Being Overseas

Seriously, i advise all my friends to go for exchange to whereover it may be even for one semester.

1. To escape the "quite boring" Singapore for a while
2. To get away from hot hot Singapore for a while
3. Your whole brain of a narrow viewpoint disappears after talking to people from other parts of Asia, Europe and America....

People look at Singapore differently, you would be shocked at the stereotypes that people have of Singapore. The most hilarious one is that you almost have a policeman behind your back all the time,so that when you litter, they would fine you...

Take a look at things differently. How Chinese in Japan think of the riots, and how those GUAI LAN Japanese writers try to suan China after the riots break out. How some People who lived in Singapore say that they have never seen anything how things seem to flow and move so efficiently and smoothly except in Switzerland...

The city looks and runs the way you wish Los Angeles would. Traffic flows freely over wide, flower-lined highways. There is no obvious litter or pollution, there are no slums or beggars. The people look industrious and purposeful, wealthy and satisfied. Services, from garbage collection to buses, run with a mindful orderliness that I have encountered nowhere else on earth except Switzerland.

Wacky Day in Tokyo

A guy jumped off the platform into the railway and died. He chose the rush hour and the most important line (yamanote line which goes in a loop to the major places in tokyo) to jump into. So the whole line just kinda stopped working and of course i was caught in a dilemma of how i was going to get to school.

In the end, i gave up waiting for the train to resume operations and took an alternative route thru the subway which took me an extra half an hour. So I reached school about half hour late. The news reported that the accident affected 110,000 commuters during the rush hour.

And then today was the hottest day in June in the whole history of Tokyo, the highest temperature reached 36 degrees celcius. I think it should also be the hottest day in my personal history. I think that is why i felt pissed off and drowsy today... and had to drink lotsa water, and of course my brain was left wondering why all the Japanese salaryman were still wearing their suits as if it was 20 degrees...

Sugayama Kaoru, the new princess of Japanese volleyball
Posted by Hello

Sports in Japan

Japanese just love sports, be it watching or playing, that's why their level of sports is higher here...

Japanese and Brazilians have an interesting relation. Lots of Japanese have moved to Brazil a long time ago, and now there are a lot of brazilians working in Japan.

So in soccer, the confederations cup, japan drew with brazil and did not manage to get into the knockout stages. Then today I watched the japanese women volleyball team take on the brazilians who are the defending champions of this world grand prix. Japan took the 1st 2 sets, before losing the next 2. In the decider, it was a see-saw set, i got damn exciting. it went into sudden death scoreline and finally the brazilians won it 20-18...almost.

Just like the Japanese have never won the brazilians in soccer, the girls have never won in volleyball too.

Nevertheless, japanese sportspeople of the matches would go to Nakamura for soccer and the new princess of Japanese Volleyball (菅山かおる)Sugayama Kaoru.
She's only 169cm, not that tall but then she can jump up to 321cm, don't think normal people can do that. And her digs and those brilliant smashes were what kept Japan in the match.... and of course, she's one of the cutest in the team...

Lazy Sunday

Some stuff I did in the course of the week...

Went to watch 電車男 (Densha Otoko) on wednesday night with Mark and 2 of my Japanese friends, Takayuki (Waterboys lead) plays a geek, who likes computers, Anime, and all the figurines of anime chracters and hangs around a place called Akibahara (Akiba for short), where it's like the Sim Lim and Bugis district where we have in Singapore... So being an otaku(geek), he's never had luck with girls, but things happen in the train, well sounds cliche, but Tokyolites love the train, and it's where the most weird and interesting things happen in Tokyo.
So in the end, he got together with Miki Nakatani who played "Hermes" in the show, the daughter of a rich guy. Yes some rich people still take trains as it's still the easiest way to get around Tokyo. The novel was a hit in Japan, it's not really a novel, but the whole book was written like a irc chat between 電車男　and his net-frens, like what a geek would do... and if it ever airs in Singapore, I would recommend it. It's cliche, but the funny parts of it are really funny

One of the worst sundays I ever had in Japan...

I woke up early cos I slept early last night, I looked at the work piled up in my file, and decided to try to finish them as soon as possible. My Japanese presentation, writeup on Starbucks Japan, the routine homework, and my Economics presentation.

I can sense the end of my term here in Japan, as I hand up my application for the return ticket and my withdrawal form for the dorm. It's really never enough in Japan I would say, there are still a thousand things I would wanna do here. But as with everything in life, you are constrained with the money and time factor. Trying to priortise the things that I want to do here, to watch a soccer match in their stadium, and to visit the Aichi World Exhibition, and DisneySea....

It's so unfair, Liverpool, Man U, Juve, Barca, Bayern, Valencia are all here for matches, while if anyone of them comes to Singapore, it would be extremely big news...

As for Aichi World Exhibition, I was surprised to hear that the Singapore booth is actually very popular among the tourists. With a simulator for the weather in Singapore, and food like Hokkien Mee and Goreng Pisang....

Not to mention that I get to watch the lastest dramas and anime on TV live. Not to say that S'pore or HK dramas suck, but it's hard to find some outstanding ones among them. Not that all Japanese drama are like WOW! but they are amazingly consistent in quality, very few dramas have made me fall asleep, but quite a few have made me watch them 5 episodes at a go...And yes please don't even try to compare them with Korean dramas, all korean dramas I watched so far made me sleep, although Japanese now do watch quite a lot of Korean dramas, and Mr Bae have made lots of money here, because the richest people here are the "Obaasans", they are the ones who zip around Tokyo in their latest red Mercs SL65, or the Ferrari Modena 360...

Well there's no such thing as the best of both worlds, I wanna enjoy life in Tokyo, but I still have homework to do....

Interesting old man selling stuff in Yokohama
Posted by Hello

The Ferris Wheel and the river
Posted by Hello

Habour view of Yokohama
Posted by Hello

Chinatown of Yokohama
Posted by Hello

Yokohama

Went to have lunch at Yokohama's Chinatown today, well it's a nice place just 1 hour outside Tokyo. Their Chinese food doesn't taste like Chinese food, also taste like Japanese food. Think to survive, you would have to accomodate the food to the taste of the Japanese.

Well now I know why people working in Tokyo live in Yokohama, the whole atmosphere is just so different from Tokyo. A much better place to live in.
Well enjoy the pictures from 346 to 362 in my imagestation.

Check out this response for the Tiananmen incident from the Chinese government

China insists the heavy-handed response to what it called a "counter-revolutionary rebellion" paved the way for 16 years of robust economic growth.

bullshit, world class bullshit

Kamakura（鎌倉）

The ancient city of Kamakura, 1 hour from downtown Tokyo. It was the ancient capital around the 1100s, and has lotsa Buddhism heritage.

So Mark and I went around to explore the area, it was about half hour away from Yokohama, the 2nd largest city in Japan. Well, what can I say, it's a good break away from hectic Tokyo, and lotsa greenery around the place. Of course temples may all look the same, but no harm just stroll around in a leisurely pace.

Well, lots of students were there on a field excursion, to let them know more about Buddhism in Japan. Kamakura is a must go for people who visit Tokyo, I would say.

Just go to my imagestation and check out pic 313 onwards, picture says a billion words. (Sorry ah, since yen count by the thousands, million yen isn't much, a billion is)

Of course what excursion is counted complete without a nice Parfait?

The temples of Kamakura, the famous big Buddha
Posted by Hello

More Parfaits!
Posted by Hello

Parfaits Galore
Posted by Hello

The amazing junction of Shibuya
Posted by Hello

4 non japanese guys, 1 japanese guy and 3 japanese girls in a Aladdinish restaurant
Posted by Hello

Uniquely Tokyo

No, I am not trying to make fun of the STB's slogan, but seriously there's a lot of things that are uniquely Tokyo

Went with some other people to go enjoy some interesting Arabian restaurant. There is nothing Arabic about the food, but the setting is like Aladdin.

First we rub the lamp, and then suddenly the doors opens, 3 ladies clad like "Jasmine" shouts welcome. Really nice dresses, baring their midriff and then the all shiny 2 piece dress and then some elaborate headdress... then we were guided to some cavern where we sit on the carpets and have our food, very hard to explain in words but it was quite nicely done. It's like a theme park restaurant.

Went to catch my first movie in Japan today, it's called "female" with Hasegawa Kyoko as one of the lead actresses. It's actually 5 short films put into one, it was more erotic than I thought, with nude scenes and stuff, but no, no such stuff from Hasegawa.... Then I saw this whole bunch of people gathering in front of the Shibuya Starbucks, very Singaporeanish, so went to talk to them, they are from VJ... Kau, nowdays people come to Japan during the mid year break, damn rich hor.... Anyway finally took a picture from Starbucks overlooking one of the busiest junction in Tokyo.....

Some bad things happened to me too this couple of days, got cornered of some sales people trying to sell me discount movie vouchers along the road of Shinjuku, even genna pushed by them to the corner, they are damn smart, I thought there were only 2 guys doing that, suddenly this guy in a suit came out from nowhere pushed me back into the corner when I said I had no time and had to rush, he pushed me back to the corner when I was about to run off and said," Please listen to what we have to say till the end." Fucking pissed, I waited for another chance and used the oldest trick in the book, looked at my watch, and then pointed somewhere behind them, pushed them aside and then ran into the human crowd.

Was also at Nakano, a small town off main downtown Tokyo like 10 min away. It has the largest anime, manga, Idol collectibles in the whole of Tokyo. So ya, found a set of Bleach keychains(handphone chains) for 15 bucks (set of 5, think got ichigo, kon, the girl, the arrow guy and forgot about the last one). Lotsa posters, and other interesting stuff. Would make a trip back to that place...