Woohoo...Hey peoples, I'm back in singapore! And japan was niiiice. Went to japan for the first time the past few days, from 23rd till this morning at 12.25am when the plane landed at terminal 1, but you should've known that now shouldn't you.

Day 1
Ok so, on the first day, after the plane landed, i was like...omg its japan o.o Cleared immigrations, met up with the tour group (yes i went on a tour), stayed at a hotel at narita (a.k.a. become field cause its 成田 in japanese). Temperature was about 8 degrees, wind made it colder though. Seriously not used to cold weather (not on the first day anyway) so was like shivering abit cause i didnt wanna wear the thicker jacket (just wore my sweater which was really thin i suppose) cause then it would be too warm. Yeah so, i was like...so thrilled that the walkways around japan looked exactly like those drawn in animes. Even took a picture of it. Really. So cool. Went to a shopping centre to get some snacks and have dinner (hehheh...sushi, very nice. Like 1x10^10000 times better than sakae, and just slightly more expensive). Kept looking at the jap guy's hairstyles cause all look like anime...defying gravity, but damn cool. Then i noticed that my hair started to stick to my head for some reason. There was this one piece "strong world" promotion going on, then alot of people queueing up for collectibles. Didnt bother to join though...probably wont know what the guy tells me. Yeah so thats about it for the first day.

Day 2
Ate breakfast at the hotel, orange eggs (very very orange yolk...interesting), rice (basically every meal of the day im eating the jap rice), sausages, miso soup (much less salty than whatever here = yummm), some fish...dunno what kind though, but its full of bones. Thats the buffet. Left for some sulphur cespool somewhere near mt fuji. All i can say is that...it stinks. Some guy on the tour got nauseous somewhere up the trip on the mountain cause of the smell...ewww. Well it was interesting to see H2S gas bubble from vents at the side of a dormant volcano, and piles of blackish solidified andesitic lava. They sold hot spring eggs there yeah, with black shells and stuff. Dunno if they stank as bad as the cespool though, didnt wanna get one. Tried the wasabi and egg flavoured ice creams though. Wasabi wasnt that strong...duh...the egg flavoured one tasted like egg tarts, both not bad, but i still dont like egg tarts. Oh yeah...maybe i shouldntve eaten ice cream though...now that i think about it, eating ice cream during winter with only one sweater at a temperature of 8+ degrees is sorta crazy now isnt it. Oh well.

Freshwater spring next, which was supposed to give you longevity if you drank the spring water. Hmm...nothing much done there. Looked at huge oversized koi, puffy ducks. There were lotsa people selling stuff like miso or sweet beans and stuff. I think my dad bought a packet.

Went to a factory outlet store after that for some shopping. Got me new shoes ahahaha (i got those tennis shoes samuel, cheaper too), got a jacket for my sis, took pictures pictures and more pictures of mt fuji. Oh...i bought something else also. Ah...where is it.

After that went to a really really really cool place. Its called, a hot spring resort. Which means...theres hot springs and yukatas, wheeee. Sat in the hot spring (which was...at an all high of 42 degrees...which is damn hot but you get used to it after awhile) for like...half an hour? Not an open air one though so no bamboo fence all around. After about 10mins my face was very red...too much blood circulation lol. Ate sashimi for dinner, alot of stuff that normally wouldnt eat in sashimi appeared ahaha. Ever ate raw lobster before? or...raw scallops or raw prawns? Tasted quite good actually. Probably will never get to eat this kinda thing until the next time i go to japan...sadded.

Day 3
Got up early to go to the hot springs one more time before leaving for mt fuji (or fuji-san as the japs call it). Didnt think there would be anyone in the hot springs at 5am in the morning...but well, i was wrong. In fact...there were more people than when i went the previous night...a grand total of 5 people. Heh. Anyway, went to mt fuji's 5th lookout (which juuuust opened right as we got there. Was closed earlier cause of weather i think...or something like that. Then closed again soon after we passed. Sooo lucky), a very very high place covered with snow. Tour guide said it was roughly -16 degrees i think. Man thats cold. Kinda glad i got to see some real, non-snowcity snow, finally...after 17 long years. Managed to make small balls of snow ahaha.

Went to a place called Asakusa after that for some temple sightseeing (no, didnt see any mikos. If you dont know whats that, nevermind), talked to this extremely hyper guy who was advertising rickshaw services to...tourists like me i guess. Funny guy. Anyway, asakusa was full of...shopping...again. Then went to eat dinner and went to another hotel somewhere.

Day 4
The most shopping-ful and anime-ful day. My sis went crazy. Went to harajuku for some clothes shopping for my sis. Went to macs for lunch, got a pokemon poster there =D yay pokemon. Saw lot of those ermm...visual kei clothing, which are...sorta like punk+gothic kinda stuff. Also alot of PINK stuff. Though like for girls only.

Went to Ginza, also shopping, but very expensive shopping. Went to this toy shop somewhere down the street. One of the floors sold all sortsa anime stuff, so got me 2 FFXIII cans, which are right now on my shelf together with the rest of my displays. Cant wait for it to come out. Bought onigiris at the nearby convenience store for a snack. I think i can survive on onigiris if i ever go to japan...cheap and quite nice.

Next was...Akihabara. Whooo manga heaven lol. One piece first book in japanese. Im very happy. Sis bought some KHR doujinshi *sigh*. Went to this place called the tokyo animation museum store or somewhere along those lines. More stuff that i wanted but...oh well, didnt get anything there in the end. There was a life sized pikachu and saber model there though. Never knew pikachu was that big...hmm. Found a hmv-like store around the corner. Glad i can read jap...cause all the titles were in jap (of course...), wouldnt have been able to find an ikimonogakari album if i didnt.

Day 5
Wouldnt say i did very much on this day. Just walked around, looked at stuff, tried a bottle of melon cream soda, went to the airport, took a 7hr flight back to singapore, got a nosebleed halfway through the night for some reason. Got a nosebleed when i woke up this morning for some reason. Yeah...nothing much.


Now...back to studying...man. Still havent finished holiday homework yet...hope i havent lagged too much behind the past 5 days.





back, and more tired than ever before...
brendon...

Hey hey...going to japan today ahahaha. Wont be back till the 27th which is a...errrcant think of what day it is. Well if you look at the time on this post it'll probably say 12.20am or something. Yeah its the right time. Flight's at 8+ though, just meeting my cousins-from-america-who-I-havent-met-in-a-long-time-but-have-come-to-visit-on-the-same-day-that-Im-going-on-my-trip. Hmm...wonder what we gonna do for 5hrs though...cant possibly be talking for that whole time... =.=

Oh well...gonna go soon. See ya peoples!!!






and im off...(to tokyo FYI)
brendon...

Ahhh...tired. Its like...almost 3.30 in the morning and havent slept a wink. Why? Dunno. Having a sleepover right now, though kinda ironic that people dont let you sleep at sleepovers...considering the sleep part that is. Oh well...at least theres mahjong to pass the time.

Anyway, went to 313 (the shopping mall) with kel, sam, ly, marion n FOC, sorta celebrate kel's bday again i guess. Walked around and around shops, addidas, addidas and errr...addidas. Yeah, addidas people. Anyway, we walked, and walked, and didnt buy anything. Then HMV, wanted to get a jap album by uverworld but...the price scared me off. Seriously...it was in its 70s. Meh...

Walked...somemore...to cineplex to have lunch, some korean BBQ or something. Well it isnt like seoul garden if thats what you're thinking. More like the recipes are korean and they BBQ the chops, hence korean BBQ. Had this...jamaican something something...well starting letters spelt jerk...so lets just call it jerk. Not bad, tv behind was entertaining too. Korean...duh.

Yeah...so after that went home, got some of my stuff (the remainding) then, off to a random house =.= where i got force fed tomyam flavoured beehoon and "salty" sausages (which of course i dont really think are salty, note open and close inverted commas).

Man...sleep, but...mahjong...ahhhh.





omg...
brendon...

Whooo...book sorting/distribution SL ended today. NTUC used textbook programme a.k.a. cheap labour. Experience i had was sorta good, compared to whatever other people experienced. No angry parents, no irritating/kiasu parents, no totally blur parents/students, which is good, for me at least. I really gotta say...some of the people who were taking the books are sooooo selfish/ungrateful. They shout at you if you give them the wrong book, knowing that its not actually our job (we're just volunteers, its not like we work there or anything) to help them get the right books, they hoard (stockpile can also be used, but i'll use the less degenerative version so as to not make them look too bad) books into large boxes (yes boxes, not just plastic bags, or those trolleys that people use when going to the market), some people guess to sell but im gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and say that theyre using it for tuition purposes. Of course there are the kiasu parents who grab a whole armful of assessment books (i pity the children) to be used at home. Im glad my parents dont hoard assessment books for me to do (especially chinese), if not i'll probably be somewhere between life and death. And of course some of the other volunteers were...err...complaining? Though i suppose who wouldnt.

Well, of course like in every good essay there must be some form of balance, and of course not all parents are that evil (notice "that"). Most were really quite nice, chatting and joking and all that. Not all were kiasu, not wanting to take more than what they needed, maybe one or two guidebooks for chemistry but nothing significant. A lot couldnt find the books they wanted though, especially for the less popular subs like...combined science for sec 2s? or some publishers of music/dnt/english/home econs. It was confusing. Too many publishers, too many subjects, too many levels to sift through. No one took any tertiary books though, even though they should be worth the most money (if they wanted to sell the books that is...). Oh yeah, some people just came in for fun, just to look at books (*cough* kaypo *cough*), then look look look, take like 1 or 2, then leave. Like got nothing better to do like that...lol.

Saw a lot of books that i used last time. The whole time i was like, hey i used that book, cool, then i would flip through abit, them put it back. Saw pokemon books o.o brings back memories. The others section was the most interesting, a lot of random stuff like well...pokemon books (yes they are interesting. Go read them), Digimon books, game guidebooks, really old dictionaries, really new dictionaries, storybooks, and...other stuff.

Anyway, after all of the book-ing, went to novena to have some lunch (no catered chicken rice for me) with kel, sam, ly and FOC. Ate donuts wheeee, and other stuff. Took a reeaaaalllllly long time, yup. Bought more donuts to bring home then went to some adidas store to check out shoes (cause i really need tennis shoes). Didnt buy anything though, all the shoes that i chose didnt have my size... This shows that i made the right choice, cause no size means its popular, which means that the design and colour of the shoe is niiice. Took awhile cause kel and sam bought stuff too, then went home after.

Oh, my room like...doesnt have much light now, so im practically ruining my eyesight while using the computer. Theres something wrong with my room light, it just wont turn on. The bulb didnt blow, so must be the sparking mechanism...which means that i wont have much light for a few more...days? or a week i guess. Crap.

Ah yeah, then theres holiday homework. LOTS and LOTS of it. Not just one or two pages, no..., MILLIONS of em. Ok not really...trying to make an impact. But yes there is alot of homework, and im not even halfway done. In fact, i barely even started. Its sooooo difficult to do...omg. Its like all challenging questions. Its gonna be a loooooong holiday...
Oh well, im slacking now anyway.




*sigh* how many mercedes/bmws drove up the slope today...
brendon...

Yes yes...i know its 1am in the morning already but why leave blogging to another day huh? (or more specifically later in the day). Yep anyway, I FINALLY FINISHED MY 2000 PIECE PUZZLE. Omg...that took a really long time. I learnt something from all this. When doing a puzzle with many many pieces, they all look the same. Imagine this, im looking for a green puzzle piece for the grass section of the jigsaw puzzle so I look for distinguishing stuff that i can use to help me find the right piece. Then i look at the box where all the puzzle pieces are, and...see a whole bunch of green stuff (like maybe 400 pieces?). Its...frustrating. Well, there is that sense of accomplishment when i finally put in the last piece...it was fun though, but very time consuming. Gotta get a frame to frame it up soon, gonna be expensive. Glad i have a sponsor, thanks mom. Well, it was the only way to get me to voluntarily clean my table, so...yup.

Ok...so im doing chores this whole month since no ones cleaning the house on a daily basis (maid back in indonesia visiting). Did lotsa housework that i havent really done much of in a long long time e.g. wash/iron my clothes. Had to mop the whole house too (broke a mop in the process...luckily i came prepared. Had a new mop ready) and those people who have come to my house before will know that it's not a simple task. *sigh*...the problem with stairs. Anywho...yes i know im rather sheltered, BUT i do know how to do housework ok...

On to another topic. Went to CO on saturday from 9am-1pm and today from 6-8pm (yes...6-8 =.= its retarded). Didnt do anything, nuff said. Was reading my book throughout the whole practice cause im not going for the hongkong trip and the conductor wanted to practice the songs for the trip. Was really bored...duh. Only went for attendance (and cause SL will kill me, again, if i dont go). Meh...

"Holidays" so far been fun, since obviously i havent started studying, much, at all (read physics : superposition abit but thats all). Dad bought Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 for himself (and effectively me) to play. He wasnt good at it, as usual, so while i was busy doing stuff in my room he would call me down and get me to complete the mission for him or something. I actually didnt wanna play it initially, since its a FPS, but...yeah. Oh well.




study? ok. After i sleep.
brendon...