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!
