Japan Trip 2018

Prologue

This Tokyo trip was initially supposed to be just a short Hong Kong getaway. Until I realised that topping up a few more hundreds, I can visit Japan instead.

I picked Tokyo for the short 7 days trip, and honestly it’s still wasn’t enough to explore Tokyo.

This write up will not have too many words – my Dad passed away just a couple of days after I came back from the trip.

Just a few days prior to the trip, I suddenly had a very bad premonition, to the point where I almost wanted to cancel the trip. I kept feeling that something will happen to me during the trip and I won’t be able to take care of my Dad anymore. Little did I know my premonition is right – just that it’s not something that happened to me; instead it’s something that happened to my Dad… It took me quite some time to finally be able to pen this trip down – so please don’t expect too many words. I didn’t bother to clean up the photo albums in my Flickr account either – so you’ll just have to bear with the repeated photos.

It’s gonna be a while until I can visit Japan again. My mom doesn’t dare to visit Japan anymore, and I can’t bear to leave her alone at home while I enjoy myself overseas… so either she goes to Japan with me or I’ll stay here in Singapore with her.

I’m not sure if this will change in the future, but at the moment it’s gonna be this way.

Japan Dec 2018 – Day 1 (15/11/2018)

Second trip to Japan – this time only for 7 days (around 5.5 full days to be exact).

After the lesson learnt from our first Japan trip, we dare not take red-eye flights again. This time we took a morning flight at 8+am. Due to the last minute decision to go Japan instead of Hong Kong, Singapore Airlines no longer have good prices for their flights. Hence after much consideration, I went for JAL instead. Around S$700+ per pax – which is pretty much still reasonable (compared to over $1000 per pax for SQ).

Instead of always reaching the airport super early to enjoy the lounge, we reached the airport at almost 6am. After collecting the mobile wifi device and checking in our luggages, we did checked into the SATS lounge but the food offered was nothing much to shout about. Bruno was more interested in reading Reddit on the large Samsung Galaxy tab provided at the booth seats.

We barely stayed for an hour, before we left the lounge and walked around the transit area where the shops started to open one by one. Before long, we found ourselves boarding the plane. JAL provided rice crackers instead of the usual nuts as snacks, and they were actually pretty good. For lunch, I chose their unagi option and gee, it was one of the best unagi that I’ve ever eaten, for real. Unfortunately it’s just two small pieces….. if only they had more! I finished everything that they served… except for the salad. Oh, and they provide Haagen Daaz ice cream too.

In the middle of the flight, they served yet another snack – this time it’s sponge cake. From the picture, it looks like purple right? Almost like sweet potato… but ultimately I think it was green tea flavour.. haha. It looked pretty plain, but it’s oh so soft and heavenly! I loved that sponge cake so much. How I wish I could buy it…

While we were flying over Japan, we craned our necks to try and catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji… and we weren’t disappointed!

And so we reached Narita Airport. I had a huge headache over how to get to our hotel at Asakusa from Narita Airport, considering our timing was not that great. By the time we landed at Narita, we would have missed the limousine bus that goes straight to Asakusa View Hotel (which was within walking distance to our hotel), and we also would miss the direct commuter train from Narita airport to Asakusa station. In the end, I decided to take the Skyliner to Ueno, and then probably cab to hotel from there. We booked our Skyliner tickets online for some small discounts, so we had to drop by the ticket office to exchange for the actual tickets. The queue was okay, not too long but there’s still a couple of tourists in front of us who didn’t seem to know what they were doing or where they were going. (I hate to be queueing behind this kind of tourists, really… c’mon, is it so hard to do your homework before you travel?)

By the time it’s my turn at the counter, we had to give the nearest-timing train a go because it would be too rushed to get to the platform. So we went for the next timing – which gave us about 20 minutes to spare. We made our way to the platform, only to find that there wasn’t much standing space or sitting area. So we went back up to ground floor and spent our time at the vending machines, looking to get some bites and drinks, since we only had “brunch” on the plane and nothing else. I honestly had forgotten what I bought… I know I bought some coffee (which was totally forgettable), while Bruno bought apple juice and tuna mayo onigiri. (Bruno said I also bought baumkuchen but I really don’t recall eating that, so…)

Anyway, we managed to get on the skyliner which we reserved our seats, and we munched and drank our way to Ueno. That’s when the nightmare started *sigh*. Once out of the skyliner gantries, we had to look for a cab stand. But there’s none outside the station. We dragged our luggage back and forth, even asking passerbys, but most of them also had no idea where the taxi stands were. Tired and hungry, I got Bruno to go into the Ueno JR station to ask the information counter, and after following the directions given to us, we found a small, unassuming cab stand at a very ulu corner of the whole station…

Meh.

I showed the driver our hotel’s address, and he drove us straight to the doorstep. I had pre-ordered a lot of items from Amazon JP, and the hotel had already signed for them on my behalf. I had three big boxes to carry to the room, as well as my luggage. So just on the first day, my luggage was already full of “loot”… hurhur.

The hotel we stayed this time is Red Planet Tokyo Asakusa, and it was a twin room. It was actually very small, even the shower cubicle is small. So small that I would bump my elbows all the time while lathering myself…

After unpacking the boxes, we then left for dinner, which we already previously decided on Asakusa Gyukatsu, because Bruno missed Gyukatsu very much. The restaurant was pretty near our hotel, so by the time we reached it was about 7pm. There was a pretty long queue ahead of us, but since Bruno insisted on eating this, we queued as well. The queue was almost unmoving, until there’s one whole big bunch of family who left the restaurant after about 20min wait (for us). We managed to get into the restaurant after that.

Their menu only had 2 items – spicy or non spicy. So the food came really quickly… and then we realised the meat was really a tad to raw to be eaten just like that. We had to grill them more ourselves on the stone “stove” in front of us… er, novel experience, yes, but I prefer to have the chef do the cooking, you know? That’s why I’m paying them? Sigh. Needless to say, we won’t be heading back there again.

While queueing, the Tokyo Skytree was actually almost just right in front of us (even though it’s quite a distance away). It wasn’t that pretty even with all the lights on, to be honest…

As it still wasn’t too late, we crossed the road and walked around Kaminarimon and Sensoji, taking some night photos of the temple and it’s surrounding, before we head to the 24 hours Don Quijote near the hotel. I managed to grab a Tiger hot flask for Miao at a huge discount, so yay, one item off the checklist.

We then went to Family Mart to get their Instant Yasai Miso soup – something which we drank every night during our last trip in Japan. Unfortunately, they seemed to have change some recipe and it just didn’t taste as good anymore… Sad.

Japan Dec 2018 – Day 2 (16/11/2018)

I didn’t sleep well.

Seriously, I swear, I won’t ever sleep in the same room as Bruno ever…. his snoring was terrible. Even after eating antihistamine, I still couldn’t sleep for the entire night thanks to his snoring. Geez… I know it’s not his fault but seriously how am I supposed to enjoy my travels if I can’t even sleep a wink at night…? Can’t blame me if I was grumpy AF the next morning right? Sigh.

So today, we had a really forgettable breakfast at Yoshinoya. I was looking forward so much to the barley tofu rice breakfast that I had two years ago… and to our utter disappointment, we found out that the dish was no longer on the menu. I was so sad. Bruno triggered me when he was trying to search online for the same dish from other restaurant, despite me already telling him many times not to bother because that was exclusive to Yoshinoya. He just refused to give up and kept scouring Google until I snapped at him real bad. Geez, why can’t guys take no for no?

We went for our morning caffeine fix at 4/4 Seasons Coffee, at Shinjuku. Our coffee took a long time to arrive, but the atmosphere of the cafe was pretty cosy. Our latte was good – strong yet smooth.

Our original plan was to head to Fuunji for lunch, but as we were too full of disappointment with Yoshinoya (and that we weren’t hungry), we decided to skip Fuunji and went straight to the next place on our itinerary – Shinjuku Gyoen. We initially planned this trip to hopefully get a glimpse of koyo, but unfortunately due to the extreme weather events earlier this year, the koyo period was being pushed back. So when we were there, the leaves were only starting to change. Sigh. Here are some photos of the garden – please click on the Flickr album link below this post for more (PM me for the Flickr album links).

Before we knew it, it was almost 2pm and we were starting to get hungry. We wandered around the streets near Shinjuku Sanchome station to look for a decent restaurant. I decided on a rather “loud” (in terms of facade decoration) ramen restaurant and went for it without checking reviews online. We ordered via a vending machine (which has English words), and were then guided to a table while waiting for food. Service was quick and friendly – and we didn’t need to wait too long when two bowls of ramen were served to us.

I ordered extra portion of spinach – not realising that the ramen already had quite a bit of spinach, so imagine my surprise when my ramen came with a HUGE portion of spinach. Not that I’m complaining… it’s hard to get vegetables in Japan, and I’m a huge fan of spinach too. So it’s a win-win situation for me. The ramen was soooo good! The broth was amazing, and even though I’m not a huge fan of thick ramen noodles, this was certainly good enough for me to finish the entire bowl – except for that small quail egg. So good! Better than Ichiran! (Bruno begged to differ, but this is MY blog, so my opinion is weighted more!)

Only long after I came back from the trip and was trying to submit reviews at Tripadvisor, then I found out that this ramen restaurant is actually a ramen chain called Ikkakuya. I felt so ignorant…

After lunch, we slowly made our way back to Ueno and explored Ameyoko. Good thing we didn’t attempt to find lunch at Ameyoko… most of the food stalls didn’t attract us. Most of the merchandise stalls did not attract us either…. We just walked and walked, and just ended up straight at Niki no Kashi. After spending about an hour there, we finally bought most of the food souvenirs that we needed, and we went back to the hotel to store our loot before we headed out again for dinner.

Dinner was a simple affair… we simply went to eat tendon at Tempura Tendon Tenya, which was just around the corner of our hotel. And it was so cheap! JPY540 (~S$6.50) for this bowl of fresh goodness – there’s prawn, fish, squid, pumpkin okra…

We walked around the neighbourhood a little longer before heading back to the hotel. I dropped by Angelus to buy something for my breakfast the next day. Check out Day 3’s post to know what I bought!

Japan Dec 2018 – Day 3 (17/11/2018)

So, this was what I bought at Angelus the previous night – Banana Boat! This was such a nostalgic cake – my mom used to buy this for me when I was a kid. It’s a vanilla sponge cake wrapped around a real huge banana, surrounded with thick rich cream. I totally scoffed at Tokyo Banana (the famous snack) because I have eaten this real thing before. Not the fake, artificial banana essence that was so obvious in Tokyo Banana.

I unwrapped the cling wrap excitedly to take a bite, and I was immediately in heaven. It was exactly what I remembered! The sponge cake was soft, filled with rich cream and the banana within it was so fresh! Aaaaahhhh I’m salivating as I typed this…

We left the hotel after eating our breakfast (yes Bruno ate the banana boat cake too), and our itinerary today was just Sumida Aquarium and Tokyo Solamachi. We slowly strolled along the Sumida River, popping by Cafe WE for coffee to-go. We basked in the sun while drinking the coffee and watching the skyline on the opposite side of the river (a.k.a. the Skytree). Bruno then had this typical touristy idea to take a photo of the coffee and the Skytree…. We tried so many times but failed – this is one of the better shots already. Not easy to try and take pictures with the sun shining straight in your eyes, you know…

We cut through Sumida Park after we crossed the river – a small park with a small pond, nothing much to it. There was zero queue for the aquarium (which came as a huge surprise as it was a Saturday after all), so we simply got our tickets and proceeded into the aquarium. I shan’t bore you with the typical photos of the aquarium here (and also to save my bandwidth), so if you wish to see the maritime creatures, please click on the Flickr link at the end of this post.

Lunch was a simple affair at the “food court” of Tokyo Solamachi. Tokyo Solamachi on its own was a HUGE shopping mall, but unfortunately it’s so huge that we got lost many times while I was looking for appropriate gifts to get for my nephew and niece. We took a coffee break at Tokyo Sumida City Point cafe (a small, rather unknown cafe within a retail space). I ordered latte (as usual), while Bruno opted for a yuzu soda. I didn’t really like the coffee, but well, coffee is coffee. I think Bruno quite liked his soda though…

We went out of the building to take a look at the Tokyo Skytree towering above us – it was so difficult to get a full shot of the tower, especially when we were so near it. Oh well. 

After attempting to take a few decent shots of the Skytree, we went back to Tokyo Solamachi to hunt for the gifts… and I ended up back at Pokemon centre. Decided on two pairs of chopsticks (Pikachu and Eevee) in the end… although the two kids still don’t know how to use chopsticks, hopefully they’ll have incentives to learn now and to use them in the future.

And just like that, the day was over. We had our dinner at Ichiran – which I still find it to be normal, and which Bruno still raved to no end…

Japan Dec 2018 – Day 4 (18/11/2018)

So, after 3 sleepless nights, I finally decided to go ahead and book another room for the next 3 nights – so that I can sleep. Yes, I couldn’t sleep properly for 3 days due to Bruno’s snoring. Enough was enough – I’d rather spend the money so that I can get proper rest before I fall sick. It was fortunate that the hotel still had available rooms – and it wasn’t as expensive as I thought. Around S$300 for 3 nights – pretty decent price considering the hotel is in Tokyo.

It was difficult to explain to the reception why I booked an additional room in the middle of my stay though.. but he managed to understand in the end, so all’s good!

Today’s plan was a “surprise visit” (didn’t manage to hide the surprise till the very end though), together with a trip to Kyu-Furukawa Garden and Rikugien Garden. The “surprise” visit was actually Yanaka Ginza, or known more as the “cat street”. This name, however, seems to be slightly misplaced… we hardly see any cats while we were there. =(

While my breakfast was a melon pan bread bought from Asakusa (which I ate in the hotel), Bruno’s was a slice of apple pie from a pie shop named Mammies an Sourire at Yanaka Ginza which I found on Google Maps. The slice of apple pie was chockful of HUGE apple pieces. I didn’t try it, but it seemed like Bruno loved it! After devouring his apple pie, we went next door (literally) for coffee at Yanaka Coffee-ten. It’s like a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, but it even roasts its own coffee beans. The coffee was way too strong – their latte was literally just black coffee with some milk (which means it’s actually “white americano”, not latte). I’m not saying it’s not good… it’s just not the type of coffee that we enjoy drinking. I like the smell of coffee shops that roast their own beans though…

By the time we finished our coffee, the shops along the main Yanaka Ginza streets were slowly opening for business. We passed by a few shops that sell fried items, until I couldn’t resist and joined the queue to buy some fried squid and croquette. We just stood by the roadside and finished them all. The people manning the stall were all quite fierce though… they yelled at tourists who tried to take photos of their items or the shop itself. Shortly after chomping down the fried stuff, Bruno wanted to try the takoyaki shop which we stumbled upon in a small alley… so off we went. It was pretty interesting…. the takoyaki came bare, and we had to put the mayo and sauce and bonito flakes ourselves. There was a Japanese lady customer seated next to Bruno and she pushed the sauces to us and gestured for us to put the sauces ourselves. She even stood up and grabbed two empty cups from the counter and poured ice water for us. (We saw the ice water but we didn’t get it as we didn’t really want to drink icy water in such cold weather…) We felt slightly embarrassed but at the same time, we appreciated her help.

We then headed towards Kyu-Furukawa Garden, while trying to search for a lunch place. Unfortunately after we left Yanaka Ginza, there was really not much food places around or near Kyu-Furukawa Garden. We ended up going for the ONLY restaurant that we came across in a long while – and it was supposedly a tea restaurant. Or should I say – a restaurant that specialises in food using tea leaves…

Their lunch menu for the day was tea-infused pork stew with toast. Errrrrr it was interesting, to say the least. I’m not exactly a huge fan of the taste, but it wasn’t too bad… The price was decent since it comes with coffee – about S$12.50.

Finally fueled up, we went to Kyu-Furukawa Garden and wow, the changing of colours were certainly more obvious there. Roses too, were in full bloom within the rose bed in front of the mansion. Some photos here, but a lot more if you click on the Flickr album link at the end of this post!

After spending a couple of hours at Kyu-Furukawa Garden, we then walked all the way to Rikugien Garden, and stayed there till their Autumn illumination. There’s nothing much to write about – just an experience of camping at a spot and waiting for darkness to fall and the lights to come on.

Our legs were both dead tired by the time we left Rikugien Garden. Initially my plan was to head to Ginza for Hannosuke tendon, but I seriously doubt we would even make it there with our legs dying, so we simply just dragged ourselves to Ichiban Coco (which we remembered passing by while walking from Kyu-Furukawa Garden to Rikugien) for dinner and much needed rest, before heading back to the hotel.

And yay, I finally got a room for myself! With a Skytree view to boot! Finally, I got my much needed sleeeeeeeeeeep….

Japan Dec 2018 – Day 5 (19/11/2018)

Finally had a good sleep!

There was a major change in our planned itinerary. Initially this day should be a day where we would spend our morning at Kaminarimon / Nakamise, but we had already visited these places at night, and we honestly didn’t feel that they are worth another trip. Hence we decided to head instead to Koishikawa Korakuen instead! It was meant to be for tomorrow, but then that just freed up our itinerary the next day to head somewhere else.

We have visited a tad too many gardens in this trip, and I honestly didn’t feel much enthusiasm anymore stepping into another one. Well, I mean, they are all meticulously curated… but they are still just… gardens. The stone paths are still nice and all… but I guess I somehow developed a “garden fatigue” by the 5th day. I had a melon bread as breakfast (bought from Family Mart the night before) and instant mushroom soup. However it clearly wasn’t enough, as I was really hungry by the time we walked half of Koishikawa Korakuen. Good thing they had a couple of food vans set up in the middle of the garden and we managed to get some hotdogs. I’ve never eaten such delicious hotdogs, really! But then it could be because I was hungry…..

After strolling the ENTIRE Koishikawa Korakuen, we then went for fluffy pancakes! The one I listed on my itinerary was A Happy Pancake at Ikebukuro, and when we reached, there was a short queue in front of us. Shortly after we joined the queue, the number of people in the queue suddenly increased significantly. Good thing we arrived slightly earlier… but even so, it was a super long wait – I think it was at least 45 minutes before we had a table! Bruno was so tired that he had to sit on the stairs while waiting.

We both ordered their standard souffle pancakes – one set each. It was good! Soft and fluffy… Bruno loved it so much that before he finished his, he ordered yet another one – tiramisu flavour this time. I was shocked – wouldn’t he be too full from all these?! Unfortunately he already ordered and in the end, as expected, he couldn’t finish them all. But uh… at least he liked them! I was half worried that he wouldn’t like this kind of pancake as he usually preferred the traditional ones anyway.

I initially wanted to go Mutekiya for ramen, but we were both too full from the souffle pancakes and we had them too late. Sigh. We had to give Mutekiya a miss…. we tried to let the souffle pancakes digest faster by walking around Ikebukuro despite being already extremely tired, but we still weren’t hungry by the time we left Ikebukuro. Feeling disappointed, we went back to Asakusa – and duh, we started to feel hungry when we reached Asakusa. I guess I’m just not fated to eat Mutekiya…

On our way back, we had to change metro lines and we passed by this onigiri shop. Bruno couldn’t resist and we went in to take a look. I forgot what he bought, but I myself bought a “tamago onigiri”… it was supposed to have a whole egg inside! I had it for breakfast the next day, haha.

It was starting to drizzle again (it was drizzling while we were in Ikebukuro), and we decided to pop by this small ramen restaurant called 三豊麺 (Sanpoumenzan) after looking at their menu. All their ramen comes with a small plate of fried rice, and we expected all servings to be rather small. Instead, their ramen serving was huge, and the fried rice serving was huge too! …And I actually managed to finish both of them. I was surprised by my own appetite…

Japan Dec 2018 – Day 6 (20/11/2018)

Ate my tamago onigiri! It was good!

For our morning caffeine fix, we walked to February cafe to get our latte. It was already full of patrons early in the morning, so we ordered and sat on the waiting bench to drink instead, until one group of family who was sitting outside left. We went out of the shop and sat in the cold, drinking the hot latte – quite a nice experience really. Nothing much planned for this day – as we have already visited the places that we initially wanted to go on this day. So we ended up heading to Ueno Park, which we put aside as we did not expect to have enough time to visit this place.

There were a few gingko trees which were turning yellow at the entrance of Ueno park, but otherwise there’s not much koyo around. We went to an “imitation kiyomizudera” temple where I bought a health amulet for my Dad (which he only had for 2 days…). After walking around the park for a bit (and spotted an early sakura bloomer), we decided to enter the Ueno Zoo to spend the rest of the day. Well, zoos being zoos… nothing much to write about. You can see more photos in my Flickr album anyway.

We had lunch in one of the many cafeterias within the zoo. The price was reasonable, and the food was decent too. Ueno zoo had a panda enclosure, and it was the panda’s birthday or something. The queue to see the pandas were horrendously long. It’s not like we haven’t seen pandas before, so we decided to give that a miss. It was about 2pm when we left Ueno zoo, and we wandered around Ueno park again. Bruno spotted the Natural Museum of Nature and Science, and we decided to visit it at his insistence. I’m not a huge fan, and I was really tired (allergies from the animals) so I spent most of the time trying to find seats to sit and rest while waiting for him. The museum consists of two wings, and both closed at 5pm. 3 hours are certainly not enough to go through exhibit by exhibit. I had to rush him so that he can complete what he wanted to see. He regretted not stumbling upon this museum earlier, so I promised to let him have a day there the next time we visit Tokyo.

I wonder when that’ll be though…

Dinner was a simple affair back at Asakusa, at a small humble family restaurant called Kamiya. I ordered their tendon, and it was full of fresh ingredients. Again I finished all of it (I hardly leave food untouched when I was in Japan… they were all too good to waste!).

Japan Dec 2018 – Day 7 (21/11/2018)

Woke up at 5am in the morning – to have breakfast and to check out. It’s not the most enjoyable overseas trip I’ve had – but I did enjoy my “alone” time when I have the whole room to myself for the last 3 nights of the trip. I hope one day I’ll be able to solo travel…

Watching the Skytree with sunrise in the backdrop while eating my breakfast was a pretty nice experience.

After we got to the airport, we checked in and started to look for our proper breakfast. We both ordered Tsukemen, and it was pretty good. As usual, the serving was huge and I took a long time before I can finish every bit of the noodles. Bruno on the other hand, couldn’t even finish his. We spent some time getting more omiyage before we went to the boarding area to wait for our flight.

The food onboard this time was prepared by Japanese celebrity chefs. I got hashed beef with butter rice, but uh… I find the food to be pretty normal…. *cough*

Well that’s it for this Tokyo 2018 trip. I don’t know when will I visit Japan again though… sigh.