My Home Stay in Niigata

About two months back, I got to stay with a wonderful and young Japanese family in Niigata. My foster parents were extremely warm, generous and helpful. Whenever I said something English which they could not understand, they would start running to their dictionaries and we would learn from each other about our cultures and food at the dinning table. My foster parents are absolutely adorable like their children. When they speak, they are full of expressions on both their faces and with their gestures.

I stayed in a modern Japanese house where the kitchen is not walled into a room. Their bathroom was interestingly rather plastic-ky. I am not sure how to describe it exactly. The closest thing to it is the bathroom in the airplane with plastic shelves and compartments.

Despite her busy schedule, my foster mum brought Judy (LPY08) and I to the bath house and it was an exciting and new experience for me. I enjoyed the bath house thoroughly. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to take photos, hehehehe. It was winter but the water was really hot! So, you could see steam rising from the many different types of pools.

I enjoyed the school festivals as well. I went to two, one at my foster mum's school (she's a teacher) and the other at Karen's (my foster sister's) school. Fresh mochi is so so so yummy! It was exciting to look at classroom after classroom all full of students' projects on arts and design. They were paintings, structures made out of paper, plasticine models, puzzles of sorts, rubber stamps, wood work, all of which were made by students.


This is my foster dad fixing us breakfast


We are heading towards the Yahiko Shrine


A little sheltered bridge


People washing their hands before entering the shrine


Some sort of a gate tower


Figurine guarding the gate tower


A chrysanthemum plant with a lot of flowers. In Yahiko Shrine, they have the chrysanthemum festival every winter and workers were shifting big pots of chrysanthemum plants around the shrine's grounds.


The shrine


The way to worship at the shrine is to toss a coin and then clap two or three times before praying. I did those and prayed for ... something.


This works something like the fortune cookie. You pay some money at a counter and they'll pass you a little piece of paper. After you've read it, you tie it around a wooden structure with strings like this one here.


They had a gallery within the shrine's grounds. In one of the rooms, it showcased portrait paintings of all the past emperors and empress of Japan, according to my foster dad.


So, this is the first emperor of Japan.


I was really curious about this one. These look like nun clothing.


These are some school girls we met at my foster mum's school.


I had a go at pounding the mochi. The hammer is extremely heavy.


One of the paintings I saw in the classroom.


We met more students.


This is a traditional Japanese dish which my foster mum's mum made. It is famous in Niigata and it's called Noppe.


This was our lastnight where we were all exchanging photos.


We visited Karen's school before we went to the train station to meet up with the rest of the SG D members.


A wall full of children's paintings




There were many activities lined up for the students during the school festival. One of them was to use simple multimedia tools to design your own sticker. Here, the students are listening to the teacher giving a demonstration.


At the train station, there were some tears. The people at Niigata are extremely friendly and we all had a great time. Steven (VPY08) had wrote "I love Niigata" and pasted it on the window as the train started moving.

Say Onigiri!

These pictures were taken during our institutional visit in Niigata where we also interacted with the local youth. Niigata is famous for its rice and rice in Niigata is said to be exceptionally delicious! And perhaps, that is why we were learning how to makerice dishes such as sushi and onigiri! Niigata is also famous for its seafood. The food during the welcoming reception dinner at the Niigata Hotel was unexpectedly, really good! It was the best I have tasted during my stay in Japan.

At the train station, Niigata delegates were putting up banners to welcome us as we were arriving.


We met with the Governor of Niigata who told us of Niigata's delicious rice on several occasions during the meeting.


We were given allowance for dinner and most of Solidarity Group (SG) D dined together to some local cuisine with the help of fellow SG D, Romy, Kosuke and Yuko, on the menu.




The following day, we had a whole bunch of activities lined up for us.


This is an xJPY from many years ago and he's a rice farmer in Niigata.


We had some quizzes to test our knowledge of Niigata.


Here, we learned to make sushi rolls and onigiri.


We had the honour of being with Mai, a local youth. She and another local youth (I can't remember his name!) brought us around Niigata to explore. We were astounded when she told us that she was Miss Niigata in 2007!


A sweet shop in Niigata.


Workers sorting out leaves used to make the sweets.


Sasadango is a sweet from Niigata. This is made of glutinous rice and it's green inside.


And, they have loads of mochi! I LOVE mochi! I wanted green tea mochi but they didn't have it so, I chose the mochi that was greenest on display.


After we bought the sweets and snacks during our exploration activity, we came back to the classroom to share them with the other groups.


These are pictures of the home stay matching ceremony held in Niigata Hotel. The hotel did not look impressive at all, nor were the rooms. But, the food here was excellent!

I love Harajuku Street

It's been two mad days since the start of the semester. Ever since I've received the evaluation results from the previous semester of my teaching, I have learnt to turn the upset into a challenge and have been working myself silly to hopefully gain experience ahead of time. So, I had the rest of December to dedicate myself to this new challenge and alas, my body is giving out.

So, I'm gonna slowly catch up on writing some blog posts of my SSEAYP experience for a bit of diversion. On our free day- 2nd day of SSEAYP 22.10.08, a few of us opted to check out Harajuku Street which is famous for its unique and street style fashion. It was more a Japanese version of Camden Town and the stuff sold here are pretty cheap! I had wanted to catch some Harajuku girls but these were scarce since it was a weekday we went. I still enjoyed myself for this place was reeking of a Japanese form of street art and I love art! Seriously, my appreciation to cosplay and anything of street art nature was an influence from a fellow Bruneian coursemate of mine back in the uni days.

This picture may seem pretty ordinary but, I had it here because that little sign by the window simply said "This is my art" and I thought, that's so adorable.

So, here you get shops that sell funky clothes that only the creative are capable of whooping it up into something cool and not weird. There are body art parlours here and there as well.

Harajuku cannot be completely street style unless it's also got graffittis.

This little ciggarette bin has a really adorable way of suggesting that smokers are inconsiderate.

I tried one of these. Fabulously yummy. Icecream with whipped cream and sliced strawberries wrapped with a crepe.


We met this guy on the street. I was trying to finish my crepe outside while the others have gone window shopping elsewhere when he started talking to me. He told me that he's famous in Harajuku Street but no one seemed to be greeting him and I don't know him either. None of us do. He was friendly and fun to talk to though.

We were lucky to come by some Harajuku girls on a weekday. We were so excited. We tried to ask them for photos when they were browsing in a boutique shop. They were really friendly.

We laughed our heads off when we saw this poster. We all crowded round it and were all laughing in agreement as to how this lady resembled our very own BPY08. And, the fish net stockings all the more added to the resemblance!


By now, we were extremely famished and was looking for a Japanese restaurant to have delicious salmon sashimi in. Marco had a particular place in mind but we couldn't find it and had to ask around.


We found it. Sushi-Kaiten is what it's called and it was along one of the streets at the end of Harajuku Street. And, lunch was awesome. I had sashimi to my heart's content. This was an artwork of music vinyl records on display in the restaurant.






In this glassy tall building is a display of an F1 sports car in which we all took a picture with.




And, these are pictures of the Japanese subway. Later on, we got lost because we were in the train that was heading the wrong direction. We finally switched and got back to the hotel in time for the Inauguration Ceremony of SSEAYP 2008.

By the shores of Japan-ASEAN Countries

These are some photos of the ports or shores of the Japan-ASEAN countries as we were either approaching or leaving the cities.

The three photos below were taken when we were leaving Japan

Reaching Brunei waters. Pardon me for the slanted horizon. Quite a feat when you're doing this on a ship.


Reaching Bangkok port



Leaving Bangkok Port


Arriving in Manila