Starbucks Taipei HanZhong store

Last trip to Taipei I visited the iconic Taipei 101 Starbucks. This trip I wanted to explore some other unique stores in the city. 

The HanZhong Store is located in the bustling street in Ximending, but the ordinary facade reveals nothing of the exciting architecture that awaits inside. 

Spanning three stories with tall ceilings and wrap-around balconies, this store is very unique in its design and vibe.

My favorite part of the store is on the third floor, were you get a 360 degree view of the balconies as well as people-watching opportunities from above. 

This store has plenty of space to have big group gatherings or small intimate meetings. 

Starbucks Japan's Sweet Potato Specials

On my trip to Taiwan I had a 3-hour lay over in Nartia - just enough time to swing by Starbucks for some unique drink specials. 

Sweet Potato was the flavor of the season and Starbucks had a full line up of frappuccinos, lattes, chiffon cake, and scones. 

I passed on the Sweet Potato scone which looked too artificial and dry, but Japanese Starbucks does cakes very well. The Sweet Potato Chiffon Cake was lightly sweetened, moist, and had just a hint of creaminess. 

For drinks I ordered both the Frappuccino and latte so I could taste the flavor in both versions. 

The Frappuccino, as with most Japanese concoctions, tasted like a liquid cake. If Japanese pastries are lightly sweetened, the Frappuccino more than makes up for that by being excessively sweetened. Still, I enjoyed the the taste as well as the corn flakes that were crushed into the drinks for a little texture. 

The latte was also sweet but not excessively so - and would be my preferred choice if I had to order again. The sweet potato flavor was a bit more bold, and didn't have all the extra competing flavors of the frappuccino. 

I always feel a certain sense of nostalgia by having special seasonal drinks at Starbucks in Japan. When I was living in the countryside, a 1-hour drive or 2-hour bus ride would take me to the nearest Starbucks and I would enjoy the drink offerings and ambience that I couldn't get in the countryside. 

Starbucks Taiwan Lychee Tea

This past fall when I was in Taiwan, I was looking forward to trying some local drinks at Starbucks. Unfortunately it was still blisteringly hot, so all the drink specials were cold. Like these yogurt parfaits I never tried. 

What I did end up sampling was the Black tea lemonade with Lychee jelly, a perfect hybrid between Starbuck's Teavana series and Taiwan's obsession with jellies and boba. 

NaNoWriMo Almost Complete

At least I got to try all the Starbucks holiday drinks I wanted

NaNoWriMo is as much an exploration of me as it is of any creative content I produce. I learn as much about myself as I do about my novel and about the writing process.

This year’s NaNo proved especially hard for factors I hadn’t really anticipated but should have. It may be a sign of things to come.

While I set out to write 50,000 words for a novel in three parts, by the end of the month I had only written 42,000 words for two parts of the novel, the third one left untouched. It was not a frantic scramble at the end. I basically gave up with several days left in the month.

What happened?

1.     I was 7 months pregnant and the third-trimester fatigue stated to sink in.

2.     Demands from the business were harder to set aside in the evening.

3.     The flu: this is what sealed the deal. I got a terrible flu the day after Thanksgiving and it wiped me out for a week. I couldn't’ even write in bed and by the time I felt better I would have had to pull an all-nighter to meet my goal. Maybe in a non-pregnant body this would be possible, but my pregnant self can’t stay awake past 11:00pm.

All four versions of the holiday cup

I am proud that I was able to get to 42,000 words though. That’s nothing to laugh at. I also learned some valuable lessons about myself and my relationship to fictional writing amidst building a consultancy.

1.     I already have to write A LOT for my business: newsletters, articles, emails, and jus the act of writing all day in that setting makes the act of novel writing exhausting. In my other jobs, the hours of my day were occupied by meetings, simple emails, teaching, and doing endeavors I would otherwise not consider creative. But with my business veery act of writing is an act of creation, and I only have so much energy to create in the day. If I had a less creative job, I would look forward to novel writing more and more, but that’s not the space I am in now.

2.     I don’t like working at cafes anymore. Wow.  A big shift for me. Cafes used to be my writing haven, but perhaps because of pregnancy and fatigue keep me home more often. I wrote most of my NaNo words from the dining room table or my office. Getting dressed and going out to a café to order a decaf latte just seemed like too big of a pain when I could just write form home.

3.     I don’t like Starbucks anymore. Since I wrote there in November, I avoided the dreaded Christmas music. This year, I did sample all 5 of the drinks I wanted to try, but I found them all too sickeningly sweet and lacking in quality. Starbucks coffee itself is pretty bad.

4.     My novel is no longer the BIG thing I want to accomplish in my life. It has taken a backseat to my business and my baby. Priorities, priorities. I love my creative work, but right now I don’t have the mental focus to devote to this endeavor. I need to get my business going and get ready for motherhood. It does’t mean I wil never finish my novel or write again. It just means that this will project will have to live on the back-burner while the other areas of my life flourish.

Day	Date	Place	Goal Words	Actual Words
Thursday	1	living room table	1,000	705
		living room table		1,013
Friday	2	Starbucks		618
		Starbucks		331
Saturday	3	14th Street Café	4,000	666
		14th Street Café		1,360
		Astoria Coffeehouse		1,094
		Astoria Coffeehouse		886
Sunday	4	Blue Scorchers	4,000	1,072
		14th Street Café		878
		14th Street Café		725
Monday	5		1,000	-
Tuesday	6	Starbucks	1,000	489
		Starbucks		579
		Starbucks		198
		Starbucks		94
		Starbucks		287
Wednesday	7	Little T	1,000	76
		Little T		761
Thursday	8	office	1,000	158
		office		217
Friday	9	office	1,000	3,343
Saturday	10	office	4,000	1,386
		office		2,996
Sunday	11	office	4,000	1,461
				3,372
Monday	12		1,000
Tuesday	13		1,000	-
Wednesday	14		1,000	-
Thursday	15		1,000	-
Friday	16		1,000	-
Saturday	17	living room table	4,000	917
		living room table		200
		living room table		797
		living room table		1,868
Sunday	18		4,000	-
Monday	19	living room table	1,000	2,087
Tuesday	20		1,000	-
Wednesday	21		1,000	-
Thursday	22	living room table	1,000	1,180
		living room table		286
		living room table		1,457
		living room table		1,240
Friday	23	living room table	2,000	1,740
		Good Coffee		195
		Good Coffee		1,428
Saturday	24	living room table	2,000	831
Sunday	25		2,000	-
Monday	26	Good Coffee	1,000	375
Tuesday	27		1,000	2,500
Wednesday	28		1,000	-
Thursday	29		1,000	-
Friday	30		1,000
			50,000	41,866

Tatami Starbucks of Ninenzaka

I have visited interesting Starbucks locations all over the world, but my visit to the 5-day old Ninezaka store in Kyoto definitely rises to the top of cool.

This one-of-a-kind store stands alone from the others in that it is not in a newly constructed building, but opened in a century-old machiya house in a very traditional neighborhood of Ninenzaka.

The shop is literally occupying one house in a row of private, residential homes. When I got there in the morning (right when they opened at 8:00am) there were children in uniforms on their way to school, old ladies sweeping porches outside their homes, and people hanging their laundry. This really is a neighborhood.

With respect to their location, Starbucks employed one security guard who keeps people in line and keeps crowds from forming. I went so early that I was one of the only people there, but I have no idea how busy this place gets on say, mid-day on the weekend.

From the outside, the house is discrete. Only the Starbucks-branded Noren (cloth doorway) marks this building as a café. The exterior is almost otherwise untouched. Though, upon leaving I did catch sight of the subtle mermaid silhouette on a light outside.

hanging the Noren in the morning just before the store opens

the Noren signifies that the store is open

subtle Starbucks logo details

Inside, the house has been heavily redone, but not to the loss of it’s original character. For instance, it smells exactly like my century-old house in Shimane. The first floor is dedicated to housing a long line of people, a counter where you can order and select sweets, a small sitting space, and a back room where the drinks are made. Upstairs contains rooms and rooms of seating. As I walked around, I noticed that they basically kept the frame of the house, and used traditional materials to modernize it, so that it still had an authentic quality.

the entrance seems generic at first

Japanese-flavored food

decoration at the entrance 

the back room drink stand

the back room where you pick up drinks

hallways

natural lighting

Guests still on pillows on tatami (woven straw) matts. Tokonoma (alcoves) in the room display kakemomo (paintings) and ikebana (flower arrangements). Shoji (sliding paper doors) section off the rooms as in a traditional house. There is also a room with modern chairs and seating arrangements.

Japanese style (left) and western style (right)

I am impressed that Starbucks refrained from putting it’s logo on everything…actually, anything inside the house. The art and displays are complete unbranded, as are the cushions and all other decorations. It would have felt cheesy if there were mere moderns replicas but Starbucks kept it classy this time. How they manage to keep this place clean, tidy, and undamaged with all the unruly tourists running around is beyond me.