bought

There aren't many garage/yard sales in Taiwan because most people don't have a car(let alone a garage) and most people live in an apartment and don't have a yard.
But over the years there have been an increasing number of second hand stores in Taiwan. For a second hand store you only need a store front and some junk to sell.

At Jianguo Road and Badu Road there is a second hand store where I bought the cheapest Math book that I have ever bought.

The book is a xerox copy of an original textbook on graph theory of only 122 pages.(You can never know enough about graph theory.)  It is bound in a paper cover but the cover has no title, the spine has no title either.

Inside the book, it starts at the table of contents and then straight to chapter 1.
No publisher's page, no title page, no forward, no preface.

When I asked the clerks how much the book was, they weighed it on a scale. The weight was so little they had to reweight it on a smaller scale. Even then the weight was small so they just said it was 5NT, 5NT is about 15 cents. Good deal.

This book was one math student's solution to the high price of textbooks. Just get a copy from the library and copy the whole dam thing. It certainly is one way to beat the high price of college textbook where a phone book size book sells for $100+ and the professor proscribes the next edition after one year. And all the time the course only covers 10% of the book's contents.

Second had stores are a good idea that just keeps going and going. I even saw one in Japan for name brand designer/fashion items.

Used Select Shop Kind

Yomi Hotel

When we arrived in Taiwan we spent 5 days at the Yomi Hotel. In these 5 days Florence reestablished her residency, we got started on getting me a residency permit and found an apartment to rent for 6 months. Staying at a Hotel worked out really well, we could come and go as we pleased and didn't have to worry about inconveniencing relatives.

The Hotel had a kitchen and washer/dryer which was convenient.

and hot water. And a self locking safe.

Like a lot of the apartments in Taiwan it was a split level affair, with the bedroom
about a half story high, above the main floor.

It was also unusual for Taiwan in that they provided buffet breakfast, this was really good for American, Japanese and Hong Kong families traveling with children. Kids are so picky that ordering off the menu never works. Especially when the menu is in Chinese.

The Yomi Hotel is located in the Red Light district in the ZhongShan neighborhood. Prostitution was legalized in Taiwan about a month ago but only in the designated Red Light District. Actually like in all big cities, there has always been prostitution. But as women had more education they have more opportunities and prostitution doesn't have to be the last resort. In Taiwan now the prostitutes are coming from Vietnam, Indonesia and China where women have fewer options.

Kyoto - Temples, temples, temples

When Taiwanese go on a tour of Europe they complain that it is one church after another. The European history is so complicated with religious wars and royal ascensions that it's hard to keep the big picture in perspective.

Kyoto being ancient capital of Japan/tourist town also has this problem. Although the history of Japan is simpler than Europe, it is hard to keep the numerous temples in perspective. Shinto was the original religion of Japan, kind of animistic belief with hundreds of gods, Buddhism  from India came to Japan by way of China. Most Japanese are probably Buddhist but mix the Shintoism with it. Temples are mostly Buddhist but some are Shinto. Of the different Buddhist schools, Zen Buddhism is popular in Japan.

In the previous posts about sangaku I talked about the
                     Kaisui Shrine - Buddhist
                     Kitano-tenmangu Shrine - Shinto

the other temples we visited were:
       1              Sanjusangen-do - Buddhist
        2             Rokuon-Ji(The Gold Pavilion) - Zen
         3            Kiyomizu Temple(Clear Water Temple) - Buddhist
          4           Ryoanji Temple - Zen
            5         Higashi-Honganji(The Great Eastern temple) - Buddhist
              6       Snake temple - Buddhist ?

Below are representive pictures of these 6 temples.


Sanjusangen-do, photographs of the 300+ Buddhists saints were prohibited but there were some good pictures before we entered the restricted area. This is the long hall that contains the 300+ bigger than life size statues of Buddhists saints, We can all become the Buddha, (except me).

Buddhists have an interesting attitude to "gates', a gate can let the good enter but keeps the evil from entering. Sounds like a Maxwell's Demon.

Rokuon-Ji(The Gold Pavilion) - scenic scenes some of the tree color pictures are from this temple.

 Kiyomizu Temple(Clear Water Temple) - Massive timbers were used to build this temple against the hills that surround Kyoto.

 Ryoanji Temple - Florence's pictures are better than mine, see:


https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108617243184877093989/albums/5680756986978287313
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108617243184877093989/albums/5681631604330461937


Higashi-Honganji(The Great Eastern temple)  these are only gates to the temple itself which is massive. Given that young people have little interest in this archaic temples who will maintain these temples? The tourist agency?

Snake temple, in the neighborhood of the Daimachi House there is a Buddhist temple dedicated to the cobra(the cobra is not indigenous to Japan), here are some of the Ema. Still mounted in the eves of the temple.

A Shinto Shrine/Temple has this kind of gate, very different from the Buddhist gate.

Daimaichi House 2

I was so impressed with the Daimaichi House in Kyoto that I have more pictures to show.

The Daimaichi House is located along a narrow row, from the address alone you could never find it, a map with the location marked is necessary. Like many old cities built before the automobile the roads are very narrow, usually wide enough for a cart or maybe a horse drawn wagon.

The small Japanese trucks can negotiate this lane but the standard American size car could never pass. There were specific days for garbage, recyclables and combustibles for pickup. The lanes had no space for dumpsters or garbage cans etc. So on the pickup day the residents put out the items at specific wide spots in the lane. A net is used to keep the cats, dogs and crows away.

The bedrooms weren't heated but the beds(tatamis) were warm with heavy comforters and blankets.

Where bathtubs have fallen out of favor in the US, replaced with showers, in Japan the bathtub never went away. I think they conserve the hot water that way.

There was a room up on the second floor that seemed to have no purpose except as a second bedroom. I don't know what it was for, maybe the tea ceremony.

Sangaku in Kyoto

When I knew we were going Japan before Taiwan,  I started reading one of my books that I had skimmed before: "Scared Mathematics - Japan Temple Geometry". This book describes a period of Japanese mathematics when Japan was isolated from the rest of the world. During the Tokugawa period, 1603 to 1868, there were mathematicians in the samurai class that developed their own brand of geometry. Starting with the Chinese mathematics from before 1600, the Japanese mathematicians developed a special set of geometry problems that are different from the what has been developed in the West. While in Europe the calculus was being discovered, the Japanese mathematician were posting their own problems in the Shinto and Buddhist temple.

These problems were posted on wooden plaques and hung in the eves of the temples. Like many other mathematicians, they credited their insight in solving these problems to the gods and the plaques were their way of thanking the gods. (Mathematicians are often suspect, so attributing your work to the gods is always a good strategy.) These plaques are called "ema" and there are many other subjects for ema. There might be more than a 1000 ema on mathematical problems still in Japan, some of them are in Kyoto. The mathematical ema are called sangaku.

At the first temple I looked for sangaku was at the Kasui Shrine

, although I found some ema, I didn't find the sangaku.

they were not hung in the shrine but in a storage building on the site.

The second temple I looked for them was the Kitano-tenmangu Shrine.

There I did find a famous sangaku.

Again it was in a storage area on the shrine site.

But the sangaku, ink on wood, was in bad shape, the problems couldn't be read but they are in the book I'm reading.

I'm now reading the book in earnest, and I have even more reasons to visit Japan again.