Golden Week Gathering 2010

Short note: Apologies for taking quite some time to make an update on this gathering, as I tried to get some of the pictures from the others to be included in the entry. In contrary to my last few entries, this is gonna be another long entry. So, please ganbatte, alright? Haha! By the way, please take note that some stuff I write in this entry is only meant as a joke and I hope nobody will take it too seriously, okay?

Breakfast session on the second day; the dining hall looks very Harry Potter-ish, with the white-bubble bulbs and wooden furniture.

This year was the third-straight year that the annual Golden Week Gathering being held at Otizawa Youth Centre in Machida City, Tokyo. The name of the venue doesn't really give one an exact idea of what kind of place it is. Well, I shall say that we literally camped in a forest lol! Plus, the area was so ulu (secluded) that there were no phone signals there! Imagine this; we were in Tokyo, one of the largest metropolitan in the world, but we were taken away from civilization, as we couldn't call or send out any messages from our phones at all!

This is my third time attending the gathering in four years, as I gave it a skip last year because I was busy preparing for my university entrance exam. Well, it's just a lame excuse to be honest lol! Anyway, I guess it would be hard for anybody to beat Andrew's record of having attended the gathering for six-consecutive years, including this year.

Some of the early birds enjoying their yakisoba and bread.

I suppose these three juniors over-enjoyed their yakisoba lol!

Nevertheless, I still managed to set a personal record. That would be for being at the gathering for the shortest period of time haha! It was supposed to be a three-days-two-nights gathering, with the main events taking place on the second day. I was only there on the second day, and didn't stay overnight on the first or the second night. 

One of the reason is because of the generation gap that I have started to feel between myself and the new juniors, who are four years younger than me. By the way, this is the batch in which I held the KTJ Workshop with last summer back in Shah Alam. Now, they are already in Japan. How fast time flies.

The three stooges busy cutting firewood for cooking. Reminds me of the exact thing we did two years ago.



This year, there were some slight changes, as some of them chose to camp in the woods, instead of sleeping in the hall.



The new juniors, looking proud after the completion of their camp construction haha!



I never knew the tadpoles in Japan are that huge!

My seniors used to say about the generation-gap thingy not some distance back, and now I understand the feelings. I realised however, that my batch mates and I were just like them four years ago; still young and innocent before having our minds being polluted by the seniors lol! And I still remember how we had that inferior feeling to approach and talk to the seniors because they look so much matured than us.

So, I thought I would be doing most of the talking with my batch mates this time. That was what I thought initially, but like they always say, expect the unexpected. The opposite thing happened in the end haha!

The traditional ice-breaking event - self-introduction session by all the new juniors.



It was a coincidence that we had two birthday kids on that day. So we gave them a huge present - a birthday song lol!



Our super duper senior which was more than a decade above us - Crystal Ting.



And that is Kevin, her son.

At the end of the day, I turned a baby-sitter to a nine-year-old boy lol! Kevin is the son of our super-to-the-power-of-super senior, Crystal Ting. We entered PPKTJ in 2005, while she enrolled there in 1992, the year when I was only a four-year-old little boy haha! She is now happily married to a Filipino husband, and both of them currently work in Tokyo.

As Kevin was born in Tokyo, his Japanese is as fluent as the native and one would never thought that his parents are non-Japanese. After some time talking with him, I found out that he is a huge fan of football and potatoes, something which we both share in common. No wonder we clicked kinda fast lol!

I wore a black Adidas t-shirt, while Kevin had a pair of grey Adidas socks. What a coincidence!

Ah Lee and Chan tried to make friends with Kevin, who looked to be emoing haha!

Guess who is the youngest here.

The Finance Minister went busy straight away, collecting debts from everyone haha!

Right after the self-introduction session, everyone had some free time to go around and chit chat, doing catch-ups after not seeing each other for some time. This was the time when most of the long-time gossips and stories popped-up haha! For example, A and B are now an item, C and D are no longer together, or X is not dating with the ex of Y, Z. Some are true, some were merely cerita dongeng made up by people lol!

At the same time, the juniors started to prepare for the next event, which was like a station-game. We were randomly divided into several groups and had to go to each station to play a particular game.

Group 2 - We had people born in the early-eighties, late-eighties and early-nineties; a pretty much balanced team.

We had Amy, a Penangnite who is currently doing her post-graduate course at Meiji University, joining in our group. She shared her stories on how she was supposed to graduate with a Master in just a few months' time, but she gave up on that and ended up in Japan to start all over again. As she just arrived in Japan a few weeks earlier, she doesn't speak a single Japanese words, besides "arigatou" and "aishiteru" lol! We were so distracted wit her stories until we were told that it was time for the station-game.

But before anything, it was time for various group pictures, beginning with the group of the new juniors.

Ex-PPKTJ-cum-KTJ 17th Batch (2008).

Ex-PPKTJ 14th Batch (2005).

Ex-PPKTJ 13th, 12th, & 1st Batch (2004, 2003 & 1992).

This is the young group.

We call this the veteran group lol!

At the first station, it was a card game in which everyone chose a card randomly. They would then places the card on their forehead, without knowing their own number. The two person with the lowest digits would be the losers and they would come out and share a string of spaghetti which was dipped in a specially prepared sauce. I call it the "ten-happiness sauce" simply because it has ten flavours in it haha!

Did I just mention it was just one string of spaghetti? Yes, two person shared one string, which means their lips would end up making contact with each others' at the end lol! It's fine if that two person is from the same sex, but things got interesting when that is not the case.

That's the ten little bowls, which were the basic ingredients for the ten-happiness sauce.

The making of the ten-happiness sauce.

It depends on you whether to believe what you friends tell you about your card. Some purposely tried to influence you to change your card, 
because you got such a big number.

Here are the two losers and they seemed to enjoy the spaghetti a lot haha!

Ah Lee pretends to be shy pulak lol! Yan Kuang seemed to be more excited than both of them!

One of the rare times when a string of spaghetti managed to attract so many people to camwhore with you lol! Randy was too shy until he closed his eyes haha!

Our team's next station was at the main hall and it was a quiz game, which tested our IQ. Bad news for me as I am quite lousy when it comes to questions which need us to work our brain lol!

Once a question is asked, the team members discussed among themselves and sent out a representative. Both of the representatives from each team would then play the "rock-paper-scissors" and the winner got the chance to give the correct answer to the earlier question. If they answered correctly, they got to pull a card which determined how many cuts of bananas they got to eat and how many pieces of sushi with wasabi their opponents need to eat. Sound pretty confusing, right? No worries because I didn't really understand the rules anyway in the beginning.

Here is one of the questions asked: "What month has twenty-eight days?"

Sushi, where some of them has wasabi inside, and bananas.

The MC asked everyone to shut-up because she's gonna explain the rules of the game lol!

I gotta be honest here; I'm kinda suck in this game.

Told 'ya; that is why you see having to eat the sushi haha!

The answer is of course: "Every month". Lame right? Haha!

The third and final station was at the dining hall, where we played a game which should be familiar to you if you often watch Hong Kong game-shows. Usually, it was played in Cantonese, but they made some additions by translating the phrases into other languages like Hokkien and Bahasa, which sound really funny. "Sushi pedas who makan, you makan, I tak mau..." Lol!

I'm kinda lazy to explain in detail how this game is played, so I shall leave it to you imagination with the aid of the pictures below, alright? Pokoknya, the loser has to eat sushi pedas at the end lol!

Our tai kar jie sekalian demonstrating the game to us.

Lose the game on purpose if you are hungry and wanna have these sushi made from half-cooked rice lol!

Everyone tried not to make any mistakes 'coz nobody wanted to eat those sushi.

If the number of people who stood up is the same as the figure a team said out, then the opposing team loses.

And they were served with nice sushi haha!

The next event was the barbecue at the barbecue pits. The location was exactly the same as previous years, but we were only given three pits to grill our chicken and stuff. So, it took some time before the chickens and sausages were ready.

Meanwhile, Kevin keep asking me to play with him and during this time, I spent most of the time playing all sorts of games, instead of chit-chatting with my batch mates, seniors and juniors. His favourite game was shiri-tori, which literally means "grab-the-butt" lol! It's the Japanese version of spelling-bee. We use a simple rule when we played the game, which is the one and only rule: there were no rules haha! It got so random to the extend that if a word ends with い (i), we can just simply continue it with the phrase いいですね (ii--desu-ne) lol!

We were playing for quite some time already and I asked for a break. But he told me not to do so, because we could still play while having a break. You tell me, is there any other ways to escape from this little boy? At the end of the day, he some more invited me to go to his house any time I like to play with him haha!

The location of the barbecue.

Sesi ramah mesra between juniors and seniors.

The chefs of the day.

Who said future-engineers cannot cook?

Some seniors went to busybody at the kitchen haha!

Few of the chefs who stole bone (curi tulang) and ponteng from doing the grilling lol!

The grilling took too long; so half of them took the chickens to the kitchen and fried them there.

Once the honey chicken was ready, it took less than ten seconds before the pot was emptied lol!

Randy was tempted to ask for a piece of chicken from Andrew haha!

Something tasted wrong to Wei Jian, Yow Keong enjoying his cup of teh tarik, while Ling Chiek just can't be bothered to pose for the camera because the chicken was more important to him lol!

I might look the largest creature here, but I am one of the two most junior members among them.

Nagaoka-ians and Kisarazu-ians.

Ming Rong, Yan Kuang, Yi Fuan and Bao Cong.

Anyone has any idea what caption should I put in this picture? Leave you caption in the comment box, thank you!

Me, accusing Randy of stealing my sausage (pun unintended) lol!

One of the many group pictures at the barbecue session.

Soon enough, it started to get dark already, which means it was time for the final event of the day - the campfire session. I wasn't involved in setting up the bonfire this time, but the one that the juniors made this year wasn't as huge as the two-meter-high one we made two years ago. That one took us more than half-an-hour to set up and it still remains clearly in my memory.

Nevertheless, it was still a good thing to have a bonfire on a chilly night to give us some warmth, while we played the musical-chair game by passing a balloon and a volleyball around.

See, Kevin still didn't wanna let go of me and want me to teman him to play his games even though it'd already turned dark!

Jump over the fire to clean all you sins. Hong Yao ought to jump a few times, since he is full of sins lol!

With Amy and Kevin.

Yan Kuang and a junior was the last person to hold on to the balloon, so they were asked to dance. They performed a jakun dance; while holding to a stick some more lol! This is surely gonna send the wrong message to the Japanese who walked pass that place lol! Now I am not surprised that the Japanese sometimes think that Malaysians still live on trees haha!

Chin Wooi and Chiang Shen performing a different dance. They movement were a little bit stiff that some people said they danced like Asimo lol!

At the end of the session, everyone joined in and made a huge circle while going around the bonfire.

We simply stole a pole from somewhere and played limbo rock as well haha!

As me and several other seniors didn't stay overnight, we bid farewell to everyone right after the bonfire event ended, and made our move to board the bus back to the nearest train station at eight plus. As for the rest of them, I suspect they partied throughout the night based on the pictures below.

Everyone squeezed into one big hall like canned sardines. That's a total of nearly fifty people, excluding those who camped outside!

Jun Hao was the odd one here.

Try spotting the odd one in this picture this time.

Those cabinets behind reminds me of Doraemon who always runs inside there to sleep lol!

Was Cedric going through some constipation?

Here, I would like to extend my personal thanks to Ling Chiek and his team for putting up a great effort in organising and continuing the tradition of this annual gathering. I know they have started to plan it early this year and it was great that the gathering was a success. There might be some loops holes here and there, but hey, nobody is perfect, right?

Give youself a pat on the back if you made it this far. I have a good news for you! Finally, the torture of this long entry is over haha!

See you guys again one year from now!