Japan Trip 2024 – Feb
Prologue
So, despite my several “assertions” that I would not travel with Bruno again, I ended up still travelling a few more times with him to Japan. Well, because I don’t have any other friends to travel with, and also because my mom refused to let me travel without a companion.
We have yet another upcoming trip to Western Japan this December, hence I thought I better get this February 2024 trip journal written before the December trip starts.
This February trip was hastily put together because Bruno was whining about December trip being too far away and he really wanted to do a short trip before the December trip to Japan. I can understand that – his previous travel was back in Feb-2023, so to wait till next trip in Dec-2024, that was really too long a wait.
But unfortunately he has a budget to adhere to, and he didn’t have that many leave days per year, so I was thinking to just make a short trip to Hong Kong just to satisfy his travel bug. However, while the airticket prices were dirt cheap, the hotel prices kinda put me off. After putting together an itinerary and looking at the hotel prices, I realised (again) just by topping up a couple of hundreds more dollars and it could be a trip to Tokyo (just Tokyo though). I checked with him on his budget again, to see if he’s willing to expand his budget just a little – the moment he heard we could go Tokyo instead, he’s more than willing to do so. (I should have known, lol.)
However, he got food poisoning almost right before the trip, and never really recovered from it throughout the trip. He just continued with his consumption of dairy food, fried meals etc – it’ll be a miracle if he actually recovered with all those dairy products that he ate, to be honest.
Right, enough rambling about him.
It was just a short 5 days trip, so I’ve decided to squish everything into one entry. There really wasn’t much to write home about anyway, but I’ve managed to visit places that I hadn’t been to for my past trips. There’s still so much to Tokyo that I’ve yet to discover! Let’s hope I’ll be able to visit them all in my lifetime. 🙂
Day 1 – 17/2/2024
Because this was an impromptu and rather “last minute” trip, SQ prices were sky-high and totally out of Bruno’s budget, hence we went for ANA instead. Bruno chose a 6am flight, which meant that we had to reach airport at 4am latest… *groans* I hate having to wake up at 2am for a trip…. ugh.
Checking in at Changi Airport was honestly a breeze, as usual. (Love my country’s airport to bits <3 ) After going through immigration, I made a beeline to SATS Premier Lounge to grab some coffee and breakfast. Yup, I can eat at any time – regardless of what time it is, as long as my tummy wasn’t filled up. 😀
Food wasn’t that great, but what the heck – I just needed some sustenance. Bruno came in along as a guest under my name, but he didn’t eat anything because well, like I mentioned in the trip page, he was still having stomach upset and he usually couldn’t eat anything early in the morning either. He took a cup of latte though – which I reminded him that it contained milk. He said he brought medication with him and had popped a pill in the morning… OK, fine. He’s an adult – I don’t think I need to constantly supervise him eh?
Soon we found ourselves at the boarding gate… I really don’t understand what’s going through ANA’s mind. Most airlines that I know of will board passengers who will be sitting at the end of the plane first. This is to smoothen the boarding process and won’t have front-seating passengers blocking the aisle while trying to get their cabin baggage up the storage compartments. ANA however, blew my mind with their weird boarding process. They put passengers sitting at the back as the very last boarding group. I really can’t understand this logic… I mean, it doesn’t matter whether I go up first, or not, but seriously, this doesn’t make sense to me at all?
Anyway, it was a smooth flight – at least I couldn’t remember encountering any form of turbulence while in the air. Because it was a 6am flight, we managed to see quite pretty clouds being coloured by the rising sun. Got Bruno to use my phone to help me capture a short clip and a photo of the clouds outside.
YouTube Link to On a 6am ANA flight from SG to NRT
Bruno, as usual, slept his way through shortly after helping me to take the video, and he even opted to skip the breakfast being served in the plane. And then upon reaching Narita, he said he was hungry… (well, who wouldn’t be?). Initially he wanted to get a quiche at the Starbucks in Narita Airport, but I don’t know what made him change his mind… he ended up opting for a hot 包子 from Family Mart. I grabbed the 网红 milk pudding to try while on Skyliner to Ueno. The milk pudding was really, really good! There seems to be two camps online – one camp saying this is sweet AF, not nice; and the other camp was saying this is heavenly. I belong to the latter, haha! I feel it was really good, and it’s not sweet at all. I don’t have a sweet tooth and I couldn’t stand eating anything that’s really sweet because it’ll give me a sorethroat, hence I’m very sure this wasn’t sweet – those who said that it was extremely sweet probably have confused the extremely strong milk taste with sweetness (for some weird reason).
In any case, those who absolutely love milk – please try it!
Upon reaching Ueno, we checked in at Sotetsu Fresa Inn Ueno Okachimachi (yes, again) to dump our luggage before heading to Hakata Ramen Ichiban for an early dinner. I’m not a fan – yes I love Hakata ramen, yes I love tonkotsu ramen, but I personally feel this was a bit way too salty for me.
After dinner, we walked over to Ueno station to collect the Fuji Excursion tickets which I booked online (which turned out to be a waste – but we’ll talk about that later), before heading back to hotel to rest for the day. I sure had plenty of energy left, but my travel companion didn’t had much before the flight, didn’t sleep well on the flight, and on top of everything, he was still having stomach issues… so, rest up it was.
Day 2 – 18/2/2024
Woke up early for breakfast at ガスト 😀 I’ve fallen in love with this chain’s breakfast since last Nov-2023, and have been missing their Tonjiru soup breakfast set forever. I knew Bruno couldn’t get himself up too early usually, and he skipped breakfast all the time anyway, so I told him previous night that I will go grab breakfast on my own and will return to the hotel to meet up with him at 10am. I really love just how everything works on self-service at ガスト. Got myself the Tonjiru soup breakfast set as usual, which came along with all-you-can-drink drink bar (which has coffee, tea, soup, juices, soft drinks etc etc). Food came on a robot, and I finished everything up – that’s how good it was! Got myself two cups of latte too – all these, under JPY800. You really can’t beat this price!
I was done by 9am, and took a leisure stroll around the neighbourhood before meeting up with Bruno at 10am to stroll all the way from Ueno to Tokyo station. Sky’s really blue, the weather’s really good considering it’s almost still dead winter in February. The walk itself took about 1hr 15min or so (definitely not the walking time of 45min as indicated on Google Maps – please don’t trust that timing in GMaps, that kind of walking time is certainly not doable by normal human unless you brisk-walk all the way when you are travelling). Took quite a number of photos along the way – including a photo of a bottle of 玉露 which I finally found in one of the vending machines. 玉露 – BEST green tea EVER (doesn’t matter which brand – all 玉露 taste good!). It’s definitely very “凉” though… my period returned (again!) even though it has just completed its cycle a few days back after I finished this bottle. This has happened twice now (same thing happened last Nov-2023). But, that doesn’t stop me from drinking it!
After the “city walk” (I really dislike this term, by the way), I brought Bruno to Hitsumabushi Bincho (Tokyo Marunouchi Building branch) for his birthday lunch. I’m not a fan of unagi, but I really like the unagi hitsumabushi there, so I thought, why not? I’ve posted about this restaurant in the Nov-2023 trip journal, so I shan’t waste bandwidth talking about it further.
We then slowly strolled and make our way down to Ginza, where we visited the Art Aquarium Museum. Although the ticket price was a little steep with the museum being a little smaller than expected, I still think it’s quite worth it! Will definitely revisit if I’m around the vicinity. 🙂
YouTube Link to Art Aquarium Museum Ginza video
After leaving the Art Aquarium museum, we then went to the next place which I’ve always been wanting to go (but never had the chance to since I’ve never step foot into Ginza until now) – Itoya. I spent quite some time combing through each floor to see their products, and I bought several very pretty stickers for Celyn. Then, we headed to Muji Diner (at Muji) for a teabreak to rest our legs. Bruno didn’t want to eat anything, so he just ordered an apple juice while I ordered their tea set and finished everything up on my own. 😀 The brownie was a tad too sweet for me, but the sourness of the raspberry sherbet kinda contra-ed that sweetness, so it wasn’t too bad.
I guess too much walking had taken a toll on the weakened Bruno, so we headed back to the hotel to rest up for a couple of hours before heading out for dinner again. I suggested Shitamachi Yakisoba Ginchan, which turned out to be a rather awesome find. I really like the yakisoba there (would have like it more if they have a shio version), and the price was really quite cheap (only JPY890!) even for this mixed version, which is the most expensive item on the menu. I would say, go for an early dinner if you want to try this place out – otherwise you’ll have to sit out there in the cold while waiting for the customers to finish their food – there’s only about 10 indoor counter seats available.
Day 3 – 19/2/2024
Today we were supposed to head to Kawaguchiko. However, we saw on the news the night before that today will be a rainy day. On my end, I thought, it’s fine even if we can’t see Mount Fuji. He hasn’t been to Kawaguchiko – there’s bound to have something for him to see/shop/eat. But nope, after waking up super early at around 4+am in order to catch the first Fuji Excursion of the day, he whatsapped me and said he’d rather skip Kawaguchiko if we can’t catch Mount Fuji.
To be honest, it’s not that I’m not a fan of Yokohama, it’s just that I’ve never prepared for it, and I really, really hate having my plans disrupted like that at the very last minute. It was partly my fault for not having an alternate plan though – totally didn’t expect February to be rainy. If I had previously looked into Yokohama and know what’s there, I wouldn’t mind making that last minute change. Yes he gave some ideas on what to do in Yokohama (I could too – it’s just a basic Google search, but you don’t just make travel plans just by searching on Google “what to do at destination XXX”), but I honestly don’t trust him to plan anything at the very last-minute. I gave him a couple of months to plan for next day’s Odaiba trip, and his “plan” only covered the first half of the day, and has nothing else in mind for the next half of the day. *facepalm*
To be fair, he did transferred the cost of the Fuji Excursion tickets to me (they weren’t cheap!!!!), and I didn’t go back to sleep despite saying I’d be doing that on WhatsApp. I really couldn’t go back to sleep after I’ve fully woke up. I decided to play by the ear and visited Yoyogi Park early in the morning, and I was glad I did, because I caught sight of some early sakura bloomers. It was an overcast day as per the weather forecast, so it was drizzling a wee bit the entire morning. But I really like strolling the almost-empty park by myself. Like what I typed in IG back then – 在细雨中一个人静静地欣赏着粉粉的樱花，也是一种浪漫呀~
I decided to go to Kichijoji on a whim after leaving Yoyogi Park, so I whatsapped Bruno to ask if he’s interested to come along (I felt a little bad for leaving him to his own devices after I rejected his Yokohama plan) if he didn’t go Yokohama himself. Well, turned out that he indeed did not go, but he already had plans to go “gacha-ing” for the entire day. OK, that’s fair enough, at least he didn’t try to drag me along to gacha with him.
Upon reaching Kichijoji, I first walked over to Inokashira Park. Maybe because it was still early, or maybe because it was still drizzling, there’s not much people at the park. And I would say I didn’t see a single tourist while I was there. I strolled around the pond, and initially was thinking whether to head to Aquatic Life House, but in the end I decided against it and headed back to the station for a quick lunch at Curry Shop C&C. This is the best part about travelling solo – you can go anywhere you want, you can change plans without worrying about the other party being OK with it or not… Anyway my main purpose of coming to Kichijoji was to go Petit Mura~
Followed Google Maps and finally found Petit Mura~ However, the shops weren’t open for some reason, even though I’ve made sure I visited during their opening hours stated on GMaps. I didn’t stick around to find out why though. I just went in, took some photos of the place, and left thereafter. There were just too many Mainland tourists there posing for photos in this very tiny place… I didn’t like the vibe. Not entirely sure if I’d revisit this place…
Since I was already there, I strolled along the street and a shop name caught my eye – 空想街雜貨店, which immediately piqued my interest. I don’t know how to explain it, but I really felt drawn to this shop name – it’s as though I MUST visit it to see what they are selling. And boy, I’m glad I made my way to this shop (it’s on the second floor – I usually would just give these a miss). I really love their artwork and merchandise! They sell 3D DIY work of their art, which I really love but I don’t think my fingers were nimble enough to piece them up together. The ready-made 3D artwork were a bit too expensive for me though. I ended up spending almost an hour in the tiny shop, because I was scouring through the entire place and was having a hard time trying to decide which merchandise I should get. And even after deciding on buying postcards, I had a hard time trying to decide which postcard set to buy, LOL. I ended up buying a 和风 set for myself. Bought a cyberpunk magic theme set for Bruno too, because I felt bad for leaving him by himself, and I know he’s a fan of such artwork as well. Now I’m regretting that I didn’t buy more… I definitely want to revisit this shop, for sure. And to buy more of their merch!
Contented with my find and purchases, I went back to the hotel to put down my stuff before heading out for dinner again. This time I opted for Isen Honten, a 百年Tonkatsu老店. They can’t speak English, and they don’t have an English menu, but I get by with my abysmal knowledge of hiragana and kanji (yay for having a decent grasp of Chinese language), as well as my abysmally bad spoken Japanese short phrases. Hey, as long as I am able to place my order and get my food, everything’s good!
I really prefer ロース instead of ヒレ… I don’t mind fatty meat, at all. Animal fat actually isn’t all that bad, you know? It’s the processed saturated fats that kills, not animal fat.
Day 4 – 20/2/2024
Bruno had already asked to visit Odaiba this trip – so I told him sure, since you’re the one who wants to go, please plan for the day~ I guessed he did his best to plan for it, but really, what can I expect from a P person (MBTI)…
We started the day at February Cafe, his favourite cafe in Tokyo. I thought we were early – but we still had at least 2-3 groups in front of us when we reached. Meh. The cafe was really cramped… I like their coffee and food, but honestly I don’t know if I wanna go there again, because I really felt uncomfortable sitting so close to other diners.
Then, onwards to Odaiba…
We actually walked the entire Rainbow bridge to Odaiba…
It was an experience, really, to have the cars and trucks and buses zooming past us and had the bridge rattling beneath us every time a heavy vehicle zoomed past.
YouTube Link to Walking across Odaiba’s rainbow bridge video
Nevertheless, we’ve had great views of Tokyo Bay along the way. And it was good exercise to start off the day. I’m not complaining, just that… we had to breathe in the exhaust fumes from all the vehicles throughout the walk, LOL. When we finally crossed the entire bridge, we were greeted by some sakura trees by the river bank (yay) and a fake beach (ummm…). Weather’s great though!
There were many malls in Odaiba, but we opted to go Diver’s City to take a look at the character shops. There was a Doraemon display at the entrance of the mall – so cute! I’m not a Doraemon fan, but even I can’t help but take a couple of pictures of them. Bruno came across some rows of gacha machines in the mall… guess where he spent his cash… (no prizes for getting it right ;x ).
Lunch was at the food court in Diver’s City. I was a little thrilled to see Hannosuke having a stall there, because I’ve always wanted to try Hannosuke at Kanda, but never had the chance to. But I guess… food court standard is always bad, even for such a famed Tendon “brand”… the tempura items were all soggy and salty. It was really not a decent lunch. I regretted, but well, at least I got to try it. Maybe I’ll try again at the honten itself some day… we’ll see. We then went out to see the life-sized Gundam statue~ I’m not a fan of Gundam but that doesn’t stop me from taking photos of the mecha, haha!=
After gawking at Gundam, we went over to Fuji Television HQ and bought a ticket up to the observatory. It was… meh. Glasses weren’t cleaned, weather’s good but cloudy so there’s no Mount Fuji in sight, and there’s honestly nothing much else to see up there. But I really quite like the cameras and lights on the dome’s ceiling though. Sigh, looking at these made me regret (a little) about not insisting to study FSV (Film, Sound & Video) back when I was 17…
So here comes the point where Bruno told me that he had nothing else being planned anymore. And that’s only at around 1pm. All that’s on his mind was going back to Diver City to continue with his gacha… I sighed and told him, that’s fine, I’ll find some things to do on my own. Before we parted ways, he even borrowed some cash from me so that he can continue his gacha adventure… *facepalm* I honestly think that it’s quite alarming to have one spent ALL his cash at gacha… isn’t it like quite obvious that it has become a problem? But I’m in no position to say anything… I’m sure he can think for himself. *shrugs*
I looked at the map, and decided to head to Hamarikyu Gardens. I’m not as crazy about gardens as Bruno is, but I still quite like Japanese gardens. They are always very pretty and peaceful, and it was always wonderful to stroll through any of the gardens in Japan. Spent like 2 hours just strolling around and resting at one of the many benches there. Happy to be able to see some early sakura (or plum?) bloomers as well too!
For some reason I wasn’t in the mood for a proper dinner, so I bought some items from combini instead and had them as my dinner.
Day 5 – 21/2/2024
Time to head back to Singapore! This is the first time I’m flying back from Haneda, so I was a bit anxious about taking the metro with my luggage (I hate doing that). And yes, even though I had the experience now, I still won’t recommend it even though everyone else was the doing the same. I really dislike having my luggage around blocking normal passengers who are on their way to work. Ugh.
Smooth check-in at Haneda via the ANA self-check-in kiosks though. Took us only about 15minutes max and we went through the customs. We had so much time that we lingered at the duty free shops, sat at the dining area drinking Starbucks and chatting about work and life… and me going for a bowl of hot 肉うどん before boarding the plane.
Really love the sakura-themed Starbucks paper cup. Kinda regretted not washing it and bringing it back home with me…
That’s a wrap! Looking forward to this December’s trip!