Furu Anime Panikku

At the time this post is published, the exchange students from HITP will already be slacking comfortably in their homes back in Hiroshima, so the title’s lagging.

On Monday night, together with our Japanese friends, we left the school apartment and headed for Changi Airport to bid them farewell before they head back home. This is probably the first time I’ve sent friends off at the airport, since I left for my Japan trip in late March before the previous batch of students from Kumamoto did. Most of the time, I’m at the airport either to leave the country, or to welcome someone.

Surprisingly, no one cried. I guess it’s because there were no female Japanese students. Hur Hur.

Although I’ve been with the students for only a short 5 days out of the 2 weeks that they’ve been here, I’ve enjoyed their company and I hope they’ve enjoyed mine too. 2 out of the 5 days were spent on the homestay, and I mainly interacted with only 2 students during that weekend. Hence, it can be said that I’ve truly interacted with the entire exchange group for merely 3 days.

Still, within such a short time span, I’ve managed to bond slightly faster to them through the moonspeak. Really, speaking a similar language does make matters such as making friends much easier.

Music does too. On the night before they left, there was a Arigatou Party held. It was then when I overheard 3 students singing Bump of Chicken’s Tentai Kansoku. I joined in and stunned them for a moment. Never did they expect to meet a BUMP fan overseas.

Two die-hard BUMP fans

A conversation soon began, and I learned that 1 of the 3 is a huge BUMP fan. He even attended their live in Fukuoka earlier this year in May! Since we both had similar tastes in music, we clicked together well, despite only a day left. I even gave him an extra copy of a BUMP single which he did not have.

During the Sayonara Party, we had this mini karaoke thing going on. We sang some BUMP songs, as well as a song which I never thought would be popular with some of the guys. Any guesses?

It’s Seikan Hikou by Nakajima Megumi, and they loved it for the Kira. It turned out that the Kira gesture was a hit among them back in Hiroshima. Macross Frontier had gained quite a fan base too, even though none of them were otakus.

Alright, enough of the talk about music. Let’s get back to sending them off at the airport.

We had a couple of girls who were actively participating with the exchange program, and that really rocketed to the entertainment level. The lasses basically reminded me of those fan girls at a pop star concert, lusting for their idol. In this case, however, the girls had multiple targets. Of course, being able to somewhat communicate decently with the Japanese guys, I made full use of the chance to tease the girls by making them really embarrassed with phrases such as 「彼女はあんたと話したい」 and 「○×さんはあんたは彼女がいるのを知りたい」.  The reactions were hilarious.

Guess who’s Singaporean and who’s Japanese

The whole experience was a joy, though I regret not spending more time with them. There’s still a whole lot of stuff that I want to converse with them about. Darn my mooncake selling job. Because of it, I haven’t been blogging anything remotely related to the otaku culture, and I have to wear a gayass uniform almost everyday. It sucks to need cash. You’ll find out why I chose to work, soon.

In the meantime, this site’s pace will remain as it has been, since I’ve not been watching anything except for gay-eyes Lulu and Kira Kira. I’m dead tired when I come back from full day of work, or a half day of work followed by a 3 hour Japanese class. It’s even worse than when I had school!

On an ending note, some people who were involved in this exchange program read this post. I’m amazed.

Finally, before I forget to say this, my DSLR’s autofocus got screwed and was sent for repairs. The above pictures were taken with a point and shoot camera that has sucky image stabilisation.