Hiking Day

The poster itself is too cute already. Winnie the Pooh??! LOL!!

There was no classes last Friday, because my college had its annual event - hiking, or more called 遠足 (ensoku) in Japanese. The name suggested that we went for hiking; but as far as I could remember, I didn't enter any jungle and hike up a hill. Instead, I guess I ate more than the amount of calorie I was supposed to burn on this hiking day.

Being the fifth year student this year, it will mark the third and final time we get to join the event. I won some some kiosk coupon worth 500 yen from a treasure hunt game with my tutor, Tanaka when I was in the third year. Last year was a little boring and I didn't do anything much besides helping to finish the food cooked by my classmates lol.

Students gathered at the school field before starting the journey to the camping site.

Taking a staircase instead of the slope as a short-cut to the main road.

Just to remind you again that my college is surrounded by rice fields.

This is a ski resort located along the way to the camping site. The green track is used for summer ski. Who said you can only ski during the winter?

The walk from the college to the camping site takes around thirty minutes. But due to the talking and fooling around by the students along the way, it took them almost an hour before they reached the place. The camping site is one part of Higashiyama Family Land, which also consists other interesting attractions like a playground, a mini zoo where you get to see sheep, pony and rabbits, and a cow farm, among others.

There is also a huge compound up a hill where they plant rapeseed and they are just too breathtaking when the flowers are at full bloom. From the top of the hill, most part of the city of Nagaoka can be viewed. There is where I went to take the picture for my header.

The signboard to greet the visitors.

Almost there.

The first thing they do upon reaching was to take a bottle of juice from the booth.

The students would then walk to their cooking pit according to their classes.

And once the fire was set up, they began cooking their menu they have picked themselves.

These Japanese chicks were preparing the batter for okonomiyaki.

Lastly, they will take their place on the sheet and enjoy their food under the tree.

Each class is given a budget of 5,000 yen (RM 180) and it is up to every class to decide what they wanna cook for the day. The most common menu would be yakisoba and okonomiyaki. My class made yakisoba for the last two years. But this year being our final year here, they thought of doing something special. Something which not many people would think is possible to cook at such place. They planned to cook nasi lemak with sambal belacan ikan bilis.

Haha, no-lah; I was kidding only. How can you expect Japanese to cook such dish. So, the menu my class decided to cook was ramen. Yes, you heard that right, ramen. You might be wondering, how to cook ramen at such limited and demanding environment-lah?

I had the same question too, until I went to see my classmates.

Instead of using the wet noodles and cooking the soup for the ramen, they just used the instant ramen lol. Damn smart, right?

Oh hi! With my tutor, Tanaka at the far right.

This year however, was busy at elsewhere that I didn't manage to get to taste the ramen my classmates made. It seemed that the international students were given a budget to make any food of our liking among ourselves this time. The rational is because most of the time, the Muslims couldn't get to join their classmates with the dish they cook due to the non-halal meat used. As this is the first time we were given a budget, we decided to make something special.

I didn't join the gathering at the field and walk all the way to the camping site as one of the lecturer was kind enough to send the three of us there much earlier as we need to bring the cooking stuff there and set up the fire there.

Wei Shen and Yan Kuang taking turns to fan the charcoal.

At another corner, I played with the fire lol.

And stealing food before the rest arrived. Haha, I'm so bad.

By now, you should be able to guess what we made for the day. Here it is.

Satay.

Using four kilograms of boneless chicken, we got almost 100 sticks of satay. It wasn't just satay because Muazam made some nasi himpit and his super delicious kuah kacang. Atiqah brought two tupperware of banana cake, and I made a huge tupperware of fried noodle. Planned to fry it mamak style but ended up becoming some unknown style haha. All the food was eaten up nevertheless.

Well, the decision to make satay this time has other c0-reasons too. Besides getting to eat local food we always crave for, we will also let the Japanese lecturers and students to get a taste of satay. We were very certain they would like it and indirectly, it acts as some introduction to promote one of our main menu which we will later sell at the college festival later this year. Smart marketing strategy, no?

I continued playing with the fire lol.

Ridzuan spreading some oil with lemon grass, but Muazam at the back doesn't seem to be happy at all. Maybe he wanted to try doing it too lol.

I got several of my classmates to try the satay, and they already placed their orders during the college festival - 50 sticks!

There are two non-Malaysians in this picture. Can you spot the two? Yes, the two in front.

Linear function in terms of height and colour lol.

Guess whose shadows are these two people. Correct guess indicates that you have an IQ above 120.

With my class teacher-cum-research lab lecturer, Kondo sensei who claimed that he has never missed this event for the last thirty years. Michelle said that we look alike =.=

Mr Haga, the nurse at my college's clinic and one of the dormitory's office guy.

A group picture of the international team.

Besides just cooking at the camping site, there were other side activities as well. The "Stamp Rally" or treasure hunt was held again as usual but I didn't join it this time. It would look funny and weird for such an old senior to join the event which is mainly held for the younger juniors.

However, there are still other events like tennis and baseball, in which the students can play freely among themselves.

Notice how the two guys are holding on the rope which acts as the net.

Futsal and volleyball for the girls were held as well and I joined the futsal, playing for my class. It was an eventful journey even from the first match. We progressed to the quarter-final before crashing out, losing on penalty-kicks. But the funny thing is that in all three matches, including the quarter-final match, we didn't scored a single goal. Chances were there, but lady luck just wasn't smiling at us on the day. So, it wasn't a surprised we got kicked out haha.

First match against the Electrical Engineering 3rd Year was won by the penalty-shootout with me taking the final and winning kick. Second match, where we played against Mechanical Engineering 2nd Year was decided with rock-paper-scissors game after everyone missed their penalty kicks. Here, they do not drag the penalty shoot-out to sudden death to save time and to make sure matches are held according to the schedule. It hurts to lose a match through penalty shoot-out, but it hurts even more when you lose out on that children game.

In the third match, we lost to the Chemical Engineering 3rd Year on penalty kicks after all three of us missed our kick. I came close to keep my team alive during the shoot-out but too bad my kick hit the top right corner. Sigh, so close yet so far.

Me in action! If only the result is decided by the size of the players.

Here is our team with the blur-faced coach in the middle.

Before the hiking day ended, there was a drawing lot session and prize-giving ceremony for the winners of the events held during the day. Too bad I didn't get my number that every students were given at the field earlier that morning. And I also missed the group photo session with my classmates, which was also done at the field. Double sigh.

Other classes had already told their classmates to remain until the end of the event because they will take their class group photo there. But for my class, the opposite thing happened. There were only three of us, including me from my class remaining at the end of the ceremony. How to take class group picture like that-lah?

Here is the way to do it.

Only three? Never a problem!

I think we can submit our photo to the Guinness World of Record as the "Least Number Students In A Class Photo" category haha.

While walking back to the college, we passed the camping site again and we saw another classmate of ours and we were excited and touched that we managed to find another person to join our group photo, which made it four of us. Haha, damn pathetic, I know.

Notice the guy on the right always pose the same way. And by the way, don't you think he looks like Suneo in Doraemon?

I hope I will get a much better class group picture next time, before I graduate.