lost art forms in a most unexpected place

After the hiking trip, I came back to Taipei and went to the entertainment district of Ximen　（西門） This is where everybody (especially the young and the cool) go to hang out. They have a lot of karaoke places, restaurants, and shops but the main goal seems to be window-shopping, people-watching, and eating snacks. I saw a few freaky looking kids, and a few dangerous looking dudes, but by and large everything was pretty wholesome. One really cool thing I saw there was the magic shakuhachi man. There was an old guy dressed in traditional Japanese monk clothes, playing a shakuhachi （尺八）flute to accompany Japanese funkified traditional music over a loudspeaker. The interesting thing was, he was wearing a basket over his head (looked like a bamboo wastebasket) If you haven't seen this before, you're missing out. Apparently, back in the old days in Japan, there were zen monks called Komuso （虚無僧）who wandered around playing the flute in order to meditate, make a few bucks to support themselves, or to perform a kind of spiritual cleansing of people who listened to them. They wore these baskets over their heads to symbolize that they had no personal identity. Later on, a number of these guys became spies for the shogun so when Japan restored the emperor not only were these komuso outlawed, but playing the shakuhachi was outlawed too. Well, that's what they say on wikipedia, anyway. So this guy was outside Ximen station playing the shakuhachi flute to keep this art form alive. I'm so glad I got to see him...I'd seen those dudes with the baskets on their heads in samurai movies before (Zatoichi took out a whole bunch of 'em!) and wondered what the deal was with the baskets...and now i know!