• 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…

  • Travel

    Nomad’s APAC eSIM for Asia

    December 4, 2023 - By 

    The short version is that Nomad’s APAC 20 Countries Plan was usable in Japan other than remote Hakone and was not very usable in Taiwan. I was always able to reconnect within a minute in Japan. In Taiwan, not only was data slow but I also was unable to connect to the network for more like 3-5 minutes at a time. I decided to try those eSIMs that you purchase ahead of time instead of at the airport. The downside is normally that data SIMs purchased in the airport usually have better coverage and eSIMs bought online sometimes put you…

  • Finance - Travel

    What is “COTHTL844-422-6922MA”?

    November 22, 2023 - By 

    If you see something starting with COTHTL (or a full COTHTL844-422-6922MA) on your credit card statement and you have a Capital One card, check whether the amount matches a hotel reservation you made. It is probably a Capital One Travel Hotel charge, meaning that you booked it through the Capital One Travel Portal. I was initially concerned to see a US charge amidst all the converted JPY-USD charges and was a little worried that I was the victim of fraud. After reviewing the dates, I realized, with some relief, that it was simply the charge for the hotel I booked…

  • Travel

    TPE to SFO to EWR with United

    November 18, 2023 - By 

    For this trip in 2023, I was with family, including my daughter! The daughter part made it more difficult to take pictures freely. The Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), like many other places in Taiwan, gave us preference because we had a /wah-wah tsuh/, or a baby stroller. In this case, we got to go through a screening line with no one else at all. The person manning the gate seemed excited to have anyone going through his not-really-a-line at all. (My father later explained that all the preference I had received was probably because the birth rate in Taiwan…

  • Food - Tea Things

    Afternoon Tea at the BL. T 33 / InterContinental Kaohsiung in Taiwan

    November 14, 2023 - By 

    Afternoon Tea at InterContinental Kaohsiung in Taiwan ended up being in the back area of what looks like a bar. The BL. T 33 seemed to share space or be right next to the SEEDS Restaurant, but that could also have been because I brought a 2-year-old with me. They allowed me to place her stroller behind the seats. My cousin phoned to make the reservation for me at the BL. T 33 the day before. It is also possible to make a reservation online. The cost for one set of afternoon tea in November, 2023, was NT$1680 before the…

  • Travel

    IASS Superior Lounge NOA in NRT Narita Airport, Japan

    October 31, 2023 - By 

    The IASS Superior Lounge NOA in Narita Airport had one bad review complaining about there only being noodles and bread. Since it was close to my gate for leaving Japan, I went in anyway. The food is all Japanese. When I went in October, 2023, in the late morning, the food options were a variety of small pre-meal dishes, soba to cook in the spot, onigiri with soy sauce, mochi with red beans, and an pan bread or cream pan bread. The offerings may look small, but they were frequently checked and replaced. For example, the soba’s cooking water/pot was…