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Perhaps some information on me before I start. I've been slogging at Japanese for a while now and since I started, I've never been back to Japan. (Yes, went once when I was in my crazy-over-anime/manga-phase) I am mostly motivated by the food and then the culture. It's really not easy to learn a language from scratch and I'm still struggling.
The school sent out an email asking for applications to JENESYS 2.0. If you're in university, you should keep a lookout for such events! This isn't the first time I've seen something that lets you go to Japan in my mailbox. This caught my eye because I was really desperate to get out of this country for a short break. The past year has been hectic for me. I've overloaded for an entire academic year and I want to recommend people NOT to do this. It really affects your GPA and your general well-being. Please make sure you plan out how many modules you have to take before you start university!
Back to JENESYS, firstly...what is JENESYS 2.0?
JENESYS 2.0 is an initiative launched by the Japanese Government (it is endorsed by Shinzo Abe) in conjunction with AEC (ASEAN Economic Community) Youth Network and JICE (Japan International Cooperation Center). In the hopes of building good bonds between ASEAN and Japan, youths from ALL the ASEAN countries are selected and sent to Japan to experience Japanese culture, history and life.
All the travel costs (airfare, food, accommodation etc) are covered by the Japanese government so I really lucked out. Of course, it's not for free. At the end of the week in Japan, you will have to do an Action Plan Presentation. For my batch, it was "How to Preserve Your Country's Culture In The Face of Modernity" after learning from Japan (and boy, do we have a lot to learn!)
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I left for Japan on a JAL flight to Narita on 26th May. To be honest, I signed up for this program without knowing anybody. We were divided according to our majors and if you can't already tell from my blog entries, I'm not fantastic at socialising. I'm an introvert and I really like my alone time. So, I checked-in alone and waited alone and took the flight alone (next to my group mates..who I didn't know were my group mates at that time). However, to my immense surprise, I came out of it with a whole bunch of international friends...and we still keep in touch till this day.
It was actually the first time I've traveled without a clear and concise plan on how things will turn out. I went to Narita Airport and the people I spoke to had no idea what was going on either. But, luckily for us, JENESYS 2.0 is a big thing. The moment we got off the plane (and I mean this, I literally stepped off the plane) we were ushered as a group to clear customs and pick up our baggage. If the fact that we got an entire row of check-in counters dedicated to us at Changi wasn't important enough, this sealed the deal.
We were picked up at Narita and then ushered onto buses by country. The Singaporeans filled an entire bus comfortably and we were given further instructions as well as rooming arrangements. I did make friends with Sherrie who turned out to be heading to the same place that I was - Nara - although she was in a different group. I ended up rooming with Jocelyn, who was a business student going to Aichi (completely different region from Nara which is in the Kansai area). Since we were short on time, they gave us packed lunches to eat in our rooms before we had to assemble again in our specific groups. Each group consisted of 30 students, with 3 students from the 10 ASEAN countries each.
Seeing how this was Japan, I had high expectations for my lunch
Mamee Instant Noodles + Potato Salad Sandwich (good) + Sweet Potato snacks coated in Caramel (weird) + banana
...which failed me. I think because the organisers had to work around the Halal standards, they didn't have much offerings from the nearest possible packed food store (Lawsons in the hotel basement). That was my only complaint from Day 1. I barely touched my lunch. The potato salad sandwich was good but the instant noodles? Meh.
After assembling, we got on the bus again to head to for a briefing. It was very basic on simple routine things. It was however, my first briefing on earthquake safety. As Japan is still suffering from aftershocks, they felt that it was important that we were well-prepared to handle any vibrations should we encounter it (We didn't.) We were then instructed to seat in our specific groups. My group was Group G and we were all heading to Nara. They grouped us by majors so all the arts majors were together and everybody in my group majored in something arts-related. I guess you can imagine the amount of noise/singing/dancing that went on whenever there was a free moment. There was never a dull moment in my group - even from the first day, which was really great.
Our first meeting as a group was very simple. We were introduced to our coordinator - Yamashita Kumi. She insisted on all of us calling her Yama-san instead of Yamashita-san because her name basically means below the mountain. Apparently, she didn't like it as much and figured Yama (Mountain) would've been better. Our group also had a supervisor, June, a Thai from AEC to ensure the program ran smoothly but we never felt that she was a supervisor. She was always game to join us in our activities. We got a group leader, Singly (from Cambodia) and a co-group leader, Benny (from Malaysia) as well as a flag bearer (Stephen)
Here's our flag with our group colours (Grey)
That's Stephen! Hi! (Also photo taken by Karin)
The program took our well-being extremely seriously. We had a person in charge of the hand sanitizer (aptly from Kirei Kirei) and thermometers to take our temperature every single morning before we departed on our activities.
At the venue, I saw this poster...
...which broke my heart because it was really so near yet so far. It would've been amazing to go for an exhibition about Natsume Soseki.
Like I said, it was a short meeting and we headed back to the hotel after that for dinner. We were staggered by countries to eat in the restaurant downstairs. Because I am a bottomless pit, I had to get myself a pre-dinner snack with my favourite drink.
That's cuttlefish sashimi and Calpis. I love both *_*
Here's something special I had for my dinner on the first day.
This is bonito. Yes, like bonito from the bonito flakes you find on top of your takoyaki.
We had a very early dinner because we needed to pack our luggage to send over to Nara the first thing in the morning. We were taking the bullet train (Shinkansen) which was not made to hold 120 people's giant luggages. Good thing I bought a backpack with me. I regretted bringing the smaller one though, it meant that I couldn't shop in Tokyo due to my lack of space. I didn't want to carry 6 bags on the Shinkansen and struggle with them throughout the journey.
Other than that, I stayed at Hotel Nikko Narita for the first day and the hotel room was good! I say this from somebody whose last travel included slumming it out in hostel rooms that had shower doors that were shorter than me and/or extremely budget hotels that had no attached toilets/no fans of any sort. The room was clean and it had all the necessary toiletries (shampoo, toothbrush etc) Their face wash that they provided was Shisedo too! :O The best thing about it was that there was a direct bus to Narita City Centre and the AEON Mall to fulfill your last minute shopping needs. There's also a direct shuttle bus to the airport too so it's definitely much easier for you to head there instead of traveling all the way from central Tokyo.
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Hotel Nikko Narita
