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Time to continue on the waseda recount! Typing this five days later has got me feeling super lazy but chances are I'm going to regret it if I visit this blog twenty years down the road and realize that I had nothing to talk about my one and only overseas school trip so yes here goes!
Aiyah it's really too long a recount I'll keep it short - talking with photos makes it so much easier!
Somehow singapore seems to be the only country I've seen so far with a dirty coastline! Japan has a much cleaner one!
Essentially the second day was all about visiting Kamakura High School and going on a little shopping tour around Kamakura with their students, exciting much!
My tour group! Along with the student tour guides :D
Their trains are interesting - everyone's so considerate, we are strongly encouraged not to talk on our phones while in the train, just to preserve that bit of quietness it's quite cool!
Walking around in Kamakura with homemade gelato icecream in one hand, this eagle here swooped down and stole yisheng's icecream, leaving him in a bit of shock. It then sat perched on top of this pole waiting silently for the rest of us to fall prey - haha we left quite quickly!
I could vaguely remember the name of this shopping street in Kamakura five days ago before I left for msia, but I clean forgot - it's a pretty cool place with lots of small shops and eateries!
Watching the evening sky from the top of a shrine we visited, at 5pm!
Gabby! tackling the shelves of Lawson's (equivalent to our 7-Elevens) while the rest of us rummaged through the place for food to eat in our rooms at night.
Day three started with japanese lessons! Followed by a tour around waseda university :D
After an entire afternoon of lectures we then proceeded on a three-hour bus ride up north japan to Nagano prefecture! At which we stayed at a hostel in Sugadaira which was up high on a mountain!
HAHA some of us got lucky and had this really huge double-storey hostel room :D
I didn't take photos at night, but at 1am it started to snow, and apart from all that scolding we got for screaming down the corridors of the hostel and into the black starry open, it was really really magical and fascinating to feel cold bits of snow fall on your face for the first time in your entire life. We watched the plains turn from green to white, and it really didn't matter that we were running about outdoors with a room temperature of -5 degs in t-shirts, shorts and slippers :D
I woke up on Day Four like it was a dream - or rather it was a moment that fulfilled my childhood dream, because the moment I got up from bed I couldn't fail to notice a sea of white outside the window!
Now this entire day was HEAVEN HAHA for we spent it solely on shopping, and nothing else but shopping! At Karuizawa shopping mall which is this really big mall containing loads of factory outlets and is about five times the size of Vivocity at least.
In Karuizawa I saw shoe haven. A GIANT NIKE STOREEEE
I think I must've spent nearly two hours there trying to decide if I should get myself a pair of sneakers! For there were designs that singapore will never have, and plus most of the shoes were going at half the price! In the end I decided on a pair of Nike Air Zoom Oncores, which were going at like SGD$60, A TOTAL STEAL :D
Walking past snow-covered vehicles (which was a really funny first sight), we proceeded to have Omu for lunch!
After a briefing session on skiing in the evening, we took the rest of the night to clown around and to have our moments of free time!
Observe this ladder which allows me to climb to the top on the bunk to sleep.
Now when I move this ladder away from the bunk and I place it at the railings on the second floor, I get...
A STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN HAHAHA :D
I can't believe we actually really studied for two nights that we were at Sugadaira haha but yes we did, seriously!
Day five was The highlight of the entire trip - SKIING YAY.
Ski Group 1! Haha I actually got the chance to ski from quite a high point up the mountain all the way to the foot unassisted - it was really the most fun thing ever! At the top of the mountain I totally had no idea how to ski down without falling or tumbling but in the end the route down just came to me very spontaneously and it really felt great skidding to a stop at the end. Climbing the mountain is tiring though - climbing it on foot is enough to leave us all breathless, but haha climbing the snow-filled slope with ski blades on takes fatigue to a new level. Every one of the three times I ran all the way to the top, I had simply no more energy to do anything else but lie flat on the slope for five minutes or so - I think everyone felt the same :D
The skiing wasn't the only best thing - the really spontaneous snowball fight which started after lunch was fun at its best :D
At some point of time titus declared an Inter-School A Division Snowball Fight Competition against the other schools and there we were, spending an entire hour building our barracks, making snowballs (some were three times the size of our heads hahaha) and bombing them away! Some teachers eventually joined in as well hahah it was craaazy!
The closing ceremony for the programme took place at night - lots of performances were put up by all the different schools, and we pulled ours off pretty well too :D There was also a bingo game in which the top prize of 50,000 yen (SGD$800 goodnessssssss) was given out! I wasn't That lucky but I was lucky still, won some stuff :D
Gift exchange! That was day five, very few days left ):
On Day six we left Sugadaira, and visited the Zenkoji temple. I now know the difference between shrines and temples in japan - they all sound the same, but praying is done differently in shrines and temples! In a shrine you'll have to call the gods to answer your prayers so you'll have to bow and clap twice before you make your prayer. In a temple, the gods are there, so you'll just have to bow and pray. Interesting much!
We made our own Soba noodles for our own lunch, and left Nagano for tokyo soon after. The bus rides eat a huge lot of our time in japan away, sadly, but they were really good sleep opportunities, considering we all didn't sleep much at night throughout the entire trip haha.
We had Monjayaki for dinner! And visited the Tokyo tower soon after :D
And that was it - day seven was simply a plane ride home, and a lot of painful goodbyes.
I really miss japan, I say again. It was only a week but it could very well be my most enjoyable week ever this year!
I MISS ALL YOU WASEDA FRIENDSSSS.
(in japanese, 'friend' is Tomodachi! sounds like Tamagotchi but I realize 'tamago' actually means egg. and the 'tchi' at the back is a plain nonsensical word)
I'M FINALLY DONE POSTING, yay phew.
NOW ON TO MALAYSIA!
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