DAY 3
QWSS JAPAN TRIP 2007
I was enjoying my time in my ‘lala land’ when suddenly I felt someone tapping me.
When I opened my eyes, it was ALAN who did that. When I looked below, I saw TINGWEI AND DANIAL looking up, complaining “ HEY DEY, YOUR ALARM WENT OFF ALREADY AND STILL YOU CAN’T WAKE UP...INSTEAD, WE’RE THE ONE WHO WAKE UP FIRST…”
Lolz , yup it was true, I set my handphone alarm clock the night before, an hour and a half before the time whereby we were supposed to report for our breakfast; 6.45AM. Then, DANIAL,TINGWEI AND I put on our yukata and proceeded down to the onsen. Along the way, I managed to greet everyone that I walked passed, including the receptionist guy& gal and the complete strangers…
“OHAYO GOZAIMAS” ,I said, while bowing at the same time.
Soon, we reached the bathing area and *censored* reason: ‘lightsabres….’
After a comfortable onsen-ing, we proceeded up to our room to change to our usual clothing and headed down straight to the Restaurant… mmm…yummy…ITADAKIMASU!!! our breakfast was specially prepared for us, and there’re sashimi,unfamiliar foods and a bucket full of rice…….

breakfast !!!!

Then, after a delicious meal, mr Gary Tan instructed us to put on our Jeans as we’re going to do river studies deep inside the forest. When we went back to our respective room, we found out that our futon*(Japanese mattress) had been cleared, and everything inside the room had been tidied up…[room service]WOW, Japanese are surely very responsible people...not mentioning, I left my handphone on the the table, and it was left untouched…..(in other country, most probably it would have disappeared). Then, I wondered whether to bring my slippers along or not.. but, later after a grave debate up in my head, I decided not to…and I just wore my track shoes,put on my backpack and proceeded out…
When we gathered at the hotel lobby, the hotel staff passed us a plastic bag full of sandwiches and an orange drink[ QOO] The moment I walked out of the hotel, brrrrzzz its very cooling sensation, the breeze was very refreshing….


First time seeing real snow in my life !!!!

Our bus driver was indeed a very nice and friendly guy, the moment we got up the bus, he kept greeting us “ GUDU MORNING” and I just smiling and greeted him back. Soon we set off to the river.Along the way when I took out my handphone, I was surprised “ BATTERY CELL, 1 bar…” despite I charged it the night before. Soon, the battery flatted… sianz….
When the bus stopped , all of us alighted with our backpack and followed the gently sloping path that led us to the river… it was quite a rough path I would say, the ground were uneven, luckily that day it did not rain, else we would be walking on the puddle of mud…After a laborious work, finally we managed to discern the river from a distance and we impatient to get there… when it was just a stone throw away,










we were paused for a while as we need to cross a small river, whereby there were no proper path, only uneven small stones and the river flowing… however, we managed to cross it, by stepping on the stone one after another.
The river was very beautiful, the stream of water flowing continuously, the green surroundings and the sound of birds chirping we felt like we’re transported into the other world…. Yup it was completely different from our daily urban experience. Despite my hometown was in Developing country, whereby the scenes of natural areas were common in the suburb areas, I was still amazed my this scene as it was completely different experience….






We began to start work, after the briefing by the teachers and the distribution of the Geography equipment… My group; DANIAL,TINGWEI,XIAODAN,SHAHENA,AISYAH,AND I was selected to be the first to do the measuring of the gradient,whereby we had to use a tool called the ‘leveler’ to measure the difference in height and a 20centimetre ruler. At first, I just let Danial and TINGWEI to went in, as they did brought along their sandals… and they claimed the the water was freezing cold… lolz …so it was true that earlier, mr TAN went into the river and quickly came out as it was cold…
So, up and dry, I assisted XIAO DAN,AISYAH AND SHAHEENA to record down their reading. However, after a while, they still could not come out with a reading and Mr tan told us to send in another member… So, since I’m the only guy who’s dry, and it is impossible for XiaoDan to get down into the river as she was carrying the laptop,Shaheena and Aisyah, were helping Xiaodan, so I volunteered myself… Indeed, the water was freezing cold, and I almost lost my balance as the river current was quite strong…. Soon, we began to take the reading… Then, we were told to measure the depth of the river by holding a measuring tape across the river and one guy in the middle, which was me, holding a stick and a measuring tape to measure the depth of the river every 20cm in order to achieve accurate reading….yeah its quite an experience….soon after river cross-sectional area measurement, we proceeded to the speed of the current of the river and finally, the nature studies, whereby we had to snap a few shots of the plants and describe about them… its quite hard for us, as most of the topic we’re covering for the river would be the Pure Geography syllabus….
Then finally lunch came….mmmm yummy, we ate our sandwiches, funny thing is that one of the sandwiches contain mashed potatoes…. Mr tan said;” Bread, contain glucose already…. Then add another source of glucose; MASHED POTATO….lolz it was the funniest joke at that time…. Well, during our lunch, we could see the QOO bottles floating in the water, yup all of us purposely put them there, because the water was very cold and it will sort of ‘cool’ our drink.
After lunch, we snapped our group photo and we made our way back to the bus…. We had to hike the gently sloping ground,yeah its quite tiring…




group photos





After the tiring river studies, we returned to the hotel to change our clothes, as most us were wet… well at the hotel, we were given 30mins to rest and changed… in our room(guys) we played card games…and watched POKEMON on the television…Soon the time’s up and we gathered at the hotel lobby…. Our next destination was the town of KURIKOMA,





Please watch the beta 1 video made by me; giving you a virtual view of kurikoma town



its quite an experience for us, because this time, we’re allowed to roam around the town freely…. Only to meet when the sun was going to set…. Well,first we alighted at the BRANCH OFFICE OF KURIHARA , SOME SORT OF TOWN CENTRE…..equipped only with a Japanese language map of the whole town, we set off…..our objective was to identify the reason for the town growth, in other words, the reason for the development of the town…..












FLOWERS THAT BLOOM in early summer

Actually it was quite hard at first, as we had a different opinion…one group member stressed on to go that way, while when the others were still discussing.In the end, we finally could come down to an agreement…. We walked around the town, found out that the reason for the town is because of the cross sign…














and many more.......

Are they Churches? Nope, they are not….they’re pharmacies… in other words, the town grew because of the good health facilities…. Lolz….By the way, I also wonder how the pharmacist will survive, as if there’re lots of pharmacies, isn’t that they will find it hard to make a living? I mean you know, if one shop sell the medicine cheaper than the others, that stall will be occupied with customers right???
Then, we even encountered such an odd vending machine, the battery-vending machine….. Battery !!! can you imagine that????




Hahaz, looks like we brought along our ‘southeast Asian bad habit’ , which was….. Jay-walking on the road….somemore, we jay-walked in front of the police station, right in front of the policeman’s eyes, who was standing in front of his post….. cool right???? Luckily we were only being adviced not to do that again…..he even know that we’re from Singapore and surprisingly, HE’S ABLE TO SPEAK ENGLISH !!!!, [by the way, something to add on; I’m very impressed to see the policeman, clad in his smart uniform standing still infront of his post…. Which other country’s policemen would be able to do such thing???? Standing for few hours with hands on his back…. I bet other country’s policemen would have either brought along chair to sit or wander to other places to satisfy his ‘want’] such an honorable thing, the Japanese……
Oh ya, along our way round the town, we often walked pass other group…. We’d just say hi to them as we walked pass each other…. Haha then, after sometime, we met Mr Gary Tan and Ms Annie Tan…. They recommend us to visit a Café called “TIMES CAFÉ”,




which sells cakes and beverages.They also say that their cake tasted good and at an affordable price….so, after getting a rough location of where the café is, we headed to search for the café….. Yup after much hard work, we found it…. The café was actually quite small, with a big table and a few small tables…. Surprisingly, we saw the teachers; MR JUSTIN, MS LEONG, MR RONNIE TAN(our guide), even MR GARY TAN and MS ANNIE TAN had overtook us despite we just met a few moments ago…
Instead of sitting down and eat, A few members from my group had decided to continue roaming the town, while some wanted to eat the cake… so in the end its 50:50 The group members that are going to continue the roaming of town were only left; TINGWEI, XIAODAN AND ME…. Well its quite harder as our manpower had decreased, but still at least we managed to obtain some information…..







Soon the Sun was on its way towards the western horizon and we’re making our way back to the rendezvous area….Along the way , I finally managed to see JAPANESE YOUNG GIRLS IN KURIKOMA…..they were cycling as well…..yeah !!!! finally…… (YUP IT’S TRUE THAT I ‘OOGLE’ AT YOUNG JAPANESE GIRLS)
This is the proof:

CHIOBU !!!!
.





queensway teacher.... walking down the street


MR & MS TAN



(WHOOPS !!! i'm not the one taking this pics)

This is because in that town, town of KURIKOMA, majority of them are the elderly….. the young ones had gone into the city to look for jobs -> sad =(
Oh ya one thing about the town of Kurikoma that I wish to treasure will be that; the policeman in that town always carry out their patrol…. I managed to see one,But this policeman was handicapped, yet he still did his patrolling duty on his wheelchair… I was really touched by that, because even though he know that he’s handicapped, yet he still did not want to abandon his duty….a very responsible and honorable person……

That night was our very first presentation for this trip…. It was quite well done for my group and during the presentation, the 4 teachers (two of them are HOD )….[3 OF THEM ARE ENGLISH TEACHERS,TEACHING THE SEC 4 ENGLISH BANDS] were paying very close attention to our contents and the English language that we’re using….. so the presentation for this trip is much harder, as you need to focus on both content and the language usage…….
Well I quite pity the sec 2, because they did not know what’s going on as this trip is targeted actually for the upper sec, so as to help to give them information…..So in the end, they had to re-do the whole slide…..
After a very tiring presentation, around 11.25pm, we’re allowed to take a bath….. light’s out at 12.30pm…… yup went to bath and ONSEN-ing ~~~~
After that, went back to room and sleep, what a very tiring day…..