hi guys, it's my second week in this cruel reality called singa-freaking-pore. during this time, i have finished watching 3 japanese dramas (don't judge me, it's not that difficult), and 4 japanese movies. unless someone gives me a job soon, i think i will just sink further in this aimless existence.

well, besides shuffling back and forth from the dreaded and cold bbdc almost every other day. arhghghghg after i pass i will never ever step in that cursed place ever again! i'm just wasting away my youth there.

actually, the reason for my angst might be attributed to the fact that i'm DOWN TO MY LAST PACK OF NATTO T______T WHY IS IT SO DELICIOUS AND WHY IS IT SO LIMITED HERE. i feel so proud and special to have spent natto day eating natto with rice. paradise~

anyway, since i have nothing better to do i should probably recount my damn excites adventure in the land of the rising sun. at the request of my so-called-good-friend-identified-by-facebook-oh-but-what-nonsense lynette ("I WAITING FOR YOU TO BLOG ABOUT YOUR JAPAN TRIP BUT YOU NEVER!"). so here have a useless blog entry about my entire day spent on taking the　飛行機 (hikouki - plane). threw in random japanese phrases as well, let's all learn 日本語 (nihongo - japanese)!

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disclaimer: this is possibly the first time i recount anything on a blog i.e. i have never ever talked about what happened today, yesterday, last year, yada yada unless it was significant so plz have some mercy on me.

平成２1年　６月１９日　金曜日 (heisei nijyuuninen roku getsu jyuukyuu nichi kinyoubi - 2009 19 june friday) WORDPOST ONLY

i had a sleepless night as usual, and not because i was ridiculously excited to be in the same city as arashi. possibly from all the nonsense nxy, ju and i were talking about (read: TRYING TO DEFEND THE DIGNITY OF JAPANESE BOYS ENTERTAINMENT AGAINST 2 KOREAN-CRAZY TWARTS); juliza didn't really sleep either, she wanted to finish hana yori dango before she left - which she didn't.

woke up at 7 (not that sure about the time), grabbed my stuff, and called juliza to make sure she was awake. SHE DID NOT PICK UP MY 203948234 CALLS, ANNOYING ASSHOLE. and so my dad freaked out a little (WHY DO PEOPLE AROUND ME ALWAYS FREAK OUT SO EASILY), lectured a lot on responsibility, and we went off anyway at my insistence, where juliza finally answered my call and reached the airport even before i did -.-. what an asshole, seriously. "I JUST WANTED TO SCARE YOU A LITTLE :D :D"

had porridge at the canteen, where my dad interviewed juliza about canada. for some reason the queue at the customs was really long for ju, and we barely made it for our plane. we ran rather unglamly through the airport lolzzzz AND IT WOULD NOT BE OUR LAST TIME @)#($*)@(#*$()*#$

slept through the plane ride as expected. juliza really KO, i couldn't really sleep so i listened to the japanese songs they were having for some last-minute brushing up of my fail japanese.

arrived in style in hk airport. GUYS, WHEN IN TRANSIT, REMEMBER TO GO CHECK WHERE YOUR FLIGHT IS FIRST AND THE PROCEDURES BEFORE DOING ANYTHING. though we had barely an hour, we went first to the toilet and then to starbucks which was already at the arrival gates lolzzzz and tried to pick up the counter staff with limited cantonese and talk about how sexy japanese and cantonese is and walk leisurely with juliza and her i-forgot-what puff that was rather delicious UNTIL WE REALISED. OUR GATE IS MISSING. and we walked on forever, juliza started freaking out, then we started running into dead ends until we came to the customs that we were supposed to pass before we could get into the departure section ---.--- we had a brief moment of special treatment and we cut the damn long queue and rannnnn for our lives' worth until we arrived at our gate and juliza: I HATE HONGKONG AIRPORT. we arrived just in time though, when the gate was almost closing. AND THIS WOULD NOT BE OUR LAST TIME !)(@*)(#*(@#$

we actually had a not-so-bad time on the flight to 成田 (narita), talking about life in general and discussing about our purpose in life. NOT REALLY, but i'm not going to divulge our top-sekrit convo ROFL. and we talked the entire flight away, which i found rather amazing, lol. we were also surrounded by 日本人 (nihonjin - japanese), and that in itself is kinda amazing. no srsly, compared to the flight arriving in singapore filled with singaporeans. (i swear i'm not a japanophile.) we also filled in our health declaration form (yea free of flu, fever, yada yada) and briefly discussed our chosen train route to our hostel at 浅草 (asakusa), which proves to be a complete waste of time in the end anyway.

touched down at around 8pm? 成田 (narita) was rather empty, which is not surprising, since it doesn't operate 24 hours. walked leisurely (we hadn't learnt our lesson apparently) until we reached the customs, which was a breeze, and collected our luggage. and so we could now get lost in the streets of tokyo!!!!

or not. my luggage was kinda heavy because compared to the all-so-smart-ass juliza who packed close to nothing, i brought my entire wardrobe to japan because i thought i wasn't going to be able to afford anything in tokyo (BIG FAT HUGE MISTAKE - i should know myself better T____T). the good ol' customs ojiisan opened my luggage and checked rather unabashedly through my underwears and other nonsense.

AND SO! i took the chance to ask just as unabashedly, 大丈夫ですか？(aa, daijoubu desuka? - is it allright?)
to which he was rather surprised and asked, ああ、日本語はできるですか？(aa, nihongo wa dekiru desuka? - you can speak japanese?)
i replied, ああ、ちょっとだけ (aa, chotto dake - oh, just a little) (which was already kind of rude in the first place!).
then the ojiisan pointed and asked, 彼女は？(kanojo wa? - what about her?)
AND SO LIKE, AT THIS POINT I WAS FLUSTERING AND BECAUSE I TAKE 3 MINUTES TO REGISTER AND FORM JAPANESE SENTENCES IN MY HEAD I ANSWERED RATHER RUDELY, 彼女は。。。分かんない。。。(kanojo wa... wakannai... - i'm not so sure.... about her)
and ojiisan laughed at my failed attempt. PWNAGEEEEE. kids, always use 分かりません(wakarimasen - i'm not really sure)　and not 分かんない (wakannai - i'm not sure. I PROMISE YOU THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE) when you're talking to a complete stranger. i felt so embarrassed immediately after that, but he was friendly and nice about it (like all japanese are T____T) and so we left for the streets of tokyo!

or not. actually, on hindsight we got to the trains rather simply and without much hassle thanks to the train staff's guidance. if not for them we would have been very lost despite owning the map and having plan our routes waaaaay before the trip happened. there were 2 counters on the main floor, so we each asked, and we got directed to the train station downstairs where the main counters for both the metro and jr were. before the trip my friend had actually advised me to buy the suica - JR's version of ezlink - to save us the hassle of buying tickets everytime we wanted to go anywhere. i think that's one of the best advice given, and i would ask anyone who's going to tokyo for more than 3 or 4 days to do the same. it reaally saved us a lot of time and confusion. so we had wanted to buy the suica, but since our destination 浅草 (asakusa) was in actual fact unreachable by taking the JR, their staff directed us to the counter opposite, which was the metro side. (i thought that was mightily nice of them, instead of making us buy tickets from them and wind up being lost in the middle of nowhere even though they were rival companies) and so the metro staff actually came out of the counter and helped us work the machine and bought us PASMO - metro's version of the SUICA, and taught us how to top up the value in it. after consulting her on how we should change trains to get to 浅草, we went off to take the 電車 (densha - train)！！！！

やっぱ日本の電車は好きな～ (yappa nihon no densha wa suki na - as expected i like the trains of japan) being n00bs, we took the first train that arrived at our station, and the train was actually bound for 成田 (narita)'s terminal 1. anyway we got seats - the seats were fluffy and soft! saw lots of salaryman, and pretty girls! i could recognize the celebrities in the adverts in the train! i got kinda too happy and misheard the train conductor when he said we would reach our destination at approximately 10:33 or something - i thought he said we would reach in 10 minutes 33 seconds lol. I MEAN, in singapore they don't tell you what time the train arrives, they tell you HOW LONG AFTER the train will arrive, right? but the japanese are anal like that. after 10 minutes juliza was like, ARE YOU SURE 10 MINUTES. and i replied sheepishly: actually, after much thought i think we'd arrive at 10++ AND THEN SHE SLEEPS.

i people-watched. and the scenery outside. nothing amazing, everything's typical of tokyo, BUT IT'S TOKYO. apartments, capsule hotels, onsens, conbinis, pachinko stores, they're all so characteristic of tokyo but so enrapturing especially when you're not from the country. and the weather was amazing the night we arrived - it was just the beginning of summer, and so it was still rather cooling, but more comfortable than chilly, like 19 degrees. plus it wasn't humid.

something i wish i wasn't lazy and captured on film. a pretty girl (i was just telling juliza that i was envious of her hair) falling asleep on the train - typical of tokyoites, everybody sleeps on the train and THEY REALLY FALL ASLEEP. she started nodding off. and a young guy boards the train, sits next to her. HE FALLS ASLEEP AS WELL. for real, not like the pervy-i'm-just-pretending-to-sleep, because he was seriously nodding off as well. AND THEY STARTED LEANING ON EACH OTHER, NODDING AWAY. rofl. this must be really ordinary, since nobody other than us were secretly giggling at them. juliza: DO THEY EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER?! at one point in time both of them woke up for a moment, but after a while both of them started to fall asleep again and LEAN ON EACH OTHER AGAIN. lskdjfksdf so hilarious.

we reached our stop and waited for our next train. and then we took the next train that arrived. luckily enough for the 2 of us ignorant n00bs the train arrived at 浅草 (asakusa)　as expected, and we proceed to our journey to our hostel. the only obstacle: the instructions and pictures given were taken in the day. by the time we were there the attractions and places of interest were all closed, and so were almost completely different from the instructions given.

oh and before that, one obstacle: japan is well-known for their stairs. they do not have escalators in stations. but since we were both rather fit we managed to lug our baggages up the numerous stairs effortlessly (no lie). and we managed to exit from the right exit. we were greeted by small exit and tiny construction site with workers hard at work. we walked down the dark but not so dark alley, crossed a junction and arrived at the gates of 仲見世通り (nakamisedori), the shops were all closed by then, but the awesome weather was really inviting. i recognized the place; i've been there before previously while on a family trip and i remember the 3 of us females standing outside while my dad was in the temple doing his stuff. BUT THEN. everything looked different cuz the temple was under construction and we got kind of confused while on the temple grounds. there were many people walking their 可愛い (kawaii - i'm sure i don't have to explain this) dogs but it was still a little creepy hanging around there in the dark. and so we walked out to the main road and approached the nearest 店 (mise - store) and asked for directions. the おばあさん (obaasan - aunty) must have been asked a lot of times, because she seemed rather annoyed and gave us curt answers when we asked her. this is one of the 2 rude storekeepers we had come across in our 10 days in tokyo. T-W-O.

so anyway, we walked according to the directions given and passed by a conbini, one small automated carpark that works like a vending (can't remember for the life of me what that is called... rotating carpark?), nice but cramped houses - by which i mean the tiny car filled up the small gap between the gates for that house, it was really the epitome of cramped... and cute -, one place of accommodation which we presumed some days after that it was a love hotel, and of course, 花やしき(hanayashiki)！ the amusement park just beside our hostel, that was supposed to direct us to the hostel directly, but because it was already night-time, it was closed.

checked in, checked out the hostel, plenty of westerners, went to the room, pretty cramped up, both of us had to sleep on the upper bunks, juliza carried her entire luggage to put on top of the lockers -.-. settled in, went to sleep.

oh and before that we logged into the interwebz and annoyed nxy a lot. :D

END OF THE FIRST DAY OF ADVENTUREEEEEE

wow, that was a whole load of rambling i thought i would never do. i promise more photos for the next few days - though alternatively you should go look for it yourself on my fb >:(

Labels: let's all learn (how to abuse) japanese, let's get lost: tokyo