Month: May 2008

Its Sunday and we are off to Kyoto today.

Along the way, we passed by many typical Japanese houses. The beautiful yet monotonous sights slipped me into a drowsy mood, especially knowing that the trip will take about 2 hours and the fact that we are on a holiday and its only 8+ in the morning.

The tiled roofs made me think that ninjas skipped on these roofs with the full moon lighting their paths. We are indeed in Japan and we are well deep into our holiday.

It was the Golden Week in Japan and being a sunday, the inbound traffic to Kyoto made us travel an extra 3 hours. So the 2 hour drive, became a 5 hour drive.

It was not in our itinerary to visit Nijo Castle, so what we could see was only one of the entrances when we drove past.

Our first stop in Kyoto was the Nishijin Textile Center where we viewed fine textiles, viewed a Kimono show and had our lunch.

Next destination, the Heian Shrine where we stopped for a short time to take some pictures. This shrine also houses the largest Torii (Traditional Japanese Gate) in Japan.

After visiting the Shrine, we were off to the famous Kiyomizu-dera.

It would take the coach too long to go up the hill, so we got off at the foot and walked up.

The crowd was amazing, the whole place was colourful and you can clearly feel these streets were never built to take this kind of crazy tourist traffic. But i could imagine it would be really charming if there were less people.

Some places in this temple reminded me of the Japan trip i took when i was a child. I remembered clearly the two metal staff and the waterfall.

On the way down, we went into the small shops, tried some of their local snacks and of cause took many pictures.

Even spotted a Golf GT Sport. lol…

It was time for the Shinkansen. We got on from Kyoto and the one stop ride brought us to Shin-Osaka.

We took the local train and ended up at Shinsaibashi where we had Shabu Shabu for dinner.

After a short walk in the main shopping area, we were off to our hotel.

The day was generally tiring as it started with major jam on the expressway, then with all the long walks and commuting, i wonder how much we have traveled today.

Woke up at 4:15am today. The plan was to catch sunrise from our hotel window and try my chances at seeing Mt Fuji. The view from my room was not to fantastic, so i creped out of the room, took the lift and went to the top level where the dinning area was.

As you can see, the morning is starting to get bright, but there the direction where Mt Fuji was suppose to appear was obviously foggy.

I was not terribly disappointed as its kinda predictable that it will be foggy in the morning. So it was back to the room to get a bit more snooze.

The breakfast spread was good and its nice to see many locals also staying in this hotel and having breakfast. There was a table near us, where the husband sat down and instructed the wife to go get food. She came back with food only to be ordered again to go get coffee. Interesting culture.

Today’s plan was to try and get up Mt Fuji and take the bullet train + two other stops. We left the hotel early, we left at 8am.

On the way up, we manage to spot some wild Sakuras, so we got off our coach to take pictures. I think this picture is the best picture to represent this Japan trip. Its beautiful.

On the way, I also spotted lone fisherman fishing. It feels almost spiritual just looking at men dedicating who knows how long alone on a small raft fishing. I mean, there is absolutely no one to talk to. Its a pretty cool sight.

We stopped at an old village and was told this was how some of the villages lived in the past in this area. The roofs were made of grass apparently. Its also cool to see vending machines everywhere in Japan, even in such secluded places.

In this whole trip I felt we would not be able to go up Mt Fuji, cuz when i was 13, my parents brought us to Mt Fuji and due to weather, we could not go up. Then just a few weeks ago when my sister’s company’s incentive trip brought them to Japan, she too did not manage to go up Mt Fuji.

On the way up, i feel asleep on the bus (i woke up at freaking 4:15am and slept like 1:30am), Pearl nudged me and asked me if the white stuff by the side of the road was snow or not. After a while, it was clear, we are going up and its full of snow up there.

We stopped at one of the 5th Station and we should have went up about 2300meters above sea level.

This is Pearl’s first time seeing snow and i’m glad i could give her this experience.

My camera’s batts were dead, hence i had to change to my phone camera. What a time to die on me.

There were of cause very touristy souvenir shops and i could not resist but take a picture of this very cute packaging.

I bought a simple fridge magnet and a plate of BBQed squid as the smell filled the whole place which made it irresistible!

On the way to our next stops, small provision shops sat quietly beside the busy tourist route and this cigarettes vending machine caught my eye.

We arrived at Owakudani Boiling Valley to see hot sulfuric water oozing out from the ground. The people there used the water to boil eggs and the result was black hard boiled eggs due to the sulfur.

The smell there was really WAH LAU!

Anyway, we did buy the eggs and tried them out. Same lah, it tastes like how normal eggs would. Apparently the story is such that eating these eggs will extend your life for a max of 7 years. I think some people actually believed it as i can see tons of people consuming the eggs like if their life depended on it. lol…

A Mt Fuji sits along the horizon, our coach drives away to our next stop which was a hotel in Toyohashi (i think).

After a simple steamboat dinner at the hotel, we went to the roof deck to look at bullet trains passing by the hotel. We were suppose to do the bullet train today, but due to time, we had to try it tomorrow.

Day 4 was definitely nice.

When I opened my eyes, first thing I did was open the blinds and look out at urban Tokyo. Its beautiful in an urban jungle kind of way. Looking out of our 27th floor room, the view of Tokyo’s Urban landscape reminded me of Ultraman, Godzilla and the likes.

Nice hotel matched up with a nice breakfast, we were all set to go to explore more of Japan. First stop Tokyo Tower.

On the way.

Its quite hard to take a picture with the Tokyo Tower as it dwarfs you at 330meters, dunno how come, but somehow I ended up taking photos for almost everyone on the group.

Its kinda hard to take a photo with something thats way way way taller than you. So the simple solution is aim and shoot a few times. I think i’m getting better at taking pictures for myself.

Asakura Shrine was our next stop. We are not big on shrines, but still the stories our tour guide shared with us about the place made it all interesting. After a few photos, we ventured out and ended up buying Starbucks and checking out a nearby supermarket.

Here is Pearl very happy with her Starbucks.

What surprised me was the usage of grid design even on an average building. Just look at how everything lines up neatly. I can’t take it… its just too correct.

Its lunch time and we headed for The Ramen Museum in Yokohama. I’m not big on Ramen, I mean its just noodles right, but the super old setup made the whole place interesting.

Its very touristy but come to think about it, we are tourists. lol…

The Stadium in Yokohama.

Redbricks was next, it’s a designer furnishing place, mixed with unique gift type shops. I got myself a mechanical pencil which looked like a normal pencil and got a green tea float with green tea ice cream yummy. Now why didn’t I take a picture of it.

Chinatown was not that interesting as we stayed there for less than an hour and one big feature about the place was the gigantic ‘paus’ (chinese steam buns). We had lunch not too long ago, so don’t have any appetite to eat any of the super big and expensive paus.

When we were about to leave, i was lucky enough to catch 2 different Volkswagen Golf together. Way cool.

Next stop would be our Hotel near Mt Fuji area, so we took the Tomei Expressway and the 2+ hour drive gave me time to type out my blog on the coach.

While walking to our room, we saw a beautiful site. Green blinking lights at the corner of the corridor… There is WIRELESS!! Finally, i can upload some stuff.

This night, we managed to Skype with our kids with the help of my brother. We IMed them photos of disneyland and even told them we met Cinderella. They were all excited.

We do miss them dearly, but also felt like this honeymoon was much needed. So maybe we’ll bring them next time.

Dinner was good, the night was comfortable. Day 3 was fun. Many more days to go. gd night… Zzz…

As the hotel we were in is not a fancy place, the breakfast was not very fancy too. I was not sure if it’s a Japanese type breakfast or not, but I decided to have a fruity breakfast after tasting some of the breakfast items in small quantities.

Half way thru breakfast, there was a 2 – 3 second rumble and I found out from our tour guide that Japan gets around 200 tremors in a year, hence I think we are quite lucky to be able to experience it.
Its off to Disneyland after breakfast and we had plans to explore Tokyo more than stay in the theme park for the whole day. Anyway, the tickets were already paid for, the transport have already been arrange, so we thought we could at least spend sometime there.

Tokyo Disney

When our coach drove into the car park, we could already see the huge queue that was trying to get in. Apparently Disneyland was not built for the foreigners, but for the locals, so Mickey spoken Japanese, Minnie spoke Japanese, all the Disney characters spoke Japanese.

Of cause we took lots of photos, but the most interesting one would have to be when Pearl wanted to take pictures with the local Japanese girls.

It was Disney Tokyo’s 25th Anniversary, so we at least waited to see just one show and the rest of the time, I was more like shopping for Disney merchandise. And just for the record, we did not even take 1 ride, we are not the ride riding type.

We do feel kinda guilty not bringing the kids, Clié and Cleo would’ve loved the castle. Anyway, we bought some gifts for them and if we do come back to Tokyo for Disneyland, we will sure bring our kids.

Ok, enough of Disneyland its time to explore TOKYO!

Tokyo and Ginza

With some advise from our tour guide, we took the train to Tokyo. Before jumping onto the JR Yamanote Line, we went out of the Tokyo Station and had a look see at Central Tokyo. I mean, you did not go to Tokyo unless you have been to the main Tokyo Train Station right.

Its May day, so no chance to see the crazy human traffic, but good also as it was not so packed.
After a short walk, it was off to Ginza where we walked around to look at up-market boutiques we had lunch there at a small café and next stop Shibuya.

Shibuya

Shibuya was pretty happening, there were a lot more people there and the shops were all vibrant with life, there were so many people hanging out at the train station and the main junction was huge.

We walked a lot here and came across the Mac shop, walked in for a short while and checked my mail to see if the Hotel T’Point had confirmed our reservation for the 2 days we have extended. Too bad, but they have not gotten back to us.

Harajuku

Next stop, Harajuku the international capital of Cosplay and Gothic Lolita. I was hoping to see more exaggerated stuff, but what we saw were still quite mild.

While Pearl was busy checking out a particular cosmetic shop, I waited outside to look at the crowd. The most interesting character I saw was surprisingly not any Cosplayer (I think that’s what they are called right?) or any of the full black zombie costumed Japanese, but it was this good looking guy who wore a big fluffy hat. At first I thought he was waiting for his girlfriend or something, but when he darted out from his relaxed position, he caught my attention.

He would walk a long side a pretty girl for a bit, then chat her up. He does not seem to be selling anything nor was he trying to make the girl go to a shop like what a lot of the African Americans were doing. So after observing his third move, I derived that he should be a “talent” scout. I leave the kind of “talent” to your imagination.

We walked on for a bit more and start to discover many small cozy buildings and more expensive street wear boutiques and this is the first time I went into a Gravis boutique. Back to the train station and its time for Shinjuku.

Shinjuku

Its dinner time, so before we went out of the station, we had our first go at having the typical Japanese vending machine dinner.

Shinjuku is colourful and its where Takashimaya is. The place really feels up-market and even the bins were beautiful. The toilets are superb and Toto’s washlet still never fails to amaze me even after being in the Toilet business. But the best part of the whole toilet was the view. You could literally see Shinjuku.

We walked around to see the loud neon signboards, the after office hours drinking crowd and before we can see any more, very very unfortunately my tummy forced me to visit the loo for several times. It was getting late, we were both tired and decided to head back to the hotel. Shucks, we knew Shinjuku is the night life capital of Tokyo, but just too bad our bodies wanted to head back to the hotel.

The biggest regret of the day for me would be that we did not manage to go to Akihabara which would definitely been a geek out place for me.

Ikebukuro

Its Prince Hotel at Ikebukuro Sunshine City for tonight. Staying at the 27th floor its quite nice. Zzz…