MiaoLi grave sweeping & Luminaries 2011

Today I went with my parents and other relatives to my grandfathers home in MiaoLi for grave sweeping day. It's a chinese tradition to come and clean the grave site of our ancestors. We then prayed for them and did the ritual "wish" to our ancestors as well as burning of money for the afterlife. Afterwards, we headed in to town and had a traditional Hakka lunch. This was my first time to have a Hakka only meal. It's hard to differentiate the different between Hakka cuisine and chinese cuisine, but being that MiaoLi is full of Hakka people, this was definitely the real deal. That and of course I trust my dad's opinion on the matter. So it was a real treat and now I can better recognize Hakka cuisine when I see and taste it. After coming back and doing some laundry, it was already time for dinner. So Yuki and I headed over for some cheap sushi at Sushi Express near the Zhongxiao Dunhua MRT station. I must say, it's mediocre at best. But at least it's not making me sick. I still give it a good review though. Why? because it's $30 NT a dish. At two pieces of sushi per dish, that's $.50 cents each piece. I can't get a can of Coke for that cheap in the states. So if you need to satisfy your craving for Sushi on a budget without getting stomach sickness, try out Sushi Express. But if your craving the quality stuff, this is not the place. After wards we made a quick run through the Taipei Luminaries 2011 festival at Chang-Kai Shek memorial hall. Then onwards to the Eslite mega bookstore at Xin Yi district (next to 101). I ended up purchasing a Taiwanese cook book. It was cheap, simple, in English and a good start to chinese style cuisine. So expect some of my culinary creations soon.