super long blog!!! read only if you have time... vacation... written version and picture version

written version...
ok ok.. i admit, i've been avoiding doing this for the past 3,4 days... the malays would call it... 'malas'... hahaha
i'm gonna start with 1st of august, the day i left for tokyo, we (alan and i) used a ticket called sei syun 18 kippu, it's worth 11500 yen and its can be used for five days... it's like you go to the station, show it to one of the workers and they stamp that day's date onto it and you can get on any train you want as long as it's a local train (the one that stops at every station)... sounds fun right? it took us 13 hours
and gut wrenching heart stop action each of the 9 times we changed trains... for god sake... i was on the verge of killing someone at the end of it...
the victims...
6 packets of sandwiches
5 onigiri (rice balls)
2 bottles of coffee
3 bottles of tea
2 bottles of mineral water
1 Lai Chai Ei

chai ei came to shinjuku to meet us and spend the night with us even though he could have slept care-freely in his own room... he took us for some drinks and bought us boneless kfc fried chicken... we kept laughing at him cause he was carrying a kfc box which we thought had normal 'un'boneless chicken in it... but... i don't really know why... but we were laughing at this the whole night... we ended up staying in a place to read comic books, they give you a room and you get to read the available comics in the store... this happened mostly because the hotel i found using my phone was located in a prostitution district which mr lai had to search for us... hahaha...
i guess without lai that night, we two would have killed each other... tiredness...

the next day we took part in the ASEAN sports fest. there was ping pong and badminton which our seniors took part and represented malaysia... in badminton, indonesia were just too strong to beat while in ping pong malaysia won. i took part in basketball along with alan, kita-kyushu representative the greatest Hi-sa-mu-dinnnnnnnnnn... along with mr lai and nagaoka three point specialist wei shen... hehehe had tonnes of fun even though i never scored a single point. we had fun when we defeated our first challengers from thailand... our compatriots and seniors weren't so lucky when they met a strong Philippines team... our second match against another Philippines team... actually we would have won if not for a stupid referee (from the other team) who was siding the other team, or better to say against our team because they were scared of our team... in the end we lost our nerves, started missing shot when the referee gave the other team the advantage too many times... emotions ran high and we were all on the verge of a fight, but thank god the other team had a lot of good guys who calmed us down and gave us the best they could... well, we lost in the end although i thought we put up quite a good fight to the end...

emm... after that, james and bao cong (two of our seniors) took alan, chai ei, wei shen and me around shinjuku showing us various places... including bars where men host serve women who have to much of money... mostly old grannies... when i said serve i meant it, no funny stuff, just serve drinks and talk to you for the night...
(alan kept on shouting that those were gay bars... i couldn't help but laugh...) we spent our night this time in a internet cafe... oh, the thing is you could bathe in both the places just that the conversation between the staff and me went like this...
me: hi, i want to use the shower room...
staff: yes, but we have a few people waiting on our list, could you wait sir?
me: about how long is that gonna take?
staff: let me see (pulls out a list) there are 7 people on the list now, each will take 30 minutes plus the gentlemen who went in just now... that will be a 4-hour wait sir...
me: (gasp)...
staff: i think you'd not want be on the list then... (smirks...)

well, the following day we snuck into our friends dorm... well, since one look at me and you know i'm a foreigner here, they took heavy measures not to let me be seen...
1. not letting me use the front gate... (meaning that i had to climb the fence in and out everyday)
2. a two day curfew which i had to stay only in the room (the guarded the place even when i used the bathroom)
3. if i was seen, i was to kill the person who saw me and swallow the poison supplied to me...

well the last one was a joke, but i really felt like that through out my whole stay there, it was like if i was in a witness protection program and if i was seen the yakuza were going to assassinate me... however i had loads of fun here thanks to yeow keong (for smuggling me in), bao cong (for his 'wisdom' and jokes), and james (for his endless comedy plus great food and the best company one could ask for). chai ei... i don't need to thank him la... he knows i love him... hahaha... i really don't remember much what i did in kisarazu except eat sleep eat and sleep some more... emm... we did go to yokohama a popular tourist spot... but i don't think anything happened there worth writing about...

we left kisarazu after a week or so... this was the worst part of the journey to me... we took a bus from tokyo to sendai (6 hours) and then took around another eight trains (6 hours +) immediately after getting down from the bus to a place called morioka... then from there another two hour bus to aomori... god... it was like hell... runnnig here and there... waiting for this train that train, don't know where we are going to end up... stuffing your mouth with food you ate 2 minutes ago... no solid food at all...
the victims...
3 packets of sandwiches
6 onigiri (rice balls)
4 bottles of coffee
1 bottles of tea
2 bottles of mineral water

we spent a night in aomori... no we didn't visit any apple farms, we just spent a night there, did manage to see the apples they were selling which looked ridiculously big and was being sold dirt cheap... we spent the night in an ok hotel... the thing about aomori is... it's a city made for it's people to stay in, there is no places to visit or even go to after 9 in the town... so it was quite boring there...

we left the following day before the sun was up by train to hakodate and took and pass from there to sapporo,,, something funny happened on the bus though... alan sat behind a girl who was... from my point of view... 'flashing her beautiful long legs...' i said beautiful because her legs were really beautiful... not cause i'm a pervert k??? after around an hour on the bus... alan turns to me and says... 'can change place or not... i cannot tahan this girl liao...' ... hahaha it was quiet funny to me at least... then i changed places with alan and started playing my DS to forget about her... hehehe

we spent two nights in sapporo by ourselves before our battalion arrived... we stayed in a hotel again and spent our days looking around and trying various foods la... but i don't have a particular interest in catching photographs of food... so sorry ah... when our battalion was ready... we ventured to a lot of different places... this part i think let the pictures do the talking better... so from here on out is the...

picture version!!!
tiredness takes over, alan sleeping while messaging, me sleeping in the train...
kabukicho host clubs? or in alan's incorrect words 'Gay bars!!!'
asakusa...
i like yien san's pose in this photo...
alan being tortured... notice the shells on his... errr... chest...
elaine so cute...
at yokohama... some weird art thingy...
me catching yien san catching elaine
anticipating their caricatures...
the finished product, two very beautiful smiles...
akaren in yokohama too
an ad for the aomori art museum
few nice stations i had been to before i reached sapporo
a flying raccoon near the hotel we stayed at in a shopping street named raccoon street...
sapporo's clock tower... got la some history behind it... not planning on finding out though...
they were various statues scattered around hokkaido especially in sapporo, i like this one the best, HOPE...
my most artistic picture of the sapporo tv tower...
view from above the tower of odori park
notice anything cute?

the sapporo fish market
in the shiroi koibito factory's park... rose garden
these cute things pop out and scold you when you touch the tree...
find yien san and elaine!!!
hokkaido sushi... yup everything was raw... extremely raw...
i front of a glass making factory where you can make something for yourself by yourself!!! i made a pendant...
i promised elaine i'll document her doing her mug, but at last... i didn't catch the picture of her finished product... sad...
i also like yien san's pose here... in front of some lake where we saw a lot of rocks under the sea
night time in odori park, bon odori (ghost festival dance) going on
on our way to asahiyama zoo... flowers!!!
sunflower!!!
dying lavender!!!
at tomita farm in asahikawa if i'm not mistaken, ate lavender ice cream here!!! super delicious!!!
called the parent child trees, used in some advertisement...
penguins!!!
'what you looking at ah?' cute polar bears were in the zoo... 3 to be exact
a cute and cheeky guy who can choose to run overhead you, he even stops and stares down at you at times... ok i admit i forgot what he is...
at the zoo
at mount hakodate... in lai's words... romantic mountain...
view from atop hakodate mountain...
wei shen insulting one of the statues...
some star shaped park made in ancient times by the feudal time japs to protect themselves from invading foreigners, but never completed at that time...
model of the star...
my last photo in hokkaido... on top of a giant rock...
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