blog

Sports day

Three Mondays ago, Nanao had their annual sports day.[^1] The sports day reminded me of the years of Japanese school sports days I used to go to, complete with the representative student’s pledge of sportsmanship, a three legged race, and concluding relay, though it was only half a day.[^2] It also was billed as the Nan’ao town and school joint sports day (村校聯合運動大會) and indeed many parents, families, and other miscellaneous townspeople were there to join in the festivities.

(more…)

Yesterday (Saturday), Katie came over to Nanao and we explored more on my scooter. We first went to the Nan-ao hot spring (南澳溫泉). Wang laoshi took me a while back, telling me you can’t really find it with a map—you just have to go. It really is a hole in the wall—er, ground. There are three “tubs” of concrete and rock built into the ground by this local retired guy in his spare time (whom I only know to refer as “Joe”). While we were there for maybe an hour and a half, three or four groups of people came through to dip their feet in: some college kids from Yilan, some women in their thirties from Taipei, a guy from Taipei who apparently comes often to walk up rivers (?), and finally a group of 15 or so tourists from someplace. And of course a couple locals (you can tell because they come wearing slippers, a swimsuit, and a jacket). Quite the social scene!

We also drove around and found the Jin-yue waterfall (金岳瀑布). There isn’t much of a big drop or anything, but there were some neat rapids and the water was so blue! There was also some construction around, apparently some agricultural engineering.

Finally we stopped to check out the beach. Unfortunately the tide was rolling in and I had a run-in with the waves.