KL Tour With The Japanese

Short note: This entry was written several months ago but as usual, there were too many pending posts and I finally get to post this up now. Get set for quite a lengthy entry; or if you like, you can go get some chips and make a cup of Milo first.

For the second consecutive year, I joined a few of my Malaysian mates as volunteers to guide the lecturers and students from Nagaoka National College of Technology around KL during their school trip to Malaysia last September. It is an annual event, and the trip is partially funded by the college. Each year, they will have three groups, making trips to Malaysia, China and Vietnam. This year however, there is only one trip - to Malaysia, probably due to the bad economy situation lately.

One of the reasons I join them is because some I personally haven't been to some of the places we visited. So, as we become their tour guide, we could also take the trip as a holiday at the same time. Besides, there will be always funny and interesting encounter throughout the trip, especially when the Japanese experience some cultural shock when they are here in Malaysia.

The nervy experience of buying train tickets haha.

Another ticket buying session at KL Sentral.

The very first thing on the first day is telling them how to buy train tickets at the counter. They stayed in Federal KL Hotel along Jalan Bukit Bintang and the nearest station would be the Imbi monorial station. So, we had to point at the destination we were going and tell them how much it cost, and repeat the name of the destination several times. Some of them were kinda like competing among themselves, seeing if they managed to pronounce the next station name correctly to the ticket person haha.

"See, I only told him once!" said one of the students to his friend.

I think he must be very proud of himself lol. Everytime we have to buy tickets, we would took like more than fifteen minutes although it could be done much faster than that. But well, we just got to tell them properly which station to get to and the amount needed. Otherwise if they got down at the wrong station, we will be the ones to have difficulties locating them. But I told them beforehand already, just in case they are lost, just report themselves at any police stations haha.

The second challenges that they got to face was crossing the busy roads of KL. You know what, they were just on their first day in Malaysia and we already made them facing so many challenges until it sound like they were racing in the Amazing Race haha. They were quite surprised when we told them we gonna cross the road without the zebra-crossing area.

"You sure you gonna cross here??!"

Japanese stuck in the middle of the road.

We just smiled and nodded to them. I bet they must be praying that they will still remain in one piece after they get to the opposite side of the road haha. Of so many roads, they got to cross at the junction near Pasar Seni LRT Station, where it is always busy with buses and motorbikes. They took some time initially but after a few days, they managed to master the skills of crossing busy roads without getting knocked down haha.

The first destination of the day was Merdeka Square and the Sultan Abdul Samad Building.

On the way to the first destination of the day, walking along the Klang River.

Maruyama Sensei describing the place to the students.

Our group picture with the Sultan Abdul Samad Building in the background.

Good thing that one of the lecturers had a pamphlet in Japanese describing that place, so he just read everything to the Japanese students. Sometimes, it is hard to explain a particular place to them because there are certain words which we are unsure ourselves what are they called in Japanese. Besides, we sometimes are not very sure of the facts and it is during time like this we realised that we know very little about our own country.

A simple test would be, can you state the exact height of Mount Kinabalu? Almost every Japanese know how high Mount Fuji is.

Another group picture in front of the clock tower.

A historical spot for our country.

"What's up next?"

The weather was kind to us, because it wasn't too hot or raining. The bright blue sky and sunny day was just perfect for us to go around places in the city. We continued our walk to the next destination, Masjid Jamek which is just a stone's throw from Merdeka Square.

Just some quick facts about this mosque, Masjid Jamek is one of the oldest mosques in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is located at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak River and was designed by Arthur Benison Hubback. The Sultan of Selangor officially opened the mosque in 1909, two years after construction was completed. The mosque was built on the first Malay burial ground in the city. Before the national mosque, Masjid Negara, was opened in 1965, Masjid Jamek served as Kuala Lumpur's main mosque (taken from Wikipedia).

The mosque has a Moorish architecture.

#1

#2

The non-Muslims who wore short pants and didn't cover their head were given a pair of jubah and scarf to be worn while they were inside the compound of the mosque. I was one of them as I forgot that we would be visiting mosque on that day. I tried looking for the biggest jubah and it was still a bit shorter than it should be. I asked the pak cik at the entrance if that is okay, and he just said it's alright.

So, here are the group who had to wear the jubah and scarf.

With a mortar board, we would look like graduates at some university's convocation haha.

We got a local to take us around the mosque.

A lady brought us around the mosque, while explaining some basic facts about the mosque.

This was the time the local students' help is needed - to translate them into Japanese. I could only remember one fact - the walking path outside the main building could accomodate about 2,000 people at one time. The mosque was undergoing some expansion work on both sides of the main building at that time.

Furnishing work done by the workers.

They were later taken to the section where people take their air wuduk.

Those Japanese tried to learned the whole process and something funny happened. The lady told Maruyama Sensei to wash his chin, but he misheard it and took off his hat, and wash his whole hair haha! Everyone there was laughing like crazy and he was sporting enough to smile back at us haha.

First we wash our hands.

But Maru-chan washed his whole head lol!

From Masjid Jamek, we took the Putra LRT to KLCC.

We first had our lunch at the food court and later, we brought them outside to KLCC Park to have some pictures with the Twin Towers in the background. Hopefully, after they have seen the two towers, they will never think that Malaysians live on trees anymore haha. We wanted to take them up to the Skybridge but too bad it was a Monday and it was closed.

Lunch at KLCC's Food Court. My aunt, who works in one of the towers was just sitting next to our table during our lunch haha.

Camwhoring at KLCC Park.

Some stopped at Rotiboy to grab some refreshments after a hot day.

The big group broke into smaller ones as different people wanted to go to different places. Some went to Aquaria KLCC, while the rest chose to hang around and window shop inside KLCC. After more than three hours there, we gathered and headed to Central Market.

Central Market has been given a new lease of life since a few years ago. I could still remember how the place was in a mess and how a tourist spot was not managed propely just several years ago. But thanks to the change of management, it is now one of the must-visit place for tourist to KL.

We let them go around the place and at times, help them bargain when they are buying souvenirs. I was at one shop with a Japanese junior and I had a short chat with the shopkeeper, who is a Pakistanese. He was here for only two years and he can actually speak some Malay. There was one point when he asked me back, "Are you a Malaysian?"

Do I look like an African, eh?

Shopping for clothes.

Souvenirs.

Kuih raya too.

There was another time when I was walking with the group of students and the lady was trying to promote her keychains.

"Keychains, keychains, one for five ringgit. 一個十リンギット (One for ten ringgit)".

See, when they are selling stuff to the foreigners, especially the Japanese, the price can just become double.

Fish spa at Central Market.

Some of them went to try the fish spa and from their facial expressions, you could tell that it was a ticklish experience haha. They were laughing the whole time when they put their legs into the pool which is full of some species of fish, which obviously, I'm unsure of.

After they were done shopping for souvenirs there, we walked to Petaling Street to let them experience our version of Chinatown. We were almost halfway inside when one of them asked me, "How long do we need to walk some more before we reach Chinatown?" I was like "Huh, you're inside Chinatown already lor!" Haha!

The electronic display board put up at the entrance.

They were surprised because their image of a Chinatown is that it is supposed to be flooded with restaurants and food stalls. But in our Chinatown at Petaling Street, the number of fake goods could outnumber the number of visitors easily haha.

We later took taxi back to the hotel to keep their stuff before heading to Jalan Alor, a street behind Jalan Bukit Bintang to have our dinner. This place recently became a headline because the city council tried to change its name to Jalan Kejora, much to the opposition of the local traders. There are various kind of local food, from satay to fried koey teow, cendol to coconut water, along this road although they could be slightly pricey than other places.

The whole group, waiting for the food to be served.

Here comes the food.

They were actually at the same restaurant on the night they just arrived at KL but too bad I wasn't together with them. So, they looked worried when I told them we would go to the same place again. I guess the problem lies at their inability to choose the right food because by the way they told me, I know the food didn't suit their taste bud at all. But after their dinner with me, they said the difference was like sky and earth.

They love the food a lot and even said they gonna go there again for their dinner on other nights haha.

A group picture during the dinner.

During their time in KL, they stayed at Federal KL.

I didn't join them at the hotel, as I crashed at my relative's place in USJ. But there was one night where I went out too late and I had no choice but to secretly sneak into their rooms to overnight there. I did that without the knowledge of the two lecturers haha. However, I had no idea what were their rooms number, so I went to the hotel reception counter and told one of the lady that I had some discussion to do with the Nagaoka Kosen group people. She asked me to give their names and fortunately, I remember one of the students' full name. The next thing I know, she handed me a complete list of their names and rooms' number; including the two lecturers' room haha!

I bet this will never happen in Japan.

The students' room, messy as expected.

The view of KL from the window.

That sums up the first day with the Japanese. Stay tuned for more.

Warong Malaysia 2009

One of the main event in every college festivals - food stalls, in which the Japanese call it 露店 (roten). Not rotan-hor.

How fast time flies.

It has been more than one year since I joined the rest of the Malaysian students in my college to open a stall during our college festival. Exactly a month ago, it was our annual college festival again and just like the previous year, we decided to open a stall again because based on our experience from what we earned last year, the profit we can make is...

Errr, I think I shall just save the details here haha.

The poster for Warong Malaysia 2009.

This time however, I wasn't the main person as I let the forth year juniors to take over. Nevertheless, I was in-charge (actually, I was only SS (self-syiok) and self-declared myself as the person-in-charge haha) of the poster-making department. I did some slight changes to the advertising poster introducing our stalls, which were to be pasted around the college. Personally, I feel the poster this year had a fair improvement from the one last year, and I am quite satisfied with the final result, considering my limited skills in Photoshop haha.

Poster design is not really the most important thing in the whole process of Warong Malaysia; but this is.

Shah (first from the left) went to work immediately when he saw me taking this photo haha.

Baked groundnuts, before being used for the kuah kacang.

And you'd guess it right, satay was the main menu this year.

I know this look kinda gross, but trust me, the grilled satay was superb.

Errr, not this one though. This one is the failed first batch haha.

The very next morning, the juniors were already at the working pit, setting up the stalls and everything. It was such a cold morning, and it was just the perfect setting for us to continue sleeping underneath our futon. But we had a job awaiting and since we are such nice seniors (yes, SS again), we went down to help the juniors.

Initially, we joked with them, saying that the seniors would not do anything except giving instructions only lol.

Two Malaysians setting up the fire in Japan using charcoal imported from Indonesia. Sounds so international haha.

Here, we were using cardboard to make dustbin wtf. See, I've told you the seniors will help out one.

Took turns to fan the stubborn charcoal which was so hard to burn.

It didn't stop at just setting up the fire using the barbecue set. We had to get chairs and tables from a room, and use newspaper and plastic wrapper to wrap the table so that they would not get dirty. They also gave us a bottle of disinfectant and had us to prepare a basin of water so that we can wash hands there. Not only that, we also had to send samples of food from our stall to the Students' Affair Department before we start our business every day. It is one of the formal procedure so that they can use those samples for testing, just in case someone gets food poisoning.

Talking about the food samples, we had to send 50 grams of each food to them. I was left cursing my luck because every time I took the food there to be weighed before handing the food to them, the food was sort a few grams. Not just once, but it was so many times that I have lost count on the number of times going to-and-forth from the stall and the Students' Council Department to add and reweigh the food. I think it was no less than five times, that on the forth time, the satay in the plastic bag was 49 grams.

I don't have the slightest idea how can it be that precise =.=

Anyway, let me rewind backwards a bit; after the guys had successfully set up the fire, they started to grill the satay.

Faiz (left) here wondered why his satay didn't look as nice as the ones grilled by others haha.

Took some time off from grilling the satay for some pictures.

I was actually there standing among the satay team just for the sake of snapping this picture haha.

The satay from the first day was the worse. Okay-lah, maybe not that bad that it was not edible. But the colour didn't look appealing, and the taste was below average as well. However, the look and the taste improved on the second day and the satay on the third day was the best. It was so good that I think we ate half of the total numbers of sticks we were supposed to sell on that day haha.

Halfway grilling and selling, we ate the satay at the same time-lor haha.

Satay in the making.

Satay was 100 yen per stick. That is like RM 3.50 for one stick. I know that is the worse cut-throat business in the entire history of mankind haha.

Besides satay, kuih bakar was on the menu. It was 100 yen per piece. Quite cut throat also-lah in fact lol.

If you know basic Japanese, you should know the word "baka" means stupid in Japanese. So, it was not surprising to see the facial expressions of the customers when they looked at the menu. We had to convince them that eating kuih bakar is perfectly safe and they will not turn stupid haha. What to do right? The pun was definitely unintended.

Business was pretty good, as expected. Most of them were supportive and willing to try the satay that we were selling. However, there were a few people, especially the older generations who looked uncertain when they saw a stall selling weird food from a country that they have never heard about.

Did I mention before that there are still Japanese who thought we live on trees =.=

Prof. Yamada, the one who helped me to clean some of the shit happened several months ago, was one of the customers.

We saw the school principal from afar and we waved to him. He had no choice but to drop by our stall lol.

Sato Sensei, whom I think bought at least something from every stalls there. Carine trying to play hide-and-seek behind.

Advertising is one of the important factors when you are doing business. That is one of the factors that we emphasise on when we work for Warong Malaysia. For that, we had our third year junior Bai to take that responsibility. Seriously, he was up to it for that job.

Here is an example.

Inviting several of his classmates (I think) to the stall.

However, this green Froggie was one of our main rival.

Besides that frog, there were Panda, Pikachu, Rabbit and Bear from other stalls who tried to lure customers to their stalls.

Like that, how to win them-lah, right?

Luckily, we got Bai with us, and with the great minds of a few of us, we came out with a totally different advertising method. That is to stick the menu on his rear part of his body, and let him go around promoting the selasih syrup we were selling. We expected him to sell off at least one cup of syrup, but guess how many he sold?

Bai, the syrup guy.

Zero. Haha, but at least we should credit him for trying.

Besides those mascots, I have no clear idea why they made our stall to be next to the stall that sold the Japanese satay, yakitori. Not very sure if it was part of a conspiracy to bring our stall down, or it was just a coincidence. Nevertheless, we didn't give up and tried all out to outwit the stall next to us. Just mention anything, from shouting non-stop whenever we see customers walking pass our stall, to luring them to try Malaysian satay even though they were standing at the yakitori stall. That is not considered as customer stealing, right? I feel that we did a great job as we managed to match, if not overtook their sales.

Rain was one of our major concern throughout the three days of business. According to the weather forecast, it would rain throughout the three days, especially in the evening. We had no choice but to continue with our business, although we were aware that business would be affected more or less.

Rain or shine, there were still customers, especially during lunch time.

Enjoying ourselves eventhough it was raining.

It was not only rain, because on the third day, the weather got really cold and it hailed!

The most excited ones were the third year juniors who saw hailstone for the first time.

Fortunately, it didn't stop customers from coming to our stalls.

The wife of Mr Haga and their cute little daughter, Manami paid a visit to our stall as well. She seemed to be enjoying eating the satay very much.

I tried to carry Manami and the next thing was, she cried so loudly haha!

There was one first year student, whose name was Kobayashi. His head is cleanly shaved which made him look very much a monk. His small eyes and sharp pointing-mouth makes him look like a photocopy version of Sineo from Doraemon. Not forgetting, his short figure just made him one of the most recognisable person in the college.

So, he was there, walking aimlessly while looking for food to buy.

His name is Kobayashi.

The cheeky few of us, looked at his movement from our stall. He finally ended up at our stall, and he took no less than five minutes to go through the menu, then looked at the food on the table, and went back to the menu again, looked at the food again, looked around the stall and the process repeated on and on haha. We were discussing among ourselves, wondering how many sticks of satay he would buy after the detailed observation that lasted so long.

In the end, he finally spoke out, and guess what he ordered.

Told you he was so famous among girls haha!

「サテーを一本下さい」or "Satay one, please".

Woah, stand there so long, think, think, think, and now wanna buy ONLY 1 satay?! I was so pissed off that my face turned like this haha!

Haha, no-lah. The picture above is just a candid shot by Hong Yao, I think. But anyway, it was just like what I had guessed lol! It was fun and interesting to see this little guy to take such a long time to decide on what he was gonna buy, only for him to tell us that he was gonna get a stick of satay. I think the attention we paid on him had make him felt a bit uneasy and scared him lol.

This entry is getting too lengthy that I guess I should end it soon. Here are a few group pictures taken at Warong Malaysia.

Alogo from Gabon and Salehin from Bangladesh, the two juniors in the third year.

The official booklet for the college festival this year.

The girls wore baju kurung on the third day, despite the freezing temperature.

It was so cold that the guys had to have their sweaters on.

Promoting the selasih syrup haha.

All can apply for part-time job to act in satay advertisement after this haha.

In between grilling and selling the satay and other food, we had our kind juniors to prepare this for us - nasi himpit and sliced cucumber. Dip them in the kuah kacang and eat them in a cold day; the orgasmic feel is beyond description.

We had some seniors from the nearby Nagaoka University of Technology who came over. They were the last customers, as they bought more than 50 sticks of satay. A big thank you to them for letting us to close shop early.

Finally, time for cleaning up everything.

Last but not least, a group photo as this is gonna be my last year here.

Take one.

Take two.

Just in case anyone are still wondering how much we earned from the three days, well, it was not that much.

Net profit from selling (partially were eaten by ourselves lol) more than 800 sticks of satay, 100 pieces of kuih bakar and around 50 cups of syrup.

Well, I will let you do the Maths.