Day 4
QWSS JAPAN TRIP JUNE 2007



“yawn…” woke up at 6.45am, feeling great , because I can wake up on my own…. You know, for the past 2 days, I so called ‘disturbed ‘ my room mates with my handphone alarm clock…. Yup I began to know, that the alarm could only be functional to me if it was set as my favourite song, “NANATSU NO UMI WO WATARU KAZE NO YOU NI by Rina Auichi & Yuuka Saegusa”
Morning after breakfast, went to visit KAWAGUCHI GREEN CENTRE, a Chrysanthemum plantation and yup, something quite special, we’re on TV !!!! when we reached the Chrysanthemum plantation, from the bus , we could already see a TV-crew carrying his gigantic video camera….. lolz, we adjusted ourselves, trying to look as neat as possible...before walking down the red-carpet =D




Well haha, after a brief welcome and explaination by the owner, we got a chance to help plant the chrysanthemum plants . Well, all of us planted around…..5000 I think…..Then, as a refreshment, we’re given soda drink… what made the drink unique was the special type of bottle…. It has a marble inside it …wooohoo…..of course, majority of us kept the bottle and soon, we bid goodbye to them before boarding the bus….

When it was noon, we stopped by a park called KURIHARA NATIONAL PARK for our lunch…. Well for lunch, we had ONIGIRI WITH GREENTEA….. quite simple but it could made your stomach bloated in no time ! oh yes, the moment we reached the park, it was a wonderful sight, the green trees, blue sky…… and the chirping of the birds that were relaxing…… There was even an eagle !

On the park, there was a special treat for us, the slide ! yup feeling like we had been thrown back to our childhood time, most of us went to give it a shot ! the teachers even joined the fun ! I’ve got the video too !!!! hilarious….. hahaha but so sorry a few of us had agreed to only use the teachers-related videos for personal entertainment…soo I can’t release it here….

After a fun in the park, we headed back to the bus to leave for KURIHARA-WASHI-TAKEN-KOBO, A wooden paper making factory….yup the owner named MR. HIKOJI KUGA( the 7th generation)… the Japanese paper is called “SIZUNOME JAPANESE PAPER” and the raw materials needed are a paper mulberry & clean spring water… the history of this paper traces back to the end of EDO ERA,(about a century ago) can you believe it !!!! I was like “wow”
Mr HIKOJI, spoke the ancient Japanese language, as claimed by our guide…. So now we know that Japanese also have their own dialect, just like Chinese….. and…. He’s quite a nice guy, he let us to have a hands on experience…… and at that time, the tv-crew were filming us……=) Meanwhile, outside there were a few people looking at us…. The guide told us that those were the villagers, including the Head village chief…. After that, while waiting for others to get their turn, we went to the field opposite and discovered …… clover plants !!!!! so some of us, went to hunt for four-leaved clover….. including ME !!!!! haha actually I almost gave up, because there were myriads of three-leaved clovers….. but aha ! found one !!! jumped with joy, even to the extent that I took a few pics of it…then, safe-keep it inside my notebook, which still there up to now…….
After that, Mr HIKOJI gave us the Japanese papers as a parting gift….what a nice guy ! yup, took a shot with him…. And we all boarded the bus…
Then, we visited ISSAKO-SANNO-ROMAN_KAN, a museum ,well we got to see the artifacts of ancient japan.
Yup, then that’s all for the day… quite simple, spent most of our days in the bus, travelling….. while on the bus, we’re doing our presentation, but in my group, only one guy was doing it…. Which I felt was not fair, because the presentation was meant to be a group work, not individual stuff !!! so in the end, our presentation was filled with English grammatical errors, vocab errors , everything !!!!despite we had sec 3 english band 1 students in our group…. HECK LAR !!!!! btw,I am not that ‘guy’…..and to that guy, you know yourself well….