Slam Dunk 2012: A Birthday Special

It's definitely been awhile. So what am I up to? What's with the silent treatment? Nothing much actually except I bought myself some Photobooks. Again. And am busy at work. Again. 

The funny thing is sometimes I get all worked up and motivated over the entire process. Picking photos, arranging them, putting words into them, etc. And then suddenly in the middle of it all, I just feel what a self-indulgence this is. I mean it's actually nothing more than syok sendiri. Yes, they're going to be awesome memory books and all, so what? 

It's funny how you can get from one emotion to another so quick.

Like how this suppose-post about my birthday spontaneously ended up 

being a post about my conflicting self. O_O

Alright. Back to the topic, shall we?

This year I decided to tune it up. Literally. Like let's just not eat to celebrate. Let's eat... and sing to celebrate! Oh dear, me singing? When Cik Datang found out about it she cynically asked if it rained. Cis! But yeah, it was different and because of that, we have a different set of photo memories to cherish this year.

But the best shot of the night has to be this!

Papa singing/trying to be Aerosmith. 

Yup, my papa is awesome. *hearts*

Well, karaoke happened few days before my actual birthday 

just so we can celebrate with little sis while she's home. 

On the actual birthday itself, well, I have to go to work. Boo.

But I received this at work. Yay!

A gift from Cik Datang. Eco(nomical)-friendly wrapped in a printed recycled paper 

with ribbon drawn on top. As expected from an Art Director.

Well, inside this gift bag was...

... a little bag! 

And inside this little bag...

... was a big bag!

Talk about a bag of surprises. :)

As a "Ohayo-Arigatou-Hai" Japanese-influenced lady that I am 

(though recently I've been splashed by the Korean wave), 

my other fellow colleagues generously treated me out to...

Duh. A Japanese lunch.

Where strangely has *ahem* an interesting selection of magazines.

Anyhow, I enjoyed my big bowl of Muscle Noodle, I mean Mussel Ramen.

And managed to shoot a Samsung Galaxy S2 ad at the same time.  

Group shot! Thank you guys!

As if muscle-filled lunch was not yummy enough...

...in came a precious box of sweeeeet memories!

A gift from dearest Cubbie who is one of the few who know about my longstanding love for Slam Dunk. She was worried that it was a bit old school but to me, that just show we go way back. (Though still not long enough if you ask me) Let's go for another 10, 20, 30 years and beyond, eh Cubbie? *hearts*

To end this special day with a special cake.

It's really special in that papa even made an effort to order it the day before. Haha. Sure it's no secret recipe but I am still very much touched by the effort especially since we usually buy a cake off the shelve every year. I told papa that I don't need an expensive dinner treat or anything but just a good cake. I love cakes! Like LOVE. And this Blueberry Cake (though very unexpected in choice... haha) was very very deliciousssss! Thank you papa, and mummy, too of course. Which reminds me, where's my sister in all these? Cis cis!

My nine precious cupcakes was kept in the fridge until the weekend when I finally had the time to give them the attention they deserve. Took a good amount of photos of each of them to store in my great memory bank. :)

And for that, here's the last shot for this year's oh-my-gawd-i'm-getting-older occasion.

Happy Birthday to me!

A Japanese Summer: Chapter Ten

Homestretch baby!

*grins*

Yes. This is the final post for the long and running, soon to be bored to death "A Japanese Summer" series.

Or is it?

Alrighties. From the mountains to the sea. We saw them all. No tour group could have let us see what we saw, go where we went, stay where we stayed, experience what we experienced, all around Japan, within two weeks. Oh, and on the budget we're on. Heh.

So here we were on our very last day in Japan. Our flight was scheduled for the evening which meant we still have half a day worth of sightseeing. Yes. Precious time must not be wasted. We packed our luggage the night before and took them all with us weee early in the morning and stuffed them in gigantic lockers at the train station and we took off to the beach!

We headed to Kanagawa prefecture, or personally to me, the land of Slam Dunk. If you know me, you'll know how much of a Slam Dunk fan I was back in high school. I dare not claim to be an avid anime/manga fan because I know I am not qualified to be one but there's no denying how invested I was in Slam Dunk when I was all teenage boppery boo.

Cubbie being more of a manga/anime/cosplay fan than I am, was even more eagered to head to where we were headed. To the 40th anniversary celebration grounds of Shonen Jump. Yes, that's the manga magazine that made it all happened. Sorta like the Kreko, Starz or whatsoever local manga magazine we have here in Malaysia, except like bigger, massively influential and probably one of the pioneers in the industry.

Oh my! Long intro. Sorry.

Behold the station that's gonna take us to our destination. You know you're on the right track (lame pun) because the entire train station was decorated with all things manga.



Hanging banners.



Panel boards.



Rounded posters? :P



And even gigantic sample pages of the actual manga!





Meet Mr Trainmaster at work.


Cik Datang commented that it's amazing how my shots tend to be tourists- and crowds-free. It's almost like I get them to make way for my photos. Well, would you believe me if I told you I'm standing right next to Mr Trainmaster then?

Watch Mr Trainmaster nagivate through the backlanes of houses. Yes. There's literally no walking space between the houses and the tracks. Imagine opening the window at the back of your house and have a train zooming across just like that. o_O






And from backlanes to the middle of the road.





Video!





And finally, we saw the beach! With itsy bitsy surfers. Took this shot specifically for Mr Skimmer Dude. Dude was impressed alright.







Video again for some real life action. *grins*






Eh?! Hawaii?


*grins*

The entire atmosphere of the area had a very "beach bummer" feel to it. Well-tanned dudes running along the beach. *blushes* Hahaha... bikini-clad ladies? Maybe. Wasn't paying too much attention. Forgive me, I was very much distracted okay?




Even the little cafe we entered was all aloha-ish.



I don't get this SPAM and GUM SYRUP.
Like woot?!? Gum Syrup? o_O



Naturally, food was not Japanese at all. Ice coffee and hotdog. Dude!

Double Dude!

"By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea...."
Excuse my ugly looking pouch.

And then, here's us being all dorky. :P

The Venue. Somewhere along the beach.

Hello Mr Dragonball. The entire setting was pretty small actually. It was a little disappointing as we were expecting something more grand for such an affair.

Anyhow, we still squeeze every good bit of it. Tried my luck and attempted a kaa-cha-pon here. Got myself an Ichigo. HAHAHA. Not bad I say. Of all the characters in there, I got myself the silly lead. Not bad at all. The perfect gift for my sister, an avid Bleach fan.

Another shot of the beach before we head back to Tokyo. *sobs*
Which meant it's almost time to go home.

My last meal in Japan. A treat from Yenyin! We met up with her again at the train station to say our goodbyes. Lots of hugs and farewell gifts. Yenyin got us each a pen and a flower. Aww... yes, that's the flower you see on the blog header right on top. Pretty and I might be bias about this but even flower from Japan seemed to last longer. ^^;; It totally stood fresh and pretty for over a week even after I got home.

That's me all sadface to go home. Hahaha... we took a shot of each other posing like that right in the middle of the airport. Memang sad to leave mah. We then got the idea of sending postcards! Totally random but that's just who we are. So we headed over to the airport post office, bought us some stamps and scribbled away on our postcards. Sent one to godmom and shared another with Cubbie to send our thanks back to Yenyin. *grins* I had previously sent one home while I was in Hokkaido.

Time for Departure.

And then we arrived at Changi Airport, Singapore in the middle of the night, about one in the morning. Our connecting flight back to Penang was at 8am. So we had the entire crowdless airport to ourselves for over 5 hours. Wondering around aimlessly, visiting the media / entertainment lounge and finally catch our fourty winks on the sofa while watching Everybody Loves Raymond. XD

Breakfast on board!

And we touch down homeland. *sobs* With that, I guess "A Japanese Summer" has finally come to an end. Remember what I've said about "No holiday plans till I had a proper closure for this"?
Well. It's about time. *winks*

It's Alive!

One and a half month into the new year and I finally got my first post up. (which now has turned to the second post, no thanks to the unofficial first post here *frowns*) Woot woot. I so fail at blogging. Then again, there was really nothing much to blog about in January. It was all about cleaning, cleaning and well, more cleaning. Oh! But I did capture some good old memories while cleaning.

A handmade card from sis back when she was... umm still unable to spell correctly.

"So I going to say tank for or the love and the thing that you tot me. Say everytime you and your big mouth owes tal daddy what I do. So I stal love you. So I going to wise you a Merry Christmas."

AWWWW!!

"Oh sis, let me tal you, I wil owes love you too!"

And then I found this! Dominos missed me!

Double AWWWW......

Who says cleaning is a chore? Okay, maybe it is but it's also sentimental when you go digging out old stuff like these in the midst of all that cleaning.

BUT

BUT

BUT!

When you are forced to get rid of stuff, that's when cleaning becomes a pain in the... heart! *ouch* T__T

No more VCR player and bye bye video tapes.

More Awwwwwwwwwww!

My Slam Dunk series! Almost all 93 episodes of it recorded in these tapes. So I might never get to watch them through these tapes again. Yes I can get digital formats of these. But nothing brings back memories than these old dusty tapes. *sobs* And so I kept half of them. =P Hahaha... it's a give-take win-win situation. Dad get his additional drawer space, I get my memories. Or at least half of them. Boo!

Slam Dunk was/is my epic anime aka teenage memory. I had wet eyes watching the last episode. I mean come on, who cry over an anime about basketball? Me. *blushes* But then again it was my love for Slam Dunk that got me into exploring the world wide web, which led me to learn about creating a fan site and thus, I gained basic knowledge of html way before I left school for college. Hah! That's how significant the series is to me. And yes, I do own the complete set of manga, too. And a 1000 pieces jigsaw puzzle, a big cloth poster hanging behind the door and cute little miniature model of the players. And and, stickers and and... poker cards! Woot?! Hahaha...

They might all be covered with a layer of dust now but these are memories. My memories. Boy do I feel nostalgic.