Out on the town with Anne @ Tonkatsu + Daiso

I think looking at pictures is more fun than reading so there's a ton of pictures attached here.  The occasion? Friday night out on the town with Anne!  Anne is Ali's sister, Johan's cousin, my friend and now co-worker. She's been helping me shop online for various home appliances such as a microwave, toaster oven, kettle, rice cooker etc.  Today she offered to take me to Daiso, a cheap dollar-store-type-of-place.  The Daiso was located close to Taipei Main Station so once we finished work around 7pm, Johan dropped us off at the MRT and Anne and I zipped up to Taipei Main Station (TMS).  Probably a 20 min ride.  We emerged out of the underground portion of TMS using exit M6.

We were starving so Anne took me to a restaurant called Tonkatsu!  If you are familiar with Japanese cuisine you probably know this word.  Tonkatsu is a fried breaded pork cutlet.  Very popular in both Japan and Western Japanese cuisine.  And apparently in Taiwan too.  It has it's own restaurant!  (Btw, the restaurant name probably isn't solely "Tonkatsu", but I can't read the Chinese so I only read the English part).

The restaurant was located in this really cool area adjacent to the TMS beside the Shinkong Mitsukoshi building that was seen on last years Amazing Race.  The area is mostly frequented by youth.  Lots of students and young people buzzing around.  And with young people, that means cheap and good eats!  Along with lots of cool young-people stores including Muji and Uniqlo :)  Looking forward to show this area to Eliza!  I digress, lets head into the restaurant for eats; I'm starving!

Tonkatsu was located 2 flights of stairs down under ground.

This is their menu.  Basically 12 different tonkatsu's.  They're all pork except there's 1 chicken dish, and 2 deep fried shrimp cake things.  Some tonkatsu has fish flakes, or chees inside, or curry etc.

Everything comes with several side dishes.  You get unlimited miso soup and rice, pickled radish and carrot, fountain drinks, and this yogurt/jelly dessert.  As you can see above I got the curry tonkatsu and Anne got the tonkatsu that comes in smaller pieces (I think it's just a different cut of pork meat cooked in the same way as everything else).

Anne, my friday night Taipei tour guide :)

Below are some pictures of the cool area I spoke of.

Tonkatsu place just to the right of this intersection

After we finished eating we walked across the street into the KMall building.  A well known mall in the area.  On the first floor are a whole wack of electronics stores.  Mostly focused on mobile computing (phones and Apple products).  The second floor was nearly completely occupied by our destination store: Daiso.  Anne gave me the full tour (it's a maze in there!).  Everything is $39NT ($1.30).  I picked up a shower curtain, some dehumidifying beads to put in the closet so that my clothes don't mold in the humidity, some all purpose spray cleaner, and some dish towels.  They had a ton of other things in there but I'm going to Costco tomorrow so today was mostly to see what they have so I can make a more educated guess later on as to what is good value.

Thanks Anne for the fun Friday night!  Hope to do it again soon :)

ps - I don't know how hot it was today, but it's 11:30pm at night and the temperature right now is 27 degrees.  Thank goodness for AC at home here.