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Disorientated Feelings (Part 56)

No one became aware of this as it happened until there was a large deviation when data was being gathered for the population census of the year after it happened, or people noticing the absence of the elderly, or an unusually high number of schoolgirls that replaced them. Indirectly, the number of deaths from age-related illnesses has dropped too. Of course, a lot of time may have passed for this to be noticeable. These transformed people had also been genetically modified to seem as if they actually the daughter of any random couple, as well as the memories of the people who knows either the new or old selves. This is technically still going on today, but the difference being everyone remembering who they were. The earliest knowns report of it happening was from my aunt, whom she claims that a man she saw on the train transforming in front of her , or suddenly having a sister she never had before living with her. It is difficult for me to use her words as an official eyewitness acco

Hokkaido trip preperation 5: Bookings

Flights and hotels. When should you book? If your trip involves the two together, choose the flight first if you hadn't pick specific dates or duration of travel. The reason is that flight fares vary a lot on a day-to-day basis and you would have more flexibility, especially if the flights are at the start and the end of the trip. If travelling through various cities, you may also want to check if a one-way ticket to your first city and another one-way ticket to your last city would be cheaper than having a return ticket to one of the cities. Don't forget to include the cost of getting to the airport itself! What time your flight arrives and departs would also determine if you should save/spend on a night at the hotel. Some flights fly more than once a day, some only a few times a week, with the latter giving you less flexibility. If your flight arrives quite close to midnight, local time, where transport out of the airport may have ended service for the day, or have you

Hokkaido trip preperation 4: Clothing

Being the northernmost part of Japan also means it is colder there. Obviously a lot colder than Onikawa, which is considered the Hawaii or Florida of Japan. Winter in Tokyo is not that cold where seeing it covered in a blanket of snow itself is rare. While I have been to cities further up north, which were the cities of London and Paris that I visited last year, the season was obviously the wrong one to expect to see snow: May to June. (Just to let you know the other extreme of what I've been through, I have stepped to the outdoors of Quatar's Doha airport, which was very warm.) I am unsure if the warm clothing I have in my wardrobe are sufficient. Might need to head out to buy if they are insufficient. The problem is that I don't know what to look out for other than the general temperature (-5℃ to +5℃) I think Hokkaido might have in early January, and clothing stores themselves not stating what temperatures they are designed for. A jacket for 20℃ weather is not the sam

Hokkaido trip preperation 3: Camerea

What trip would be complete without a camera to have a record of what you have seen? Especially more so if it is of somewhere where it isn't easy for you to get to enough to have the next time of being there being hard or impossible? Well, you don't need those expensive cameras, as well as expensive lenses and equipment to go with it, to get a good picture. A normal point an shoot camera will do. I don't recommend ones built into a mobile phone: it lacks a lot of features (though smartphones like iPhones has things like point focus and exposure), memory is shared with everything on your phone (less space for your photos and messy to organise), reduced battery life due to non-camerea related use (not good if you want to take pictures all day), analog zoom, the awkwardness of holding it. More importantly, how long does it take between activating the camera and being able to take a picture? And for phones with touch screen, are you able to take a picture without looking out

Hokkaido trip preperation 2: Accomodation and timing

Since the previous post, I have more or less decided to enter Hokkaido by plane to New Chitose Airport. Shinkansen (Aomori is the furthest north it goes currently) would still be an option should there be an aviation or timing related issues. Initially, I was thinking of making a day trip to Hakodatte from Sapporo, but the travel time of 3 to 4 hours made me reconsider to maybe staying there for some days instead. Double that to make my way back. What can I see if most of the day was spent on travelling alone? Adding to that, it is winter, and quite far north (though London is the furthest north latitude-wise I've been), which means less sunlight. Timing-wise, I'm not sure of the exact dates yet as this is largely determined by flight and accommodation availability (and prices). I want to visit the Winter Festival in Odori park in Sapporo, but that is in February. Not sure when this trip would be, but it won't be any earlier than December. This also largely depends if

Hokkaido trip preperation 1: Where exactly?

It has been more than a year since my last trip to Europe, which made up of the Paris, Venice, and London. (Read my entries that I had written on this blog as I was travelling then, though I neglected to write the London portion of it there) While planning for that, there were considerations to visit Iceland, Berlin, Rome, Vatican City, and Zurich, but time and financial constrains limited this. Total trip was about a month. How is this related to this next trip I'm planning? Preparation, packing, and an unfamiliar environment that pictures and words can't make you fully prepared for it. My packing was so efficient, having experience from earlier travels (Hong Kong and Bangkok), the accommodation host was surprised that I only had two regular-sized backpacks instead of those large luggage bags with wheels commonly associated with a travelling tourists. My plan at the moment is to visit Hokkaido, with nothing booked yet, but where exactly should I go? At the moment, I'm

Teary Promise (Part 21)

The electrical appliances seem a bit more recent than the others: the TV displays were still of those bulky square-ish screens that were common until the past 10 years. Only a small number of them used the more recent widescreen flat screen TVs, which I assume were replacements of broken screens. The computers were provided by the prefectural government, so those are the only recent ones as they are standard issue across all schools in the prefecture. The location of vending machines may seem odd, but since the school is known for vandalism and violence by the male students, they are strategically placed at locations where there is a recording security camera nearby like the main entrance of the building, or where several staff working nearby could see and hear people using it, like at the cafeteria and outside the teacher's room. The school board has warned on removing most of vending machines when there are any damages to them that would render it inoperable or theft to the con