My Lovely Friends

Wednesday, 25th of July
It wasn't surprised to find out that I was allocated in group 5: the Survey Report group (Japanese for Beginners). There were 7 of us in the class and the funny thing was everyone happened to be English speakers: David & Nicholas from UK, Manuel & Lindi from Austria, Amy from Sydney and Olivia from Perth. We often spoke English in the class because we weren't very capable of speaking fluent Japanese yet. We slowly became quite good at introducing ourselves in Japanese because we had to do it in many different occasions. I often had to explain that my family still lives in Malaysia and I only went to Australia 5 years ago for further study. Some were surprised and they would ask me if I was Muslim "=.=

Magnificent view of Kobe city taken when the weather was clear.

All of us were really motivated to improve our Japanese. We had a lot of fun and really enjoyed working with each other. During the first lesson, Tanaka-sensei who was in charge of our group tried really hard to teach us because she doesn't speak very good English. Fortunately, there were always 7-8 supporters (all Kobe university students) to help us out all the time over the 3 weeks. We actually received a lot of help throughout the program. I felt really lucky to have the chance to meet so many nice people. I seriously miss everyone T.T

::Karaoke::
The topic of our project was about Karaoke. We learnt about the history of Karaoke during the first lesson. Everyone knows Karaoke was made in Japan and it was actually invented in Kobe. It was interesting to find out that coffee can and oliver sauce were also Kobe inventions. We learnt about the inventor of Karaoke, Ino Ue-san (井上さん). In 1999, he was selected as one of 20 most influential ASIANS of the 20th century by Time magazine, along with Mao ZeDong (the red emperor), Dalai Lama (Apostle of Peace), Mohanda Ghandi (Peaceful warrior) and other brilliant people. He was also awarded an Ig nobel prize in 2004 and a film about him and Karaoke was made in 2005. Many people think that Ino Ue-san would be loaded for his invention which became so popular in Asian countries, however the truth was he didn't become rich at all. This is because he did not take out a patent for his invention (as he thought he wouldn't be able to), otherwise he would earn at least 100 billion yen. After learning so much about him, we were told that the university had arranged an interview for us with the karaoke inventor, Ino Ue-san. Everyone was so excited and as a frequent karaoke-goer, I seriously couldn't believe my luck........


Group 5: Survey report group taking picture with our supporters. Precious memories.