It feels like kind of a weird place to check out since I don't get to visit Japan a whole lot and I've already been to China.

Can't seem to escape the place.

But since I'm here, I figured, you know, sun's going down, why don't we see what Chinatown here in Japan and Yokohama is like at night time.

But you know what the fun thing is about Tokyo and I guess Yokohama, because it's not quite Tokyo, is that it has like a real character, like the city feels like a character.

Think about like Casey Neistat, right?

The way he shot his videos when he was vlogging, it felt like New York City was a character in his videos.

And I get the same kind of feeling in Tokyo and Yokohama, like I could have a life here because the temperatures are normal and I could see myself running around here and stopping in cafes and stuff.

I'm not saying you can't do that in Taiwan, but I suppose that's the truth about any city that you live in.

You know, people get a little bored of it or the city that you live in loses its luster and you feel like you have to go somewhere else.

I'm not saying I feel like I belong in Yokohama or Tokyo, I don't speak Japanese, I've hardly spoken to any Japanese people, but I don't know that I've felt that about any city.

I'd love to know in the comments if you guys live in a place where you feel like you really belong, you really settled in there, it's your town.

Let's give this a try.

Here is the main problem with Taiwan, or at least in my opinion, everyone has their own opinion.

Feel free to disagree with me in the comments.

That's not a problem.

You see, the thing about Taiwan is that you're never going to fall in love with a place just by going there and seeing it once.

It doesn't really have an atmosphere or a feeling or a character to it that's going to make you feel like, oh wow, I'm in Taiwan.

I've mentioned this in videos in the past before, but in my opinion, Taiwan is more of like a blank canvas for you to make your own conclusions as to what it is.

In fact, even to Taiwanese people, the answer is going to be different if you ask them, what is Taiwan and what Taiwan should be in the future.

And so even to local people in Taiwan, they don't really have an answer for what Taiwan is.

And I find that really interesting.

The sort of atmosphere, this feeling, this character that places have is important to me.

I've been looking for this kind of place my whole life, a place where I can kind of fit in and feel like I belong, a place where I can walk outside my front door and feel like, wow, I'm in insert place here.

Taiwan took me years to figure out, you know, why I like it and what it's all about.

I find that not necessarily a problem with Taiwan.

It's just, I think that Taiwan takes a little bit of getting used to, a little bit of time to love and grow.

You know, it's not somewhere where you can just go and visit and think, wow, this is amazing.

You know, it wasn't really until I started walking around Tokyo, Yokohama, just Japan in general, I started to wonder, you know, like, why doesn't Taiwan feel like this?

Why doesn't Taiwan look like this?

And there's a lot of different answers I've been given over the years now that I think about it.

One of them being that when the Kuomintang came down to Taiwan from China after the Chinese Civil War, they were planning on going back.

They were planning on retaking the mainland.

And so they build everything with the mindset that they're not going to be there for very long.

And that's why everything looks like that in Taiwan and not really like this.

It doesn't really feel as nice.

Because none of my friends or my family have ever visited me in Taiwan, but I have heard from a number of other people who has visited Taiwan.

Maybe they have family that are friends there or someone they want to go see and they visit Taiwan and they're like, this isn't what I expected.

Or they're not, they don't really like Taiwan because of that face value sort of feeling they get from it.

It's kind of sad, like, that people don't really like Taiwan when they come to visit, you know, because I guess they don't really have any expectations as to what Taiwan is or what it's going to be like, and they go and they end up not really liking it.

As opposed to when they come to Japan, and they get to see all this cool stuff and how But, anyways, with all that said and done, I am in Chinatown.

I suppose I should go see what some Chinese food tastes like in Japan.

I'm just one person, so I should get a set.

Just one?

Yeah, just one, yeah.

Okay, got it.

Wow.

So that was not very good.

But it just didn't really taste like much.

I felt like I had COVID and I couldn't taste my food.

See, a lot of, like, in Chinese cuisine, they really like to use really strong flavors, in-your-face flavors.

But that one was really dumbed down, it really didn't have much, it didn't taste very good.

But whatever, that was an interesting little experience.

I think what I'm going to try and do is find one of those candied strawberries or candied crab apples that I used to eat when I lived in China all the time.

Can you speak Chinese?

I can speak Chinese.

Okay.

Can you show me a strawberry?

It's 550 yuan. 550 yuan, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It feels weird communicating in Chinese in Japan, but I got my candied strawberry.

Oh, wow.

They're frozen, which is interesting.

It's still good, it's still very sweet.

It's weird how it's so cold.

I guess, you know, they do have to cater to Japanese tastes.

I don't think Japanese people are used to eating really strong flavors like they are in Chinese cuisine.

There's a sort of subtlety, I guess, to Japanese cuisine.

They like the natural flavors of whatever it is they're eating.

Just to give you a little bit more of a clear example of what I'm talking about, this is the same Chinatown I was just in, but all the lights are off, the shops are closed, and everyone's gone to sleep.

So all of a sudden, it doesn't feel like a lived-in, genuine place.

It feels more like an empty movie set.

And that's because this place was built, it was designed to make you feel like you're in China, or in Taiwan, for example.

Taiwanese flags back there, cool.

It's supposed to cater to the Japanese people and other foreigners, to provide them with what they think in their own heads what China or Taiwan is supposed to look like, when in reality, Taiwan and China doesn't actually look like this.

See, Taiwan, like I said earlier in the video, was built with more of a temporary mindset.

It wasn't built to last.

It wasn't built with the idea that people were still going to be there.

Okay, surprise.

I'm in Taiwan.

I was editing this video, and it didn't really make much sense to be filming something like this in Japan.

I don't know what I'm doing.

But basically, my point is not to call Taiwan ugly.

Everyone kind of knows it is, and I think people are tired of me making that point.

My point is more, how did it get this way?

What does it do to people's mentality, and maybe what Taiwan can do in the future?

I already mentioned before that one of the biggest reasons that I got for Taiwan looking this way is because when the KMT came here, they were planning on going back to China, blah blah blah, you heard that.

There's been a whole bunch of other reasons.

Some people say that it wasn't the KMT, it was the Americans when they bombed the crap out of Taiwan in World War II, basically deleting any nice Japanese architecture.

Some people say that it's just the way that the people want it to look, because while the land that some of these buildings are on are worth a lot of money, the buildings themselves aren't worth anything, and the people don't want to tear them down because they work, and sometimes people even see the way that these buildings look as an improvement because Taiwan looked so bad before that they actually kind of look a little bit better now.

I don't know, there's a lot of different reasons I've been given.

I'm sure some of the more well-read people in the comments will tell me how it got to look this way.

Now I'm in an area of Taichung that's actually quite nice.

It's a park that's become very popular with people over the course of the past couple of years.

It's been kind of redone, and I think it looks quite nice.

It's a very popular place for people to come and sit and relax, or read a book, or walk your snake.

And I think this area is a good example of where Taiwan can head in the future, because there are some buildings here that have been put up that look okay.

They're new, and they don't look all that bad, and provided that Taiwan can maintain them well enough to look nice in the future as well, I think it's a good way for Taiwan to have its own aesthetic, its own appearance, like Japan has, which I think is something that's important to Taiwan.

It's something that Taiwan can really benefit from to have its own kind of style, to have its own look, to have its own atmosphere, its own feeling, to have its own heart, its own kind of soul, I guess, if that makes sense.

I think that they shouldn't go too far down that extreme.

If you take Singapore, for example, I've never been myself, but one of the criticisms I see people often have of Singapore is that that city is too clean, it's too sterile, it's too sanitary.

It takes away from that lived-in atmosphere that some really nice cities have.

I don't know that Taiwan will go that far.

It's not really a part of their personality or their culture to make things look that nice, but who knows where it will go.

Take this building, for example.

For my Western audience, how old would you wager this building is?

Now, whatever your guess is, it's probably too high.

This building probably isn't that old, but it looks terrible with the bars on the windows and the exposed plumbing and the AC and wires hanging on to everything.

But then, there's not much Taiwan can do about it, because if they decided that it was up to the government to kind of get rid of these buildings and put something nice and new in its place, the government would have to make these large sweeping reforms where they would have to knock down all these old, ugly, and quite frankly, often illegally built buildings.

And they would displace a pretty sizable portion of the population.

It really wouldn't work.

And a lot of people in Taiwan are reluctant to sell the properties.

There's all kinds of reasons why it wouldn't work.

But for me, I've lived here for so long, I don't even notice it anymore.

I used to, and it used to really kind of bother me how not nice the cities looked and how kind of old and run down they were, rough around the edges.

But now I've kind of sort of somewhat appreciate them.

It's just sort of a part of life here.

And I can appreciate how these buildings feel a little bit more lived in, a little bit more real.

Again, Taiwan's heading in all kinds of new directions.

And one of them is taking these old buildings and regentrifying them.

Take, for example, this old Japanese building that's been turned into a nice restaurant.

Or over here, I think this is a house.

I'm not really sure.

And again, it doesn't look very inviting with the bars on the brick walls and all that kind of thing.

But I'm sure they could turn it into something nice.

This whole area has been regentrified into all kinds of different restaurants and tea shops and bars and things like that.

I think that's nice.

I think that's a good way to go.

And that way, Taiwan doesn't have to tear down these old buildings.

They can turn them into something new.

But I would love to know what you guys think in the comments.

What stories have you heard from Taiwan's past and its history?

Why does it look the way it does?

I've heard so many different things from the pollution levels or acid rain from China or it's too humid.

I'm not sure if I buy all of those stories considering there are other countries nearby Taiwan that are just as humid and hot and don't look this bad.

So I'm curious what you guys think.

And maybe a bigger question to ask you guys for the comments is where do you think Taiwan is headed in the future as far as, you know, generally speaking or aesthetically speaking.

However you want to answer that question.

Let me know in the comments down below.

Now I did finish this video off in Japan.

So let's go back there.

So I think that sort of third world feeling that a lot of people get towards Taiwan.

It all stems from that lack of sort of national unity or idea of what Taiwan is.

But I don't know.

That's just my opinion.

Maybe you have a different one.

You can let me know in the comments section below.

While you're at it, you may as well hit the subscribe button if you felt like I earned it.

Follow me on Instagram at Prozzy underscore SR.

Stay positive, keep your stick to the ice.

Catch you guys next week for another video.