When darkness turns to light, it ends tonight. I've successfully completed my duties as a 3 day Japanese Guide. And so, it ended last night. Call me a Japanese pro? Nah, not yet. I've not mastered the language, but at least I can understand or speak choto. その余りに複雑, wakarimashita ka? hahah! No. One thing you have to know, whatever the "watashiwa", the "sumimasen" and the "ohiyo guzaimashite", those limited vocabulary Singaporeans know of Japanese words, have never been used by them. So the next time you meet a jap on the streets, don't embarass yourselves by doing that, because it doesn't work at all! Its been a really spectacular exchange programme, an eye-opener, a chance for you to learn someone else's culture and language. It may all seem foreign and uneasy to you at first, but you'll get used to it soon. Its been most interesting watching them talk among themselves in very quick and unclear japanese, you can't catch it. Plus, the tone and expressions and big actions they do, it really tickles you. Till now, I cannot forget the 実際に *shows face in ultimate disbelief and curiousity*. Well, ready or not, this is gonna be a long post, because there's just so much to say, but somethings are better off left within memories. When the opposites meet And so, it was DAY 1. We were practically sitting in LT2 rotting and testing out sound systems. Well, we opened the sound control room and started kicking the systems and pushing every button up and down, on and off, pulling out plugs and inserting in-puts. Kudos to AVA crew. I really don't know how the f*ck it works. Rupertlover89 and I (brenybear89) had our usual crap and it was finally 1.30pm. "lets get these teen hearts beating faster, faster". The entire group was hoping for some kind of Kaneshiro or Kimura, while I, a Brendon Urie and jeanette a Ryan Ross. There came the bus. The japs alighted. The at-first-excited us and them suddenly went tongue-tied and we just stared at opposite sides, flashing a fake smile, like World War III. Wow, it was hell of a group. First things first, all eyes scanned around for a potential, I noticed most of them wore surfer t-shirts, while Ruperlover89 spotted a RYAN ROSS. WTFF! RYAN ROSS MADE IN JAPAN?? haha! But heck. We were too busy trying to interact with them, and didn't really take a good look at the rest. Besides starting of with a [ HI! HAJINI MASHITEH CHARLENE DES. Namae Wa, Nan des ka? ] , we found that it was all we could say. Here comes introduction barrier #1. On the other hand, they were trying very hard to understand us as well, and to reply in English. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. haha! So, we did what we did best again, that is flashing fake smiles and nodding our heads slightly. I guess the school tour and speeches didn't work as well, it was all in English and the translator had to constantly do his job. We played icebreakers, which although 15mins only, it was rather funny yet frustrating. We were supposed to arrange them on a bench without touching the ground according to certain criteria. First was height. (well, wasn't so bad as it could be shown in actions and to begin with, my group already stood in height order) haha! Then came shoe size ( we were struggling real hard to show what shoe size, 靴のサイズ meant. honestly, i did all i could, you can imagine how dumb we all looked. but still, they didn't get it. luckily the translator came to our rescue *phew*) Lastly, it was birthdate. Wow, I would say japanese are definitely honest. Despite being so (nan nu shou shou bu qing) meaning the boys and girls refrained from even touching each other, they didn't lie about their birthdates, even when they knew they had to go right to the front/back. And I didn't know jan-dec had their own unique names in japanese. haha. Therefore, it was another killer stage. They would tell you all weird sorts of numbers when asked for the month. When I got quite tickled yet at loss of what to do, I turned to the next group to ask for help. It was then, I saw the FIRST POTENTIAL, Mr Mitsumura. (who happened to be in Ruperlover89's team, while her Ryan Ross was in mine). At performance time, they sang a famous jap song. Awww...they all looked so shy, holding the lyrics book and lookin down on the floor, so afraid to lift up their heads. They also did a school introduction in both english and japanese, and trust me when I said the english version was as good as not having it =) but they tried their best, so applause! Luckily for the jap version, it was done by the same boy I saw, only then did he introduce himself as Yasutaka. Waheyy, this was going to be an adventure. At least there was ONE. Apparently, there was also a emo boy, who wore red and black striped shirt and his hair was WOW, JAP EMO. (and no, audrey, not your kind of emo! :D) haha! Aiya, basically, throughout our Singapore presentation, we were busy commenting on all of them. The girls themselves were very adorable and some unique. The most embarassing thing during the ceremony was...they had something to give us, but we had nothing to give them. They had a really grand gift imported from japan, wrapped in a FRAGILE! labelled huge box for us, yet, all we gave them was a...forget it, I rather not say. At the end of the introduction crap, and the breath-taking (in a bad way) communication barrier, which only ended up in nods and "OH YES (es)", all I could understand was "harry potter", "avril lavigne", "inuyasha" and all that manga shit. haha! Off they went to HOME VISIT for dinner,while ruperlover89 and I set off to hunt our day 2 locations. PART II, to be continued....
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