「オペラ座の怪人」映画を観に行った。
なんだか懐かしい！観てて鳥肌がたってた・・・
実際のミュジカルは観たことないけど、子供の頃からPhantom of The OperaのCDを聴いてて、大ファンだった！Phantomの音楽は、脚本家Andrew Lloyd Webberが当時の奥さんのSarah Brightmanのために作曲したんだそうだね。Labour of Love というのかな？＾＾
ソプラノのSarah Brightmanもすごい！彼女の声は３オクターブの音域を持っているんだね。最近、彼女の新アルバム、「Harem」というアラブ系の音楽を聴いてる。
やっぱりすごいボイス！オススメ！
Happy Birthday to Mayu!
We went to Bangkok Kitchen in Jiyugaoka to celebrate…
Great food as always!
A mouthful of goodness!
Fresh shrimp in a tangy sauce and spices with a huge slice of garlic.
A whole row of them, each prettily decorated in a tiny plate. Yummy!
Today, I had to stand up All Day in a booth in the freezing COLD JR Ueno Station, mostly explaining to old obasan’s and ojisan’s about highly technical issues like the directions to The Nearest Toilet and stuff, all in my Broken Japanese!
It was damn fun!! ^^
Well, I was there for technical support. But we had no technical difficulties whatsoever with the system. So I ended up helping out with the operators doing new user registrations and answering questions. Yeah, right! In my Broken Japanese! But anyway, most of the people who came to our booth were asking compeletely unrelated questions like where the nearest ATMs were and stuff. ^^p
It was really fun though! I haven’t done too much work where I had to interact directly with the customers like this. There were all sorts of people! Some were really timid and you have to hold their hands and walk them through the whole registration process one step at a time. There were also some angry ojisan’s who were probably in a perpetual bad mood! And there was even one drunk dude who just wanted to draw random pictures on our brochures…
OK, so it was a small one made of stone.
And we didn’t exactly fight till death…
But it was cool anyway, and it made my day. ^^
You know how visitors to the USA feel like they’re “In America!” when they see the Statue of Liberty?
In Japan, it’s the Statue of Godzilla!
Well, not really. ^^
Some sort of Tokyo City Improvement Campaign.
Anyway, they had a booth in Ginza, and I WON a T-Shirt!
It has the “I LOVE NEW TOKYO!” words on it!
Yay!
OK. No big deal.
Just wanted to blog about something other than food for once. ^^p
After the Taiko Concert we all went to get some food in a nearby Izakaya called “Chanto” (ちゃんと).
They have really cool looking food!
This is fish! Really! Kinda um, glamorous (?)… ^^
Great looking dessert #1: Fried Banana & Ice Cream.
Great looking dessert #2: Cheesecake surrounded by BLUE Flames.
Umm, yeah, what’s wrong with having more than 1 dessert?? ^^
Went to watch a Japanese Taiko Concert — the famous Za Ondekoza.
An impressive show of strength and stamina!!
Just the way they sit on the floor requires so much stomach muscle strength, I probably wouldn’t last longer than 10 seconds. Not to mention having to bang on them Taiko’s for like an hour making cool rhythm. Damn. I heard the members of Za Ondekoza trained for stamina by first running a full marathon, and then another round of full marathon. Madness.
(Photos in this entry are from the official site. See more here)
Valentine’s Day in Japan.
A day for the guys to receive chocolates from the girls.
Yup.
Girls Give.
Guys Receive.
A little messed up.
But great for the guys anyway. ^^
(Caveat: have to return them on White Day next month…)
Thank you for the chocolates!
Some are from deep in the heart…
The best *namachoko* I’ve ever had!
(Very late entry…)
A day in Singapore on my way back from Jakarta to Tokyo.
Well, one day is Too Damn Short!!! It was so depressing. I mean, I spent a whole 6 years of my teenage years in Singapore! And those growing up days are a BIG part of me. I do miss Singapore and all my friends here. When you grow up in a foreign country far from your family, your friends become like your family too. *sigh* Unfortunately there was nothing much I could do. One can only take so much vacation. Plus all those other commitments etc. So in the end, I could only squeeze less than 24 hours in Singapore to meet a limited number of old friends.
(For some of my friends in Singapore whom I didn’t manage to contact, really very sorry!!! Why not come and visit me in Tokyo instead? ^^)
Jintong, Shuyun & Derek, thank you for picking me up at the airport!
The schedule up to that day was so hectic I couldn’t even plan properly, and could barely drop an email saying what time I will arrive, and yet you guys… *sniff* I haven’t seen you guys for like what, 8 years?
Derek called up the rest of the guys. And we all went to a hawker center somewhere in the middle of Singapore for dinner.
Close friends, great food, relaxed atmosphere. Hanging out with The Kahkee’s and the Chobo’s! Hehe! ^^
A dragon dance troop! Passed by right next to us.
It’s Chinese New Year this week! And CNY is BIG in Singapore!
Lots of decorations and celebrations.
You can just feel the festive atmosphere in the air…
And then, one of our favourite pastimes in Singapore too:
Karaoke! Screaming our lungs off ^^
It was really great hanging out and catching up.
Kinda wished I was still living in Singapore. I feel like this everytime I visit. Maybe someday I will come back…
Tok kok sing song play mahjong (except the last part)! ^^
So much fun!
Thanks guys, for everything…
THE FOOD
And of course, some photos of famous food from Singapore…
Satay + Lontong!!! This is great! ^^
The famous Chicken Rice from Singapore.
There are actually sooo many more that I wanted to eat while in Singapore! But my stomach can only contain so much… Hehe ^^
Late that night after Karaoke, we went to eat Roti Prata. Prata + Teh Tarik + Close Friends. The best combination for supper… one of the indulgences in Singapore that I will miss so much…
It was like a competition! My dad wanted to show off what great seafood you can have in Indonesia. So he brought us to The Best, The Most Famous and The Most Expensive International-style seafood restaurant in Jakarta. I, of course, just happily tagged along. Hehe… ^^
Good seafood is all about the freshness of the ingredients. So before we enter the restaurant, we had to choose from the stacks and stacks of aquariums .
There were all kinds…
We chose our LOBSTER:
Believe it or not, this, was in fact one of the ’smaller’ ones. ^^;
We asked the chef to prepare the lobster into two different dishes:
Lobster Sashimi, and…
The head and legs cooked into:
Tom Yam Lobster Soup!
It’s Goooood! ^^
And then, as if that weren’t enough, we picked a few huge crabs filled with eggs and all that crab goodness, and had them prepared into a sweet and spicy dish:
Chili Crab & Man Dou
Wow.
I had about four of those crab legs… *burp* ^^