Professor John

This is Professor John,Welfield. We call him John, because he's not our professor.

I first heard of his name when I jogged & talked to the locals on my 2nd day here, they asked me whether I know John-san or not. They said that he always go and chat with them.



We can be certainly sure to find him in the gym everyday without fail at 6pm. Everyone who goes to gym knows him. Everyone who eats in shokudo knows that he specially orders butter toast for lunch.

However, what I will remember him is his stories. An Australian, he's been in IUJ for 15 years. He knows many stories that were untold and unknown stories to many of the students here, which I will post up in the future.

Chinese New Year

First time celebrating Chinese New Year away from family with mid-term exam the following week!!!


Around 20-30 Chinese in IUJ from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, US, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam and others, came together to have reunion dinner in SD1 lounge.


Charles from Taiwan, me from Malaysia & Chin Yung from Taiwan/HongKong/Singapore. I just forgot that I was not supposed to wear black.

Each of us came with our own country's dish. 30 of us came up with 25 dishes

I made the famous Malaysian Bak Kut Teh. Just put in pork, garlic, some mushroom & boil with the essence and it's ready in 30 mins.


We have snacks, mandarin oranges, beer & soft drinks, just like what we have back in Malaysia.


One thing that I learned is that in China, making dumpling is a tradition. And the dumpling is made after the dinner, where everyone is supposed to help roll the flour into thin dumpling skin, put in some meat & wrap it.

This is how we make the dumpling's ingredient before the party started.


Of course, everyone helped and tried even non-chinese. Many were first timer.


And we found a way to punish those who wore black.

IUJ Ski Day

What's that....
IUJ's student society, called GSO, organizes the IUJ Ski Day every year. For ski, normally there are 2 things we have to pay for, the ski pass & the equipment rental. GSO negotiates bulk discount from the ski operator & from the equipment rental. I paid 2500 yen (1500 for ski pass + 1000 for ski rental).

On that day...


IUJ bus took us to the Hakkai-san ski resort, which is just 10 minutes away. However, Ben drove us there instead since the first bus left earlier than we thought.


Reached the ski-area, I immediately go to the equipment rental shop to get my ski equipments, buckle up & started skiing.


Start Skiing...

We take the ski lift to reach the top. The lift here takes much longer time than Urasa's ski to reach the top. The first difficult part of the ski is to get down the ski lift, since we are supposed to start skiing to get down the lift.

Actually we were quite a nuisance for other visitors, because we don't know how to get on the lift, occasionally the workers have to stop the lift to let us get on & stop again when we fell while getting off at the top of the hill. Our incompetence created such a long queue for those who wanted to get the lift up.

The Hakkai-san ski is supposedly to be easier than the ski-area in front of Urasa station, where I ski the first time. True enough, the slope was gentler and the view is much nicer. First 2 rounds, practice rounds. I fell many times over. Anyway, after 3 rounds, I stopped falling and able to ski all the way down. Completed around 20-30 rounds the whole day.


Ski is not easy. It takes at least 2 times just to get the hang of it. So many of the first time students they were just practicing whole day at the bottom of the ski resort, without taking the ski lift up.


One student, first timer, went up without knowing what to expect and took 2 hours just to get down, when normally it takes us 2 minutes to reach the bottom and have to queue to get up again.


More pictures here

Ski Day