Nageki & Koi

It's been awhile I listen to Kitaro's songs. Somehow these 2 songs struck me like a thunder when I listen to it during this morning.

嘆き　なげき Nageki


恋　こい Koi


Am still very excited the kind of feel when these songs struck me. Is like somehow your emotion and thoughts are connected to the song, resonating what's inside your mind and let the feelings explode.

ハ。。。嘆きと恋。。。奇麗な音楽です！~　私心中の気持も同じ!

Late Night Update

I noticed the lack of "massive updates" which I usually wrote like few weeks back. Kinda busy with my homeworks so left not much time to explore things around.

I do brought my camera along all the time in case I've noticed something interesting that can be shared with you all here. There're still a lot of places yet to be discovered, for example, the Rikugien Garden 六義園.

This week we've started the core subjects for the university exam. I'm studying Arts stream so I had comprehensive subjects which include Sociology, History & Geography. Oh boy, these are something that I'm more interested in, to the horror of many people else, heh.

I had to take Maths too, a subject I liked but cannot really score well somehow hahah....
English is part of the course but I did not take the lesson. I'm quite confident with my English standard, heh. :)

Now weekdays I'll be having extra classes til 4:15pm+ for 3 days. Because I don't need to attend the English lesson so I'll have 2 days where my class ends at usual 2:30pm. Tuesday and Friday it would be. Absolutely love it especially Friday! :D

Let's have a look on what I'm studying for the comprehensive subjects.

The infamous yellow book.


1st chapter, yawn..... Media stuffs. Have to write the English words for the katakanas....


Further chapters, oh boy.... sociology stuffs.


Different types of deaths? O_o


Some demographic facts of Japan.


Some random pics I took within past week.

Katsu don, one of my favourite dish. Egg + fried chicken fillet with rice.


A little luxurious feast, bak kut teh!!


The bicycle domino effect. One down, the rest follows.


Meiji University.


Footballs on sale. Felt like wanna kick the ball hahaha....


Best to gear up with an umbrella during rainy day.


Loaned this album "Best of New Asia" from Tsutaya, a local CD/DVD shop. Cost 150yen for just a day. Ripped the CD into mp3. GG....



Guess these 2 kanjis! (Chinese letter).



Kids from local primary school walking in a long line.


That's all for now. Next week having a long holiday, planned to visit Akihabara, Tokyo Central & Roppongi. Monday might be going to Yokohama's China Town? Heh.... lots of pics will be poured into this blog then. :D

Notice

Ah I wanna update this blog but dunno what on Earth happened, but seems like I cant upload pics onto Flickr. 

A blog post without pics is boring, so as long as those pics aren't uploaded I cannot write here yet.  :(

A random pic, my fav drink over here.

Okuribito, Departures

Last night I spent like 30 mins to dwnld this 1.7GB worth of movie. Am glad that this movie doesn't disappoint me. :)

The protagonist work as a encoffinner who takes care of the "ceremonial process" where the deceased is being cleaned up and encase into the coffin, therefore enconffinment .

Most Eastern-Asian cultures had this common taboo of speaking about the deceased, the death etc. This movie somewhat gave the audience a refreshed view of someone doing their job done, albeit being discriminated due to the nature of their job.

I find this movie interesting and educational for me to learn some of the things about Japanese culture. This movie provides some of the details where one wouldn't possible noticed unless one attended such ceremonial before.

This movie provides some deep thoughts to think of. We all live this life for just once. Everyone around us, someday will have to pass on too, so the best is to appreciate them while they're still here.
Better regret now than regretting later on, when everything is too late beyond redemption.
This do reminds me of this phrase: 树欲静而风不止，子欲养而亲不在。

Also, kudos to the soundtrack of the movie too, great songs as expected from Joe Hisaishi. I learnt about this movie after listening to some of the soundtracks.
Heh, nowadays I watch the movie based on the OST I listen to.

The main theme of this movie, played by mainly cello & piano, both are my favourite instruments. :)



I think I'll be catching a few Takeshi Kitano's movies later this year. Many of his movies' soundtracks are composed by Joe Hisaishi as well, so I expected something spectacular from the movies as well. :)

Godspeed Torrent

Fastest speed I ever achieved....

I was just thinking to dwnld the movie and watch it, but I never expect it will run so damn fast lol..... 1.7GB done within 30 mins!! XD

I got a feeling that my HDD will soon go burst lol.... luckily brought an external HDD as backup. :D

Departures, Okuribito

Departures, Okuribito (おくりびと), literally means the one who prepares the final rites for the departed? I dunno how to translate the title.... but some sort of undertaker job.

Read good reviews of this movie, and Malaysia's director Yasmin Ahmad recommend it as well, so it must be something good. Since I'm over here in Japan, so I would try to find the chance to watch this movie.

Does the song sounds good? Well definitely.... composed by my favourite musician Joe Hisaishi!! :D

3 weeks

LOL.... it has been 3 weeks I came here. Fast it seems, but picked up the life over here rather quickly. Thankfully have lots of people around to help us to get things started.

I arrived while the sakura started to bloom.


Surely a welcoming scene as Japan is famous for their sakura. It's like a privilege that the sakura lasted for 2 weeks, a rather unusually long period as normally the sakuras would last just a week plus.
It's a welcoming sight that we have such wonderful flowers around while to get our new life started here.



I came here to study Japanese language, aim is to reach at least JLPT Level 2. At the same time I would also be applying for Japanese universities for my degree course. Still undecided but I will be starting to collect more info about it.

Also, I came here to absorb the Japanese' culture, their ways of life, how it differs than what I observed in Malaysia, and compared to those of China & Taiwan which I've been to before. From my observation,there're goods and bads about each of the cultures.

Just like other East-Asian countries, Japan's culture do have similarities than those around, say like China or Korea. Yet, there's something unique about the Japanese.

Like what others would usual comment about Japanese, they are indeed very polite & soft-spoken. So far almost every Japanese I've encountered do live up the name though.

Talk about this I'd like to briefly introduce you to a little basics of Japanese language.

There are 3 different levels when it comes to the language. The first is the common form 普通形, formal form　丁寧形 and lastly the respect form　尊敬語.

Common form is used in daily conversations between the folks.
Formal form is used when engaging in works or some official
Respect form is used when you're having a conversation in a very formal dialog especially to someone who stands higher than you (eg: boss).

In school the lessons are conducted in formal form, but we're also exposed to the use of the common form and respect form.

I had this trouble of calling the Dell Japan's tech support line earlier weeks ago to fix a matter on my laptop. I can't really understand what they're speaking because I'm not used to listen to the form of language they're speaking.

Funny on how it turns out to be, at least at the end of the day someone who can speak English contacted me and got all the troubles solved.

And this leads to another important observations I've made. The Japanese's working ethique and service is no doubt, possibly one of the best in the whole world.

The Japanese seems to be enthusiastic with what they're working as, you can easily spot it by observing them while they're at work. They seems to be satisfied with the job and will present the best of themselves to the customers/clients.
I'm quite shock to see that the Dell technician who came over to fix the laptop came in full suit the other day.



One can safely take a deep breath on the streets of Tokyo. Well believe it or not, the air is so fresh to breath in, even if you're beside the main road! I spotted almost nil smoke produced by the cars on the street.
One of the reason perhaps is because the cars no longer runs on petrol only, the hybrid technologies kicked-in contributed to this achievement.



Is like you can find 1 or 2 hybrid cars out of 10 cars on the street. Toyota's the winner in the hybrid car-making with their popular Toyota Prius and Lexus's hybrid cars.
If only all the cars on this planet are replaced by hybrid cars, then the Earth won't be as sick as it is right now.

I'm still getting myself more established here and discovering something that I didn't know before. Japan is a land of discoveries....

A little update

Hello people, I'm still here, but busy with stuffs so seldom update nowadays. Besides, nothing much happened, pretty peaceful so nothing special to write about lol.

To compensate the lack of contents, throw in some recent pics. XD

The pinkish flowers are replaced by green leaves on most of the trees.


Rendang for dinner!! Oishii!!


A little luxurious dinner on the rainy evening. Steak + pork teriyaki. 560 yen.


Sample of dishes displaying outside the restaurant..... mmmm....


Green Court's canteen catering for those office workers. Affordable meal and nice place to dine in!


OK enough of food pics lol.... I'm full.

Lexus LS 600h L, the best specs for a Lexus car, and also my dream car hahaha....


A shop near Akihabara which sells string instruments. Love the comparison of the violin and double bass!


OK so far for now then. Will sort out some time in the weekend to blog~

Real life Need For Speed scenario

I think this happened recently somewhere in the US. Do check out this video.



Amazed by the driver's skills, and the fact that she's a female!!

I thought all these only happen in the game or movie, but it's actually applicable in the real life lol!

Kudos to Toyota for making the Scion car a tough nut to crack. The police needed to deploy close to 10 units of Crown Victoria Interceptors to stop it. A PIT maneuver wasn't enough to stop it, so in the end the box formation kicks in to finally end this craze chase.

Dell Japan Tech Support

When I reached Japan on early April, the first computer problem I had was the DVD-rom which unable to read the disc when I insert it.

First I sent a report via Dell Malaysia's e-mail support. The representative Benjamin Tan replied with the usual methods of diagnosis the hardwares. He also provided me with the contact details of the Dell Japan support.

When I get my phone, I called the Dell Japan's tech support line. Language was indeed a barrier as I can barely understand what they're saying, and they couldn't speak English. Well luckily we could work it out with the details and an agent who can speak English contacted me for further details.

Mr Yoshitaki briefed me about the process and arrange a technician to come over to replace the possible faulty DVD-rom.

A weird thing I noticed is that, the replacement hardware, the DVD-rom, came separately with the technician. The replacement DVD-rom courier arrived 45 mins before the guy came.



The technician arrived around 4:45pm just after making a call to confirm with me. Was kinda surprise to see that he came on full suit! My first impression is that he looks like a salesman than a computer technician hahah!

Well that's the work culture of the Japanese. To appropriately present themselves to the clients/customers as a sign of respect. I heard that we need to wear full suit as well when going for interview just for part-time jobs at the restaurant.

I asked him whether Studio laptop is common in Japan, he don't really know bout the sales amount but told me that he fixes one or two Studio units in a month. I wonder whether mine is the 1st, 2nd or more that he fixed in this month.

Talking bout this reminds me of the conversation with the Dell Malaysia's technician who came over to fix the faulty Nvidia graphic processing unit (GPU) on my previous Inspiron 1420. He said that he fixed quite a few Studio units at that time due to some instability issues back then.
At that time I never thought that I would be getting another laptop so soon, heh.

Starting to strip my laptop apart.....



At first he seems to be quite nervous handling the laptop judging from his expression and gesture, but few mins passed he's already working according to the flow.

Taking out the keyboard module.



Revealing the hardwares underneath it. You can see he's holding the DVD-rom on his right hand.


The culprit. Kinda surprised it's actually made in Indonesia.


The slot-in DVD-rom. Seems to be working normally now, which is a great news.


The service report.


The entire process took just 45 mins to complete from arriving to departing. Slightly faster than the previous experience but that time was fixing the motherboard though (that one took bout an hour).

For some reason I don't really get the name of the Japanese guy who came over to fix this Studio 15. Dunno how to pronounce it in Japanese but the kanji name is 儘田 纯一. Many thanks to him!

Well then another great service from Dell.... Am impressed and satisfied with it! :D


P/S: Everything is done without any charges, thankfully since the laptop is still under warranty!! :D

Awkward Invitation

Afternoon went to Higashi-Nakano 東中野 with a gang of friends to attend a so-called senior's invitation to his place.
I would refer this senior as Mr L then.

From the tone of the above you may sense that something isn't right here.

So Mr L waited for like 20 of us in front of the station, and brought us to a nearby building few minutes walk.

Spotted unusual massive amount of people gathering in front of a building. No idea what's going on so just followed the senior walk in.

Quite unusual to spot Korean words on the notice board, and the moment I see the crosses, I knew something's fishy here.

We were lead to the 4th floor, where they're actually having a Sunday mass, or prayer, in Chinese Mandarin. Yeah, we came all the way from so far away just to be informed that we're joining a Christian's Sunday mass?

Not much details were disclosed when Mr L invited me via e-mail. He chose not to tell us what place is it until the very last moment.

(click for larger view)


And also, we're naive that actually came all the way here eventhough the details aren't very clear. I was one of them. Because I stick to the point that we're going in a large pack, so if anything happened at least we can solve it together.

No offense to fellow Christians, but we're disgusted when we realised this. As much as we respected the religion, but we have the rights to choose whether we're to attend or not to attend such event.

Back in Malaysia it's quite common that Christian friends asked us to join their church's events. We may choose to go or not to go. Now this time, we're like "cheated" to come here.

Some of us left the place after a brief talk with Mr L. We aren't happy with the state of the situation, but given he's also a Malaysian so we just kept silent.

While a few of them actually attend stay to the prayer, I followed the majority gang walk to Ookubo 大久保.

Kinda like this place, it's the street where Chinese and Koreans are quite active. On the streets you can occasionally heard people chatting in language foreign to Japanese, heh.

Spotted this unusual restaurant. Malaysia Restaurant Mahathir lol! Nasi lemak FTW!!


Went to bought 3 packs of dumplings for 1000 yen at the Chinese shop. Good addition for the soup dish we usually cook.

Head back to Arakawa around 5pm. Pic taken from Shin Ookubo JR station.


Spotted these 2 cars that I like.



Since today spent quite some amount commuting, tonight's dinner budget cut short, just 200 yen. A McPork and a Hamburger from McD. I know I might get hungry soon but I think still can stand it 'til tomorrow's breakfast.

A final note about Mr L. Like many Christians I met, he's helpful and friendly, really a Mr Nice Guy. But please, do not try to persuade, or in another worse word, lure people to goto such places if you knew that we might not want to go to such places.

The school has the rule stating that no religions activities are allowed to be carried out to protect everyone's interests, and this matter cannot be taken easily.

A lesson learnt in Japan, do not trust people truthfully even if the person came from the same country, careful we must be.
I just loss a few hundred yens of commuting fee, not much damage.

Dinner's on ABK

This week has been quite busy in the school. With the classes finally kick starts, and many talks to attend for applying this and that. Besides that, placement test for Maths & English are carried out as well.

Talk about the placement test, hah, reminds me of those time in college.
Maths, as usual, not my best subject, although I kinda like to solve those mathematical questions.
English, I think is about TOEFL level. American slang English, which mainly focuses on business conversation. Something kinda different than I normally did in Malaysia, but still able to do with it.

Had a brief game of table tennis with some friends after the English placement test, and then headed for a talk regarding opening the bank account.
Japan, as high-tech as it's said to be, still employs the very tradition method in processing the applications. For example, using carbon paper-based application forms and requires a seal stamp instead of signature to verify the application.

Went to a friend's room to do some final rehearsal for the evening's performance.

Friends chilling out before the event starts.




Still preparing, around 5:50pm I think. Crowds starting to build up.


Event started around 6:10pm. Introducing some of those seniors who helped to prepare this event for us freshmen. Was quite surprise to know that few of them are actually studying in Tokyo University right now!! (for those who dunno the fact, but Tokyo University is the Top 1 university in Asia.)

Host of the evening, real sporting guy hahah.


School principal Mr Ogiso Yu giving us a "mandatory" speech. Thankfully he's not as draggy as the other old mans hahah.


Before the makan begins.... 食べるの前に


After the makan.... 食べた


The food were good, a welcoming change from our usual menu. Too bad the serving size unable to satisfied most of our appetite lol.

Right after that is showtime! It started with a harmonica solo performance by another fellow Malaysian. He performed "Colours Of The Wind" and William Tell's Overture. The video recording is with my friend though.



OK so next is our turn, the so called Yamabuki gang lol (named after our hostel).



Amusing to see those 2 guys performed like this lol, but anyway everyone had fun with the performance.

Last program of the night is bingo! It's like lucky draw, but in a funnier


Lots of stuffs to choose....


Ying is the 1st who gets the first bingo. She ended up with an SD card and washing powders.


Maritan who performed with us earlier got himself a bottle flask, useful.


As for me, I was lucky enough to grab the t-shirt that I wanted. Black in colour, with some logos which reminds me of LV's styling. Didn't take a pic of it though.

That was a great night, rode back to the hostel around 8pm, a smooth ride as not much cars are on the road.

So today enjoyed a bit of my weekend.... Will update again when I have some stuffs to write up. :)