なし狩り (nashi gari)

21 Sept, Tues

muahahaha finally get to go to my 1st fruit picking~  *pear picking* (shines, shines)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Personally, i would prefer to

1. pick grapes or anything else besides pears... Mum owes made me eat pears whenever i got sick back when i was young.. so i kinda associated pear = sick

2. go with friends of my own batch or other foreign students in my college... it would have been ten times as rowdy and fun...but i get the feeling that it's gonna be a long long long time i do any fruit picking if i wait for them so....       

I joined a nearby's chapel pear picking event ~                         

 (yumi, zhong ing, me!, laurel)

Yumi and Laurel are part of the pastor's family. To be exact, Laurel's the 2nd son's wife. They met back in america when the son went to further his study there. AND she's ONLY 23. I was kinda shocked when Laurel told me that ppl back at the states usually marry around her age 21~23.  Can you imagine me getting married next year?? According to Laurel, she wouldn't want to wait till she get "old and boring" before getting married so they generally get married right after graduating from college.  hmm... I guess that explains the difference of passionate-ness (excuse my english, please) between ours and theirs' married couples. Age huh...

      

I'm not sure how it is for you guys, but it was a bit of a culture shock for me. Like WHAT?? Getting married to some guy 

1. who doesn't even have a job yet?

2. whose present income is obviously unknown (refer to 1)

3. who you might never know, will never be able to buy you diamond rings *gasps* o_o (nay just exaggerating)

I thought the whole point of getting married for us women is to settle down, to attain a sense of security (money, home.. bla bla). But NO! Apparently American women marry for LOVE. hahaha

Ok I'm really exaggerating too much.

Well, basically i just wanted to point out that whereas we would at least make sure the guy we are supposedly going to spend the rest of our life with are capable to at least provide the minimum level of security (before we actually agree to spend the rest of our life with them =) ), there's some civilization out there who doesn't even bat an eye at the guy's income. Yea, yea if its with the guy I love i wouldn't really care how much he brings back home either, BUT i would still want to make sure he's able to bring back SOMETHING... 

 Plus i think for us Asians we have this impression that those who marry young are either 1. uneducated 2. pregnant.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      

But all i can say is Laurel's got guts. She can't speak any Japanese and believe me, Japan is not a country one can survive long in without being able to speak some level of Japanese. She has just recently, (after coming to Japan for like.. 2 months?) managed to say ohayou, arigatou, kutsushita.. 

I wonder how long a couple can last with the girl having to depend on her hubby to translate anything and everything, a girl who practically.. can't go anywhere without her husband since she obviously has no friends (aside from her hubby's family, luckily church ppl are very friendly ppl) yet, and a girl whose husband's not even bothering to teach his wife any Japanese because he expects her to pick it up naturally since that's how he picked up English during his five years in America. Japanese and English.. are on a different level of difficultiness...I sincerely wish all the best to her. Really...

Ok... wait wait...I've steered too far away from the pear-story. Let us once again return to 神戸観光園.

Note the green basket of pears in my hand. 

A shopaholic mustn't forget to do what one must do even if she's at a fruit farm XD.

In the end, i only managed to eat 4 pears. 4 super humongous pears to be exact. I didn't bother to pick any pears that doesn't meet that minimum standard. The 1st one tasted so sweet ahh... the rest.. well.. tasted like pears..

I KNEW from the start that grape-picking would have been so much better. We only stayed there for like .. 2 hours? though we could have spend the whole day there.. which i would, without a doubt, definitely have done to get my money's worth had i been with my friends.

When we reached the chapel around 2, everyone headed to the toilet including yours truly... to.... excuse my manglish... laosai

haha さすがに even if its just four pears.. it IS four pears. Eating that much fruit in one go guarantees a trip to the restroom.

cost:

• 
  
  1000 yen (rm40) for admission fee
  
  
  
• 
  
   400 yen (rm 16) for transportation fee    <----- this is actually one of the reasons that made me decide to tag along. Its counted as cheap cause it usually takes around 1000yen for return densha tickets.
  
  
  
• 
  
   XXXX yen for the pears in the green basket
  
  
  

and...

just for your information:

Laurel just got a job as an english teacher at a nursery, her dear husband is currently working as a delivery boy so he can concentrate his 'real' work at the church, and they have yet to have their honeymoon since they were, frankly, moneyless when they tied the knot last year.