Category: Travel

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…

Was talking with my Mom on the phone when Pearl called me over to a Timberland shop in Terminal one Changi Airport. She knew I wanted to buy a good pair of sneakers and that one took her fancy. ‘Dear, what do you think of this one’ I think its very nice for you… WILL THE PASSENGERS NICHOLAS… PEARL… PLS BOARD FLIGHT…’ we ran… that’s how we started our trip to Japan.

We are married 10 years now, hence this trip is our second honeymoon. Initially I thought of going to a beach resort nearby as I really wanted sun, sea and slack, but I think that may not be the best way to mark our tenth year. We talked about going to Japan when we were dating, and this would be the best time.

Saw 2 and a half movies on the Japan Airline flight, I Am Legend (loved the Bob Marley quote ‘The people, who were trying to make this world worse… are not taking a day off. How can I’), American Gangster (I love true stories) and half of The Great Debaters (the plane had to land).

Upon touching down, we headed to our first hotel of the trip, Hotel Narita Marroad which was just beside the airport. After putting down our luggage, William our tour guide brought us to Elms for dinner and some shopping as that was a nearby heartland mall. We were given a short time, hence my very smart shopper wife suggested we pack back and spend time shopping instead.

Can you believe it, we actually spent a few hundred Sing Dollars there.

At this mall, we were given a 5% discount voucher and I manage to remind Pearl about it only after we have bought our stuff. We went to a cashier and showed her our discount voucher. She knew what we meant and went to get her supervisor. Together, they voided the whole 3 receipts that we had and started scanning them all over again with smiles. Talk about service. In Singapore, I think the black face alone will already spoil the whole shopping experience.

We got back to the hotel, ate our simple take out dinner, had a good shower and soaked ourselves in the tub. It was a nice way to end our first day in Japan.

The only pity is that we found out that our hotel is quite a distance from the Tsukiji Fish Market as we initially planned to go there before day break. Oh well, good also, this means we will have more time for snoozing.