Thai Festival 2012

"Celebrating 125 years of diplomatic relations 

between Japan and The Land of Smiles."

the official theme for

Thai Festival 2012

The main entrance to the Thai Festival, from Harajuku Station side.

Cancelled in the wake of March 11 last year, the annual Thai Festival returns to regular scheduling this weekend, just in time to mark 125 years of diplomatic relations between Japan and The Land of Smiles. Thai Festival is one of the many festivals usually held in May and June by various countries, including Brazil, Jamaica, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc. One thing though, Malaysia doesn't have one, which is a little bit disappointing.

The venue has always been Yoyogi Park, in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. The main organiser of Thai Festival is the Royal Thai Embassy in Tokyo, in collaboration with its Tourism ministry and several other agencies. With more than 70 Thai restaurants, 50 food and drinks stalls, 16 fruits stalls, and over 20 other tents by various agencies, Thai Festival is undoubtedly the biggest festival compared to other countries.

The size of the crowd was just amazing. You can hardly find any empty spaces along the stalls.

A specially designed area for visitors who had brought their own sheet to picnic there. One thing about Japanese is that 

they love to sit under the tree with a mat and enjoy their food. One fine example is during the hanami season.

A magnificent booth by Thai Tourism Ministry to promote its beautiful country. Dear Minister of Tourism of Malaysia, 

 you should seriously learn from your neighbour, instead of spending millions at Facebook.

The main attraction at the festival is of course the delicious Thai delicacy. They are prepared by local Thai chefs and looking at them alone is already very tempting. There are also the usual array of stalls selling handicrafts, clothing, Singha beer, etc. A new change this year is that the stalls are arranged in alphabetical order to avoid confusion.

 

The Thai Philharmonic Orchestra are being brought over for the occasion, along with veteran rockers Carabao and rising star Newwy, who's being groomed for her Japanese major label debut later in the year. 

Awesome Thai traditional umbrella dance by a group of performers.

The main street was easily more than 500 meters long and the whole stretch was fully occupied with visitors looking to have a taste of Thai food.

Various kinds of method were used by the stalls to attract visitors to their stall.

A very creative way of advertisement.

I dropped by at the festival on the first day (it is held for two days over the weekend of May 12 and 13) on my way to attending the Wesak Day celebration in Shibuya. This is my first time going to Thai Festival and I never expect it to be as this big. I was quite surprise and yet got shocked for a bit as I have never seen such festival as crowded as this one. It was quite insane to see the amount of people lurking and wandering around the Thai Festival

One interesting thing though, is that I saw more Japanese than the Thai people themselves who organised this event. Nevertheless the small presence of the Thais didn't stop you from getting the feeling that you are not in Tokyo and the place indeed has the Thailand feel surrounding the atmosphere.

Singha beer were selling like hot cakes.

A wide variety of fruits can be found at the festival!

First time to see so many durians in Japan. The prices is really shocking really! With this price, I guess I can get a full lorry of durians back in Malaysia haha!

Tamarind, or asam jawa in Malay. 

Mangoes, green unripe papayas and some mysterious fruits that look like armadillo which I have forgotten its name haha!

The rest of the tropical fruits sold at the fruits stalls. It might be common for us to see these kinds of fruits, but to the Japanese, 

they will go "Whoooaaaa, what is this fruit, what is that fruit?!?" haha!

There were just too many food stalls to choose from and one may be spoilt for choice. However, the types of food and prices are more or less similar to each other. So, the safest option is probably to pick the stall with the longest queue. However, I usually do the opposite to save time haha!

Thai Food are mostly spicy and hot which makes it a perfect time to eat this type of food on that day since it was a cloudy cool weather where one needs to eat it to warm your body up.

How can a visit to the Thai Festival be complete without tasting my favourite Pad Thai.

Spicy minced chicken meat with basil and Jasmine rice (khaow kai pad bai kaparo).

Her colleagues whistled at her when we were taking this photo lol!

So, there you go, a short entry on Thai Festival this year. Kob kun krab for reading.

Full-Time Engineer, Part-Time Babysitter

"Calvin, let's talk in English"

Katsuwata-san

Senior at my department

Here's one good news! I survived my first week in the office haha! Last Monday was my first day working in the company's office in Akihabara, after undergoing a two-month job training since April. The first thing early on the Monday morning was the announcement of the department each of us will be assigned. Suzuki, who ended her job training two weeks earlier, has been working in the Business team for a couple of weeks. So, it leaves the remaining three of us - Sato, Samitha and me, who were still without a department haha!

So, during a short meeting in the morning, came the much anticipated announcement. To be honest, I was a little anxious and also excited at the same time, down to the curiosity to know which team I will be put into. I expected the announcement to have some suspense element in it; something like: "Okay, now I will make the announcement of where each of you guys will be put into. Jeng jeng jeng… *drumrolls* Sato… into the Blue team… Samitha, you're in the… Yellow team and Calvin… you are in the... actually you don't have a team. Hehe, tricked you! Calvin, you're in the Red Team, etc."

 

How the office looks like at eight in the morning, when there's still hardly anyone around.

However, that didn't happen and it went something like, "Okay, like you guys have known, the assignments for you guys have been decided. Sato and Samitha, you guys are in the Technical Solution Group and Calvin, you're in the Helpdesk Group." The end.


Just like that. Damn potong stim kan?

After spending a week in the office, I guess I can say I love the environment very much; a working environment that I'd wish to work in all this while. Although it is a Japanese company, there is a relatively huge presence of non-Japanese employees in the office. In fact, almost a quarter of them are foreigners, from Sri Lanka, Nepal, China, the Philippines, Singapore and of course Malaysia. The scary Japanese working culture that you always hear or read in the media is not that bad here. The moment the clock shows five thirty, one after another will start their ritual of packing their bags, turning off their PCs and leave.

 My cubicle desk, at the corner of the Business Solution Development Department island. Still very empty and I have yet to decorate it haha! Any idea guys? 
By the way, you can see the white helmet under the desk, to be worn when a huge earthquake happen.

In such a diverse environment, I occasionally have the chance to hear people speaking English to each other and it is a great break from being in a Japanese-only speaking environment from nine to five every single day. That sometimes can make you feel tired, mentally. And guess what? My senior in my department sitting next to my desk is a Singaporean!

On my first day, she asked me what language I prefer to use when we talk. I told her, lets speak Hokkien hahaha! No lar, just bluffing you only. But yeah, it is great to have someone from the same kampong in the company because I am pretty sure we more or less share the same wavelength. Sometimes it's hard when we have to talk to someone who is on a different frequency as we'd have to adjust the frequency to match the same wavelength haha! Besides the Singaporean senior, there are another three more Japanese seniors in my group.

  My senior, Crystal asked me for a small favour to babysit his son last week, as she wasn't around for a couple of days. This is the kid I baby sit - 

that's his DIY name tag and his little blue mobile phone.

The main task of the group is to provide technical IT and PC assistance to the customers, plus to assist in troubleshooting and problems solving to users. Here comes the difficult part – it is done through the phone. Most of our customers are international companies who have set up their business in Japan and hence, being able to speak Japanese alone is not enough. English is equally as important as well. And I suspect that could be one of the reasons I was put under this team. Just because I can speak rojak Manglish, they thought that is the same as Queens English haha!

On one fine day, while I was building several PCs for the customers, one of my senior turned to me and said, "Calvin, let’s talk in English!" I was completely cool about that and I said yeah sure. Then, came the moment of silence (pun unintended). Both of us stayed frozen for the next thirty seconds, looking at each other without saying a word. In the end, my senior said to me, "Hmmm, I guess let's do this on other day. I just couldn't think of a topic" haha wtf!

 

 Here's the dinner I prepared for both of us. Japanese braised cube pork or kakuni (角肉) and stir fried spinach. When he took a taste on the spinach, 

  he said softly that it tastes so much better then his Mom's cooking lol!

  He complained that I took too much of photos and he couldn't wait to start eating as he was super hungry already haha! 

But yet, he still gave me full cooperation by giving me a peace pose lol!

Just like what my ex-Japanese language lecturer, Nezu sensei commented on my Facebook status, it is something very common to happen among the Japanese when they talk to gaijin. Happily married to a Malaysian with a kid now in KL, nevertheless as a Japanese, she could relate that situation very well which made her laughed haha!「よくありそうな光景で笑えました。きっとその先輩さん、英語で何話していいか分からなかったんだろうなぁ。日本人としてその気持ちよく分かり ます。(笑)」

It's great that my senior has assured me that whenever we talk in English, there is no need to use the honorific expression, commonly known as keigo (敬語) in Japanese. Instead of saying the long winded "Honjituwa otsukaresamadeshita. Osakini shitsureishimasu" before we leave the office every day, he asked me to just use the short and simple "See ya!!". Haha, damn time saving right?

After taking a warm shower, time to have some juice while we play some card games. He actually made me play until almost midnight

but I insisted that if we do not head to bed soon, both of us gonna be taking MC the next day lol! 

And this senior can really tell crap jokes. Just recently when I was halfway doing my work, he called me over and I thought he wanted to ask me to help him in some task. Mana tau, he actually wanna show me a photo from his iPhone. It was a photo of a mini plane and he said he is the proud owner of the plane haha wtf! Apparently he takes that plane to office every day and use a parachute to jump onto the office's rooftop to get to the office lol! You tell me-lar, how should I layan all these kind of crappings haha!

As I had mentioned, the main task is to assist customers who are having difficulties on their network and to perform trouble-shooting tasks for them, through the phone. Still with limited knowledge now, obviously I feel anxious and worry just in case I don't understand the customers' problems. So, every time the phone rings, it will be like an earthquake alert. Damn phobia now to hear the phone rings nowadays already haha!

What do you think of this shot? We didn't pre-plan our pose and it was a coincidence that our hands are placed in the same position lol! 

Both got ready to head to our respective destination - Kevin to school and I to my office haha!

If you have experience making phone calls to companies in Japan you should be used to the super friendliness and politeness of the person on the line. But after a few days seeing how my seniors, I guess that is not necessary the case. Sometimes, they might be halfway chewing on a candy, and when the call comes in, they will immediately reach for the tissue and wipe off their hand while dealing to the customer on the line haha!

I was out for lunch with another two seniors last Friday and one of them mentioned that my Facebook wall is full of food photos. Yup, that’s one of the no-no thing to do – adding people from your company as Facebook friends. He wondered if I like food. Well, obviously I love food a lot; otherwise you wouldn't see me this fat like now hahaha! I’m not sure if he was trying to tease me, but he asked if I wanna take a photo first when my noodle was served at the lunch. Feeling that it was not exactly a suitable situation to take food photos, I just malu-malu kucing-ly said, "Hehe, it's alright" lol!

 Kena complained again for the second time. He said I'm a weird salaryman who holds a camera while walking to the train station lol!

It was my first time having lunch with the two seniors and I suspect they didn't know where I came from. Yet, they tried to cover it; though they should really polish their covering-up skills lol! Just wondering, do I look like I came from the Philippines or Indonesia? Haha, damn sweat kan? As I explained to them a brief introduction about Malaysia, one of my senior told me that all this while, he thought that Borneo is a country. Dah-la I was eating some spicy noodle at that time, it just made me to sweat even more lol! If an island is considered an island, do you know how many countries will Indonesia have?

Thousand island (dressing) lol!