Tokyo Disneyland

Last Saturday I went to the Matrix....... er I mean Tokyo Disneyland. It's a saturday. It's school holidays. Do I need to tell you how many people were there? Had no choice... my last weekend in Japan. So off I go early in the morning..... Ticket fees-5800 yen about RM200 which is quite resonable.

Entrance

World Bazaar where you spend a lot of money there buying souvenirs. I think the profit does not come from the entrance ticket fees. It comes from a lot of crazy people buying souvenirs.

Queued up for 2 hours just to get into this ride....Buzz Lightyear. Lesson learnt- when they put there 130 waiting time I thot it was 1 and a half hours. I was wrong...It meant 130 minutes to wait!

Roger Rabbit ride.

It's a Small World Ride. Didn't go for this ride as I've been to the same one at Euro Disney.
Daytime Parade. One of the highlights in Disneyland. The last time I was at Euro Disney I was so caught up in catching most of the rides I missed this parade so this time I make sure I was there to watch it.

Video of the parade.

This is the amount of prams park outside one of the rides.... can you imagine how many babies/children were there?

Space Mountain.... one ride you must not miss...One of my favourite rides...Peter Pan. I remember taking both this rides at Euro Disney and I dun mind taking it again.....

For most of the rides be prepare to queue up at least 30 mintues for it. As I was queueing up for one of the rides I was just thinking that all this things here are fake.....it's like I going into the Matrix. But I felt happy taking the rides....took my mind off the Project Plan. So maybe it's good to be in the Matrix once a while....you just need to know when to get out! ngahahahahahah

JICA Net and accessible design

Last friday we had a JICA-net meeting with a lady from Philippine, Ms Joy Cevallos-Garcia. She shared with us about her center "Tahanang Walang Hagdanan". This center provides services for persons with physical disabilities. They have a wheelchair section, woodwork section where they product table , chairs and toys and metal works. One interesting thing about this center is that they also teached thier members entreupreneurship so PWDs are able to setup thier own business. The center is also run and manage together by the PWDs themselves with some support from others.We had a good session. Also has some ex-JICA particpants joining us all the way from Nepal...of course one of them is Kiran's wife...Rama.
Had to go to the next door building where the JICA-net is setup. 3 countries meeting, Japan, Philipine and Nepal

That's us getting ready for the lecture.....I can see myself snapping this pict!

That's Rama, Kiran's wife... beautiful yeah? She came for this course last year......

In the afternoon we visit the Accessible Device Center. This place worked together with a few groups and of course the PWDs to come out with improvements to product designs that is accessible not only to PWDs but also to the elderly and others.
Braille on the cans so the visually impaired can differentiate from beer to soda...

The notch on top of the milk carton

Sharing about accessible toys for PWDs especially for the visual or hearing impaired.

Some of the products at the center

Project Plan & facilitating

Didn't get to blog for the last few days...busy with project plan. Each of us has to come out with a project to crete employment for PWDs in our country. On tuesday we had the second day of project plan workshop by Ms Sarajean. She went through the details of how to write a project plan from background to goals to implementation to budget to sales. A lot of things. we were all very "stone" by the end of the day with so much info buzzing in our heads! But it was good to learn as most of us have to write a lot of proposal to ask for funds.

Next day we continue the facilitating workshop. Each of us has to take turns facilitating a session. I choose to go first (take the pressure off earlier!) My topic was "How to support/communicate" persons with learning disabilities". Did a couple of role play... even took Indra to the toilet! hahaha Managed to get response from the participants...phew! It was good exercise. Might be able to use it for training in Malaysia.

Next was Nerand. His topic was how to create awareness for people with intellectual disabilities.

And after him is Zhou. Zhou's topic was interesting though we were confuse initially. He makes us look at our schedule and reflect back on what we have learned so far.

The next day was Kiran & Indra's turn. Here you are seeing Kiran torturing Nerand! hahaha.. no just doing a role play on how does it feel to be a PWDs so he's tying up Nerand's hands & feets and ask him to try eating and drinking!

Aiyoo... hard eh?

After Kiran was Indra's turn. He's topic was the perspective of people towards PWDs. After each of our facilitating we will have a feedback session. It was interesting to see our different styles in facilitating...There's no right or wrong answers....also be participatory and allow participants to give out ideas .....And Ikezumi-san told us one very important word when doing facilitation..."feedback"

I enjoyed his sessions very much...... very open, very different, alwiz challenging you to think in a different way or perspective.

I Luv Yokohama!

Yesterday went to Yokohama with Latiffah. Took an express train there from Shinjuku, only half an hour (thanks to Akiko who told me which line to take) if not if will take at least 1 hour to reach there. This place has one of the largest Chinatown in the world so naturally being a chinese I had to visit it! Beautiful city. Reminded me a bit of Perth (seaside) and also Paris (old european style buildings and some french sidewalk cafes). There is a JICA Yokohama here...whish I was staying here! hahaha

Nice sculpture!

Went up to the 69th Floor of this building, Landmark Tower. It has 72 floors. The view is fantastic but had to pay 1000 yen to go up, a bit to expensive in my opinion.View of the habour

This is Osanbashi Pier! Highly recommend....if you are in Yokohama... do not miss it. The style and design of this pier is beautiful. Never seen anything like it before and very, very wheelchair frenly.

We walked a lot from Yokohama Station to Landmark Tower to the Pier and finally we reached Chinatown! It's a lot like any other chinatowns but with a LOT more people! Chinese food here is super expensive. I had a bowl of "tan tan mien" and it cost me 800 yen! But at least here I can order in mandarin! haha
Finally we went to Yamashita Park which is opposite Chinatown. Nice park but nothing much to see so off we went. Wanted to visit the Ramen Museum but too tired and had to take another train there. Said bye bye to Yokohama and took the train back to Tokyo Central. I like this city a lot and it's a place that I definitely would luv to come back to again if I ever had a chance to visit Japan again. I had a great time here especially with Latiffah. Thanks Latiffah for accompanying me to Yokohama.

ITC, Job Coach & Okonomiyaki

Last thursday & friday was our individual training and I choosed to go and look at the IT center for the disabled and also at Job Coaching. So on thursday Keiko arrange for me & Nerand to go to the ITC (IT Center) Tokyo.... This center provides IT training for PWDS
Sorry...can't remember her name but this lady was explaining to us some of the devices used by PWDs to assisst them to use the computer.

Many types of mouse and keyboards

This is call Intellikeys. The keys are changable. Good for UV members but damn expensive.
I like this one.... can you guess what it is? It is invented by a parent of a child with intellectual disability. Here no matter what disbility you have if necessary they will come out with a device to assisst you in using the computer. Good right? Instead of telling a PWD that they cannot use becoz it's not suitable....

Keiko was worried that I was not getting enough info..... actually she's right becoz I didn't have much time to ask the lady more questions but I guess I can alwiz email her.
After the IT center we visited a Special School at Oota Ward. Sendai-san, who is in charge of vocational training was showing us around the school and explaining the system. Funny I have not even visited any special schools in Malaysia yet. This school works closely with the Employment Support Center for PWDs to provide support for students who are employed after graduation.

The next day coincidentally all 5 of us choose job coach so we are went together (so much for individualise training!) to Oota Ward again to the employment support center to get some insights on job coaching. After that we went to Haneda Airport to visit one of the PWDs who is working at Starbucks.
Keiko enjoying her cup of coffee. She wanted to belanja us coffee but none of us took up her offer. The boys don't really drink coffee and I told her that I will never buy starbucks coffee becoz of how the company in US exploit the coffee farmers at Ethopia. Dun know if she stills enjoy her coffee after what I told her! hahahahaha
The boy beside Nerand in the green apron is the PWID working at starbucks and the guy next to him is the shop manager. He is now learning how to be a barrista. Matsuura asked us not to put the picture in any of our organisation homepage becoz of copyright and stuff and I told her dun worry... we will never advertise for Starbucks!hmmmm I think I just did.... should I take out the pict above?
They have a TV inside the toilet.... not TV programs but advertisements. Makes me wants to do my er..... business longer! hahahaha

After the airport, we visited another PWID working in a supermarket. She has been working there since May.

After that we went back to the employment support center for Q&A on job coaching.

When we finally reached TIC it was almost 7:30pm and I had an appointment with Yoko at 7pm! Last saw her in April last year when she was sent to UV to support a PWLD from JOCV (Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteer) Previously she has worked in Malaysia for 2 years and that is why her malay is good... better than mine! Rush over to meet her at the Yoyogi-Uehara station and she bought me to a nearby restaurant and we had okonomiyaki.

That's her cooking the okonomiyaki like an expert. She's from Osaka and that's where okonomiyaki is from.

Oishi

Tried something called er....."mirku, morko" dunno how to call it.....something like that which is only available in Tokyo....cheese, cabbage & flour. And we use like mini spatula to eat it as it cooks slowly on the pan.
This is Ms Yoko Sato. We spend most of the night laughing & laughing. I was updating her on UV's activities and talking about Malaysia's political scene. And she knows how hard it is to work with government servants as she was based in Pahang for 2 years..... oh and of course we complain about the royalty. She told me that once she was surprised to hear that when the sultan of pahang visited a village that was flooded they have to present him with basket of fruits in order that he might grant them more money for relief! They lost almost most of their processions and yet they have to give him something. I told her that's malaysian's style or mentality. Sad......

BTW she's 5 months pregnant. Aiyooo...she's as gila as me.....imagine her being a mother.... poor kid! hahahaha And we were having our conversation in Malay as she only knows a liiiitttlle bit of english... Funny... 1 Japanese & 1 Chinese speaking Malay in a jap restaurant. Have not laughed that much since coming to Japan. Yoko...Arigato Gosaimasu.....

He shall not die in vain! May his death also be the death of the BN dogs!

Wanted to blog about my last 2 days activities but very, very disturbed by the death of Teo Beng Hock.

Agreed with Mr Goh's view......
http://www.themicahmandate.org/2009/07/i-cannot-remain-neutral-about-issues-of-morality/
Are we going to still remain quiet and watch injustice goes by. Is that what Jesus taught us to do?

And read Ee Chia's point of view of how Malaysian police treats people who are mourning the death of a friend. And while mat rempits and snatch thief are still roaming our streets. Malaysia Boleh!
http://eechia.blogspot.com/2009/07/beng-hocks-death-will-more-stand-up-now.html

Management Skills, Kabuki and more sushi!

Last 2 days had a lady Ms Yoko Asakawa from JEN(Japan Emergency NGO) came to talk to us about Organizational and Business Management. Her NGO is the kind of dream NGO that I would luv to work in. They provide emergency and rehabilitation to countries that suffers from Conflict and Natural Disaster. They usually go into places that nobody goes to or difficult to reach not the main area where there are a lot of media coverage. They also provide psychological and economical self reliance program. This NGO works together with the local people to offer them relief. Yoko san shared with us some case studies from the NGO, some of the project they did and also shared some fund raising ideas that they did. Check out their website. Wonder if they hire foreigners......

That's Ms Yoko. Amazing lady Has worked for JEN for 15 years!

The 5 of us sharing our view of how to start a business

PCM

The essence of organizational management

Sharing about examples of business models that we plan to implement in the future or existing one. Of course I shared about our Employment Project. I'm the only one with an existing model... they rest have to come out with one which they plan for the future. Phew!!

The usual group photo after the lectures.

After that I met up with Dr Kenji Kuno for dinner. Dr Kenji is a JICA expert and used to be based in Malaysia so he worked very closely with United Voice. He was send back to Japan last year as his contract expires. He's applying to go back to Malaysia and this guy's Bahasa Melayu is waaay better than mine! Hopefully we will see you soon Kenji san!

Ginza the "Beverly Hills" of Tokyo! No shopping here.

Didn't go to Ginza for shopping but came for this....Kabuki, Japanese style theater. Interesting. Simple props and background (usual japanese style, simplicity) All the actors are males even those who acted as females. Not too expensive 1500 yen for the show and extra 400 yen if you want to get the english translation device which you can listen too during the show. Of course Dr Kenji was very generous to pay for me. Didn't stay until the end of the show becoz I was hungry and there weren't any sitting place so had to stand for about 1 hour.
Outside of the theater. Dr Kenji said they are probably going to renovate this building later to a high rise but will keep some parts. At least I've seen the old building before the reno.

Dinner.... what else but sushi.... He asked me to choose between tempura & sushi....dun really fancy tempura that much.

Yes... this is Dr Kenji Kuno. Our famous DET(Disability Equality Training) expert. Helped us came out with the module to train Air Asia staff before he left for Japan. Thanks for the Kabuki show and oishi sushi dinner! Arigato Gosaimasu!