hOMe
aBoUt mE
deCemBEr 2001
JanUArY 2002
fEBrUArY 2002
mARcH-ApRiL 2002
PiX
mOrE piX
LaTEsT sNipPetS
guEsT bOoK
LinX
LyRics oF ThE wEeK
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jaNuaRy 2002
One of the greatest months in my life!!!
A lot of cool things happened during this month. Chek them out!
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Seijinshiki (Jan 14)
Seijinshiki is a 'coming of age' celebration in Japan. The local goverment invited people who just turned 20 to join the celebration in a public hall or I even heard that the local government where the Tokyo Disney Land is, held this ceremony in Tokyo Disney Land.
You can see pretty girls dressed up in their best kimono (specially bought for this occasion), or young men in their suits or traditional outfit called hakama.
This year, our friends from 'Chiba-Indonesia Society' invited us to see the ceremony which was held at Chiba Minato-port on January 14th 2002. My friends Santi, Vita, and Windy took a lot of pics with the beautifully dressed girls and cute guys in hakamas. (Santi, Vita, and Windy are picture freak!! They would take a picture of anything anytime!)
The funny thing was, Matt, our friend from Canada, was also invited to this ceremony because he just turned 20 this year. But he was too shy (shy, huh? :p) to join the celebration so he decided just to watch it from a far. Thank God we came cuz I bet he'd be clueless, considering he's the only foreigner who got invited to the ceremony. So once again, the Indonesian girls saved the day!!!
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One Night Home Stay Program (Jan 19-20)
For this one day home stay program, I get to stay at Morimoto family's house at Kisarazu (about half an hour by train from Chiba station). The family was very nice, I like them a lot!
First, there's the mother (48). She's very well knowledged about Asian languanges and she's very nice and has a sunny disposition so we got along fine in no time at all. We talked about a lot of things and she was eager to learn things about Indonesia.
Then there was the first son, Taishi (21). He's about my age so we didn't have any problem finding topics to talk about. He's a bit on the serious side, but I could see that he's a very good big brother.
The second son, Mitsutake (18)is great! (He and his mother are my favorite, actually) At first he seemed a bit reserved, but after we found a good topic to talk about, we just couldn't stop talking. He likes movies just as I like movies, and he has a great sense of humor, he even talked to me into teaching him some weird Indonesian phrases to tease his mom.
Then there was Ibu (13), the only daughter in the family. She was a bit shy at the beginning, but after a while she and I could talk about lots of things.
The father of the family doesn't live together in Kisarazu since he has to work in Matsue (an hour by plane from Chiba). That was too bad, cuz I bet the father would be an interesting person too.
The best thing about this family is that each of the member has such a warm relationship with each other. I could see that by the way they joke around and by the way the brothers treated their sister and vice versa.
Anyway, I had a wonderful time with the Morimotos, and they invited me to come back and stay at their house again sometime in the future. I think I won't pass that offer! |
Me and my host family the Morimotos! |
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Our Last Japanese Class for This Semester (Jan 25)
For the last Japanese class this semester, Ms. Nanba, our teacher, gave us a task to do a debate (in Japanese of course) in a group. It was quite fun actually. My group (Me, Okaku, Jenny, Tom, and Endah) decided to pick 'mobile phone' as our topic.
The theme of the debate was: "Does having a mobile phone really enriched you life?" Me and Okaku were in the affirmative team, and Tom and Jenny were our opositions. The debate was done for about 40 minutes, and I think that we've done a very good job on doing it. And of course, Tom and I were very loud and opinionated at that time. But of course my team won. :p |
My class mates. From left to right: Jenny, Endah, Nanba-sensei (My teacher), Tom, Me, Amy, Inur, Windy, Lois, Doug, and Taufiq. |
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