so here we are, on top of the world and few hrs away from Japan! *salutes Northwest Airlines for their cheap air tickets to Tokyo! Though their seats aren't exactly of the best comfort, knowing that its not a budget airline. But at least we get to have nice meals during the flight! this rocks!*
Yeah yeah yeah..i'm really pretty excited at the meal portion! =X Come on lah..its not everytime we get meals on flight can. Most of the time, we're only on budget planes which dont even serve snacks! We had to smuggle chocolates and biscuits up the plane everytime in the past. And to make things worse, no liquid is allowed on the plane!!!! there goes our drinking water too. This time, not only do we have yummy breakfast and lunch, we get to watch movies!! I still remember me watching Jim Carrey's "Yes Man". Say yes to everything!! I thought it was quite inspiring. But shu begged to differ. Just Say Yes to everything and dont really think of anything else. I mean, how cool is that?! For once in your life, take the risk and embrace every single thing that may come your way, just enjoy and have fun!
Goshh! Turned our heads to the left and this is what we got! I've always had a thing with clouds. I strangely believed that fairies..okay maybe not fairies but people..or just things..lived on the clouds and their everyday jobs includes shaping the clouds into different patterns and sizes. This may largely accrue to that Enid Blyton book I read long long long time ago when I was still a little girl. The story is about a girl living in the clouds who had a pet cat. The cat dropped down onto Earth one day due to a hole in the cloud, which the girl forgot to mend (hmmm, i guess their job includes mending the clouds too.) A little boy saw the injured cat and brought it home. Cut the long story short, girl become friends with boy after saving cat. Girl brought cat back to the clouds. Boy and girl became such good friends but had to stay separated. So, girl will always shape the cloud she stayed in the pattern of a cat while boy will get reminded of girl everytime he sees a cat-shaped-cloud in the sky. Anyway, from then on, I developed a liking for clouds. Would stare at them and try to fit familiar shapes and patterns to them. *heee, yeah i know. such childish thoughts*
This is what got us all excited for a while. Ice crystals on the glass panes!! So damn cool! Thanks to shu's G10 that we were able to get this shot. My dear old Z5 could do nothing. hahhaha.
They said "Yokoso Japan" and *swhoosh* we landed in the land of the rising sun! Nice chilly weather! *beams, beams and more beams* Now off to take our very first Shinkansen, or bullet train and may be more commonly known as. I had actually wanted to take a picture of me with my face stuck on the panes of the train door and hair very messy, machiam on a damn fast train like that. But alas, the legendary bullet train aint THAT speedy afterall. I thought it would be quite scary, like cant really see anything outside due to the high speed. It pretty much felt like a normal train ride to me. Okay lah, it was pretty smooth, I would say.
Just before hopping into the Narita Express, we loaded ourselves with maps and info guides about Tokyo (they only had stuff about Tokyo in their visitor centre).
We thought we could pretty much take things easy in Japan until we say the transport network maps. OMFG is the only thing we had on our minds! I thought maps are supposed to simplify stuff and make things easier for the map readers? Okay...okay...calm down...we can do this! afterall, the types of public transport in Japan only includes JR trains, subways, normal trains, another kind of MRT-type train, and buses. Thats about it. We can so do this! Hmmm, are there monorails too? I think we traveled in one of that too. Oh well, alls well! we came back in one piece!
errrmmsss, just having some fun posing with my big yellow sunglasses to pass the time. HAHHAHAHAHA!! =X
1st try : eeeeeeeeewwwwsss!!! it really is unsweetened! is this even edible? where is my pokka green tea?!!
2nd try : hmmmm okay lah..I can get used to this taste.
3rd try : heck the pokka green tea. feed me more unsweetened ochaaaa!!! gimme my ochaaa!!!
After we got bored with my big yellow sunglasses and finished our ocha, we started making eyes at the neighbouring cute lil baby. Its at that time when I spotted the dispensable milk bottle. Oh my, I was so amazed! Japan really is a damn cool country! Innovations and cool technology everywhere!
After an hr long ride on the Narita Express, we still have to change a train and then a subway and who knows what else to get to Asakusa, where our hostel is located. Bring it on man!
Look at the sign warning peeps not to rush. Well, I guess this is much needed. Japanese seem to perpetually be in a rush. Morning, afternoon, night....anytime of the day, you name it! And yeah, its quite scary when you stand in the middle of the corridor (with all of your luggage on you) trying to figure out which way to go and which train to take. We resorted to hiding in a corner and stretching our necks, peeping at the signs. HAHHAHA
Asakusa..here we comeeeeee!!
Presenting to you..a typical day in the train. So what does a typical Japanese do in a train on a typical day?
1) Sleep
2) Read the papers
3) SMS
4) Sleep somemore..SMS even more..
Whilst the typical singaporean girl checks out the so-damn-cool hairstyle and make-up of those pretty Japanese girls on board. The typical singaporean girl also constantly wonders whether those ultra long eyelashes are real.
After changing a train, we reached Asakusa! First things first, we have to chiong to our hostel to unload! Carrying that huge backpack and another haversack infront is no joke.
I'm always amazed at the law abidingness (is there even this word? who cares~) of the peeps in Taiwan and Japan. They are so escalator friendly! Those who are not in rush only stands on one side of the escalator while rushing peeps will plod their way up and down on the other side. They dont even have signs telling them which side to stand on. Nobody breaks the unspoken rule. Everybody are so law abiding that you would feel weird if you stood on the rushing zone. Do we see that in singapore? Okay, lately we do see a little bit of such a scene. But some irritating arse just have to stand right in the rush zone and refuse to budge. Do you know how irritating it is for some peeps who are in a rush to board the train or get out of the train station? Ehhh but I conveniently blocked out all that I've just described hahhaa. Use your imagination!
Even a normal walkway look sooooo pretty. Thats the beauty of holiday huh! hahaha! First glimpse of Asakusa. And then..afterwhile, we caught this glimpse a tad too many times (we couldnt find our hostel and ended up walking in circles, hahhaha. Did i forget to mention...in the cold with our heavy backpacks!)
A nice ojiisan offered to help us look for our hostel but we thought he 越帮越忙 mainly cuz he didnt actually know where our hostel is located and to make things worse, he didnt speak any english while I only speak like super minimal and very broken japanese. Hahaha, in the end, we went to the police post nearby to enquire. We are finally on the right track.
Asakusa SMILE...yeah you're supposed to like :) when you reach the smile part. And thats me! on the 2nd floor in our room for the night.
After dropping our bags, we promptly made our way to the highlight of Asakusa and also the cultural point of Tokyo >> Sensoji! Many many lanterns lining the walkway and delicious BBQ-dango! *yummmy* A pity the temple is down for some renovations. We are not able to visit the insides.
And then we spotted SAKURAS!! *screams, jumps, runs towards to flowers* With a deep heave of disappointment, we realised that they are plastics. Anyhow, we came so far for お花見, we decided to just take some photographs with the sakuras and pass them off as REAL sakuras! WAHAHHAAH!
In a bid to blend into the local culture, we found our way into this small traditional eatery. There's like only this obaasan and two other ojiisans in this small shop. None of them speaks english and everything else on the menu is scribbled in hiragana. So I started slowly figuring out what food is on the menu. After a while, I gave up and began talking to the obaasan in my broken japanese instead. Oh well, it is not too bad. We managed to order some decent food afterall. Looking at the outlook of this humble eatery, we had thought that we got a good deal with some cheap dinner. Alas, after comparing the prices outside after our meal, we realised its not so cheap afterall. zzzzzzzzz...nvm its alright, at least we had some fun conversation with the obaasan and ojiisans in the shop. *beams*
Looking back at the picture now, the obaasan probably thought we would not have enough to pay her for the meal. That might just be the reason why she's grabbing shu's arm so tightly. HAHA
Now for some after-dinner-entertainment. What else if not the famous Pachinko which popularized the whole of Japan and everywhere else which imports Japanese Drama Serials! We, if cuz, have to have a go at it! And so, we held our breath and stomped into the smoky and noisy pachinko outlet. Got some guy to teach us how to play. Again, nobody speaks decent english here. So...I started conversing in broken japanese and the guy in broken english. He was trying to teach us how to operate the machine. I was only interested in how to win the lil metal balls though. HAHHAHA! Okay so after a long while, when the guy had ran out of english vocabulary, he gave up teaching and we still have no idea how to play. hahhaha. We thought, maybe if we watched others play, we might get the gist of the game. So we started watching this ojiisan play and win many many metal balls (the metal balls are supposed to be exchangeable for cash). We still did not figure out how to operate the machine and the peeps on duty are all avoiding us. booo! After considering how much food we can eat with the minimum bet required for Pachinko, we decided to just pose with the machine and pretend to play. Food is so much more impt to us. We need our ramen and sushi!
eeerrrrr...some self-entertainment at some random flight of stairs. Actually it started off with me sitting at the stairs to rest my tired feet and back. Then, we started setting off the timer and doing stupid poses. HAHA!
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Well this is pretty much the end of Day 1 in Japan. Hmmmm we did have some drinks back at the hostel. Well, its complimentary! 不喝白不喝right? We konked out much too soon after that. Had like a few hrs left for decent sleep before we crawl out of bed to catch the morning train to Kobe.
- the Good Friday loooong weekend of 2009 -
so what's the highlight of the trip?! 
After all said..we did have a good time there. 