AS a guest relation officer for Japanese accounts at the five-star Nanhai Hotel, Kotaro Higashikawa gets up between 10 and 11 a.m. everyday and then eats brunch before starting work at the hotel's sales office at 1:30 p.m.

"I'm working at the hotel on an internship," he said.

After dinner, he will take up another job at the hotel's lobby receiving Japanese guests. His day ends at 10: 30 p.m.

A Chinese language major in a Japanese university, Higashikawa's interest in Chinese language and culture was aroused by a school trip to Tianjin seven years ago when he was a high school student.

"Having studied Chinese for three years at the university, I decided to live in China for a year in order to master Chinese," he said, adding that he had only one simple requirement for his future home: it had to be warm. "I hate cold climates," he said.

He traveled from Osaka to Shanghai for two days on a ship and then traveled to Guangzhou by train in late February this year. "I like traveling by myself and enjoy my way of traveling,"he said.

A shutterbug, Higashikawa is never without his camera when he isn't working. "I like the scenes of ordinary people's lives. It's also fun to search for various kinds of Chinese food restaurants," he said, adding that he liked eating litchi and he was in the right place for it.

Editor: Wings