Down a long, narrow road lined with fishing ponds, small groups of fishermen ply the waters with their poles, which droop at an angle nearly parallel to their dangling cigarettes. Nestled in the countryside 20 minutes outside Taipei is Tsubaki, the type of small, upscale inn that in Japan is called a ryokan. Pass through the old wooden gate, and you might as well be in Kyoto.
Surrounded by a densely wooded hill, Tsubaki’s garden has just the right Japanese mix of burbling water, rocks and carefully tended shrubbery. Inside the ryokan rooms, the air is fragrant with the earthy scent of new tatami mats, and at night, futon mattresses and bean-filled pillows are carefully laid out in each room.
Taiwan has plenty of its own sights, sounds and tastes—the night markets of Taipei are famous for their endless variety of dumplings, noodle soups and sausages—yet many visitors don’t realize the island also offers some of the best Japanese food and service in all of Asia. It’s as authentic as any you’d find in Japan itself, but at far lower prices. Tsubaki might not have the same 300-year history and esteemed guest list as Tawaraya, a ryokan in Kyoto where princes of the Japanese royal family and foreign heads of state have stayed. But it’s just as comfortable, and at about $200 a night, including two meals, it’s one-fourth the price.
Much of what’s truly Japanese in Taiwan remains from its days as a colony of the Empire of the Sun. Japan occupied Taiwan and the nearby Pescadore Islands from 1895 to 1945, and during that time the Japanese turned Taiwan into one of Asia’s most modern and well-educated societies.
The Japanese built grand public buildings, turned the harbors of Kaohsiung and Keelung into key shipping ports, and laid a railroad that stretched along the western coast of the island. In Taipei, they tore down the old city walls and built a grid pattern for the city’s streets. Eventually, they extended primary education—in Japanese, of course—to ordinary Taiwanese, an effort to nurture literate workers.
After the Japanese defeat in World War II in 1945, the Chinese reclaimed the island. The ruling Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, set about erasing most traces of Japanese rule and renaming streets after Chinese Nationalist heroes and principles. Chokushi Kaido was renamed Zhongshan Road (after an honorary name for Sun Yat-sen) and Sansen Doro became Zhongxiao Road (meaning “loyalty and filial piety”), according to Tai Pao-tsun, a history professor at Taiwan’s National Central University. They also destroyed Shinto shrines and banned Japanese publications.
But the rebranding of Taiwan, which continued after the Nationalists fled the Chinese mainland in 1949, wasn’t entirely successful. There are many Japanophiles living in Taiwan, and many places offering tourists in Taipei a less-expensive alternative to a trip to Japan. The roots of Japanese culture are still on display in Taipei, in a warren of alleys that locals call “Little Tokyo,” just south of Nanjing Road.
Today, these alleys are virtually indistinguishable from Tokyo’s Kabuki-cho nightlife district, lined with brightly lit Japanese signs advertising countless tiny hostess bars hidden behind doors not quite thick enough to contain the warbling of off-key karaoke. At the bar, you’re likely to find groups of middle-aged salarymen similar to those you’d see in Tokyo, except the hostesses—sitting beside them and keeping the drinks and conversation flowing—speak Japanese with a Taiwanese accent.
The Japanese-style grilled eel at the restaurant Fei-qian-wu is far better than its bar-alley location would suggest. The smoky flavor of the eel counters the slightly sweet basting sauce, just as you’d expect in Tokyo’s finest unagi (grilled eel) restaurants.
As at most casual eateries in Japan, the menu at Fei-qian-wu hangs on plaques around the walls (laminated menus in Chinese and English are also available). Order in Japanese or Mandarin—the restaurant was founded 35 years ago by a Japanese-Taiwanese family. You won’t even find the ubiquitous Taiwan-brand beer here. Instead ale drinkers are expected to order Kirin. A regular size unajyu (grilled eel over rice served in a lacquered bento box) and a Kirin costs about $6, a small fraction of the several thousand yen you’d expect to pay at an eel restaurant in Tokyo.
It’s not just the physical manifestations of Japanese culture that survive. Taiwan is one of the few places that can successfully duplicate the tipsy camaraderie of an izakaya eatery, where Japanese kick back and relax over drinks and small dishes of food after a hard day at the office.
At Wa-ko, the specialty is fresh seafood, and it offers an excellent variety of sashimi and grilled fish, served in small portions to go with drinks. Like most izakaya joints, the restaurant has two rooms: one with tables and chairs, the other with pillows or low-benches around tables in sunken recesses—old-style Japanese. On a recent visit, the traditionally styled room was full of Taiwanese customers. Owner Asato Satoshi, 55 years old, hails from the southern Japanese islands of Okinawa, and opened Wa-ko nearly two decades ago. The most popular dish is an Okinawan xia jiu cai—tofu with small fish and lemon on top. Be sure to try the roast chicken wings and squid with tarako, a kind of fish roe.
Oden is so much a part of Japanese food culture that a steaming pot of the stuff can be found right next to the cash register in many Japanese convenience stores. A simple, lightly flavored broth with root vegetables, egg, tofu and fish paste, oden dates back hundreds of years. Besides the modern convenience-store variety, oden traditionally was consumed at sidewalk stalls, along with the requisite glass of sake or beer, as a late-night snack. Taiwan sports its own homegrown version of oden bars—called heilun in Mandarin—that date back to its occupation-era days, and it has some traditional Japanese versions as well.
At Tian-quan, Darryl Wang, 32, the gregarious Taiwanese host, might not speak much Japanese but everything else about his street-corner oden bar is authentic, down to the address plaque from Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya district on the building’s wall. Both street-facing sides of the bar are completely open, leaving customers at the L-shaped counter exposed to the nighttime Taipei air. The feel is much like the now mostly-lost open-air oden stalls that dotted Tokyo’s streets in the immediate post-War period.
Mr. Wang spends most evenings dishing out bowls of oden to a crowd of steady local regulars, who return the favor by pouring him an occasional glass from their sake bottle. Belly up to the bar and try his fishcakes in soup and pick what you want—vegetables, meat or even fruit—to add in. Or just point to what the locals are having. Grilled chicken and fish also are available.
For dessert, head to the Sanmeido pastry shop in Taipei’s Tienmu area, in the shadow of the Mitsukoshi department store. The imposing proprietress, a Taiwanese and fluent-Japanese speaker named Tsai Yin, supervises from behind a glass counter showcasing her traditional Japanese sweets. In her 70s, Mrs. Tsai is old enough to have attended Japanese schools during the occupation, and, in fact, she speaks only Taiwanese (the local dialect) and Japanese—no Mandarin. Her Japanese husband taught her how to make the desserts, which include homemade dango (chewy rice-flour sweets skewered on a bamboo stick for easy eating) and the shop’s specialty, strawberry mochi (sweet rice cakes).
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