Where in Taiwan?? You've named an entire country as the location.

Yep! Though the simplified kanji are sometimes different than simplified mandarin characters. I don't know much about these differences, as I've never spoken/written Japanese, but I do know they exist.

Well kanji is pretty much just borrowed chinese characters. "Cat" in mandarin is also 猫 (pronounced "mao"). This depiction just clearly isn't Japanese.

(I've also talked with this artist before, and most of their work contains either mandarin or ancient Chinese seal script)