Kakistocracy

Quodlibet----> Topic of theological discussion. Kinda like "Did God create man or did man create God?" That sorta thing. I just got back from Japan, there are so many photos that I would need 3 or 4 posts again, like last year.

I recently found out my uni 2nd semester results. I learned a lot from them, in the sense that I know how much effort(or at least minimum effort) is required to pass uni standard exams for me. On the 7th of December, biting my nails, I anxiously read my results as displayed on the SIS:

Programming 76
Electric Circuits 73
Finance 66
Maths 56

Yeah I was pretty much in shock. I had previously scored relatively high in Maths, and this time I have had sleepless nights over Maths, even pulled an all nighter running on 5-5-3s (5 coffee, 5 whitener, 3 sugar) with my MASSIVE mug. Shows that uni's no joke, gotta really put in the effort to pass (of course I looked for trouble myself by picking the advanced maths) but still the effort is worth it la...

Okay so I actually just got back from Japan, went there for 7D5N with my parents and bro... So this post will consist of 4 posts: 2 on the trip, 1 on the pictures/sceneries, and one on random shit I've seen/learnt from Japan/Japanese ppl... So here goes

Chap 1: Ohayo Nihon-go... Snow, beer, and.... No Bluetooth

So we left for Japan on Friday night, arrived at Nagoya airport on Saturday morning... Transferred to Sapporo airport after that, so there's where our adventure began la. We were on a tour consisting of about 30 people, just being brought about everywhere la... Our first stop was Chitose, where we were brought to direct factory outlet stores to buy stuff. Now apparently, you can't find ANY fake products like we have here in Malaysian pasar malams, and everything is SO cheap (but then shopping at DFOs memang supposed to be that cheap one la) Anyway, I managed to get my hands on a new pair of Nike Uptempo that cost me about 4000 Yen (which is about 120 RM, bloody cheap!!) Being totally unprepared for this trip, I was busily reading the "Simple Japanese" book throughout the plane ride, and I really found it hard to ask Japanese people ANYTHING at all haha, it was so amusing to hear words come out of my mouth and answer to a whole rap song of words
that I did not understand... All I knew was 'Ikura desu ka?" Which was "How much is it?" (quite redundant coz the price tag already there la haha)

Anyway after that embarrassment, we headed towards Sapporo city, and we basically did more shopping...

NHK station tower. Remember NHK? The only Japanese channel on your Astro channels long ago? Check it out, it's only 1.6 degrees Celsius, imagine how cold it was.

So after some shopping (and more awkward word guessing at a cafe), we headed for, guess what, more shopping at a local famous street called "Li Siao Lu" in Chinese la

Yeah, there are 8 streets like this altogether.

So after more shopping, we had our first encounter with authentic Japanese food lol.... I don't remember exactly how to pronounce the name of the restaurant, but yeah the food was amazing, better than what you find at super classy Jap restaurants in KL Hilton or Subang...

Jap garlic fried rice. Looks so simple, but it goes so well with everything.

Ra-men. Yeah every Jap food fanatic would know this, looks so similar to Wanton Mee, and the restaurant's famous for this dish... Actually not bad tau


This tops the lot though. The Gao Zi here is SOOOOO good that I got hooked, my goodness I miss it already

Sapporo beer. Better than Asahi you know, don't pray pray.

Me dad and bro outside the restaurant. Good stuff, will remember this place.

So after all that shopping we all KO'ed at the hotel, after all we had to rest more to prepare for the ski trip the next day (oooh....)

So the next day we headed for our next stop, a Japanese government house, and guess what happened on the way there...

Yeah I like marveling at stuff I've never seen before, really like jakun like that.

And you know my sneaky brother already collected enough snow to throw at me, you see la that fella

So yeah we got there, and buildings just look awesome in snow....

Cooladeneh.

And those who know me enough would know, that the first thing I would do with snow is...

Snow is sweet. Believe it.

Yeah so after that, we were brought to an Olympic ski ramp, which was used in the last Winter Olympics... I've always thought that ski jumping wasn't that hard a sport, as long as you know how to land, but when you see this....

Yes, after you see this massive thing, sometimes you wonder where ski jumpers hide their big balls needed to jump of this thing and not scream.

Like a rollercoaster without safety bars. Or a seat.

So we made our way up the mountains after that, got some quality ski time muahaa... Now the thing about skiing is, it's so so so hard to walk uphill, but when you go downhill it's even more frightening coz you dunno how to stop haha... Of course my ever experienced dad sought of taught me and bro how to ski, so we were goin pretty fast after an hour of skiing or so... Proud enough to say that I have not fell down yet, so yeah I look forward to doing it again, if I have the chance haha

Pictures say a thousand words, but this just says so much more haha, if you know what I mean...

So after the skiing, we were brought to another snowy place (lol, snowy) to ride snowmobiles, like James Bond like that. After a 5 minute teaching session (more like briefing) form the instructor, we all just hovered off into the snowy forest, and it's just awesome powering through the corners and speeding over bumps, really feel like James bond haha... The only setback was that we did not have enough layers of clothing for our toes and fingers, so at th end of the snowmobiling I could not feel my toes until half an hour after boarding the bus... Eek

Me shiok sendiri-ing at the first pit stop.

So after the snowmobiling, the tour decided to warm us up (finally) by bringing us to the Mahoroba Hot Spring resort in Noboribetsu (not like you'll remember the name anyway). Se the thing about this resort is, the saunas and the jacuzzi are heated by hot springs, so it's supposed to be really really healthy. Problem is (well not problem la, more like trick) that you're supposed to go in NAKED (maybe I shouldn't have put it in caps letters). So yeah, it was literally a sausage fest when I went in, but after 10 minutes or so you just don't really wanna bother anymore, and you just wanna have a nice time. And besides, couldn't see shit without my specs anyway, was very distracted by the 40 degrees of hot water. Got really stuffy after a while though, but nonetheless it was a very interesting experience.

So much more to talk about, so I'll leave it for part two, I'll see you guys next post. Sorry about the weird change of font sizes, dunno how to fix that.