Wednesday, June 30, 2010

World Cup fever!

Just a snippet of the various players playing in the World Cup.


















Neko-channnnnnnnnn

UEC International House mascot ftw!!!

 
















Food adventures!!

Many different food adventures!!!!

First up is some Hello Kitty omiyage from Michael =O

 

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Fuji-Q!!!!

Fuji-Q. Awesomeness in Japan. A theme park that holds 2 Guiness World records (used to be 3).
Our trip started off with us waiting for the bus...


















Warning - Picture overload

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

World Cup

World Cup opening!!!! Most people joined in the party room for this =D

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Cooking Party June 5th!

Another cooking party!! I actually made 2 dishes on this night...
First one being....

Chicken skewers!!!! SUCCESSSSSSS



















Followed by cucumbers with sesame oil, and other stuff XD



















Success number 1



















Success number 2











Jenny's potato salad



















Naoki's something



















View of a lot of food (actually there was less food tonight, some people didn't cook)



















Sleeping Jorge











Thanks to Fang Lin and Jenny for their help with my dishes, and sorry to Fang Lin I forgot to take a picture of yours XD (but don't worry it tasted good)

MINE TASTED AWESOME quoted by all who ate my skewers *smug*

Etegami!

Etegami! E = drawing/painting, tegami = letter. A lot of us signed up for this optional class, in which we designed etegamis to send to anyone we like. It's a type of traditional Japanese artwork.

First we had to make a seal. This is the kanji for my surname, Kwan.
Traditional Chinese = 關
Japanese kanji = 関
Simplified = the one below:



















The seal was made by first drawing the outline of a rubber onto a piece of paper, use a 4B pencil and write your character for your seal, rub the end of the rubber onto the paper, then cut out the "reverse side" of the character that is now on the rubber. Understand?



















My first etegami - an owl! Fukuro desuuu.






































My second - Yakko-san! According to the teachers, Yakko-san is some kind of comedian from the old times that sang and danced.











A photo of all of the etegamis drawn yesterday.



















Jenny's - it's a splitting image XD



















Fang Lin's - yea... cool!




















Jorge with his - same smile!

Indian Curry! - Karendo

Woops! Photos in reverse order again.

Anyway, Karendo! Indian Curry (according to wiki they have this curry in Pakistan too, so apologies for any mistakes) near Chofu, recommended by many people, lead there by Jenny and ate together with Jenny and Fang Lin. DON'T STOP READING NOW, COOL STUFF AT BOTTOM!

This (actually really small) bowl of rice came with...



















This bowl of Curry Udon. Quite tasty, but not so spicy compared too...



















Kheema Curry! It looks slightly weird, but it was really tasty and really filling and quite spicy. Yum!



















Pickles of some sort.



















Salad and pickles (sorry for not rotating some of these)



















Now here comes the interesting part! The restaurant decor is amazing - it reminds me of real old-school restaurants, but not the least bit Indian/Pakistan/Japanese. It just feels really homey.



















(please rotate counterclockwise)

































Similarly for this one. (counterclockwise)



















Wednesday, June 2, 2010

NHK Open house

On Saturday the 29th, we had an "excursion" to the NHK research lab, where they had an open house of their latest technology. Notable mentions include:

Context-aware TV User Interface
Face recognition, facial expressions etc. all add to the TV experience. The TV turns on when it senses you, turns off when you leave, pauses when you read a magazine, shows the name of the actor that you point at etc. AMAZING.

Full-resolution Super Hi-Vision Camera System
According to the guide, cameras nowadays use 2 million pixels, video cameras that is. This new one has 33 million pixels, and required 4 TV panels to show the full detail.

Super Hi-Vision Theater
6o fps, 22.2 multichannel sound system and 7680 x 4320 pixels. Watched some of Kouhaku on that, and it's like you're watching people on stage. This was totally epic.

There were lots more but these stunned me the most.

There were also a series of stations where you received stamps on a piece of paper and at the end you were rewarded with some random things like the badge and phone strap below.


Random Keitai #3

Chopstick fails again!



















Another okonomiyaki night with Fadiya and Galuh at my table!






































This one is modanyaki (Modern?). Behind it is a motto modanyaki by Fadiya and Galuh... XD











A charm from Kitakyushu (heart GG)



















Epic feast at Tenya - me and Jorge had an oomori tendon udon set. Epicness. And also in the photo is Michael's fat stomach. EDIT: Note the large number of cups... Jorge and Michael drank a lot of water and we pretty much finished a bottle of the Tenya sauce on our tendons... XD











Another awesome dessert from Ministop. Mango ftw!



















Oa and Jason. Brothers from different countries. And we wore the same vest on the same day LOL (i.e. today)

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Random Keitai Photos #2

Chopstick breaking fails. First one is at Genkiya (oh I love Genkiya, why is your soup so wonderful?)



















Forget when this one was.... but epic fail.



















That's a playing card there. I flicked it from about 2 metres away and it landed perfectly! (All other 51 cards landed about less than a metre away from me on the floor)



















Gintama wootz!



















New pictures of my room! Everything is so organised *smug*