Start of the trip
In the first year of high school, I had a special travel to Japan. Since I had only been in 3 months, new environment and new friends were unfamiliar for me. At that time, I met my best friend, Zhuang. In an occasional conversation, Zhuang told me that he had a family travel to Japan and asked me whether to come with him. I searched for my parents’ permission. Surprisedly, they agreed, and this result also shocked Zhuang. Both of us never believe our parents would agree. Out of our expectation, my adventure began.
Colorful trivia
Our plan was to travel around Osaka. I arranged a schedule to go skiing around Lake Bika. In March, our plane took off. This was the first time I had been to Japan and second time taken a plane. I was excited and a little bit nervous while being on the plane. After arriving at Osaka International Airport, something embarrassing happened. Although I was with my friend’s family, I was alone officially. While passing the customs, I walked in front of the officer alone and the officer kept asking the man behind me to come here. It seemed that he misunderstood we were together. The ridiculous scenery that I tried to stop the stranger and the officer tried to convince him to come at that time was a little bit funny from the present perspective.
SKIing
On the third day, since Zhuang’s mom didn’t want to ski with us, the three of our high school students had to go there in person. The conductress on the bus spoke all Japanese during whole journey, so I was over the moon when hearing someone else spoke Mandarin too. They are couple from Hunan, and helped us a lot for borrowing the skiing equipment. Never did I then believe that such an international skiing resort did not have any English version of the documents. The documents were all in Japanese! Finally, we got our equipment, and took cable car to reach the mountain. I had to say skis were not for me. Maybe next time, I should try the snowboard. I was very weak to manipulate the skis and my legs. My legs trembled out of my control. So, I sneakily wandered around the coacher and tried to learn some skills from him. However, my skill still did not improve, and I had experienced near-death twice while skiing down the mountain. I almost fell off the lane and approached the 70 degrees side slope. Despite such a horrible experience, I still like skiing and snowing, so after returning to Taiwan, I went to the Taipei Arena to skate. That is another story...