goodbyes

2008 Japanese Language Proficiency Test

I've been super nervous since the middle of last week because I was expecting the results of my JLPT (Jap Lang Proficiency Test) to arrive in the mail. Mitsuru said it would probably arrive last thursday or friday, and I couldn't get his statement out of my head, resulting in an even more agonizing wait over this weekend when the results didn't arrive as he presumed they would....

and today, monday, i was just as fidgety, going into forums, and checking blogs to see if others had gotten their results.... and finally, I arrived home at about 8pm to THE RESULTS.

I thought that if you passed, they'd give you the results in a bigger envelope, so when i saw the pathetic puny rectangular slip in my mail box, i was like... "greeeat. so i failed".. and was wondering what i should do next as i was opening the slip.

so it came as a shock when i saw the words '合格' which means 'PASS' on the slip!! had to read and reread it again to confirm it!!

I didn't study for the test, though i spent a considerable sum of money buying practice books, and past year exam papers, so passing the Level 1 exam really seemed like a miracle to me.

you need above 70% on a REALLY difficult test to pass (even the japanese themselves find the grammar component difficult as they dont' use those grammatical forms in daily life). The test was divided into 3 components and here are my scores

Writing/Vocabulary 73/100
Listening 93/100
Reading/Grammar 128/200

As you can tell, my reading/grammar was the PITS - like only 64%. so i was really really lucky to have my listening pull me up a bit.... passed by a hair's breath!

YIPeeEEE! This is this month's Happy Event!! YippeeeEEeee!

For those uninitiated to the JLPTs, level 1 is the most 'advanced' level and is required for employment in japan

Video Clips from the Omoshiro-Yama Ski Trip: Machiko & Tomoki

Tomoki


Machiko


Both vids taken by mitsuru. hear him laugh at machiko in her vid! so naughty!! tsk tsk!!

Omoshiro-Yama Ski Trip

Mitsuru, Tomoki, and Machiko (Tomoki's girlfriend) went to the nearby Omoshiro-Yama to ski on Weds, a public holiday in Japan.

Group Pic. it was a warm day and the glare from the snow was quite strong!



This is Tomoki at the summit. I ventured up just once, but turned left (hard course, but slightly more manageable) instead of right (suicide route) and after i descended, i decided that i wasn't going to go up again. I let the two crazy guys take pics.



Mitsuru - he claims he looks like a boy, i say he is a boy! hurhurhur.



Pic of Tomoki and I during our lunch break. we paid for a lunch set cum one day ski pass and lunch only cost us about 300yen (S$5) which is awfully cheap. the set was ramen and curry rice, and tasted so so only. what can u expect for S$5 right?



Strange but interesting pic of machiko and me taken by tomoki. he also managed to catch mitsuru's skis.



*OH! and the cute ski wear (plus googles and beanie too, but minus skis and stocks) i am donning is courtesy of my friend Chihiro! :) She was nice enuff to loan them to me, saving me a good deal of money! yipppeee!!!!!

Zao Hike! 2nd time LUCKY!!!

WE WERE LUCKY THIS SUNDAY! :) Mount Zao is well-known for its bad weather, but just as well-known for its spectacular volcanic crater. Mitsuru, Sundara and I tried our luck earlier this year but the fog was so dense we had to turn around and we ended up eating soba at a soba joint instead.... on this autumnal sunday, we decided to try our luck again, this time with Mitsuru's Mountain Climbing club friend Sugeno, and his girlfriend, Mari-chan.

This is a pic of Mitsuru and Sugeno. These 2 are mountain goats. They RUN down steep mountain slopes. this time, though, Sugeno was a little bit more 'reserved' because his non-mountain-goat girlfriend of 5mths was with him! haha! He Had to act chivalric and wait for Mari-chan (and me!) to make our slow way down the mountain! hahaha! poor Sugeno! Mitsuru didn't bother and on the way back, RAN, HOPPED, SKIPPED down the mountain in what seemed like less than 2mins, sat down and stared at the crater in thoughtful bliss while waiting for the tortoises to plod their way down the mountain.


This is Sugeno and Mari-chan. Mari-chan is a midwife! Midwives are in high demand, and painfully low supply in Japan. So her's is an occupation in danger of extinction! she's really sweet and hand-made ricecakes for sugeno to eat for breakfast!!



OK. This is how our Sunday went:
4am: Wake up & Shower (don't ask me why I took a shower even though i knew i was going to be sweating later)

5am: meet everyone at the big carpark of the supermarket near my place

6.30ish am: Arrive at Mount Zao - we get FREE entry into the carpark because it's WAY too early for the carpark attendants to be up collecting 520yen (abt S$6.50-$7)for every car that drives in to view the crater and climb the mountain. YIPEEEE!!!!! that kind of makes my day, cause the last time we went up to Zao with Sundara, we paid 520yen for a magnificent view of NOTHING.

6.32am: experience a sinking feeling of dismay as the fog swirls thick around our car.. the only saving grace is another black SUV parked about 6m away, it's driver also playing the waiting game

7am: between deciding to nap and deciding what our next course of action should be (shall we head for YAKINIKU at Yonezawa instead? etc.) we watch as a TOUR BUS with a whole group of enthusiastic aunties and uncles pulls into the carpark. the group proceeds Enthusiastically to form a circle and do warmups before heading into the WHITE FOG.... ?!?

7.20am: my tummy starts giving me trouble.. need to use the loo and am about to head out into the fog on my own when the rest of them decide to give the hike a try and check out the conditions nearer the crater.

7.30am: we reach the crater, a beautiful white swirling mass of FOG on our right....unperturbed, we decide to just continue hiking and see if the weather clears on the way back. at this point, i remember that mitsuru's camera has been left in the car! SHUCKS! oh well. the weather was so bad that i didn't think it was such a bad thing to have left the camera in the car.

we hike and explore zao and its interesting scenery and midway through the weather clears, offering us pretty magnificent views of the valleys of Zao.

and. lucky for us, we managed to catch the crater on the way back! by that time, it was already 11+AM. what was meant to be a short, light trek turned out to be a pretty long and interesting (read: challenging in parts) climb. Sugeno's girlfriend Mari-chan was pretty pooped i think!

Mitsuru wanted to have an individual shot of HIM ONLY with the crater, but unfortunately I wasn't going to let that happen. ho ho ho. this is how the shot turned out.


Group shot to round off what is possibly our last hiking trip of the year! Winter's coming and its going to get too cold (and snowy) to hike! Expect Ski pics the next time!

Trekking @ Izumi Gatake & The Worst KFC Ever.

On Saturday I had the opportunity to go trekking with mitsuru and his 2 friends from his former Uni's Mountain Climbing club, Fumi-chan and Sugeno! :) We went to a mountain pretty close to Sendai, Izumi Gatake - Coincidentally, it's where our yearly church camp is held, and last year, one of the camp's optional activities was trekking/hiking!

the whole climb took us a total of 4hrs. The weather was exceptionally cold (for the start of autumn - i think it got to about 12 degrees - in the city.) and it also rained and drizzled for most of the climb up. so we get a bit soggy and our shoes looked like they went for a mudbath. not to mention my pants... haha!

it was fun! looking forward to going climbing again before winter comes! Have to go before the end of October, if not it gets too cold and it starts to snow!!!


On Sunday, mitsuru and I went for a long stroll in town and we ate the WORST EVER KFC!



The Chicken was:

1) SUPER EXPENSIVE - 1760yen (about S$23, for 6 pieces of chicken and 2 drinks ONLY - no coleslaw, no mash potato NOTHING. BOOO to the Stingy pple at Japan's KFC.)

2) Super GREASY - the original chicken was horrible. without a doubt, we would have been able to eat better, and much cheaper chicken if we had bought some at the supermarket's time service sale (after 9pm, the prices of perishables like sushi, fried chicken etc get slashed!)

3) COLD - I couldn't believe my tastebuds - the chicken tasted as if someone had just taken it out of the fridge and put it in the microwave for about 20seconds. to make matters worse, when we sent the chicken back to the staff and requested that they heat it up again, they put the chicken in tepid oil - and they told us that they 're-fried' the chicken. there was about a 1 degree change in the chicken's temperature and a 200% increase in the grease factor, making my appetite: 0%.

I know many of you love japan. but please don't EVER step into a KFC restaurant here. I have to eat REAL JUICY KFC in Singapore. KFC Singapore Rocks.

belated pics from yann's wedding

new troupe!

A Tribute to Koharu


Since i came back from Singapore, Koharu stopped making his bubble nests which he was so fond of making before I left. Then on Tuesday last week, I found him leaning on one side and swimming frantically from the top and the bottom of the tank.. .... he was still eating and trying to eat, until monday night, when he just gave up and sank to the bottom of the tank and laid on his side. and death came quickly after.

I have No Idea why Koharu died.... we reckon that it might be the change in temperature (cause there has been about a 4degree drop) and its gotten slightly more chilly at nights. apparently, fighting fish need a temp of like 29degs!

I was quite sad and perturbed about his death, because i really liked him! i'd feed him every morning when i got up, and at night before i slept....



anyway, today, after Mitsuru's baptism classes at church, we went to a big petshop nearby, petted a horse called 'Status' (yeah.. wat a name) and I decided to challenge myself and keep GUPPIES! Apparently, this transitional season between summer and autumn is the BEST season for guppy breeding, so they had a sale (3 pairs of guppies for about 600yen) so i now have 6 guppies swimming around a tank.

I had wanted to keep the guppies in Koharu's old tank, but then I realised that it was too small for all 6 to fit comfortably in, and got a larger tank, and (Because Guppies need their water aerated) a small in-tank water filter as well.

silly me - i left the cover of the tank off... and within 5hrs of bringing them home, i found one of the pregnant-looking female guppies on the floor of my bedroom!!! I have no idea how long she was there but i only realised there was a fish on the floor when i Stepped On It. i didn't put all my weight on her, it was more of a horizontal movement ... and she was a little bit injured i think, cause there was a trail of scales on the floor! anyway, i scooped her into the net and put her back in the tank. she was super disoriented for the first couple of minutes (which probably happens when you have been deprived of air to the point of near-death, and then descaled by someone's foot) ... but she looks okay now.

more reports (and maybe, pictures) on the new troupe soon.

wish me luck, guys!

waiting for a free car!

updates from sendai ... i successfully converted my singapore drivers' license into a japanese license and can now drive legally in japan! yippeee!

the process of getting the license changed was slightly tedious ...
first, i had to get my singapore license officially translated into japanese... it cost 3000yen at the Japanese Automobile Federation (JAF) and only took a 30min wait. my only gripe was that they didn't translate it completely and left out a very important piece of information. the PASS DATE. how on earth can you miss that out???? seems that in japan, the pass date is the same as your license Issue Date. so well. my issue date was like.. 3 years after my pass date.

the day after i got the translation done. i headed down to miyagi prefecture's driving license centre. i got there at 9am, thanks to this lovely bus driver who personally drove me TO the centre because i had stupidly missed the bus stop by miles... only to find out that the registration process for conversion of foreign licenses started at 1PM! so ensued a time of reading materials and waiting till the time came.

at 1pm, i went into a room where we had to fill out this form detailing every single flight in and out of singapore from the time we passed our driving test.....

which of course was no problem for me because i LOST MY PASSPORT and only received my new passport 3mths before i was due to leave for japan for further studies! lucky me, or so i thought.

the guy started counting the days i was in singapore after my singapore license was issued and we ended up with only 86 days!

I NEEDED TO PROVE THAT I STAYED IN SINGAPORE FOR 90 DAYS AFTER MY LICENSE WAS ISSUED BEFORE I COULD BE ELIGIBLE FOR JAP PASSPORT CONVERSION.

CRAP.

but lucky me, somehow my brain decided to work that day and i very quickly told me... "how about if you count the day from which this passport was issued, to the day on which i left singapore for japan?" (this happened to be about 3mths, i think)

and he said, "OH YEAH, i think we can do that"

and that is the story of how i scraped through the conditions for converting my license.


that was all i could do that day. they told me that i could come back the next day to take the paper test and the practical (driving) test. and i did just that

the paper test:

it was a simple matter of 10 questions - written in both english and japanese! this is a special test for foreigners, so dont' u go thinking that the japanese have it easy okay? i think their test is quite complicated with 100 questions or more.

example of one the questions:
1. if the traffic light turns red,
a) cars should stop
b) cars should proceed
c) cars should proceed with caution
d) cars should go

i'm sure you get the idea. anyway, i aced the paper test (of course!)

the practical test:
this was a bit nerve wracking because i'd heard and read so much about how people take the test 5-6 times and still fail!!!

anyway, i went to see the course (within the centre grounds) and was quite surprised because
1) there were hardly any cars on the course (i only saw 1 - 2 cars!)
2) there were no arrow signs to mark a one-way/two-way streets.
3) pple where taking their tests using TAXIS! taxis with their side mirrors attached to the front of the car bonnet instead of near the window (like normal sedans)

anyway, i'd applied for a test on a manual transmission. so when my turn came, i got into the taxi, and very very nervously, started the car, and realised that... the taxi was so old, that the gears were rattling and the biting point for the clutch was like DAMN LOW. i panicked so much that i didn't know how to look at the mirrors at the front bonnet of the taxi. i was too frightened to accelerate too much (for fear of exceeding the 50kmph speed limit), and i didn't know the test route and so was highly dependent on the instructions of the tester (which were in japanese) and in my highly nervous state, i went RIGHT when he told me to go LEFT. sigh.

anyway i failed. *sad*

the very next day, i retook the test (yes you can retake as many times as you want, but you have to pay more each time you take the test.

the next day, i got the same tester! (he recognized me, but didn't say anything) and i was thinking... oooh myyy gaaaawd... but oh well whatever, just drive and do my thing!

and i passed!!!! yipppeee~ thanks to mom who spent quite a lot of time negotiating/bargaining/pleading with the Lord to give this little weenie her jap license.

now all i have to do is wait for someone to give me a car for free!! yippppeeee!

THE RFKC JAPAN 2008 TEAM

Frm top row (L-R): Calvin, Sophie, Mitsuru, Steph, Carol, Kayla, Menghin, David, Midori, Hwee Joo

Second row (L-R): Yukari, Nicole, Olivia, Pauline, Joan, Grandma, Gabby

First row: Elaine

Sendai-Singapore-Tokyo

i'm back after a loong hiatus. sorry for the wait! was super busy in the first semester but now its over and mitsuru and i have just gone and come back from singapore and tokyo!

it was mitsuru's first trip overseas. so everything was new to him (the food, language - especially my brother's singlish!, toilets - which he said where 3rd world, culture etc)

so this is us at the boarding gate (i've never taken photos at the boarding gate i don't think! but well there's always a first time!)




we got back on saturday night and we stayed at linyu & lokhun's house before heading for sunday morning service at covenant. after that it was brunch at Holland Village before lunch with the folks at jurong hilltop teppanyaki restaurant and then we whizzed off to yann's for a tea party!

the mom and dad photo


another family dinner (complete with bro and max too!) at jack's place!


the tea party that yann, addie, and yan created with magic fingers!!!!!



yan and mr tok. pls note that yan is wearing makeup in this photo. she actually specially put on makeup just for mitsuru!!!


the yummy cakes (that we couldn't finish)


the fabulous fruit salad! (that we finished!)


this is adeline and mitsuru! addie introduced him to char kway teow!!


yann the tea-party maker!


group photos sans men


he also had crabs at ang mo kio with wymin, laikuan and may! thanks for the treat girls!!! *heart*
slluurrrp!




caveman eating crabs!


and we brought gin out to southern ridges (just from kent ridge part to alexandra arches only! cause it was raining and raining and raining... gin had a good time though!)


we also brought gin to sentosa for a swim and a romp! it was a lovely day out!


the boy and the dog.


did the touristy thing and paid S$5 for a picture with a phython....




happy me with ice cream!


we had dinner at racecourse road with the c3 gals again (addie, true to form, recommended the place and the food was greeeeat! we wolfed it all down so quickly we shocked the waiters!)









did more touristy things... we went to the zoo! and boy did mitsuru enjoy the singapore zoo! he bought a zoo cup (super expensive some more!) even though he's not a souvenir freak... but he enjoyed it soooo much he spent 6.5hrs there AND bought a $22.50 CUP (which is, by the way, sitting on MY table now ho ho ho!)

the white tigers were amazing!! roarrr!




oh this paper is made from elephant dung! depending on what the elephant eats and how old the elephant is, the colour and texture of the paper changes!



me eating my favourite snack!


carol, gabs, nik, and kayla came to join us, and kayla wanted to take pictures with the orang utans but when it got to her turn she freaked out .... which explains the worried look.


we watched the sealion show (which was so so) and i lined up to get kissed by a sea lion! it wasn't slimy or pointy (but it was abit wet and soft! hahaha)


nic, mitsuru and i.


oh one of the highlights of the trip was the foot reflexology session.


it was such an electrifying, ticklish feeling!!!


and it was great fun for the boy too!


my feet in a very 'tame' tank (this was when we had to 'share' the fishes. subsequently, i moved over to a tank that no one was using, and that's when i got to take the first picture u see above)


on the second last day, we had bandung!


and then compared tongues!


met with yann for dinner at carlton hotel and had extremely yummy mee goreng!


and chicken rice!


even though we really only went there for the durian cake!! look! it's in the shape of a durian! cool huh.

thanks yann for the treat!!!!!



TOKYOOOOOO! the day we arrived, we headed out to Yokohama Chinatown and met up with Yukari who happened to be in town! stuff our faces, took a short walk around Minato Mirai and went to the Mitsui Outlet malls where mitsuru got a new pair of shoes!


that night, we stayed at mitsuru's grandparents' house and there, i met his grandpa, grandma, uncle, mother, and sister! wow! it was a crowd, but they live in a 3 storey apartment so we actually had a lot of space to ourselves!

went to tsukishima to eat monja yaki (the sticky version of okonomiyaki!)



mitsuru's mom and sis!





met the GEMS + affiliate! (the other affiliate was looking after babe and wifey and couldn't make it)


then went for the AYF 13th Batch's Tokyo Gathering!
we all love nohata sensei!




and that's also where i met The Other Singaporean, Diana!!!! YIPPEEEE!!!!
WE LOVE FOOOOOD!!



the day of the AYF Gathering, Shiaw Jia took me on a fun tour of the places i had never been before, Lalaport and Ueno - cheap stuff at the latter! and a purple dress from the former! lovely!

the day after the AYF Gathering, 3 brave souls decided to head down to Tsukiji Fish Market. we stayed over at Erwin's place, and slept in the master bedroom with gigi and erwin!! apparently that's done pretty often in the Philippines! wow!! Erwin woke up at 4.30am to shower and cook gigi some bfast and then woke mimi and i up at 5am. we headed out and reached the market at 5.30am just in time to see the last bits of the action!







KUDOS to the 3 who braved the early morning sleepiness and the horrendous drizzle and rain that refused to stop!




all in all singapore & tokyo was a really interesting 2 week getaway from the mundane life in sendai!