Getting a cheap flight back to Tokyo was not easy. There were no direct flights in our price range. The best option ended up being either a 5 hour layover in Taipei or a 9 hour layover in Taipei. I read somewhere that the government offers free tours if you have a 7+ hour layover, so we picked that flight. We flew out of Nam at 2am went through customs around 7 and signed up for the tour. A cute old guy took us around on a bus and showed us the older part of town for about 4 hours. It was pretty great. We saw a beautiful old temple and walked around the ceramics district, then we went to some weird ethnic museum and toured a famous pottery factory. We noticed when we signed up for the tour that tons of flights were being cancelled. Turns out their was a MASSIVE typhoon hitting southern Taiwan. They ended up grounding all the flights, and closed down work in Taiwan for a few days because it was so bad. Luckily, our flight wasn't cancelled and we missed getting trapped by only a few hours. We felt so lucky when we checked the news the next day and saw people getting blown over in the street.
