It's been quite a while since I last blogged. Many things have happened that have kept me on my toes and sleeping late at night only to wake up at 6.30 the next morning so yes I am actually just having enough rest to tide me through the days' events.

The weather has been acting up. It was really warm the Saturday before during the cherry blossoms viewing cum picnic event that the SSAJ (singapore students association in japan) organised at a really huge park at GyoenMae (Shinjuku). The park is just gargantuan in size, at one point of time we lost one of our friends and not having any handphones yet we were prepared to throw in the bucket and leave her to her own means of entertaining herself. But amazingly, somehow she managed to find us in the end. Weird. Okay anyway, it was a nice surprise to see all the cherry blossom trees in full bloom since the start of the blooming period was much earlier this year and we weren't expecting to see such healthy clusters of flowers. The sun was shining very strongly, you could even feel HOT and we had to take off our jackets. Hard to believe especially when just the same morning at Sagamiohno it was still rather chilly, but still not all that bad. The temperature was rather bearable then.

And like a display of its tantrums, it started raining abruptly the next two or three days, the temperature, of course, dropping to some very cold temperatures, the kind that leaves you scurrying from place to place as quickly as possible. The tricky part about this weather, was that in the morning when we set off on our bikes to the train station it was cold and windy but it was always clear and bright, but after classes ended till when we got back to the train station, it would always be raining. It took me a few days to get used to riding a bike through narrow pavements sandwiched by the kerb and building or some other obstacle, sometimes another cyclist coming from the opposite side which is definitely scary since you don't want to crash into the other person but at the same time, the both of you would be barely touching each other. I think the Japanese are really a kind of get-up-and-go type of people. Whatever happens, life goes on. They just take the matter in stride and get on with their lives. As such, you see some pretty amazing feats of life, such as, Japanese people riding bikes whilst carrying umbrellas. How they do that so well is very much a mystery to me. Thinking that I might just simply need some practice at it, I proceeded to try doing so... ... with much unglam.

Firstly, with only one hand on the bike, that would mean braking becomes more inefficient. Turning corners requires ultra slow speed in order for you not to roll off your bike and onto the street. And okay that might not have been so bad... until you realise that there are other road users besides yourself, such as cars for example, that absolutely insist on driving through those narrow alleys, other cyclists or pedestrians where the path becomes very narrow, or even without such external factors a seemingly innocent lamp post or one of those short poles sticking out of the ground would be bound to leave you frantically steering to avoid hitting them at best. Of course the worse instant would be if you fall down. Anyway, I had my umbrella flying off to where it pleased on my first try, then I decided to be a man and take the rain as it was, later on deciding it wasn't very pleasant to ride even in a drizzle. So the next day, I had another go at it, practice makes perfect doesn't it?

Even on streets without obstacles, my one hand bike riding has wobbling tendencies, at which if I'm not paying attention, I might even find myself on the road the next second with a painful behind. I think the ultimatum comes near the end of the journey back to the hostel, where past the traffic lights of the main road and entering the maze of houses, we confront this thing of a mini hill where you have to peddle hard and quickly to ride up it, followed by the slope down thereafter which makes the bike go very fast downward. It was quite dark already, and somehow I had managed to ride up quite haphazardly, but still managing to ride up the mini hill with just one hand to properly steer and the other trying to decide between shading my head from the rain or holding onto the other handle. So I suppose this other guy decided it was a good idea to pop out riding in the opposite direction and without his light on so that we sense this looming shadow. Haphazard bike riding takes up as much space as it wants, cares not for other things around and goes wherever it wants, so there I was wobbling up the hill, wobbling toward the other cyclist, I tell you you can't insist on going another way when your bike decides to go the way it wants to. So it seemed to want to make friends with this other bike, hobbling ever steadily toward it, taking me, the innocent spectator along with its fancies. But just at the last moment, when it decided it had had enough of saying hello and when the other cyclist sensed the inherent danger of crashing into each other and thus became wobbly himself, my bike just narrowly scraped through, neither of us touching each other. But I bet that must've been a rather strange way of saying hi to someone you don't even know, as though I thought it was a good idea to cycle INTO people.

Anyway, the weather forecast has been rather accurate. I checked it on my phone (haha yes I have gotten my paws on one!) and it said the weather would get slightly warmer and why yes, it did today, much to my delight. The handphone I got was from Softbank, that offered an attractive sounding plan which allowed you to call or sms other Softbank users for free. I had a friend who convinced me that everybody was changing to Softbank and now that I use Softbank, he became the only person I knew who used Softbank.

This phone is rather amazing in itself, imo. I was enticed by the built-in TV, which apparently is absolutely free for you to watch. No subscriptions whatsoever to watch TV on your phone. The screen flip-flips nicely horizontally and the picture is clear. The programs you watch even come with subtitles (in Japanese of course) specially for phone users. You don't even get to see subtitles on your TV sets. This is useful if you haven't got your earphones on and you're watching TV on the train where silent mode is necessary, or if you're like me, learning Japanese and can't catch everything you hear. The only dumb thing that is pissing me off now is that outside Tokyo, I can't seem to receive any tv signals so that would mean outside Tokyo, which is at home, I can't even watch tv on my phone, which isn't supposed to be the case. Still, you can check the tv programs for the day on your phone which gives me the opportunity of running down at such and such a time to catch a program in the common room.

People here don't key in friends' details on their phones, they beam their details over through infrared or if more convenient, bluetooth though I haven't really tried out how that works. But yes, this infrared is very convenient indeed, especially since here in Japan they don't call it sms but email, where to send messages you have to specify a handphone email address to send your message to. In your details page, fill in all the important information like address, email add for phone and web, handphone number, landline number, you can even add a picture of yourself. And watch all this information transfer with a snap of your fingers to your friend's phone.

This phone also allows extra storage capacity in the form of a micro SD card to a maximum of 2GB, which you insert into it. The phone itself comes with about 17MB free memory. Expect to store in hoards of music, videos or episodes which you can watch as and when you like and when the tv doesn't work. Or simply fill them with tonnes of pictures you take using the phone which has a 2.0 megapixel camera, not to mention the kind of options it comes with such as altering exposure and turning on a light if it's too dark.

I thought today I had better prepare for when I receive the micro SD card in the mail which my mom will send to me because the price of one here is absolutely ridiculous (at least 5,000yen for a 1GB card, at least 8,000yen for a 2GB card), and buy the proper usb cable to connect my phone to my laptop for data transfer when I realise when I got home, that although my laptop isn't rigged with bluetooth (what some of the other people use for convenient data transfer without physically connecting their phones to their coms), it comes with an infrared port which meant I didn't need to buy a 1,000+ yen cable.

The silly thing again is that somehow, the phone only accepts .3GP, .MP4 and .M4A file formats for music. And I thought mp3 was so universal, why in the world these weird formats. Which left me no choice but to search online for some freeware that allows format conversion of music files. I learnt that .M4A is a type of music file for Apple users, termed a type of 'lossless' format which supposedly means no loss of sound quality. Anyway, just a technical issue, I test trialed some songs and they finally reached my phone safely through the infrared and into my music folder, if which not, I would still not be able to listen to them even though they're in. Oh my and the sound quality is just unbelievable. Such clarity. Ladies and Gentlemen, you need not carry your boom boxes around anymore. This phone packs all the punch despite its size. Like an mp3 player (well mp4 more accurately speaking), it has all the stuff it needs, like options to create playlists and tinkle with sound effects (Bass/surround/karoake/rock/hall/hiphop...). Other impressive but not so important functions at this point of time include, tv recording and voice recording. The phone comes with this very thick handbook that supposedly tells you what you can do with your phone. And with some rather complicated illustrations of the phone being connected to a power outlet and either your PC or discman, I suppose it even allows you to record music playing on another portable audio player. Wow. That's all a little bit too much, but I think it will be rather fun exploring all the different things I can do with my phone. Anyway, ohmygoodness the excitement!

Okay besides the sakura viewing picnic, the Singapore Embassy held a reception at its HQ located in Roppongi, the hip and happening place with all the clubs and designer boutiques (I saw the stores for Louis Vuitton and Yohji Yamamoto's collection for adidas, Y-3) and we got to eat lunch for free! And a very good lunch at that too. CHICKEN RICE!!! IN JAPAN! Oh my goodness, I couldn't have asked for more. Roti prata and those chinese noodles that you eat in restaurants. And we got to see a lot more other students as well as talk briefly to the embassy people even though we really had nothing to do with them. But the ambience was very nice, the place was furnished very nicely even the garden and pond outside exuded a calm Zen-ish sort of atmosphere. And somehow it was nice just talking to the other students especially hearing from those who live in obscure areas about how different things were. It was just nice to hear about various experiences each person had. Coping with the cold, sickness, living far from schools, mugging for entrance exams (not us, the undergraduate students), inefficient heating systems (haha! Hot air rises and the heaters are at the ceilings). Also located in Roppongi was my senpai's school, Hollywood Beauty School or something like that that looked like a very seriously cool shopping centre with glass walls. Roppongi just gives one a kind of relaxed, laid back, where-the-rich-dwell kind of feeling. Maybe because it was a Saturday.

Then I've been hanging out with the Africans from my hostel. They really just crack me up. No actually one was from Uganda, one from Benin and the other from Brazil and ohmygoodness they are more auntie than me in the supermarket talking between themselves about meat and taking quite some time to decide what exactly they wanted to buy!! I found myself just laughing out loud at everything the Ugandan said (he has a name and his name is Ronald) because he is in all seriousness putting forth and opinion which just sounds quite preposterous, you can't help but laugh very loudly.

Alright this is a very long post indeed, since its a sunday tomorrow I can afford to sleep late for once this week so there, I hope that was entertaining enough and I didn't put you to sleep halfway.

Haha. Okay it seems everybody likes to look at photos (and photos only) so here's more of them to keep you guys entertained. I realised I don't take many photos outside, of buildings and such, maybe because my camera's XD card keeps acting up or I don't want to look like a stupid tourist. Bah. Anyway, here's what I've been cooking and eating the past few days. Thanks to Judy who introduced me to Japanese curry. Haha.

See the red tape-ish thing across the glass? That's the 'Thrift Mall' area. It spans a few shops selling those vintagey quirky knick knacks, clothes, shoes. I bet imported from England and other countries like that. Very flea market-ish feel. It's one floor down from the 100 yen shop so we took a look around, some of the stuff aren't that expensive.

My first home cooked dinner. You guessed it, instant noodles from the 100 yen shop (3 for 100 yen! What a steal. Hahaha). Ham. vegetables and mushroom I got from this cheapo supermarket that the seniors recommended us to go to (called 'Taiga'). They keep playing the same cheesy jingle instore that goes "Suki Suki! Onaka Suki suki!" blah blah blah and then it goes "Char Siew Tonkatsu Hambagu!". Yes its catchy after a while but moments later and thereafter it gets very annoying especially when you're a poor starving student trying to do mental sums on which product on the shelf is cheaper.

Yesterday's dinner of leftover pasta and... ... what's this??

A steaming pot of miso soup! With mushrooms and chicken meat! And dinner is served, next to 'Two Moons', the red Indian on the postcard. I bought it at a shop called Titicaca that looks strangely touristy because of the prints and batik-ish stuff they sell there.

What the kitchen area looks like now. It's rather small and cramped especially after I've stocked up on cooking utensils. There's only one fire so meals tend to get cold easily if your meal consists of two parts you need to cook separately.

My lunch today :) I bought the Japanese curry in a packet which I poured over my dish of fried onions, chicken, carrot, potato and mushroom, all heated up of course. And what better way to wash it all down than with a cuppa milk. Not quite ready to cook rice myself so I had bread instead.

Some pictures I took so far:

This is my room! Or more like apartment. It's got everything including a washing machine, toilet, kitchen area, fridge and even a balcony where you can hang your laundry to dry. Here's what it looks like from the door.

The toilet is quite cramped, I hit my knee on the sink the other day. And there's the stove and fridge. It gets a bit squeezy in the fridge after I did grocery shopping but maybe its cos I didn't dare put my food on the areas that haven't been cleaned. It's so dirty inside but I decided to spare you guys the gross pics I took of the inside.

And this is the bedroom. The desk is quite tiny but other than that, there's tonnes of storage space! The second pic is the view from the back of the room. If you draw the curtains, there's a sliding glass door which you can unlock to access the balcony.

Froggie bin! It was left behind by the previous owner. So many different spreads and sheets and I don't know thingamajigs, there were 4 of them. So I called a senior in to help me.. Help! Help!!

That's us walking out from the hostel. Sensei is the man wearing a blazer in the front. He takes care of our needs in the hostel and he's really useful to have around when an applicance malfunctions, for eg, when my washing machine hanged on me. The second pic is the view of the hostel from the front. The entrance is rather small.

That blue car never seems to leave that spot, so I kind of use it to make sure I'm going in the right direction. There's another very similar looking blue car parked at a house that also always seems to be there and that's where we turn left to the main road so it serves as a very important road sign indeed... Oh there's Moji, my bus partner on the way to the municipal office. We had our alien registration and health insurance cards done there. She's from Mongolia.

Cherry blossom trees! They were everywhere and I saw many on the bus trip. Sometimes you see only one or two amidst other green trees but other times like this, you'd see a lot of them together.

My lecturer for the Japanese film module used to say that when you see cherry blossoms just a few flowers at a time, they don't look pretty. But when you put a whole lot of trees together, they look really nice. So enjoy!... The overdose of sakura.

Mmm yes. More! More! More! There were lots of petals scattered on the ground.

We were at the post office opening our postal bank accounts. That's either Yan or Tong looking at a poster. I can't tell them apart!

Suspicious looking cat that was right in the middle of a big empty playground. It was actually just crouching there, looking left and right. By the time I took out the camera it decided it was thirsty.

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Okay brace yourselves for a fairly retarded post. As I type, I`m using the com in the common meeting room and people will start arriving and their presence seems to obviously hint that they want me to get off the com so they can use it...

Anyway, I`ve started unpacking in my room. Those who have not heard yet, my room is actually like a one room apartment, fully self sufficient. One step in and you see the washing machine and stove and sink to your right, toilet to your left. One more step in and you see the refrigerator. Many more steps in and you`re in the bedroom. The entire place is rigged with so many cupboards and drawers so theres actually tonnes of storage space. I was completely appalled the day I moved in, firstly at the floor because it was so dusty, then at the kitchen stove for all the dirt. And lastly I was most appalled at the fridge, it was SOOO dirty, I wish you could see it but you can`t cos I`ve not uploaded the pictures I`ve taken so far because this annoying computer doesn`t allow you to plug in devices like a thumbdrive in which I transferred the photos into.

The seniors recommended buying most of our stuff from the 100yen stores. There`re 3 altogether around our district. The nearest and smallest which is actually a 99yen shop which is probably great for buying the usual stuff, `cept there isn`t much variety to choose from, say two brands and that`s about it. The next one is at the train station, which is about 20 minutes walk from the hostel. That`s pretty far if you`re gonna lug home a few big bags of shopping. The shop is called DAISO, yea guess it`s the same one we have in Singapore, `cept its cheappppppeeeeerrr here, cos 100yen is about 1.30SGD. They do stock items priced more than 100yen too though. The last one is just opposite the station. This one`s the best in my opinion cos its so big, it spans 2 floors. The things are arranged in proper categories and there`s quite a range to choose from. Bought my pot and pan from there. Notice I didn`t say pots and pans cos yknow, I`m not that rich to buy so many things at once.

There are some really cool vintage shops one floor down the 100yen shop. They have that vintage feel, you know, psychadelic colored clothes, old-ish stuff that look inspired from decades before. Some of the clothes are reasonably priced as well and there was a lot of nice stuff. I saw a bag that looked very much like that ASOS bag I wanted to buy, it`s like the Jimmy Choo one, and it costs about 4,500yen, which is about SGD52, and I really wanted it, but no way was I getting it cos I`m not here on holiday. But if its still there next month I might get it if I have enough money:) I felt there and then that I would love to take Fang around cos I think she would really like the place, think she`d go mad over the quaint shops and snazzy buys. There was a shoe shop near the station that stocked mass manufactured shoes like those plain white maryjanes for going to school and a few other variations that I thought looked pretty nice. Woulda definitely been a haven for peeps in Singapore who like customising shoes like that.

Right, as of now, 2 days after I`ve moved in and cleaned up (`cept the floor), it feels a lot more homey. It just lacks proper internet access before I start to see my room as MY room. As I have mentioned before, it is rather retarded to use the common computer because people could hop in anytime and use the com for quite long, or its really just impossible to use the com in peace for like an hour or so. The teacher in charge subsribes for the internet, which is the same line as the one in the meeting room. We could tap into this line with his permission and pay a one time payment fee of 2,000yen to use the net for as long as we stay here, definitely a much cheaper alternative than subscribing for a personal line ourselves, for which we`ll have to pay 12,000yen initial payment (spread over a period of 1 year or so) and 2,800yen per month at a flat rate. Of course, I`m hoping the rest of the students don`t have laptops or aren`t MMORPG fanatics who will sap up phenomenal amounts of bandwidth and leave the rest of us waiting for our browsers to load. A senior has recommended that a few of us students living on the same floor subscribe for a personal line and share the internet among the few of us, but that seems a little more troublesome so I think I`ll just take the easy way out first, get the teacher to buy a cable to hook my laptop up and I`ll see how things go.

A list has just been put up for bicycles on sale and the teacher has asked us to write our name down on which bike we`re interested in buying. They are all second hand and cost either 4,500yen or 5,000yen. Three of them were left behind from students before and are therefore free. Sure a bike comes in handy I guess. Japan has a kind of bike riding culture. You see people cycling on the streets all the time. I think I`m quite fine without a bike. Afterall, I`ve lugged my grocery shopping and 100yen shopping for a good 20 minutes walk (if you exclude the time walking from shop to shop) and you gotta pay a fee for parking at the station. Parking your bike outside a shop to buy stuff is fine I guess, but you risk having your bike taken even though cases like that are really rare (senior says "It`s really weird if your stuff gets stolen.. it`s just really weird because nobody steals around here.") and having to learn how to ride properly without banging into people or a wall or lamp post or car because houses and such are packed so closely to each other and those bike riding Japanese are so capable of weaving in and around people, I wonder how they do it. Btw, one thing I`ve noticed is how the motorists here have the peace of mind to drive so blooody close to pedestrians. It`s annoying though. They drive through alleys where people are walking on both sides. My friend was crossing a zebra crossing and one driver just turned into the road just barely missing her. I`m curious to find out the accident rate around here.

Visited a store today selling second hand manga, games and soundtracks today. As in other stores, there was so much stuff and you have to really read and look at the signs on each shelf or dangling from the ceiling to know whats where and whats going on. Even though the things are organised properly, it is rather tiring for the eyes to discern whats of interest because there are just too many details. Anyway, most manga sell for 105yen (about $1.30SGD) and are unwrapped. Though I`ve seen very new-looking manga before, these definitely do not look new but are of readable condition. It`s the kind where you buy a book for dirt cheap and don`t bother really taking good care of it. Some PS2 games were selling for dirt cheap especially the older ones like about SGD30 per game. I`m not sure whether they were selling new PS3 sets but the price they quoted was somethinkg like 57,500yen, which is slightly cheaper than the release price of 59,800yen quoted by Sony. I do hope I can get one in the near future...

Anyways, I`m feeling hungry now. It`s 9.18pm here and I`ve yet to eat dinner yet. Intending to cook pasta with the pasta and gravy from the 100yen shop and the onions, ham and mushrooms and other stuff I got from the supermarket. Other people are also waiting to use the computer so I`m going now. Do hope the teacher buys the cable soon.

Cheers!