Looking back on 2004 (Part 1)

It’s 2005! While welcoming the New Year, one can’t help but feel nostalgic about the old year. For me, it’s one of the most interesting years I’ve ever had. It was spent entirely (save for the last weeks of Dec) in Japan.

In 2004, I ushered in the New Year at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine with Evelyn. We had taken an overnight bus to Tokyo, reaching there at 5.30am in the morning. Without a place to stay, we just roamed the streets or stoned at fast-food restaurants until it’s almost midnight. We queued for almost 2 hours at the shrine, wondering what the Japanese do...imagine our surprise when we found out that they queue for hours just to throw coins to make their New Year wishes! Boring countdown, or lack of it...decided that i would go to one in Spore in 2005, but ended up too lazy to go out. I don’t remember what wish I made for myself in 2004. It doesn’t matter since it was 1 year ago...hmm... I’ve yet to make my New Year wishes for 2005...

After the shrine we continued on to Disneyland at 3am. Played some silly rides in our half-asleep state, walked around, amazed at the number of Japanese who camped overnight at Disneyland after countdown...left the place at almost 4pm to check in to our hostel. We had survived almost 40hours w/o any sleep...but still had enough energy to go on a shopping spree the next day! That’s when my bought my darling piggy soft-toy.

Back from Tokyo, it’s the start of a new school semester & the start of my work at McDonalds. January was cold. I was down with flu soon after returning from the Tokyo trip. It was my only time falling sick in Japan. The only difference being sick overseas compared to Spore was having no one to fuss over me, no regular checks from parents, no “cooling” chestnut drink, no special meals. The flu medication I brought from Singapore didn’t work & I had to get it from the pharmacy in Japan. There was such a wide range of flu medication that I didn’t know which one to get ~ so randomly picked one! It worked miracles within days tho the irritating cough persisted for some time...

February was very cold. We thought January was bad, February was worse! Sometimes it’s so cold that I’d walk to school rather than cycle coz the freezing breeze would numb my ears. But I liked winter, except when it rained. I was always waiting for it to snow ~ but it only snowed 3 times last year. I still remember jumping for joy when it first snowed. It was on 20 Dec 03. I had stayed over at Evelyn’s place coz it was too cold to go home the previous night. In the morning, the surroundings were all covered with snow & it was snowing pretty heavily. We were so excited ~ started calling our friends and snap pictures & videos.

Celebrating Chinese New Year away from home was a first for me. My family sent me a parcel full of goodies. My sis even included those CNY decorations! Evelyn’s aunt bought her the “Yu-sheng” ingredients. We used salmon sashimi for it. On the eve of CNY, we held a “reunion dinner” at my apartment, our “family” being the 3 of us S’poreans, 2 Jap frds, 1 Indonesian & 1 Korean. It was very fun...I wonder how this year’s CNY will be....

Sometime in late January, after ending a long-term on/off relationship for good, I went to make my wishes on love during the CNY month. One year on, my wish is still not answered. Or rather, it’s answered in a way that I didn’t expect to, probably because I didn’t have a specific person in mind then ~ so I ended up with someone liking me but I didn’t, many guys treating me very well but none ended up as romantic interest. Hmm... if I want to try it again this year, I must have found a specific “target”, or else I’d probably end up like last year again...ok, I’ve 2 months to find that someone...

I started teaching English in February. For safety reasons, the first lesson was held at my neighbor’s place. My student was a 40 year old working adult who’s quite good in English. Preparing for lessons were easy ~ search for articles, discuss them, do dictation, with occasional listening practices as well. We often discussed about the Japanese culture & practices. And he was always eager to help me with my travel plans within Japan. I enjoyed our sessions ~ he’s more of a friend than a student. We still keep in contact via email, and recently his daughter started writing to me as well :)

February 29th was Daniel’s 20th birthday. I was not close to him, but do not know why I was so enthusiastic about organizing a birthday for him. Probably I felt sorry that he gets to celebrate it once every 4 years, and this time round he’s all alone in Japan. I knew most of his classmates, and together we held a party for him. It’s one of those rare moments that I see him so happy. We had fun too...getting him drunk! After that he sort of became part of our Spore clique.

I took up another job in March, speaking English to the customers for 1.5hrs/sesson at the English café. On average I had 2 sessions per month, so it wasn’t too taxing on my daily schedule. It was a good chance to interact with the Japanese, but it was tough having to cater to different customers’ command of English & topic interest. I finally left the job in August. Nothing significant happened in March, except for the planning of my parent’s trip to Japan in April.

It was an emotional period for me ~ the thought of meeting my mum brought back memories I’ve tucked away... I’m glad the April trip went on well. They stayed over at my place for 2 nights, and we went to Kyoto & Gamagori. It was a first for us to experience the hot spring & view the cherry blossoms. Things have been going on fine since I returned, and I hope it stays that way.My parents left just before my birthday, but not before passing me my birthday gift from my brother. Knowing that I’m bored at home, he bought me a DVD/VCD player. I was really very surprised & touched. He always seemed so bo-chup, but sometimes can be so sweet.

On my birthday I took a day’s off from McDonalds & spent the whole day nuahing at home...no celebrations, just a relaxing day at home...or so I thought... At almost 11pm my doorbell rang. What greeted me at the door was Asep with a birthday cake, and the rest of the gang. An unforgettable birthday celebration…I worked almost everyday from April onwards, sometimes holding 2 jobs a day. Sometimes I wondered why I was doing this to myself. I’m not exactly facing a financial crisis. I had enough savings to live comfortably for a year w/o having to work, but yet I’m doing this. I guess the thought of my bank account balance falling rapidly was too much for me to handle! But the more I worked, the more I spent...on travel! I spent so much on traveling that I ended up having to borrow from my dad to pay my rental. Extending my studies for another 3 months also messed up my financial plans...

Sometime in April/May, my Jap friend invited us to a fireworks gathering. We thought it was just a simple meal with a few of her friends followed by fireworks. Imagine how surprised we were to realize that it’s a big social gathering ~ a baseball team of guys & a few of their female friends. Being the only 3 foreigners there we were the “centre of attraction”. It was fun though...most of them spoke to us in Japanese while another tried to translate... Our social circle in Japan was quite limited to the youngsters at McDonalds & Japanese females then, so it was interesting to observe how the older guys interacted among themselves.

After dinner we drove to a park to play with fireworks. It’s not the right season for it, but we played with it anyway. We were like a scene out of a gangster movie ~ 8 cars fetching about 20 persons arriving one after another at the car-park. It was fun & exciting ~ our first encounter with fireworks being so close to us. But the guys kept giving us those harmless, boring little sparklers to play while they took the fireworks. And we noticed that the rest of the gals there all played with the smaller sparklers as well... let’s leave the more dangerous ones to the guys huh?