Thursday, July 19, 2007
1st dayour JAL flight touched down in Osaka/Kansai airport at ard 6plus in the morning!
at osaka castle
shinsaibashi. bowwow and i swallowed down octopus balls as lunch in our rush to do more shopping here. =)) started off our shopping spree in japan here!!
trying my hand at 'pachinko'. its a super popular game in japan. pachinko outlets are everywhere! we dint really understand the game though. the game was over in a flash before we even knew wat was happening. oops haha.
Universal Studios Japan!!
both of us were super tired cos we hardly slept on the plane. still we were damn cheong. cheonged from ride to ride cos we wanted to finish all the rides inside. my heart almost stopped on the roller coaster 'Hollywood Dreams'. super exciting. we went on quite alot of rides, including spiderman, jaws, terminator, back to the future, jurassic park . saw sooo many cheek-pinching-cute kids there!
and there are really lotsa eye candies in japan. bowwow and i derived a code for them: 'manymany'. cos there are manymany eye candies. so everytime we see an eye candy we will exclaim manymany. haha~~
our first night hotel was just next to USJ, called hotel Keihan. we showered and showed up in our pyjamas for buffet dinner at the restaurant. muahaha~ cool huh.
2nd daywe proceeded from osaka to kyoto.
at the Kingakuji temple- Golden Pavillion.
we saw a kimono show at the Nishijin Textile Centre.
Kiyomizu Temple.
this is the cliff-edge veranda that young japanese men supposedly jump off to prove their love to women. if they survive, it means that their love is true. in my honest opinion, i doubt anyone can ever survive that steep drop down. even if they do, they will prob get lost in the forest beneath anyway.
the japanese believe that the smoke from the urn brings good fortune. bowwow and i went to 'yan' our heads so we will be cleverer. we wanted to yan our wallets too so we will be richer.
the pure spring water is supposed to bless one with health, beauty and wealth. tastes pretty good too.
the Toyohashi Nikko Hotel has cute pyjamas. =))
3rd Day
in the morning we took the Shinkansen from Toyohashi to Hamamatsu station. the speed of the bullet train is really quite phenomenal. we were so impressed with the discipline of the japanese. they are so orderly and polite when boarding the alighting. and everyone keeps to the left on escalators.
on board the Shinkansen! Zoom zoom zoom!!!
then we went to Hakone, where we visited the Owakudani Boiling Valley where there were sulphurous boiling ponds and steam everywhere. i couldnt really bear the smell of sulphur, which smelt like fart.
we tried the black eggs which were cooked by the boiling ponds. its believed that every egg eaten will add 14 years of life. if i had eaten 10 i will become a 老妖怪.
at the Peace Park. we couldnt see the Mt Fuji from there cos it was too foggy on the day we went.
we drank sake at the Wasabi Farm.=))
On Mt Fuji's 5th station!! the wind was super strong that day. we were almost blown away.
it was not in the tour's itinery, but our nice tour guide decided to bring us to see lavenders since there was time! the whole expanse of purple lavenders was really breathtaking. super pretty.
our hotel at night was at Hotel Lake Kawaguchi. we had Japanese Nabe(steamboat) for dinner. the rest of the pple in our tour had ordered sashimi. bowwow and i din order cos it was like 7000 yen. but our tour guide treated us to a mini sashimi set!! think he took pity on us poor girls. haha..
after dinner we went down to the shore next to Lake Kawaguchi and set off fireworks!! my first time playing with fireworks. soo fun! how i wish they are not banned in singapore.
clad in our japanese Yakata!
at night we enjoyed a session of hot spring bath in the hotel. haha bowwow and i experience how izzit like to see each other in the most 'yuan shi' way. we kept laughing over it the night before. but the hot spring felt really good. we just enjoyed the hot spring bath, watched the stars in the night sky and chit chatted.
i loved the little tatami section in our hotel room that night.
4th Daywe reached Tokyo!!
in the morning we went to a famous cultural landmark in Tokyo-Asakusa Kannon Temple.
Tokyo as seen from the cruise ship!
in the afternoon we took a cruise ride across Tokyo Bay to Odaiba Park.
den we went to the Toyota showcase called Mega Web.
oooh i wan the car.
we went on the Tokyo Flyer. Took the car with the transparent floor. but the flyer moved v slowly and bored us.
on top of tokyo flyer!!
next was the Aqua City Odaiba.
the mini statue of liberty!
in the evening we stopped over in Shinjuku. saw the red light district there. ooh the gigolos all stand around and jio business. quite interesting.
5th Dayspent the whole day at Disneysea! the rest of our tour group went to Disneyland. bowwow and i decided on Disneysea cos thought it was special to Tokyo. Disneysea was totally fun-filled! the Tower of Terror scared the hell outta me, with its free-fall elevator ride.
that night, while the rest of the tour pple went shopping, bowwow and i went hotel-hunting around the ikebukuru area with our tour guide. our reservation at the shibuya hotel was really too ex, esp now tt the price had to be divided btw 2 pple instead of 3. we searched high and low, even asking in Love Hotels (they call them fashion hotels there). by a stroke of luck, we found a room for 3 nights in hotel theatre, which was super ideally situated. but on the downside we were going to be homeless on the night of 14th jul, so we decided to spend the night at an internet cafe.
6th daywhile the rest of the tour returned to singapore, both of us started our 'luan zou' adventure in tokyo. haha~ we started our full-scale shopping st sunshine60 shopping centre, just next to our hotel. by the time we finished the first floor, B1, our hands were already loaded with bags. super scary. it was really lucky that the shopping centre was having a clearance sale just during tt period. so the stuff there were all rather cheap.
we had lunch at macs cos our tour guide said tt macs there is v nice. we both love the ebi burger! super yummy. bowwow will eventually go on to eat a total of 4 ebi burgers in the course of the whole tokyo trip. hahaa i keep laughing at her.
we could only check in to our internet cafe at 11pm, so we had loads of time to rot ard. went to our new hotel's lobby to stone for quite long.
the internet cafe was pretty cool. internet, DVDs, free flow drinks and PS2 games. i watched Saw3 and Letters from Iwo Jiwa there.
7th day the next morning it was raining rather heavily, prob cos of the typhoon. it was only 6am in the morning when we checked out of the internet cafe. and there was practically nowhere to go. both of us were super sleepy. so we dozed at the hotel's lobby. think the hotel front desk staff prob thought we were super weird. kept loitering there. haha!
later in the morning i dragged bowwow off to Harajuku. din wanna waste time dozing off in hotel lobbies. haha and i wanted to see meiji shrine and cosplay.
there was no cosplay of cos, the rain was super heavy. and meiji shrine was nothing to look at with all the rain pouring down. i ended up feeling quite guilty for dragging bowwow out. haha~ but we did see a traditional japanese marriage taking place at meiji shrine. bowwow caught the bride laughing secretly underneath her veil on her camera. its so hilarious. oh and the groom was quite manymany.
Shinto priests.
we shopped at the Takeshita-dori for awhile before returning to ikebukuro. finally checked into our hotel. the room was really nice for such cheap rates. both of us were kinda thankful to have a roof over our heads after one day. got some well-deserved rest, den headed down to explore the streets of ikebukuro. we had delicious ramen for dinner.
oishi!!
8th dayheaded down to Shibuya. we felt like pros at the train system by this time. haha! quite familiar with the trains and where they run to. we kept praising ourselves. haha~
Shibuya was reeally super busy. we headed for the Hachiko exit and saw the famous Hachiko statue.
den headed off for the Shibuya 109 building for more shopping. in terms of shoppin shibuya turned out to be quite disappointing though. the stuff there were pretty pricey compared to ikebukuro.
we had dinner at this stall famous for its unagi. had my most expensive dinner of the trip there. a unagi rice set for about 1600 yen. worth it though. really nice. we shared a table with this man and woman. the man kept trying to talk to us. but we din understand him and he couldnt understand us. haha think he was abit high from the sake. we kept saying 'wakari masen'.
tt night we watched some movie in the hotel featuring 'the rock'. it was all translated into japanese, so we made up our own dialogue for the movie. haha! it was super hilarious. i laughed till i almost died. we changed all the dialogue during the fighing scenes and love scenes into a discussion about breakfast and breakfast vouchers and how hungry the characters were.
9th day we went back to Shinjuku cos we din get the chance to do any shopping when we were there. window shopped at Isetan and Takashimaya. we saw some women holding boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts at Isetan and got all excited. started to ask for directions to find the krispy kremes outlet. haha asking for directions in japan is fun. lotsa gesturing. think all of them ponned their english classes. one guy had to make a snake-like/wave-like action with his hand when he wanted to say 'stairs'. super funny. we kept laughin over tt afterwards.
we found our krispy kremes outlet rather easily. queued for abt 35 min. rather fun though, not to mention tt we were rewarded with a free original glazed donut each while in the queue. haha~~
10th day we did some last min shopping in the morning before taking the limousine bus down to Narita airport. our luggages were all bursting. haha!! bowwow ate her 4th ebi burger at the airport. haha.. we decided to pack some burgers back to singapore. the customs officer confiscated my mayo and hair dye. i totally forgot i put them in the hand carry!! erpps. he laughed at my badly banged-up donuts.
watched 2 movies, Zodiac and the number 23 on the flight back. =))
-Shin- 7:59 PM
