The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

i've been living in my little bubble of hope..it's not going to be broken so easily.

been going onto the net to escape for a few hours each night. do i dare to? far from it i guess...
long long hiatus! been super busy..with whaaat i really don't know... Fr*******r perhaps..seriously addicted to that. sch has reopened, first day was really bad, it was like being thrown into a swimming pool suddenly when you really hate swimming.

anyways i'm really proud to say that I HAVE NOT BEEN LATE ONCE for lessons! this is like a uber huge achievement considering that 2 sems ago i was practically 25 mins late for all lectures.

this sem is like the killer sem of all pharmacy sems so guess i've got to push myself harder..thing is i have been lazing around feeding my addiction. GO GO AGNES!

and i have chopped like my tresses off...it feels good once again to feel the wind on my nape...

thing is people have been telling me i looked better in the past but somehow it just feels great to me to be a short mop revert once again...

and i know it doesn't sound like it but i'm damn damn emo right now. thinking of what could have happen IF...all the ifs..and i've been snucking around on the net just to look out for updates when i know i shouldn't..i'm a bad bad person.......it's been like this ever since that fateful day at BV...

anyways i've been talking alot to vels these few days now. it's good to finally get back in touch with her again. so vels if you're reading: "LURVES!"

gonna hit the bed now mighty busy day tmrw....
Sleeping on the tatami mat and the floor mattress wasn't as comfortable as i thought as i woke up to a backache.

but the view when i peered out from the window was rather amazing..the gravel road in front of the inn hit the lake almost instantly with the mountains flanking the background.


the whole japness got me into a buzz and i decided to dress like a ninja that day..haa!


we went to say bye to out hot spring before leaving after breakfast


bernice looked like that klutzy princess from Goong!


boo!


bye to our lovely room at the inn


and to the lovely view


we then hit the roads.....to head for TOKYO! really expensive road tax on the highway..


our first glimpse of the tokyo tower. it's a replica of the effel tower in paris except that it's a few metres taller and obviously it's much redder than its compatriot in paris.


there was a huge shopping mall at the base of the tower. huge-ass kitty!


all the staff at the tower wore uniforms with the really weird hat. it looked good on them though.


christmas at tokyo tower!


there was this caricature guy who sat at a corner of the mall and his work was really good. bernice and i swore to go back to have our caricatures done during our free days. YEAH RIGHT..shibuya shopping made us completely forget about this.


right outside the tokyo tower

you couldn't really take a nice photo of the tokyo tower when you're right beside it


we had to drive a distance away from the tower to take a really nice picture


Miz Bee and i on the bus, psyched at finally being in Tokyo!


the thing was tokyo being the affluent state we all know still had homeless people sleeping around on the streets. however, they aren't beggars. they are the tons of office people who had lost their jobs and to the japanese this means extreme shame to their family. hence they leave their homes to stay on the streets in order not to shame their family. the tour guide even added that there were even former CEOs on the streets. also, they wouldn't except any money from you so don't go around throwing your change at them.


we spied cute jap kids on an excursion


weird thing is their teachers transported them around on trolleys!


miz bee with the huge-ass red lantern of the sensoji temple


papa and i with the red lantern again. i spy with my little eye miz bernice in a red cloak



outside the sensoji was the famous bazaar street of asakusa. it was really a colourful, overwhelming mess to be in!


bernice outside the temple itself. i think it was really close to the japanese new year or something. there were so many people visiting the temple. the whole place was filled with billowing smoke. there was once i could hardly breathe.


another lantern at the entrance of the temple


the lantern had some words printed on them. have no idea what they mean because if you look really closely. there are alot of 'xiao3' words printed on it.


right outside the entrance.


and then we left the temple to throng through the really crowded bazaar. pretty flowers going for 3000 yen. that's about S$400!


they were pretty unique flowers though


the colourful stalls


japanese street food! it still amazes me how i wouldn't think twice about eating the bangkok street food but i didn't even dare touch the jap street food. they looked really weird. this stall was like selling grilled squid. they looked really cold and slimey!


another colourful stall


along the bazaar street of asakusa




the exit of the temple (different one from the entrance) had another huge lantern..


i got a shock when i saw my father chatting to this guy


see what i mean..look at his footwear for goodness sake

the guy my dad was talking to pulled one of these things around as his job


had lunch along one of those tatami mat restaurants on the second floor of this row of shophouses


exiting the restaurant


we then went to another bazaar street..this time in ueno! my mum at a stall selling dried cuttle fish


street food..look! HUGE octopus balls...really regretted not trying this...but i just had lunch, didn't feel like stuffing myself with such a huge tako pachi..


along the streets, i saw this man selling a really gigantic fish!


gothic looking stall along the street


we were passing the tokyo imperial palace when the tour guide told us that each tree outside the palace is worth a whopping ONE MILLION YEN!


headed to Ginza after Ueno..first stop was the Hakuhinkan Toy Park since there were a fair bit of kids in our tour group..the toy store had practically any toy you were looking for


this was quite cool..you buy a card..


which you can bring home to make into a snow globe


this was like my worst nightmare..a whole room of the pea-like thingy that nods its head non-stop almost hypnotically


ginza is like the orchard road of singapore. the flagship store of burberry


my dad surrounded by burberry goods


bernice outside the house of shiseido


the pretty pretty store of lanvin


went to shinjuku for dinner...shinjuku is purportedly the red light district of tokyo. but it seemed more to me like the heeren area of singapore. there were alot of jap teenagers dressed in their punk garb


we were in this open square surrounded by buildings of cinemas and arcades and karokes...


dinner was sukiyaki. it was super nice! it was also the first time i tried sukiyaki. it's like cooking extremely thin-ly sliced meat in this pot filled shallowly with fragrant dark sauce. once cooked, you're supposed to dip the meat in a bowl of raw beaten egg before eating it. YUMMY!

and the japanese seemed to really like those machines that you had to control pincer-like things to pick up soft toys..


they had huge arcades of them! the whole place was just these machines


stayed at the crowne prince metropolitan hotel that night. a really posh nice hotel that was quite near some shopping district. we slipped out for a little shopping before the shops closed. i bought some stuff from muji that were cheaper in japan than in singapore.

another christmas tree at the hotel lobby! love tokyo!