Pre-Script: Very disappointed that I do not have internet connection in my room. Bummer. Hope I will be able to post this when I bring my laptop around. Or when I use my thumbdrive to bring all this to school.

 

I flew from Changi’s Terminal 3. The place is sparkly but no interesting shops were open at 8.30am. The departure area looks the same as Terminal 2 to me. No wonder Changi’s voted the best airport, the services available are amazing. Reclining seats for tired travellars and free internet. Shanghai’s airport has plug point but no wireless LAN. It sucks! (will blog about it later)

 

My luggage was 1.9kg over the stated 20kg. A couple in front of me was told by the girl at the check in counter that they cannot bring their overweight luggage in. bla bla bla. But at my counter, it was a middle aged man and perhaps D is right about “Lolita Complex” but I would rather be in a complex than pay money. ha ha

 

My air tickets

 

A phrase book I bought at S$5 from Carrefour.

 

China Eastern’s plane wasn’t bad. It’s a lot better than I’d imagine, the seats are blue and red. On the plane, I was seated quite near the business section and there weren’t many people around me. Most of the people switched seats and so did I. I had a four seat row all to myself. :D

 

 

For lunch, we were given a choice of pork with rice and fish with noodles. It’s the first time I’ve heard of pork on the plane. I’ve flown from planes leaving Malaysia, which muct be the reason no pork is served. Of course I ordered pork. I don’t like soggy noodles (which comes with fish).

 

The meal wasn’t bad. Only the bun had the texture of really hard wholemeal bread. And that thing does NOT look wholemeal. I lathered on the butter but couldn’t finish it. When I was a kid, I absolutely loved plane food’s bun, actually, I love the butter more than the bun.

 

I only had a meal on the plane. Was disappointed because I was expecting four meals like last time I had on the plane from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. I don’t have enough money to eat in Shanghai’s airport (they were selling a set meal at around S$20). I’ll bleed if I eat that.

 

weigh your hand carry here

 

Charge your phone here

 

Shanghai Pudong’s terminal 2 is sooo boring. There is no free wireless and I couldn’t go online to update my blog. *sob*

 

The plane to Fukuoka was quite full. I was seated next to a 25 something Japanese dude. He gave me candy and wrote in Chinese characters to communicate. I used my really broken Japanese to reply.

 

At last we reached Fukuoka airport. The view from the plane was fantastic. The city looked bright with lights. All my nervousness was gone as I told myself, “THIS IS IT!”

 

It was raining when we got down. JAL employees handed us umbrellas. It was very exciting for me. I’ve only seen them in dramas. How cool is that! (How lame I am!)

 

Guess what was the first photo I took in Japan? This:

 

How to use a squat toilet. ha ha ha

 

The immigration guy was really lenient and I passed the booth after scanning my two index fingers and giving the camera a BIG smile.

 

But the guy at the luggage checkpoint was a busybody. He asked, “Why did you come from Singapore?” Only after two hours did I realise he was trying to say, “Why are you in Japan?” Man, that’s two different Qs! So I told him I am a student in Singapore. He didn’t understand and I had to let him see the photocopy of the letter from Kyushu University.

 

I met the welcoming team and they sort of looked at me strange. Is it my makeup-less face? Is it my hairy legs?

 

My host family was there and because I didn’t try too hard to imagine how they look like, it was a nice surprise. But my peer tutor turned out to be a tall, beautiful girl with the right amount (in this part of the world) of make up.

 

The host family is really nice and polite. AH! Politeness is what I don’t understand… The journey home was long and I didn’t talk much because of my limited spoken Japanese. I will work on this once I’m taking lessons.

 

It rained hard when we got back. It’s the rainy season and it didn’t feel like it’s a summer.

 

The pets turned out fine. Quite cute, very clean. Seems like they have an overflowing love for animals. They’ll faint if they know how we treat animals back home.

 

The family and I sat at the table to “chat” and have juice. Awkwardness 95%!

 

I took a Japanese bath and it wasn’t as relaxing as I had imagined. I slept well.

 

As Confucious (or some other old chinese guy) was quoted, “A thousand mile’s travel starts with the first step.” I have stepped in to Changi Airport and my journey begins.

Yesterday, I collected my JR pass, insurance and misc cards. Rushed to International Relations Office to get the insurance endorsed but was told to go to Japanese Studies. Ran with N to JS office but lady there said no need. It was a good exercise.

Went to Suntec to buy travellers’ cheque but was told no DBS in Singapore has Japanese yen t/ cheques. What!! then why on earth did they write on their site that they sell them??? In the end, changed some cash and decided to withdraw using ATM card there.

What else happened. Oh, dinner at my uncle’s. Let’s skip that.

This morning, was fine too. Weather looks ok. everything will be alright!

See you in the next post!

To J and N, signed up for chatterbox but don’t know how to stick it in the blog!

reached SG yesterday.

Bought these stuff at STA Travel in Science co-op (grouchy lady)
– Insurance $120
– Youth hostel card
– International student card
– JR Rail pass. -had to pay extra $20 express fees because normally get the pass after three working days. sheesh

a total of $551.

have to buy travelers cheque today and get money exchanged

Contributing to cyber junk with a birthday greeting to my sister!

お誕生日おめでとう！

I’ve received an email from my peer tutor in Kyudai. It went into my spam box, probably because the email address has numbers so it looked suspicious to the very stupid gmail algo.

My p/t is N-chan who’s majoring in American and English Lit. (Cool!) She likes movies and dramas (me too, except I’m more nerdy and like manga too) And she likes to search for nice cafes. (I would like that too if I weren’t this stingy)

And I’ve emailed another ATW participant who’s also on the same flight as I am. (Yipee!) And she has a friend who’s going too. Smart birds fly in a flock (on cheap air tix).

I’ve never really packed my luggage before going to university. I used to count how many days I will be in a place and throw the same number of clothes. I even have to sit on my suitcase for it to zip.

But university education has fullfiled my life. Now I can pack in less than two hours for a seven week trip! Yes, taking classes in university has taught me that it doesn’t matter how carefully you’ve prepared packing — You’ll still forget something.

So don’t worry about the small stuff. Just throw what you can remember into your luggage. And of course, get a suitcase that’s large enough to store everything without you sitting on it.

-Seriously though, I’ve learned more about throwing (letting go, as some would say) than packing.

My front and back yards have an assortment of trees and wild plants popping out of the ground. Nobody really takes care of them and they don’t bother growing much fruits either.

But some fruits grew and I’, lucky enough to get photos of them.

The mangoes that are as big as my palm

Weird mulberries

loofahs that climbed all the way up for sunlight

One of my dream bubble has burst. I dream of walking to school with the wind in my hair, smelling the ocean air and not sweating at all.

The dream has come crashing down when I found out from Google Earth that I will be staying very far from Kyushu University during my home stay. And that’s six weeks of squeezing in the train and running to school breathless and sweaty. It will take 30 minutes from home stay to school.

No wonder my accommodation rate was in the lower bracket. Faint.

Daimaou has interfered again.

However, a very good excuse for me to loiter about after school. Good good

Bad bad. Even the subway lines don’t reach there. I’ll have to take JR trains?

Mom says, at least I live near the sea. Yeah… sea breeze

New travel plans people! I borrowed a guide book that recommends taking the ferry as transportation.

That way, I can save on the expensive bullet train and also a night’s accommodation.

My plan now is to go from Fukuoka to Beppu (hot spring town) during the day, and take the night ferry to Osaka.

And perhaps, I can even ride the ferry to Hokkaido for lavenders!

I tried out Ubuntu 6.01 during February while I was home for the Chinese New Year holidays. It was exciting seeing a brand new desktop but I couldn’t access my other MS folders so it was useless. Plus, I had to catch a plane an hour later. So it didn’t really worked out.

When I was going to get a new laptop, I had considered getting a Dell with Ubuntu. Apart from satisfying the inner show off in me, I wouldn’t have to use Vista (which was having a bad reputation). But, in the end, the local Dell didn’t carry Ubuntu laptops so I got a cheap Acer during the computer fair.

I wanted to get a decided to give Ubuntu another try when I came back in May. I burned the latest version of it and the CDs didn’t work. It turned out to be my fault as I didn’t burn it in the right format.

I’ve been using Ubuntu for about a month and a half. I like it a lot more than Windows because my downloads are a lot faster with Ubuntu and bugs and virus won’t infect my system.

Come to think of it, the only reason I want to use Ubuntu is because there’ll be very little virus if I download using bittorent. Ha ha. Perhaps, in the end, it’s actually I’ll miss my bt downloads

Nice interface. The buttons on the top and right bars are shortcuts. Ubuntu has lots of free games loaded. I like blackjack