A day trip to Yokohama

Sunday June 12th I went to Yokohama with Yue Min and Tomoko for a visit to my guarantor. Guarantor is a person who is either Japanese, or foreigners residing in Japan, that acts as your representative between you and the university. Most of the universities in Japan requires you to have a guarantor in order to apply. And not many are willing to be guarantors for it is rather troublesome too. I am lucky that under some senior's help, I manage to get a guarantor. His wife came to Narita to pick me up on the day of my arrival, driving nearly 2 hours all the way from Yokohama, and another 4 hours to Hachioji. My guarantor, Mr Ozaki, however, was busy that day so he wasn't able to come. So this time, I travel to Yokohama to pay this family whom I am greatly indebted to for being in Japan, a visit.

We took the Yokohama Line direct from JR Hachioji station straight to Shin-Yokohama. Once we arrived, we went around looking for my guarantor, and one young man with a girl came and approached us. Appears that he is Mr Ozaki, and the girl is his eldest daughter. I was kinda surprised really...I expected somebody older actually haha, he looks like he is in his thirties.

So we got into his car, where his wife and two daughters are around too, and went to Kanagawa Kaikan. We also visited the Toda Peace Memorial Hall and later the park right opposite it, which is next to the Yokohama Harbour. It is a hot day really. But it was fun. I saw lots of dogs around, wearing t-shirts and even sunglasses! Japanese really love their dogs. Later when we walked further there was a man doing a street performance. He was funny, and skillful in juggling fire. We are really entertained hehe..

Time for lunch...for that, we head to the Yokohama Chinatown, which is off walking distance. We had Chinese food there, a type of buffet style where we need to pay a certain amount of money per person, and then you just order from the menu whatever you want. Of course, Mr Ozaki was the one who picked up the tab. Free chinese feast...I miss Chinese food. So I ate quite a lot. I also took the opportunity to eat grape fruits which is unavailable in Malaysia (and fruits are very expensive in Japan) and also had come ice-cream. Oohh...it was a really filling lunch.

Later we head back to Mr Ozaki's home to rest a while, as he himself had a speech to do somewhere. By the way, he is a Komei-to politician. So me, my friends, his wife and his daughters walked to the nearby shopping centre and do some grocery shopping and desert (cake) shopping. Then we head home and prepare some homemade temaki sushi, which is really really nice. First a filling lunch, now a filling dinner. I think I eaten enough for a week!

By the time I am back in my dorm, it was nearly 10pm. I got a headache after that, but it was worth the day...so had an early night sleep. It was a great fun day...