• Travel

    Auberge Saint-Antoine in Québec City, Canada, or Archaeology Right in Your Room— If You Can Find It!

    February 13, 2024 - By 

    The Auberge Saint-Antoine in Québec, Canada is a pleasant old hotel with an archeological theme. It is located close to an old alley of Québec, the Rue du Petit-Champlain, which is a lovely little street to walk down. In 2024, I got to find out for myself how comfortably placed it was. Although only a 4-star hotel, the Auberge Saint-Antoine was cleaner and in better condition than the 5-star Fairmont Le Château Frontenac. For example, there were no discarded bandages lurking by the mattress, the bathroom was not dusty anywhere, and the only dirtiness was that the bottom of the…

  • Travel

    Cheap Suitcases in Tokyo at Ginza Karen

    February 9, 2024 - By 

    In Tokyo, Japan, you can buy cheap suitcases, as in roughly US$50 for a 28-inch, in several of the covered shopping streets. If the shopping streets are closed or you do not want to go there, Ginza Karen in particular is well-known for selling suitcases at that same price point. This shop is extremely popular with Chinese tourists and one location, in Nihonbashi, is conveniently open until midnight! Ginza Karen also sells higher-priced suitcases, but most people who go there— myself included— are looking for the ~US$50 suitcases to quickly and cheaply carry back our purchases. I have purchased from…

  • Finance

    A Baby’s Roth IRA

    January 30, 2024 - By 

    Planning ahead is important, and I consider the Roth IRA a useful tool for every person who qualifies. That includes babies, who, like everyone else, should think about saving for their future. Because babies are not capable of comprehending what this is, their parent has to think for them. For the 2023 tax year, you can contribute $6,500 if under age 50 or $7,500 if age 50 or older. There are income limits involved, but I doubt any babies even approach it. Even a mere $300 per year for the child’s entire childhood, with no further contributions made past age…

  • Travel

    Carnaval de Québec 2024: Effigies

    January 22, 2024 - By 

    If you attend in 2024, it is the 70th anniversary of the Carnaval de Québec, a winter festival held ! Attendance requires an effigy of Bonhomme Carnaval if you are a teen or older. For example, my 2-year-old will not need her own effigie parce que les effigies sont “obligatoire pour les 13 ans et plus”. To purchase your effigy, you visit Nos produits carnavalesques – Carnaval de Québec. The snowmen are not sold in mid summer, but sales opened up at some point before I returned to the US in November. Purchasing before January 15th, 2024, allowed for a…

  • Food

    Seagull Egg, or Kamome no Tamago from Japan

    January 19, 2024 - By 

    In the Tohoku region of Japan, a common souvenir item you will see is their regional specialty, the Kamome no Tamago, which translates to “egg of seagull”. In English, they frequently refer to it as a “Seagull Egg”. Like most regional specialties, you will have to physically be in Tohoku (Iwate Prefecture is the safest bet), look online (https://saitoseika.co.jp/), or pass through international departures at the airport to find it. Like most of the other regional products, it has a short life; this one typically has 30 days from the date of manufacture. Although they claim that the motif is…

  • Food

    Tokyo Banana from Japan

    January 6, 2024 - By 

    This tastes like a banana Twinkie, agreed all of my taste testers. I have not eaten Twinkies myself too often and cannot remember what it tastes like, but the Tokyo Banana certainly looks like a banana Twinkie. Tokyo Banana is basically banana filling on the inside and a very soft sponge cake on the outside. The banana filling is rather plain, but it works fine together. (According to a vegetarian friend, these were vegetarian at some point but no longer are. They currently have gelatin. She was very sad.) The packaging is rather nice. The inside box is not plain…

  • Life

    Insurance and HRA Paid, but I am Still Getting Billed

    December 29, 2023 - By 

    When you are getting billed by a medical service but you are sure that your insurance already paid or some account under insurance, such as an HRA, already paid, call your insurance company. Once upon a time, when I naively thought I could resolve such matters myself, my family called Labcorp three times without any resolution regarding two bills that had already been paid through my HRA. The first call was handled by someone who was tricked into paying a second time for the billed service on one of the invoices. I made the second and third calls. In the…

  • Finance - Travel

    What are the QR codes I get with my receipts in Taiwan?

    December 14, 2023 - By 

    Whenever you buy anything in Taiwan and are given a receipt, you may receive a physical printed out QR ticket along with your receipt. If you are a resident, you have the opportunity to not take a physical printout but instead have it added digitally to your collection. These are entries to a government lottery that was started to incentivize reporting sales and therefore allow the government to collect more of the sales tax owed to them. These QR lottery entries are done as a straight entry into the lottery, not a multiplier. It has led to silly situations such…

  • Food

    Langue de Chat and Where I Found Them in Japan 2023

    December 11, 2023 - By 

    I very much enjoy the cookie called langue de chat, literally “tongue of cat”. It originated in France but has proven itself to be quite popular in Japan. We can observe this because many tourist attractions and towns have their own version of it. The Japanese versions are commonly not shaped like a cat’s tongue but are more like a square sandwich with filling. In 2023, I purchased these langue de chat from these places: The Famous Hokkaido-Exclusive Langue de Chat As far as I know, the famous Shiroi Koibito chocolat blanc et langue de chat from Ishiya (“ISHIYA GUARANTEED”,…

  • Travel

    Train: Taitung to Nanzhou / Kaohsiung in Taiwan

    December 11, 2023 - By 

    We bought our tickets for the Taiwan Railway online while in the United States without issue and chose two meals, one vegetarian and one regular, at the time. The train tickets would take us from Taitung to Nanzhou, which would place us conveniently for my Kaohsiung aunt to pick us up. For our money, we received a very low quality QR code that we were doubtful about. At the station, we walked up to the counter and attempted to change our dubious QR code for the tickets. Unfortunately, the man at the counter was unable to scan the low quality…