QWSS JAPAN TRIP DAY 2

(Narita airport: passenger's arrival hall)

DAY 2
QWSS JAPAN TRIP 2007

The time was 12.00am …yet, the light inside the plane were still shining brightly… the air-stewardess began pushing around the snack trolley and asked what we wanted to have for our drink… Well, I still chose apple juice to be my midnight drink, despite knowing that I did not bring my toothbrush set along with me into the passenger’s cabin…. Had a hard time brushing my teeth , using only my fingers…. Besides the choice of drinks, we’re given a packet of sweeten nuts each, which I forced myself not to eat… Yeah watching movie…..until 1am in the morning and then cabin light were dimmed, that time, I tried to fall asleep…but I couldn’t, firstly I am not used to sleeping inside a ‘moving’ object and some more, my seats were still around 90 degree(straight)…But as time passed by, I finally dozed off….
I opened my eyes, the plane were still flying…. And I looked around , only to see that all of passengers were asleep… I wanted to go toilet, but Tingwei was obstructing the way, I tried to wake him up, but he’s still sleeping peacefully…. So no choice, gotta jump over him… well quite hard, but luckily thanks to my ‘compressible’ body, I managed to…Later returned to my seat and sleep again….
When the next time I opened my eyes, outside the windows, the sun had already risen, the whole clouds were very bright… but when I looked at my watch…. Surprised….. Only 4am in the morning??? And the sun had already risen like the time when we’re usually doing our reading period after the flag-raising ceremony…. Then… went to toilet again…after that, decided not to sleep anymore… continued to watch the movie DORORO….
At around 06.00am, almost everyone had already woke up…and we’re having our breakfast….. My choice of drink is MILK!!! MOOOOO……well the meal was delicious…. But we had to eat it quickly, for that by 6.30am, the air-stewardess had started to collect the tray, regardless whether we had finished our food or not….
15 minutes before our landing, the pilot instructed us to look to our left…guess what? It’s the famous Mount Fuji…. And we managed to view only part of it….the peak of Mount Fuji which was white in colour… ..Not long after that, from the live-view camera, we could see the landing pad was coming closer and closer to the screen as time passed………and finally………TOUCHDOWN! The plane landed at Narita Airport…..after the plane had taxed, all of us proceeded out…. I switched on my phone equipped with starhub prepaid card…yup…I had a signal…. It’s the local Japan Telecommunication operator; VODAFONE…. Then I got a message from starhub, wishing me to enjoy my trip and reminding me that I could use my phone normally just like how I used it in Singapore…but each outgoing sms is very very very expensive…. $1.50~$1.60 (my 600+free sms were useless) after a while had to send around 2 messages to inform my parents that I had reached Japan and at the same time, told them that I would send sms only if needed….(in fact i nvr sms-ed at all after that)
So…all of us proceeded to the immigration checkpoint…and it was a very long queue that we were able to say hi to each other for a repetition of 5 times…. At that time…whoops a girl said that she had left her monkey in the plane…actually the teachers told the girl to ‘give up’ the monkey already, due to time constraint…but since the queue was very long, then she was allowed to return to the plane to fetch her ‘monkey’…

“Japanese people are very friendly and polite”…that is what most people claimed”
Yup, I agree with it totally… when it was my turn, I approached the immigration officers and surprisingly, he greeted me “OHAYO GOZAIMAS” which means “good morning” I was stunned by his politeness and quickly greet him also in Japanese…while bowing at the same time…XD
(Narita Airport:baggage collection depot)

(Narita airport: Passenger meeting hall)



(Collecting our baggage)
Then after that, we went to collect our baggage….then we had our toilet break… yup I really like the way the Japanese set up their toilet…. The washing basin, there were ‘water temperature adjuster’ to allow you to wash your hand with either cold or hot water….wow just think about it??? Which country will give such a unique toilet….After doing our business, we proceeded out and saw a guy…holding a paper written “QUEENSWAY SECONDARY SCHOOL” …. That guy was our tour guide named , MR RONNIE TAN….. After the teachers and him doing handshakes and after doing a head-count, all of us proceeded to the coach to head for our next stop…KURIHARA CITY… and by the way, the weather outside is very cooling, just like inside an air-con room….


(Meeting Mr Ronnie Tan, our tour guide for the entire Japan Trip)

Inside the bus, he began to do a proper greeting…he introduced to us that he was formerly a Singaporean, now living in Japan already….then he began to give us some information about Japan…for eg. The Japanese are very honest people…..how do we greet people….the steps in making purchases in Japanese Cashier….etc…and of course he began to share his life story….Some more, he also told us that the whole KURIHARA CITY citizens would like to invite us to attend the welcome party…..
His funniest joke: WE PRONOUNCE MC-DONALD IN ENGLISH… JAPANESE CALLED IT “ MAH-KE-DOH-NAL-KE…”

(Mr ronnie Tan doing his introduction)
Meanwhile, Majority of us had already dozed off, partly due to that we did not get enough sleep above the plane…..but I was still awake, since I am the type of person who can’t take a nap…..and also Mr Ronnie tan also told us that we will be passing JAPAN’S DISNEYLAND soon…. and most of us woke up and get cameras were ready in our hand…Soon Disneyland was in sight and all of us busily take the pictures….after that some returned back to their sleep….


[Bypassing Japan disneyland... yenqin are you interested?=) ]

( Japan's 'rotating ride' )

while ARIYANI,XIAODAN,DANIAL,TINGWEI,GARY AND I began to do our crazy stuffs, which was to say hi to the other driver….lolz… I could not stop laughing whenever I recalled Ariyani waved to the truck driver and the truck driver waved to her back ,while at the same time he was laughing like mad like that !!! HAHAZ, Imagine could this ever happened at the HIGHWAY ??? Some drivers who were the ‘serious’ type remained unflinched…
Around noon, we stopped by the gas station for our toilet break….lolz ..what a cool breeze the moment we stepped out of the coach….we headed to the toilet and changed into our school uniform….then went to the mini market to purchase some snacks and drinks…(By the way the gas station’s mini market is not the same as what you used to see in Singapore’s…it is very big….) Then this was the first time we encountered the unique Japan….. first was VENDING MACHINES…. THERE ARE LOTS OF VENDING MACHINES ALIGNED NEXT TO EACH OTHERS…. Not



mentioning also the automated Canteen whereby you had to make your purchases on the machine and the machine will issue you a receipt, which you had to pass it to the cashier for your food to be cooked…Anyway, we did not eat at the canteen…we just went to the Supermarket and grabbed some bites… I purchased a 1L mineral water + 1L “Pocari Sweat” …their machine was damn cool…. The cash register automatically eject out the required coins while the paper money were being drawn by the cashier-lady manually…. One most surprising part was that the cashier lady counts the money in-front of me…. 1000,2000,3000…… plus 100,50…. YEN* wah lao, with that, I don’t need to double check the money again…(which I often had to in SINGAPORE-as I dun trust fully the cashier) and one thing about JAPANESE, after they had scanned your goods and said your total purchases, you will be prompted to place your cash in a tray…after you put your cash there, they did not immediately took the money…. They waited for you for a while then they would collect your money….what a nice people…..
Then we returned to the bus and continued our journey to Kurihara City… at around 1 pm, we stopped again to have our lunch…. At a typical Japanese restaurant…. I ordered the most expensive meal in the menu… a set of cold noodle, rice….beef…etc…. 1400yen ++++ ($17.72) it was OISHI…… DELICIOUS !!! and luckily Some of us were fast-eaters, so we went down to the mini shop to look around…. Yup they sold a local stuff, a something like dharma doll….but it had a cute face picture painted on it….
Then we went back to the bus to continue our journey….after a long bus ride, entertained by MR Ronnie TAN who shared his life experience in Japan, told stories about JAPANàTHE 47 SAMURAIS….. update us with the latest news happening in Japan, etc…..Finally when we bypass Sendai City, he informed us that at around 3pm we will be reaching KURIHARA DISTRICT, MIYAGI Prefecture…. Soon after our coach exited the highway toll, we finally began to see the Japanese town….Shopping district..KURIHARA SHOPPING DISTRICT….We were given 45 mins to roam a supermarket called “ MAXVALU” while at the same time, we were instructed to break into our planned groups and to gather some data about factors on why this district are successful or not successful in attracting tourists….which falls under our sec 4 Geography elective syllabus…”TOURISM”
Our TEAMS ARE MADE UP OF;
~DANIAL
~ME
~TINGWEI
~XIAODAN
~SHAHEENA
~AISYAH













(we were browsing 'hentai' magazines !!XD)






Instead of using the time to do shopping, all of us went to roam around the supermarket and even around the area around the supermarket to search for the factors…..we managed to noted some; such as a casino….an inn….. an entertainment store…etc…..and also we took the pictures… Then comes the funny part…..
We were inside the supermarket and we saw a 100 YEN SHOP…. Browsed the things and then suddenly danial pointed to us…..” HEY HOW COME GOT BRA HERE ARH???” immediately Tingwei, XiaoDan and I looked at him and laughed …..XD PERVERT SIA…..HAHAZ
Ariyani ‘s style of asking “how much is this thing?” in Japanese… is by hand gesture… first show the item to the cashier, then raise your palm vertically one by one…then point the signal ok(pointing finger stick to your thumb)…. Then the cashier lady nodded and told her the price… in YEN* … lolz we never expected it to happen.....
After a while, we went back to our dropping point and waited for the bus to come…when the bus came, all of us boarded it and headed to the town center, which was just around ten stones throw away …. Meanwhile inside the bus, all of us tried to make full use of our time to adjust our ties, trying to look as smart as possible especially with our purple BLAZERZZZZ!!!
When the bus stopped, we looked outside the window and saw there was a banner that SAYS “WELCOME TO KURIHARA” wow…. All of us were very elated….and we alighted the bus and went inside the building….
THANK YOU FOR ROLLING OUT THE RED CARPET FOR US,GUYS
As we made our way inside,we were walking along the red carpet and the whole staffs inside stood at both sides of the corridor and clapped hard… we felt really honoured….just like if we’re the president or some ‘important’ people….Soon we were given lists of our host families and we waited for them to prepare the ballroom…..first, the host families were told to go in first and sat according to the table number allocated…. Tingwei and I were buddies for the home-stay and when we sat at our table, there were no one…. While others…their host families were already seated before them…. After the playing of national anthem of both countries, opening speech by the mayor of kurihara and ms leslie leong…. the show carries on…. Not long after that, our host family came with his children…. We began introducing each other… I started the conversation with him by saying “ WATASHIWA ARWIN…. YOU?POINTED AT HIM* “ after hearing he said that his name was Shiratori-san, I said, “ YOROSHIKU…”(which means nice to meet you” … of course I did the same for his children too… a boy named “KYOTARO” AND HIS SISTER NAMED”NATUKO”
Well the feast was really grand…. Ballroom standard !!! no joke !!!!...there were even SOBA*(JAPANESE NOODLE) … unlimited flow of ICE-CREAMS….that We ate until our stomach filled...and after that we bid goodbye to each other….Some funny thing happen to me and TingWei again… as we were walking out of the ballroom,along the corridor, the staffs were clapping again…while both of us were busy greeting them “SAYONARA”(which means bye-bye) we were so engrossed in saying sayonara that we walked out the wrong door…instead of heading outside, we went into their restaurants… when we realized it,we quickly came out and bid sayonara again…. The staffs were laughing at us and we were laughing too…..then we boarded the bus and headed to our hotel…. Our hotel were located on the slopes of the mountain…it took around 40minutes to travel there… while the excitement followed us, Mr Ronnie tan said that we will still be served ‘free’ dinner by the hotel… and of course the whole bus was like saying “ HUH????(HAHAZ SOUNDED LIKE ALICIA*) “ then heeding the teachers’ advice of being polite by not to reject the hotel’s kindness,we accepted to eat the meal…. In fact, none of us finished the meal, except…. The sashimi was hardly seen being left on the plate…
We reached the hotel finally ….the hotel is called “HEILSAM KURIKOMA” when we walked into the hotel lobby, we saw a signboard “ WELCOME QUEENSWAY SECONDARY” wow… our school was very famous….after getting our keys, we headed to our respective room to settle our luggages and rucksacks, lucky that my room only have 4 people ; DANIAL ,ME,TINGWEI, and ALAN…. Then we put on our YUKATA*(BATHROBE) and headed down to the dining hall… wow… everyone was wearing Yukata…. Lolz….All of us felt like we’re suddenly transformed into Japanese in an instance….btw The Yukata was very revealing…. If you sat wrongly, you would end up revealing what’s beneath the bathrobe, which happened to some of the boys…. Some of Our underwear was being seen clearly … The girls however were smarter, I think they knew that such things would happen that they wore their yukata on top of their clothes, which means that they were wearing 2 layer of clothes….
Good thing was that MR GARY TAN said that since it was our first night in japan, he would call off that day’s presentation, so as to let us enjoy the onsen*(hot spring) in one conditions: When the teachers were onsen-ing, the students were barred from entering the onsen*…..
After a delicious dinner finally came my favourite…. “ONSEN”*(Hot-spring) …. Yay! A few of us went into the male onsen….inside there were a large space…and we were supposed to go in naked… at first we were reluctant…. Because we were shy….. not getting used to it…. But in the end, someone said that later NS also must see each other naked what…so all of us decided to Strip naked and ran inside the bathing area !!!! after cleaning ourselves up, we took a dip inside the onsen… at first when you put your feets in, it will be very hot…after a while, our body temperature had adjusted to the water temperature and we dipped inside…. It was very comfortable that I could not even describe it merely with just words….. it gave you a nice feeling…. Arrrh…..!
Then after that, we went back to our room…. By the way in JAPAN, their Room toilet only consist of a TOILET BOWL !!!! we prepared our slides for the presentation tml until around 12.00am in the morning…and we slept….
Tingwei and Danial slept at the FUTON*(JAPANESE MATRESS) while I slept at the 2nd level western-style bed …. OYASUMINASAI&* GOOD NIGHT !!!!!!