The original plan was to take us Aliens to cultural sites of Japan....something like "Lawatan sambil belajar". Well, It is a good thing to know more about Japanese culture....but I've been here for 3 years! I've seen my share of Shrines and wooden houses with straw mats for flooring.....and I'm bored of it!! Just in case you are wondering about Japanese sub-culture, there was no way the Aliens supervisor was going to take us to the "hanky-panky" girls-in-various-costumes Museum.
So I suggested....
Me : Instead of going to those boring places, why not go for a ski trip?
Aliens supervisor: Hmm...give me 3 reasons why.
Me: One reason is good enough. I want to go.
Aliens supervisor: I said 3 reasons.
Me: Okay, there are no snow in my country. And that makes skiing a part of culture exchange too!
Aliens supervisor: Sigh...alright. Ski it is. to be honest, I wanted to go skiing too!!
And that was it. College trip plans changed. Aliens conquered humans in Japan.
Anyway, for the ski resort, we went to Fukushima, somewhere north of where I am, Ibaraki, which is somewhere north east of Tokyo, which is very very much faraway north east of Kuala Lumpur.
The day started with a 3 hour bus ride to Hotel Listel, the hotel that we stayed at. Didn't occur to me to take photos of the hotel at that time....but I did take some pictures when I'm inside...
View from the hotel room overlooking Lake Inawashiro...
Bunch of 15, 16 year olds....they made a point of avoiding me by standing in the furthest corner and huddling together....typical behavior when facing a predator such as me.
18 year olds. I like the one on the right....made a mistake of telling her she was pretty during my first year in Japan. The term should have been "cute". Damn....
18 year olds. I like the one on the right....made a mistake of telling her she was pretty during my first year in Japan. The term should have been "cute". Damn....
The guys...well, one of them is a girl. Can you guess which?
Seafood pilaf for lunch....if you think that the arrangement of the spoon is weird, that's because it was me who arranged it.
After lunch was the main event. Time to eat fresh snow for dessert. Everyone you see in the picture above are beginners. The ones who have experience was me and Alien supervisor only....but Alien supervisor arranged instructors for them so....yeah, everybody had fun.
Ah....the feel of wind against my face as I glide effortlessly down the mountain. The feel of the ski board straining as I make a tight turn round a corner. The look of frighten small kids as I raced towards them at high speed.... Makes me wish that Malaysia have snow too...
Later that night, there was some illuminations on display in front of the hotel, so I invited the girls out for walks....ehem, invited guys as well but turns out that girls were more sporting than guys....8 girls and 3 guys turned up for the walk. Too bad for the rest of them, I get "the bigger piece of pie" so...good for me.
Santa already preparing for next year's Christmas. This proves how hardworking and efficient Japanese can be.
Plastic Santa was so happy to see me it grew organic limbs!!
Tricked two girls to imprint their body line on the snow.....nah, just kidding, didn't trick them, I just shoved them into the snow and jumped in after taking this picture.
The same two girls now expressing their love for me.....
Had a lot of fun that night...as a matter of fact, I had more fun that night than the ski itself! The girls were so crazy that they infected me with their "youngness" and suddenly I was among them rolling on the snow, running across empty fields, climbing statues...damn, it's good to be young again.
All in all, it was a fun trip although everyone was having too focused on skiing despite the fact that it was a farewell trip for us Aliens who are going to graduate soon....or did they mistook me to be a "Young Alien" instead of "Old Alien going away"? Hmm....don't know if I should be happy or sad with either answer.
