My 5km Walk To The Town

Short note: Compared to me few previous entries, this is gonna be a heavy entry, not with words but with pictures. So, it could take some time for the pictures to upload if you are having a slow connection. Forty pictures in total, which I think is one of my entries with the most number of pictures.

For the past couple of weeks, my daily schedule was to wake up at noon, go online and check my mailbox, take my lunch, online again (which includes watching dramas and chatting), take my dinner, continue online again until my Internet gets disconnected (which usually happens at 2.30am sharp) and go to bed, and the whole cycle will start again the next day. But this is not good at all, and I know that as well. So, for the past few days, I have been trying to wake up early, take my proper breakfast, spend some time exercising, do some reading, and go to bed by midnight.

However, it's still winter now and with the highest temperature outside doesn't go beyond 10 degree in the afternoon, with the cloudy and dark sky with occasional rains to add to it, it's just make me not in the mood to go out and have a good jog. Yesterday, it was an exception. The weather was great - blue sky, bright and sunny day and since I have not gone to the town for almost a week already, I thought about the idea to walk all the way there.

The distance between my dormitory inside my college to the town is roughly 5 kilometers. My college (bottom right) must be located in a damn ulu place as you can see there are so many square boxes, which are paddy fields that even Google Earth can't give a clear view of it lol.

From this point onwards, the caption below each picture will tell you what I saw along the way, and it will also show how does the place I'm living now look like.

#1 - At the entrance of my college, before I start my journey.

#2 - This is how the bus I normally take when I go to the town because it snows heavily in my place during the winter and it is rather dangerous to cycle. It is not cheap either, because a 13-minute ride will cost us 200￥(RM 7) and bus fare has been increased recently =\

#3 - The nearest bus stop from my college - Katakai-iriguchi bus stop. The bus time table is at at the bottom and although I said taking a bus ride here is super expensive, the service they provide is first class, in terms of punctuality. For the two year that I have been taking the bus here, I could only recall once when it was late for eight minutes; other times, it arrived exactly on the minute.

#4 - The road which I have seen for the 2967343249th time. But one thing for sure, there are no potholes or rubbish along the meticulously clean and well-maintained road, even in small towns.

#5 -During winter season, evergreen trees usually have stiff bamboo or wooden poles paralleling to its main trunk. Each pole has varying lengths of rope descending from the pole top and tied horizontal limbs on the tree beneath. This create a cone-shaped structure like a Christmas tree and they were ties to limbs to keep them from being broken by heavy, wet snow.

#6 - Here is anther example. They usually start doing this towards the end of November before it snows and it really takes up a lot of time tying all these trees after each autumn.

#7 -A signboard shop.

#8 -Several stalks of big onions which were hung on the wall for some time already, I guess, judging from the stem that grew from the onions.

#9 -A rubbish station in front of an apartment. Rubbish are generally divided into two types, degradable and non-degradable. There are certain days where you can only dispose a certain category of rubbish and if you don't follow them, then they will not collect your rubbish.

#10 -As I walked, I could see more shop houses and car, which means I am getting nearer to the town. But I wasn't even one-third of the journey yet by then.

#11 - Oh hi! I actually wanted to take a picture with the liquor shop across the road but too bad I had a wrong angle.

#12 - I continued walking and I suddenly noticed a large crowd in front. I thought it was a road-accident. Y'know, whenever there an accident happens in Malaysia, the motorist will be the busiest one, looking for the plate numbers for TOTO number.

#13 - When I took a closer look, I realised that it was something totally different from what I first thought. Someone was getting married that morning and she just got her make-up done there, because the bridegroom was nowhere to be seen.

#14 - The bride, who went into the car already by the time I was near enough to catch a glimpse of her. This is my first time seeing a bride in Japan; I mean, of course I've seen some from dramas and pictures, but I've never seen one in real life. This picture doesn't show how white the face of the bride was, it was so white that I think they use a few kilograms of flour on her face.

#15 - This was taken against the direction where I was heading - the crossroad at Nakazawa. The road on the left will lead to my college.

#16 - I sneaked through a small lane in between two shops and saw this.

#17 - Stopped halfway through the walk and took this picture, right in front of 7 Eleven.

#18 - I began spotting more cars. The flyover on the top left is the trunk road that lead us all the way down to Tokyo in the south.

#19 - One of the place I frequent the most when I do my groceries. - Gyomu Super. Most of the stuff here are much cheaper than the supermarkets.

#20 - I recently noticed this shop which sells bento sets, although I have never tried it before yet. It might not be as convenient as getting one from the convenience store, but I think the food here are fresher and cheaper too.

#21 - An example of a convenience store - Daily Yamazaki. You will get to see tons of them in Japan. You can get almost everything here 24/7 - from snacks and drinks to stationery, paying bills and cashing out money from the ATM machine. That is why they call it a convenience store.

#22 - This is something cute. When I first saw it some time ago, I thought it's some machine selling rice but it's actually a place where small farmers can take the paddy they plant themselves here and the machine clean the paddy from the husk to turn them into rice.

#23 - The city library, where I have came here a few times before.

#24 - Here is another example where they protect the plants from snowfall. It would be impossible to protect the multi-trunked shrubs in similar fashion with poles and ropes; instead they build little bamboo lean-to structures that allows light and moisture goes through it, but keep heavy snows from crushing vegetation.

#25 - A telephone booth outside the library.

#26 - Just a week ago, the snow was twice this height. Someone who sells ice kacang must be loving this, eh? This was taken from the parking lot next to the library.

#27 - Well, at least this is something familiar.

#28 - I took a different route this time, cutting through the blocks of houses to get to the town, and saw this tree, which I'm not very sure what tree it is. It looks like a pear thought. Don't know, it could be a watermelon tree.

#29 - This is the small lane I took, instead of the main road to avoid the traffic. I have no idea what those poles signify.

#30 - Walking through the small lane and passing by rows of houses along the way, I took a break for this picture to be taken.

#31 - Finally, after walking for almost an hour, the town is just a few more steps away. Despite living in a dormitory which is surrounded by paddy fields, at least the town is not that bad.

#32 -This place caught my attention, and when I went closer, I got to know that it was a place where the council keeps the towed bicycles and motorbikes. Whoever who wish to claim back their bikes, there is a fine though, roughly 1,000￥(RM 35) for bicycles and 2,400￥ (RM 84) for motorbikes.

#33 - I finally reached the train station of Nagaoka and this is a pathway which goes across the railways below it.

#34 - It so happened that there was a train when I was there that time.

#35 - The ticket counter inside the station.

#36 - The front section of the Nagaoka station.

#37 - The main road which leads to the other part of the town across Shinano River.

#38 - I did some shopping and groceries and it was time for me to return. This time, I took a bus because it would be crazy to carry all my stuff all the way back. This is where I usually board the bus which goes to my college.

#39 - It is not a practice to take pictures in public in Japan, but this is how the interior of the bus looks like. Talking about boarding a bus here, you are not supposed to talk on the phone and turn it to silent mode (they call it manner mode) inside the bus, fearing that it will be a disturbance to the older generations. Same thing applies in the trains.

#40 - Final picture of the day, it was a full moon.

If you made it this far, well-done and thank you for reading.

Skating Like A Penguin

Short note: This is a super back-dated entry that I only managed to post up now. Believe it or not, this trip was held two months back, but I was too busy back then as I just returned from my winter holiday in Malaysia and just before I managed to get myself settled-down, my finals followed.

Just like snowboarding, I have never skated, not even once in my whole life. When we were told that the school would be organising a skating trip for the international students, I was the first to raise my hands up. After all, who would want to miss this all-expenses-paid trip. It was held two months ago, in the second week of January when the school had just reopened after our two-week winter break.

Back then, it was just the starting time when the snow began to fall heavily and on the day of the trip itself, it was snowing all the way.

View of the almost frozen Shinano River, the longest river in Japan - taken from the Nagaoka Bridge.

A common view of the villages during the winter season - taken when the bus made a stop at the traffic lights.

We were taken to Kashiwazaki Aqua-Park, about an hour bus-ride from Nagaoka.

The place is just separated from the sea by a road. On that day, strong and heavy hailstorm hit the place when I went out to look around the area. This park not only has a skating ring, but it has other facilities as well - like indoor swimming pool, traditional Japanese restrooms and public bath.

Kashiwazaki Aqua-Park.

After the registrations were done, we were introduced to two instructors who would be in-charged on us for the day. But before we start with anything, we were asked to take our pair of skating shoes which were already prepared and placed at one corner. Well, I had the easiest task of locating my pair of shoes - I just had to look at the furthest end of the shoes' row and there is where my shoes was.

I was quite surprised that they have such big size, because I had gone through some experiences at bowling centres, where they do not have my size and I had to wear a tight pair of shoes. However, this pair of skating shoes was still kinda tight and I asked if they have a bigger size.

They use centimeters here in Japan, not only for shoes, but for clothing too.

Thank God, there was one pair - size 30cm.

Since most of us were first-timers, we didn't even know the correct way to wear and tie our skating shoes. So the poor instructors had to check first on our shoes before we proceeded to the next thing. We were made to do a warming-up session first and it's actually quite hard. Imagine wearing a skating shoe, which has a piece of blade just a few millimeters wide and we had to do all sorts of movements - like flapping our arms wide and using our feet to hit the ground continuously like a penguin.

We however, just followed whatever the two ladies asked us to do, and it was actually quite fun.

Penguin in the making.

Happy feet were clearly enjoying themselves.

So, after we got ourselves warmed-up, it was the time to enter the ring.

Half of the ring was closed for us.

But it was not as simple as we thought.

Guess what, we didn't walk into the ring but we crawled in. Yes, I kid you not, she said she's gonna teach us from zero and just as a precaution, she thought it's better for us to enter the ring by crawling. Again, we obeyed to her instructions and made our entrance to the ring like four-month babies.

I guess it must have been some time since most of us crawled like this.

Even the super-sporting Maruyama sensei did the same thing like the rest.

The embarrassing thing is, the small kids which were around four to seven years-old, suddenly stopped from skating and looked at us, the jakun in amazement. You know, those "Huh??!" kind of glance. Not only they were looking at us, they were laughing away and we not no choice but to smile back at them. I wonder what they were thinking about us at that time.

Anyway, we didn't bother to think about those kids anymore and just continued our skating session by the two instructors. They asked us to stand up slowly while spreading our arms wide to balance our body. Everyone did it so slow in fear that they might slip and fall on the hard ice.

Can you feel the tension?

Next, we were required to walk to the side of the ring which seemed like an impossible task. For those who have never tried skating before, walking on the ice surface is totally different experience because it's just too slippery. A simple analogy is to slide an ice cube on an ice surface and that is how slippery it is when you are walking on the ice wearing the skating shoes.

We tried to get to the end as fast as possible, and as soon as we reached there, all grabbed the pole tightly and our heartbeat began to get faster. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief once they got to the side of the ring. We were hoping that we do not have to walk to the centre again and just happy to stay there, holding to the pole lol.

"This is just the beginning of the lesson, kids," said the instructor.

My cuak face wtf.

Sodo (second from the left) tries to balance himself.

The lesson continued with the instructors teaching us how to slowly walk on the ice. Balance is the important point in skating and to make sure we do not fall too often, we just have to spread out our arms as wide as possible whenever we feel like falling down. Another point is to make sure our body is straight and not bend backwards.

So, we were slowly required to try to increase our walking speed and subsequently, we managed to skate on the ice surface already. We were in disbelief at that moment - it was like a miracle lol. Yea, maybe I am over exaggerating here, but I tell you the feeling is so exciting, even more for a first-timer like me.

How to get down on our feet while we were halfway skating.

We were even taught how to gostan while skating too. Cool, eh?

However, that was also the starting point where we fell in love with the surface of the ice. One after another of us had their butt kissed the hard ice surface, including myself. At first, I counted the number of times I fall. Once, twice, thrice, four times, five times and it went on and on. But in the end, I fell down too many times, that I can't be bothered to keep on counting anymore.

By the way, I wasn't the person who fall down the most, but I would say I was among the people who fall down the most. I'm not particularly proud of this achievement anyway, because my butt really hurts every time I made contact with the hard-rock ice surface. I think being tall and having a higher gravity point is really stupid because I will never enjoy such sports anymore for the rest of my life. Same thing when I go for skiing and snowboarding.

Why can't I just be a little bit shorter? Sigh...
(How ironic it is, when I'm complaining now, while I just mentioned about we people who will never be satisfied with our lives in the previous entry)

Anyway, we continued skating and began to gain more and more confidence. After some time, we managed to skate much better and not just walk one step by one step anymore. However, not everyone were quick learner and we were divided into two groups - one for the ones who still couldn't really skate and wanna learn step by step, while the other is for those who wanna learn some new skills and tricks.

For the more advanced group, we were taught how to make a 180-degree turn and stop instantly, how to move in circular movement non-stop, and a few others. But just a few of us managed to master those steps, while nobody able to do the circular movement.

More like a kindergarten game, no?

As for the beginner group, they were made to go through various drills and in fact, they were actually harder than the other group. One of the drills was to go under a goalpost-like pole to practise their balancing.

We were given a short lunch break and after that, everyone were free to skate by their own as the skating ring was open to all.

It was the weekends and the place was fairy crowded.

So this time, we had to skate among the Japanese kids and adults while making sure we didn't simply go and hit them. Too bad I was unlucky to lose my balance at one point, and hit a poor little kid in front of me. I pulled my emergency break but too bad at the most vital moment, it wasn't working =.=

This was taken after I managed to calm down and skate properly.

With my 5th Year seniors, Roby (Indonesia) and Chuyen (Vietnam).

Among all who went to this skating trip, I guess the person who enjoyed the most is my junior.

Pictures above should tell everything.

I can proudly say now that I can skate already. Barely, though.