today was really a memorable day. the first time i really felt like blogging after meeting so many frens. alright, morning was badminton session with anto, ch and kiwi yeah and anto was too good for us! then me and him went to fetch shermaine for lunch at ah yat seafood restaurant for the cheap and delicious dim sum. we also had drunken prawns and everything was at 50% off! really cheap and we ate as though it was a buffet and had to play zhong ji mi ma to clear all the food! gosh!

well, then went to meet swee keat for dinner which was really memorable! and i shall blog in chinese from here as i find chi more expressive.

好的。当我们在 sushi tei 吃晚餐时，聊了很多。 聊起了这近两年来彼此所经历过的事情与以往在德明时的事。说着说着，我突然发现一切并没有改变，彼此的友情还是依旧不变。心里有一股暖意，好温馨。是我在伦敦时所无法体会到的感觉。当时的我感触良多。因为分隔了两年，这段友谊并没淡化，我深受感动。说话时，偶尔也含着泪。我发现这也许是我第一次这么珍惜跟朋友说话的每分每秒。也许不是第一次，但并不频繁。谢谢你的这份友谊，我真的非常珍惜，因为我知道不管是十年或十二十年，这段友谊依然如旧不变！

So it has been another week of meet ups! met super many ppl! met michelle, mad, jinhui for suan thai dinner on tues. felix on wed for lunch. seletar gang: weidi, sam n nicholas on thurs for dinner! eve on thurs for lunch. aunt and cousins for jap buffet lunch at minori today and a nice fish n co dinner with anto, yl and racheru today! wow, been quite tiring to meet ppl everyday! and on top of that, would make a point to run every other day! so that i do not accumulate a lot of fats!

yup, so i shall talk a little about each outing. been a great meet up with the dso interns. and mad is as crap as ever and feels crazy while talking to her. shi mei is still as nice to talk to!

wanna wish felix all the best in aust! haven met him for the past 1.5 yrs and tues lunch was really nice. could still remember the times back in seletar camp when we would just listen to songs till like 1am? haha! and talk crap when he was the coxwain while i'm doing my lifeguard duty (slack). haha!

wed was a great meet up with the seletar gang at ashtons then rochor tao huay! and nic is still as crappy and would make me laf like mad! yeah, was a good catch up! this is wat i call long lasting frenship!

yup, janei! to eve as she returned to aust for her final year! gambatte! u'll be back quite soon!

been a nice catch up with the cousins and my aunt. and got to play with the fat baby! shall play mahjong with them next tues! and yes, it was a great dinner with rachel, ant and yl! haven seen racheru for soo long and feels good to see her again! crapped so much and she's a bit more da dan now. would gang up with ant to hit me! hmmm, i shall ask ant daopok her in future! yeah and thanks anto for asking the singer at fish n co to sing a bday song for me! quite nice though i'm quite embarrassed as well! hahah but i was sporty enuf! yeah!

it's time to update a little about myself after my trips! well, it has been gatherings and more gatherings ever since i was back from london for 5 days, and now after my japan trip. have met eve, yx, jiayin, kee sheng, my bmt mates be4 i flew off for japan.

and after i'm back from japan, i've met meng ni yest and my bmt mates for steamboat today! and we're watching harry potter this friday morning. and tmr i'm meeting ceejay ('daddy') for dinner and st jie for dinner and stayover on fri! sat will be with filbert n gang and sun will be with long lost alvin and zhi. i'm really happy and satisfied with my life now. and while typing this, i'm listening to yan zi's yan shen which resonate with how i'm feeling now. i don't want all these to end... though it's just the start of my hols and i'll leave 2+ months later, i know these will go by really quickly. and all of them will start sch next month if not work and i think i'll start studying a little too. the thing that i think i'll dread most is returning back to london cos i noe i'll miss these dear ones in sg. i'm quite sick of this feeling last year and i hope not to have such a feeling again. hopefully staying with close frens would help to alleviate a little at least. i can still vividly remember how sad i felt when jy and gang visited me when they were in london cos i finally felt my closed ones beside me after so long. was really a long wait... but yeah, kiwi was right in telling me to live the moment, enjoy the moment now. don't think too much! but i could already imagine myself having another hard departure this year. haha~! alright and i shall live the moment!

It's my 2nd last night in japan and am now at tokyo! these 2 days were basically spent on travelling from sapporo to hakodate, then from hakodate to tokyo! but we made a short trip to nice, quaint otaru yesterday before leaving sapporo for hakodate. i like the way how the houses are built and yeah we went to the famous musical box museum! everything's so nice inside and we spent 2 hours there getting souvenirs for friends as well! all the musical boxes are either too cute if not too exquisite! but they're quite expensive as well. spent a good $75 there!

cute bears

pretty!

we shall visit here again when we're 60 years old. haha!

and the rest of the day till today was spent on travelling. and we stayed in a hotel located near to shinjuku! went to have dinner at shinjuku and we had it at attas takashimaya! the restaurant we went to was located at 14F. service is really good again and we took photo with 1 of the waitress there cos she taught me how to eat their cha soba. it's quite different as u get to mix sweet sauce and spicy sauce according to ur own liking. it was a 2100 yen dinner per person. really おいしい! and then i went to walk along the bridge which i went to 2 years ago and everything still feels the same. crispy creme is still as crowded, and takashimaya is totally pretty.

dinner at taka!

and we decided to catch a movie at night so we bought transformers revenge tickets at 1500 yen per person for the 10.50pm show. it was 1800 for a normal tix and it's good to have a student card though it's still expensive. haha! but well, it's really quite an experience to watch an english show subbed with jap sub titles. yeah! and tmr, think we'll make our way to tsukuji market. argh, i dun wanna leave this place!

at the cinema~

yeah so after 2 days, i'm back at sapporo again! well, we've been to sounkyo, biei and furano for the past 2 days and we got to those places via our obedient suzuki swift! sounkyo was just a scenic place (but not the best during summer), and we went up to 1 of the mountains to look at deitsuzan mountain range. but we really self entertained ourselves greatly, and those videos really have high entertainment value! made me laf till i cried. haha! yeah will watch when i feel bored. and so we went to the 温泉 in sounkyo choyo resort, followed by a great buffet spread for dinner! we had lots of crabs. breakfast was also a great spread and it was buffet again, i couldn't believe the amount i had the past 2 days! and yeah after breakfast, it was checkout and we went to visit 2 waterfalls, called ginga waterfall and ryusei waterfall,　銀河の体、流星の滝, but it was raining so heavily then and was so cold, 12 deg for summer!

so after which, we made our way to exciting biei where we saw panoramic undulating lands! they're really pretty seriously, the pictures are doing injustice to the actual view! seriously pretty! with neat rows of vegetation, and the air felt really crisp and the wind was strong as well.

and after biei, we went to furano where we saw lavendar fields at farm tomita. and we bought really ex souvenirs! Biei is really different from furano. while one can view nice greenery from the former, the latter would wow 1 with its pretty flowers, esp the lavendar! yeah and we had lavender ice cream which has a very fresh aftertaste. yeah! so now we're back in sapporo, took a couple of videos back, and will be going to otaru tmr, an impromptu decision!

so today we wet out to noboribetsu, 登別, where we got to see the hell valley, 地獄谷. it was a sulphur onsen and the smell of sulphur smells good to me. haha! the view was totally pretty, it's a little like the sulphur valley i saw at hakone. well, i really loved the pictures taken today. noboribetsu is a quiet town, and the pace of life is slower which i really like. like wat i told anto, i could find inner peace here. yeah and we went to the oyunuma, お湯沼, where we could put our legs in the hot water. not too sure if it's suphurous. but well, it was comfortable,  気持ち!!! and took a couple of photos over there. 

きれいな景色

so we spent about half a day at these areas that we had very little time for the ninja town! and we paid 2500 yen for just a 1h visit as it closes at 5pm! but it was still fun as we got to catch a show! and anto was the part of the performance! haha. and i threw a small tip after the show ended as this is what olden japan is like! ppl throw tips wrapped in a white paper after the show has ended. and the ppl there called us, 仲間, meaning very good friends! haha somehow i like this word!

at the ninja 村

yeah and after we're back in sapporo, we went to ramen yokocho, ラメン横丁, to have very nice chashuramen! gosh! it was really good and there were so many ppl! i think they sell like 10,000 bowls a day! wee! am really satisfied today~ and i learnt some new words like 半額, meaning half price!

and so, we'll start driving tmr to sounkyo! the highlight of the trip! and also, during this trip, anto let me realised the importance of general knowledge, i shall better myself when i'm back! be more abreast with current news!

greetings from sapporo! yes, so after a 3h train ride, we left peaceful hakodate for busy sapporo. everything here is a little like tokyo just that there's a lot of restaurants selling crabs cos sapporo is famous for its hairy crabs! 

yeah and so after checking in to our comfort hotel, we made our way to 白い恋人工場！ which is the factory that makes white lover biscuits. they sell really exorbitant biscuits but are very delicious! we got to catch a glimpse on how they make their biscuits and also had high tea at their cafe! bought quite a number of souvenirs which cost me $60! haha~ so after the famous shiroikoibito, we made our way back to our hotel and booked our car before making our way to sapporo central and had our hairy crab there!

shiroikoibito!

our dinner was sugoi! had crabs, squid and egg roll! took really nice pics and we chatted with an american businessman who was with a group of japanese as he offered to help us take a photo. and they all know where singapore is, well he was on a business trip in sg be4! hah and we helped him take a photo with his japanese 仲間 (nakama) as well! wee~ finally, a decent dinner! tmr will be going to noboribetsu where i'll get to see the hell valley! can't wait man!

新鮮なかに！

yeah~ and so after a night at ueno, we made our way down to hakodate. it was another 6h of travelling, 3h by shinkansen and 3h by tokkyu (limited express), the scenery got much better along the way as mountain ranges started appearing! and it's my first time travelling so relaxingly, as if i'm a japanese. well and cos we reserved our shinkansen seats separately, we had different seats! and i sat beside a young obasan and her grand daughter. the obasan's really polite to me and i smiled at her when i sat down. then we started chatting a little and she asked me where i came from. and i told her her grand daughter is cute. she's really very obedient i think. and i like listening to her talking to her grand daughter. she will say things like it's cold, you should put on ur jacket. and when her grand daughter could not finish her bentou lunch she would say 頑張って食べてください！ so cute right! and she alighted at the stop be4 me! and she asked her grand daughter to bid me farewell, おにちゃんにさよならい。so cute right! and she was bringing her grand daughter to her sis house to play. so i told her, お楽しみください。 and she said 気をつけて。and i really like the way the grandmother slowed down when talking to me and allowing me to understand better. and so i shared with her my hokkaido plans and she said yeah it's a really good time now cos it's summer! and i told her it's really pretty when there are so many flowers blooming. we had a really nice convo!

our first 2 bento set of the day! and our comfy hakodate room! and interesting thing of the day! the train chairs can be rotated 360 deg!

ok, and so when we finally reached hakodate, we rushed to get up the hakodate mountain. this place is basically quite a dead town but i like the tranquility that u cant get elsewhere. tanoshii! ok, the view on mount hakodate was really amazing, pretty and we had nice japanese helping us take fotos again. the night view was pretty too when all the lights are lit up. 

at mount hakodate! pretty isn't it!

and after this pretty view, we went to have dinner and bought sake from this wine shop. and we started chatting with the receptionist cos they asked where we were from again. and she said our jap is すばらしい (wonderful). they asked us how is hakodate as well. haha wa, i like talking to the locals i think but it's a bit stressful when they start making really long sentences and speed up. haha! yeah~ so it'll be to sapporo tmr! oh yeah and i shall have my 1st sake tonight!

the gorgeous night view!

yeah! and after travelling for an arduous 10 hours! i'm here in tokyo! took me 7 hours by plane followed by 1 hour of narita express! this feeling is undescribable when i touched down. i just kept smiling to myself when i saw those familiar japanese words! really love this place i guess. changed my rail pass and i think i was too pro at asking them to start my rail pass tmr such that the guy kept babbling in jap, explaining to me how to use the card. and i told him wakarimasen, eigo de ii? haha! but i still tried to use jap whenever possible. and it feels good when i was able to guess the pronunciation of certain kanji correctly. like ９号車 is pronounced as kyuu gou sha! and i was right! wee~ 

ueno!

pachinko!

our dinner!

and finally after changing for the yamanote line. 山の手線に乗り換えて, i finally see anto! yeah and then we went for our dinner somewhere nearby, and had korean bbq! quite a nice dinner for a start. and yeah started using jap from then on! fun really, and it felt really good when they understand u. but one thing bad about here is that fruits are really expensive. i bought a small box for 295円. yeah and i used my jap to ask if they sell fruits, and i dun need a plastic bag. wee~ i feel my jap tongue returning. and i love walking slowly along tokyo streets, cos it's really wide and i felt really relaxed. yeah, and it's hakodate tmr! will be another 6 hour ride! 3h of shinkansen desu!

this shall be our breakfast tmr! called first kitchen!

alright and then we moved on to greece athens! which was quite a disappointment. everything there seems so backwards! houses looked a little like slums and the cultural heritage isnt strong as most of the ruins are really ruined! but well, the highlight of greece was actually santorini and there'll be loads of photos on santorini! we took a morning ferry to santorini island which was called thira in short! and then rented this cute little vehicle called an ATV to drive around the island.

ant and i were the 2 drivers and it has really been a while since i last drove in sg. luckily, this's an easy vehicle and yes it's my first time driving up mountains! those winding roads are really daunting as i was unable to see any approaching vehicles! hahah but it was really cool driving up though many vehicles kept overtaking me as the slow ATV could only go up to a max of 50km/h on flat road and 20km/h up mountains. and we caught 2 sunsets in santorini which was really beautiful though i hate to wait for it to set cos i'm not a really patient person! there was this dinner we had on the rooftop, overseeing the sea, mountains and sunset, really really cool dinner! and it feels so relaxing, really. have nv had such nice dinner be4. and yes i had wine or beer almost every meal cos kyodai wants to drink~ haha and i think it's more fun to have ppl accompany u drink! ok so for more pictures!


at athens!


and we've reached santorini! look at the cute fat atv!


driving around on our first day there! really cool to take pictures with shades on! haha~ the sand at the beach is black due to volcano!


our first sunset! and camwhoring at that area~


yeah and travelling to the red beach. wonder why is the sand red~ cool photos we took agaiN!


the 2nd sunset we had at the northern tip of the island! and we almost holland on our way back! quite a long distance back to our hotel!


and finally! our last day in santorini at the wine museum! had a relaxing day and swam in the pool in our hotel. really nice i feel! v relaxing!

and yeah so the next trip will be to hokkaido and hopefully i can blog over there with good wifi!

yes~ am back from prague and greece and now it's time to blog a little about it! haha many things happened during the trip, it was still fun nevertheless! yeah and alright so lets continue from prague day 1! anyway we only stayed in prague for 2 days and i can conclude that things are cheaper there! the most attas meal we had was a 3900 kroners meal! and that works out to $200 meal? and we really had a loooot of food. well, actually almost every meal in this trip was attas. none was below 10 euros! haha but i love it that way! that's what travelling should be about! splurging (but of course not too extravagantly) and having fun!




and this is what we had for the attas dinner in prague!