7th Week - Saturday (230208) Chilly Experience

Finally attended my second jap lesson after 5 weeks of absent. Haha! Yamasaki sensei was still teaching the class and my name was still there! This time round, I managed to make friends from Italy, Thailand and Germany, with the second half of the class being China people sitting at the other side. Hehe... All of us got to present our points for some simple questions and I managed to learn a few more vocabs. The challenging part about the lesson is that it is being taught completely in japanese! Could not catch all the words that Yamasaki-san was saying but could roughly understand what she wants us to do or the terms she wanna explain to us... :)

Me and my international friends at the Jap class...

After the class ended at 3pm, I started the recce to my new workplace. But before this, I cycled to the kaikan shop to look for some postcards. The kaikan shop was located just opposite the kaikan, at the other side of Hiroshima Eki and this is the second time I'm exploring that place. Everywhere looked very new and fresh to me. I cycled in and out of the small alleys and narrow streets instead of the main road and without me knowing, I was somewhere near the kaikan! Hehe...


As I entered, I introduced myself to the staff and asked for the postcards. But they told me there was no cards for sale. Hence, I crossed the road and entered the kaikan and inside, there's another shop selling books and again, there are no postcards. Haha... But I noticed that there's a small corner selling English books and I saw the English version of the NHR and 'The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra'! (But let me finish up reading the books in my room first. :)) While browsing through the books, I heard a strong chanting sound from the corner at the other side. I went to see and noticed it was a chanting room! I felt very tempted and decided to go in and chant! I think the room was 60% the size of our Pine room in SCC and it feels like someone's house with the tatami mats and not like our rooms back in Singapore! I chanted for 20 minutes before leaving and getting on with my recce.


When I came out of the kaikan at 4.15pm, it started snowing! But anyway, I still cycled and about 30 minutes later, I saw this very big shopping centre and detoured in as I saw my favourite supermarket - Jusco. This shopping centre is called Diamond City and the building structure is similar to our IMM, just that it is bigger with more facilities. The only bad thing about Japan for now is that there are no food courts. Everywhere you see are individual restaurants selling only their specialised food. I only explored the supermarket and brought my coming week's groceries in Aeon Mall (similar to our Giant). Will explore the whole shopping the next time. :) As I left the mart, to my surprise, it was snowing very heavily! This was the first time I'm witnessing such a heavy snowpour and it seemed like a snow storm to me. Haha... I took out my camera and wanted to take some shots but arrghh! Low Batt! I forgot to charge my camera!!! This might be the first and last time I'm seeing this in Japan and no pictures for it! Sianz... But anyway, I went to get my bicycle and cycled in the pouring snow...

I cycled for another one hour until I met a deadend. It's an upslope and there's no space for cyclist to travel with the narrow single lane. So I turned back and decided to try another route. The snow storm was on and off, turning from small to heavy and back so many times. At some instances, the snow was so heavy that visibility was very poor with the snow keep on hitting my eyes. My whole jacket was like 60% covered with snow and I kept sweeping off the snow on it, if not i might become a snowman. Haha... But the feeling was good to have the opportunity to cycle and appreciate the falling snow at the same time. At least I won't go back to Singapore with regrets (just that no photos to show for it).


But now it was already dark at 6 plus and after around 3 hours of cycling and without my gloves on (cause I did not bring them out as the afternoon then was still warm), my hands were numb and I could not really feel and control them. At one point, I stopped to tie my shoelaces but my hands were so stiff that I could not even bend, let alone tieing my laces!!! Hence I just slipped the shoelaces inside my shoes and decided to go home straight.

The beautiful snow scene outside my apartment...

The heavy snowpour throughout the night...

It took me around 30 minutes to defrost my hands back in my apartment and during this time, I could not even write! I can just hold a pen and simply could not write anything!!! But after that, my hands returned to normal and I had a warm meal to keep myself cosy in my room. What a chilly experience it was today!!!