Or a puppy. Or a bunni. Whatever. I actually perfer bunni. It’s cuter. But somehow a bunni in Japan is very likely to give people a wrong impression. So i typed hamster.

Anyway, i dunno how it works in school nowadays, but if i’m allowed to write my essay with tons of pictures slot in between words, i for sure can score this “My Life as a Hamster in Japan” essay.

For once i feel like turning my blog into one of those– this morning i had yaki onigiri with umeboshi on top, and then i went online and chatted with Carolyn, she told me her cousin’s uncle want to introduce me to his godson. I wonder if the godson has got smelly feet. We loled. And then i listened to MEG’s Beautiful. I love that song. And then about 3pm i opened a pack of Jagabee potato chips, it is slightly salted one. It is nice and crispy. Now my left knee is a bit itchy. I think i got bitten by a mosquito. Ok i am going off to pachinko now, bye xoxo– blogs.

I really don’t have much interesting things to blog about, just in case you are expecting some, screw-Lonely-Planet-and-read-my-26-day-complete-guide-in-Japan thing.

(By the way i don’t get paid by writing Omg Cheesie’s Professional Guide to Travel in Japan! okay. Hmm. Well, i kinda do, but you know what i mean. Hmm.)

I am locking myself up in the room most of the time. When TK’s at work. So I’m like his little pet hamster. He comes back and feeds me during lunch time and then plays with me. Nom nom nom nom.

Chow of the day choice A. (Look i don’t even have a table. It is put on the carpet and i will sit on the floor and eat. I mean, nibble. Gnaw. Whatever.)

(Erm… what are the chopsticks for again?)

His aunt cooked one. Some taugeh with leek and egg and yakiniku. I dunno why but it taste exactly like Chau Kuey Teow minus the kuey teow.

Chow of the day Choice B

Yakiniku and egg and cabbage.

Chow of the day Choice C

Yaki onigiri + Hokkaido cheese stick.

Nom nom nom on the floor. I feel like a proper hamster. Except i am expected to clean up my own poo. And sometime help trim Master’s eyebrow.

And by the way when i say choice i mean Master’s choice, not hamster’s choice.

am allowed to take pictures.

Hamster is allowed out for a walk.

Hamster is have plenty of free time! When i talk to my human friends online, they are all like, “Omfg what are you doing here online!!! Go out!!! You are in Japan!”

I’m in Nara, by the way. And i stay in this place which is like 2832649 planets away from… from… from err… i dunno (not shopping center, not amazing 24-hour supermarkets, not yummy restaurants, not adult shops and definitely not pachinko and game center. Hmm… what leh?)

(Come to think of it Nara has got everything. I’m really quite pleased with it.)

(I mean, come on, what can a hamster demand?)

And i didn’t expect to do much traveling in the first place. Just… you know, spend some time here. The damn ticket was so cheap anyway. By the way traveling domestic in Japan is much more expensive than traveling overseas from Malaysia so i guess i will continue to lock myself in the room and have myself fed hamster food.

1. Jagabee potato chips

To avoid confusion with actual potato chips, you know, like Chipster chips, i shall call it Jagabee fries. But it is not actually fries. It’s difficult. But it’s better than Mc D fries for sure. For suuuuuuure.

2. Yukke

Some raw ground beef with sesame oil. Sooo good.

3.  Tamago kakegohan

Favorite. So simple so nice. A hamster can’t ask for more.

3.5 (i added this picture later and i’m too lazy to change all the numbers below so i put 3.5 ok) Gyutan.

It is so delicious i might consider naming my baby Gyu Tan in the future.

4. Spam

Wooo i dunno why it looks like some proper hamtaro food. Don’t you think?

5. Hoka Hoka bento

My favorite bento in the world. On a rainy day we will drive out and tapao Hoka Hoka for dinner. I <3 Hoka Hoka HOI SOMEONE PLEASE OPEN ONE IN MALAYSIA OREDI!!!!

Then i will ask for Mentaiko topping. 80 yen each.

Super Shogayaki bento

Karaage Special bento

This one i dunno how to read the kanji.

With mentaiko topping <3 <3 <3

Tori Mayo Don.

6. Four season fruit ice with green tea mochi and special tea… set thingie

7. Macha swiss roll and Yuzu tea + marmalade.

Hey, it doesn’t sound too bad to be a hamster now, does it?

Ok i am going off to pachinko now, bye xoxo.

heh. You guys think my room is messy. Wait until you see these other 5 pack-rats.

The funny thing is, these messy people actually won RM2,ooo vouchers to shop at IKEA from the Go Clean Your Room contest i wrote about. So i’m now feeling very sesat dunno to feel happy or sad for being not messy enough.

I really salute some of these people. The amount of effort they put in shooting and editing the video and all, i wonder why they didn’t channel the energy into tidying up their room in the first place. (But then if they did, they wouldn’t have won RM2,ooo. Amazing isn’t it.)

Let’s take a look.

Nasrieq

Liew Li Ping

Shiau Lee

Yvonne Mah May Lin

Joseph Lee Cheng Kim

Who really reeeeeeeally put all shopaholic girls to shame with mountains of stuff in his room. I’m not kidding. Mountains. Gunung Kinabalu. Everest.

Anyway, i was really curious how they managed to even live a life in such atrociously messy room. So i did a little questionnaire with some of the shortlisted winners.

Anyway, let’s take a look at what the say about their room. Below is a little Cheeserland Interview with the shortlisted winners.

C: Cheesie
N: Nasrieq
J: Joe
S: Shiau Lee
B: Cheesie’s secret bubble speech

C: How did you manage to put up with so much mess in your house for so long?

(B: You don’t get sinus problem one meh)

J: You live with it… literally. I’m sure you’ve chucked stuff about before, and developed your own system amid chaos to survive. Adapting is a necessity in survival!

(B: yea but… do you really need like, 150 jeans?)

S: Well, as a messy person, i can only find things when the things are messy, if the things are neatly kept, i find it impossible to find, and eventually i will forget the existence of the things. So, i always warn my mom not to touch the things in my room.

(B: Hmmm. Good excuse. Now i got something to tell my mom.)

C: How do you plan to utilize the voucher?

N: Buy a BED…ahhhhh… A goodnight sleep makes you feel energetic the next morning and happily clean up the mess!!!

S: All this while, i’m big fan of IKEA’s stuff, i think the plastic bag organizer is one of the best designs, and the sofa bed i got for my brother years ago…..is really cool.

J: I already did, and it took me no less than eight hours spread out between two days. Day one was to identify suitable IKEA products to my needs, dimensions that fitted my room’s limited space, survey the price tags and of course, the oh so important question of colour combination. It’s not enough that it looks good, or is functional - it also has to fit into my daily routine as I will never have a piece that is there for just one reason. Not an easy task, because I tend to buy on impulse and that’s never a good thing. Still, being a shopaholic, I’ve learnt to control myself just a little and taught myself how to plan quick for shopping sprees.

C: What is your best purchase from IKEA so far?

N: I love my stand up lamp…just cost me RM30..

J: Aiyo! How do you limit your favourite IKEA products to just one. I mean, the Expedits, Lacks, Kalas, and its well-known Billy series. But if any purchase is good, it would be the Famnig Hjarta. You know the red heart pillow with arms. IKEA’s most popular item. This is the only time, where something with 100 % polyester on will get my hug. And it feels good! Awwww…

(B: I’m starting to like this guy. I wanna make him my shopping buddy.)

C: Share with us your tips to clean up your room (if you have any).

S: Well, stuff everything inside a cupboard if you have guest coming and he insisted to see your room. And always use wet vacumm cleaner so, u can sweep and mop the floor at the same time. Well, when u are more ready, categorize your things into 3 different  sentimental values; 1: Important, 2. Can be negotiated, 3. Unwanted.

(B: lolol. Best tips ever. This girl really inspired me. Salute.)

S: Alright, Cheesie… that’s all from me. Actually, i want to thank you, cause i only send my video after i read your blog the other day. And today i won it. Kinda feel satisfied over it.

(B: !!! What about me!!!)

^^

So. These 5 people are gonna show you their makeover room soon! Go to IKEA to vote for your favorite makeover and stand a chance to win IKEA vouchers worth RM50!

I don’t like Japan anymore.

Because Japan got mosquito one.

I mean, Japan has got so many things. Sushi, bullet train, manga, sakura, Capsule, pachinko, 7-storey adult shop, and hentai old men in porn theatres and all other weird things in the world. But who would have thought that they have something so insignificant and mundane as mosquitoes!!!

I woke up feeling itchy all over my body. I thought it was some new form of hay fever. You just go like, itchy all over and then die. But no. it was the bloody mosquitoes.

I hate mosquitoes more than any other insect in this world. I mean yea lizards are slimey and disgusting and geli and all that. But if your room has got lizards, they don’t come and kacao you when you are sleeping do they? Ok they might go like ciak ciak ciak ciak a bit, but that’s bearable, isn’t it? They don’t go, falling down piak piak piak piak from the ceiling one by one onto your face, do they?

But the bloody mosquito will bloody come and bloody sting you in the middle of a bloody night.

I really don’t understand why whatever forces (i shall still refrain from using the word God, although i reserve the rights to still take it in vain.) that created this earth created mosquitoes. What bloody use have mosquitoes got?

I’m so angry. I want to live in a country that has no mosquitoes.

Oh ya.

Did i tell you that Japan now is bloody hot? HOT.  Like, hell. I want to die. The tv news says that the day i arrived was the end of rainy season and the start of a burning hell. What did i say about being fateless with Japan? I want to run back to Scotland and freeze my ass off.

And anyway, it was really hot in the afternoon. At night, it sort of cooled down, and it was that kind of temperature where it is too hot for you to tuck yourself under a futon and too cold for you to sleep naked, if you know what i mean. (No i can’t use a thin blanket because we don’t have one.) So the whole night i just kept alternating between:

1. pulling the futon to cover my body to prevent the bloody mozzies from attacking me

2. waking up feeling too hot and decided to remove the futon

3. falling asleep tulanly thinking about the mosquito

4. waking up because of an itchy foot/arm/thigh/finger/palm (they bloody bit me on the palm. Can you believe it?),

5.pulling the futon to cover my body to prevent the bloody mozzies from attacking me. Oh. did i say that already.

Anyway. Ad nauseam.

Anyway again. I reckon you would want to see some pictures. From now on i shall attempt to blog about my pathethic little hot life here everyday. I swear. It’s only getting hotter everyday.

Field outside our house.

Horyuji (法隆寺) is a Buddhist temple in Ikaruga, Nara. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Look at the weather.

And the kids.

They look soooo much darker now!! But damn cute!

You can’t see much of Yuuri here because his new camwhore style is now you see now you don’t.

Anyway, i really don’t mean what i say in the first sentence. I had yummy sushi last night.

Read from bottom-up one.

By the way. If you haven’t, follow me on Twitter HERE!

Japan visa approved. Flying in 2 days to Osaka.

Honestly, i am really quite fateless with Japan. It is like somehow God (ok i will unuse the word God here—hate to use this word, with the exception of the times i’m taking it in vain, of course) some strange forces make it so hard for me to set my foot on this bloody rising sun place just so i would give up.

Some strange forces really don’t like me in Japan. So much extra effort to put in, so much last minutes changes, so much panic, so much frustrations sometimes i actually wonder if it is actually worth it.

A 14-hour flight alone on the plane makes people really pensive. When i couldn’t sleep, i just stared outside the window and thought about everything that is happening before/below/to/around me. To be honest, London wasn’t as beautiful as i saw it the previous time. Too much construction going on, maybe in preparation for all its glory in 2012 Olympics. People weren’t as friendly as i’d like to fondly remember. Too many foreign people struggling to survive. Too dirty. Too dusty. Too…unLondon.

It used to top Tokyo and stayed  number one on my favorite cities in the world list, but now i’m not too sure really. Like somehow it has lost its mojo. I actually got bored the second day in the city. But i did really have fun with people i met up with. Thanks everyone. Especially Carolyn, call me when you come to KL! ^^

Rainbow in Scotland! How lucky!

Edinburgh was beautiful though. beautiful, but not magical. I would really like to go back to UK again. There are so many places i failed to visit this time. But there’s this thing about traveling too often, which is that you see things differently each time you float 38 thousand feet above ground. Things change too fast you wonder why you were feeling what you felt a second ago. I remember i used to want to escape from where i was so desperately i envied everyone who was staying away from home. When i met Malaysian staying abroad who said they want to go home or tourists who said they love Malaysia so much they want to stay here forever i couldn’t understand why in their sane mind they would want to do so. Malaysia was the last place i wanted to be in. For political reasons, for the climate, for everything there is to loathe about Malaysia. I would want to earn a lot of money, get my ass out of here and stay somewhere quiet and nice, preferrably a cottage with rivers around it and ponies strolling leisurely eating grass.So i had a bit of money and i started to travel excessively, in search for my perfectly quite and nice cottage with rivers around it and ponies strolling leisurely eating grass.

Actually grass-eating sheep also can la.

And then, the next thing i know, i wanted to go home.

No matter how much i openly express my hatred for this country, for some really strange reason, i started to have this inexplicable protective feeling towards it. It is like having a really really badly trained dog. You hate it for a million reasons. It drives you insane all the time. You know it is impossible to re-train it given its hopeless stupidity.

But you can’t really leave it can you. It is your dog.

Maybe because i have started to grow old (like, old. Like, OLD. Oh FML). I have lost the dauntlessness in me to want to run away forever and find my cottage with rivers around it and ponies strolling leisurely eating grass. Maybe you just start to miss something when you don’t see it for a long time. Maybe, i started to see home in a different way when i’m away from it most of the time, so high 38 thousand feet above.

I stared out of the window and i smiled. There’s this warm feeling in my heart knowing that i can go home.

And the best thing? The fact that i know that i can always run away from it again whenever i want to.

For now it would be Japan. 3 weeks.