Visit From Malaysian Rotarians

Over the last weekends, there was a visit from the Rotary club members from Malaysia (Ampang branch) and Taiwan. We only got to know about this event at the eleventh hour and Mr Sato Akemi, the President of Arai Rotary Club in Niigata Prefecture, who has a close relationship with the international students in our college extended his invitation for us to join this event. However, most of the international students were still in Malaysia and there were roughly half of us who went there, including the five newly arrived juniors.

It was held at Takada city, roughly two-hour drive down south from Nagaoka. As this trip were joined by only seven Malaysians, the college lecturers who took us there came to pick us up at the college's hostel with two cars but before that, we stopped at the nearby 7 Eleven outlet to grab some stuff for brunch.

One thing that distinguishes the convenience store in Japan and Korea is the variety of bento sets that can be found in Japan; in Korea, it's either a few Korean onigiri and not more than five bento sets.

I somehow feel that the highway in Japan is better-maintained than in Malaysia. By the way, the mountain are still covered with snow caps in the background.

One spot at the service area with sakura trees in the foreground which are yet to bloom.

We stopped at Yoneyama service area halfway through the journey to have our brunch.

It was sunny earlier that morning but by the time we stopped there, the sky began to darken and I realised I had made a wrong choice of attire for the day. Anyway, only if the weather is clear, we would be able to see Sado Island, the biggest island besides the four main island in Japan at the far background.

Here is where we had our brunch.

Our brunch - onigiri, potato chips, potato wedges, Kit Kat chocolate bars, sandwiches and two bottles of juice.

Since there were only seven of us, the lecturer used the school's budget to buy those food stuff.

One lesson learned - never pose with mouth still full with food when taking pictures.

Sato sensei promoting his onigiri, Joann with her potato chips and Carine with her last bite of sandwich.

We continued our journey and within one hour later, we reached Takada city.

The road in the middle of the city.

Takada train station, which has a rare architecture; something like Disney's castle maybe?

The city was relatively much smaller than Nagaoka. Even though it was a Saturday, not many cars were spotted on the roads. Since the Rotarian from Malaysia and Taiwan have yet to arrived, we were taken to a wood factory, owned by one of Mr Sato Akemi's old friend, which was located just next to the train station.

We were like, "Is this a hanami trip or a field trip?"

This is one of the main machine used to cut the tree trunk.

Listening to the explanation by Mr Matsuoka but to be honest, I was just trying to stand as long as possible because I was in real need for toilet break at that time and I kept on shaking my body lol.

Those wood there came not only from Japan, but other countries like the Scandinavians, Americe, Canada, Russia, Indonesia and Malaysia as well.

One group photo before we headed to the hotel to greet the Rotarians.

Apparently, they Rotary club members who came down didn't know that we were gonna meet them there and it was planned to be a surprise. The Taiwan bus arrived first, followed by the Malaysian one behind. Most of them looked quite surprised to see us there standing like the hotel's mascot and greet them.

Malaysian team from Ampang branch. At first, they kept saying "anpan, anpan" and I thought how is it related to anpanman lol.

Had picture taken with some of the members from Taiwan too.

While we waited for them to settle the check-in and keep their stuff in their respective rooms, Mr Sato invited us to have a tea break at the hotel's cafe. All six of us had cheese cake.

Cheese cake, which tasted like heaven.

From left: Sato sensei, Mr Sato Akemi, Carine, Joann and me. Two sato (sugar, in Japanese) in one table; our table must be very sweet (I know it's a lame joke).

Those Rotarians from Malaysia as we expected, practised our infamous SMT (Standard Malaysian Time). Everyone were supposed to gather at the lobby at 3.30pm but we only saw them starting to come down fifteen minutes later. That's considered quite fast, eh?

The town folks surely quite surprised to see such a big group of aliens walking along the streets of the town.

Over 4,000 illuminated sakura trees surround Takada Castle, making this place one of Japan's top three locations for night-time sakura viewing. They came a tad too early because it will take around two more weeks before the sakura in Takada Park blooms. Besides, it was raining the whole afternoon and it continued through the evening as well, which I'm sure it won't be the best hanami experience for them.

When the sakura are at full-bloom, I bet this place is gonna take any body's breathe away for its beauty.

A red bridge across a lotus pond.

If this is sighted in Malaysia, maybe they will have Hang Tuah and Hang Li Po pictures' drawn.

Four of the five new juniors in Nagaoka Kosen this year.

There are lots of naked statue along the path in the park. Another prove that Japanese are perverts lol.

Everyone was in jovial mood even though it was raining.

The rain made the day really cold and I misjudged the weather by wearing only one layer of shirt. There were times when I started to shiver when the wind blows. But when I returned to the hotel to guide the awaiting three lecturers to a cafe for our dinner together, one of them handed me a paper bag and said, "Here, I got some souvenir for you."

I was already excited, thinking that "Wow, I only came and show them the way to the cafe and they're giving me something." I looked inside and it turned out to be a raincoat. But still, I appreciated their concern on me.

We stopped at a house on our walk back to the hotel for a tea ceremony demonstration. This house is owned by one of the local Rotary Club member, Mr Arizawa who has an own company. It was indeed a huge house which has a Japanese garden and a special guest room which can be used for tea ceremony.

The Japanese garden outside the house.

One section of the guest house.

The lady who was preparing the tea using the traditional method.

I had experience such ceremony two years ago but I took this opportunity to join in as well.

The correct method involves some bowing and turning the bowl around a few times but I didn't really follow it this time because I have forgotten it already.

The Malaysian team; saw any familiar faces here?

The next event was a dinner at a local cafe nearby the hotel. We went to the cafe first before the rest arrived. There was one time we were invited to the stage to perform. Everybody were hinting at us to do the tiger dance and we looked at each other. This must be the biggest joke of the century.

Our instant reaction was something like, "What??!! This can't be true!"

The MC conducting the night.

Haha, no-lah, I was just kidding. We were just asked to introduced ourselves briefly but you know what, nobody bothered to listen to us and we were talking in front like clowns; all because they saw something else already.

Guess what did they see?

Food!

Nobody will beat Malaysians when it comes to food.

The crowd were later entertained by some performances by a band and after a while, people began to step up and dance. Since we were provided with free-flow of liquor, I had myself drunk that night. My first experience getting myself drunk.

Oh, again, I was just making that out. Of course I wasn't drunk, but I managed to try some Japanese sake on the night. And I can now conclude that I prefer Koreans soju as it's more mild compared to sake.

Elvis songs from the seventies were played on the night.

Me with the new juniors; somehow, I feel so old now already.

Mr Haga Ryusuke with the juniors.

One last group shot with the Malaysian representatives from Rotary Club.

Mr Sato Akemi decided to treat us to a sushi dinner-cum-supper after that before we headed back to Nagaoka. It was something unexpected, nevertheless, how could we reject it, right?

Everything in Japan has to look cute, even the paper for the chopsticks.

Sushi-making is like an art.

We ordered three servings similar servings of sushi and the sushi were super fresh and nice.

From left: Sato sensei, Mr Noguchi (lab technician), Mr Haga Ryusuke (Chikyu Lab's coordinator) and Mr Sato Akemi.

From left: Hong Yao, Yan Kuang, Hafiz and Faiz.

But during the sushi meal, something unexpected happened.

Every one's attention was turned to the same spot under the table.

Guess what was under the table.

I Was In The Newspaper

Short talk: Do you still remember about the much-hyped Earth Hour 2009 on March 28? Well, I was still at Seoul at that time and the whole house of my friend whom I stayed over during my time there was in darkness for almost an hour. Well, I was halfway doing some stuff over the laptop and I didn't switch it off. But from the news I saw, the Petronas Twin Towers and KL Tower were among those who participated and remained dark for an hour on that night, which I consider a good start.

When I brought up this topic to Mr Haga, the coordinator of Chikyu Lab, even for someone like him who has a strong passion on topics like global society and environment, he just said that he wasn't really impressed with the effort and it was more like a gimmick. He added that the Japanese do not need Earth Hour to conserve energy as they have other better alternatives; barbecue during summer nights at the beach as the simplest example. Gimmick or not, I think the effort is more to raise the awareness of the importance of energy conservation, especially among the younger generations. Even though they are so much ahead in terms of technology, I believe the Japanese and Koreans still lack behind in such humanitarian effort.

Anyway, this entry was supposed to be posted long time ago, but due to my Seoul trip and a few other pending entries, I only managed to post this up now.

Yes, I appeared in one of the local newspaper in Japan almost a month ago.

When I was younger, there was two times I got myself in two of the main newspaper back home - the first one was my tiger tail drawing for the Newspaper In Education (NIE) project was featured in the News Straits Times when I was in Standard Six, while the second one was my article about the Rapid bus service which appeared in the Letters' section in The Star.

Well, it wasn't something which was planned earlier, but it was a rather last minute thing. Mr Haga Ryusuke from Chikyu Lab texted me and asked me if I was free to join him for an interview, which will be done by the people from Niigata Nippo. Besides, he needed at least one international student to be there because after all, Chikyu Lab is meant to be a place for the Japanese students to with the international student. I'm currently having my five-week long spring break and have practically nothing much to do; so I said "yes" to him immediately.

Two ladies, one reporter and another photographer were already there interviewing Mr Haga when I reached there. They were accompanied by another 5th Year student, Kubota Yuta. The reporter interviewed Mr Haga most of the time, regarding the structure of Chiku Lab and the purpose of the setting up of such place in the college, and only a few times where she turned to Kubota and me for some questions.

Below is the translated version of the newspaper article.

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"Anything is possible, from discussion about life up to doing English homework here," said Mr Haga, who is the co-ordinator of Chikyu Lab.

Born in Sydney, he came back to Japan when he was still a ten-month-old baby. His dad is Japanese, who married an Australian wife. He used to hate the fact that he is different from the rest, when he was still in his primary school days. However, it took a changed once he went into his junior high school.

"Wow, are you half? Kakkoii (Cool), eh!" was among the impression he got from his classmates.

He was shocked to get such positive comments from them, and it was from there that he'd never looked back. He won the Chuetsu district English speech contest as a 1st Year high school student and later, he attended a study trip to the US for one month that he saw it as a golden opportunity to open his eyes to the world.

Upon his graduation from his high school, he went to study in Australia, taking IT-related course as his major for two years. Ironically, instead of working in offices, he later helped one of his dad's friends at the sheep's farm for three years. It was during this time he got the chance to team-up with farmers from more than twenty countries, in which he got to experience the different characters of the people from different nationalities. For example the slow work pace is a certainty for some group, while the rough temperament is bright for the others. The vital point is how to team-up different groups of people with various characters to ensure the work is done effectively.

"From this experience, I realised the culture difference is not a handicap, but a plus point," added Mr Haga proudly.

He returned ot Japan on May, 2007 and was invited by his dad who is the chairman of the to be the coordinator for Chikyu Lab. Chikyu Lab was is a place to foster more interest about the outside world through the people in our surroundings; in this context, the international students.

"I will try my best to assist the students who have interest on a particular topic, and also cooperate with them when they need any information, whether or not it has to do with their school project," said Mr Haga.

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As you can see from the translated text from the newspaper article, none of what they interview Kubuta and me was mentioned. But nobody cares-lah, as long as my face is up there. But you know what, this wasn't the real thing. After the end of the interview, they kind of asked us to act as if the three of us were discussing about something. While doing that, the photographer turned into a tarzan, climbed onto the chair, table, and even a cute little fold-up ladder she brought along taking continuous shots for several minutes. I am quite sure that she took no less than thirty shots that day. A few days after the interview, Mr Haga texted me in the morning, saying that our story was featured in the front page of the Niigata Nippo. I was excited, and went straight to the library to pick up a copy of the newspaper.

Too bad that when I see the picture, I saw they picked the one which only showed my face partially which I don't understand why.