Tokyo Day 2 - 02 April 2016

Woke up at 8am.
Left house at 10am.
Reached Otemachi Station at 11am.
Visited the Imperial Palace.

There were a lot of people, but the check point was very efficient despite the fact that they were very thorough.

They even requested us to open our bags, and drink the water that we brought along in front of them, still in a very polite manner.

 

The whole palace is like walking in a heavily guarded botanical garden.

One of the buildings in the Imperial Palace.

One of the side entrence/exit of the Imperial Palace. Noticed how huge and tick and tall is the wooden door.

The palace is full with historical buildings and lots of trees, not only Sakura. 

One of The park outside the palace. The trees all looks like bonsai like. Stocky.

1pm we went to Otemachi Station and had our first ever local authentic Japanese ramen.

400yen per bowl.

I ordered tempura ramen and Danielle ordered prawn ramen.

ordering is done thru a kiosk machine, and proceed to the counter by showing them your receipt, and in less than 3min, your servings are ready.

it was really wonderful.

the soup wasn't too salty, and the hot soup was perfect at this 8degree Celsius weather. most importantly the people are all very gentle and polite.

love this place very much.

After lunch we went to Tokyo Station.

Bought the tickets for Shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagano for 5th April, as we plan to go there for a day trip to see the famous "snow monkey sauna" scene. 

Man , the tickets are not cheap.

33000 yen for two and fro for the both of us.

We spent some time in Tokyo, and then took a train to Yasakuni Shrine.

There is a lot of people that says that this is the most hated place for Chinese, as this is the place where the Japanese build this shrine to pray and worship all their soldiers and heroes during WWII.

I personally have no comments. I'm just here to see and learn about the different culture of Japan.

back to the topic.

somehow, I'm not sure , but it seems like they are celebrating some special events here. 

there are lots hawkers selling food along the way, just like our Pasar Malam.

Notice the hawkers lining on both sides towards the entrence of the shrine.

One of the food we tried along the hawker stalls. It's a thick like kogepan with red beans paste. Hot, not very sweet. Not oily. Just nice for a very cold and windy evening.

We walked around the shrine.

One thing I really love about Japan is, although they are a very developed country, their parks and places are all still well preserved with a lots of old trees which you can see from their huge trunks.

The whole place is again filled with Sakura. 

One of the statue in the shrine.

Entrence of the shrine.

This is a place/hut where these is a pool of water. People go in and scoop some water and wash first their left hand, then their right hand, and then their mouth.

And there is also some wishing thingies. 

You drop 100yen into the box, and you will get a piece of paper which says all the lucky stuff.

And then you need to tie that paper to the lines beside it, just like what thus Lil girl did.....

There are also other kinds of similar thing where u can buy a piece of wood, and cali graph your wishes on it and then hand it on this wall.

And this will be the shrine itself (I guess).

Lots of people are lining up to pay respect.

The note there says:-

1 bow, 2 claps, 2 bow

... which is what everyone does.

There is a place in it where it's a long room with heater. It displays a lot of nice floral arrangement.

We left Yasukini Shrine around 6pm and reached Shinya at around 7pm.

Shinya is a very busy city. 

The first thing of course was to find the very famous Hachiko statue. 

If you haven't watch the movie Hachiko, please watch it. It's a very touching movie (especially if you are a dog lover)

To show you how busy Shibuya is, here is a snapshot of the infamous Shibuya Crossing when the lights turn green.

Did I mention that Shibuya was a very busy city? Well of course, shopping is definitely inevitable then.

1pm went back to sumiyoshi.

We walked around our housing area, and noticed that it's in fact a small village of its own, having a few easily accessible 7-11 like store, and also a few ramen, sushi, and other food related houses.

We bought some food and drinks from 7-11, and then headed back to our house

.......

...... only to find out that Danielle lost her Pasmo  (subway) card with around 10000 yen worth of credit in it.

Tokyo Day 1 - 01 April 2016

5:30am dad and mum came fetch us.

6am reach airport. Very cold. Flight from penang to HK delayed by 2 hrs. Departing time is now 10am. We got rm25 voucher for McD each. Met song chiew as we were in the same flight. He was going to US for biz trip

10-2pm watched Revenant on the plane together. It was really a very nice exciting and intense movie. The flight was awesome.

2-4pm walked around HK airport. Damn. The food there is damn expensive. A bowl of Wan ton mee was Rm 30 and a bowl of fish ball congee is also Rm30.
Visited Disney shop in the airport.

4-9:15pm flight from HK to Haneda airport.

9.15pm reached airport.
Long queue in immigration. Gotn9ut of check in around 10pm
Went collect rented portable WiFi by pupuruwifi.com at ABC counter
Went asked around for directions around bought PASMO card for train and bus (3000¥ each)
Hopped on around train. Which turned out to went to the wrong direction .
Asked two japanese working guys , they were very good. Led us to the correct station and told us what to do.
Hopped onto it. Bang a few walls again, kept asking people.
Found out that the train in Japan is extremely confusing compared to all the previous subways (Singapore and taiwan) that we've taken.

We asked for help from some young guy inside the train who happens to be a Chinese. He gave us this 2 picture and asked us to snapshot it. It does not help at all. Lol

One thing that we noticed. All adult Japanese , when you walked close to them , you can smell a very strong smell of alcohol. I guess it's because today is Friday night. Lol. A lot of those can't even walk in a straight line when they enter the train. Some even need help from their friends to enter the train. 

As the trains that we took are somewhat the last train , we had the privilege to experience packing together with all the working folks that are rushing back. I could not explain in pure words how packed it was. But you could hardly breathe, and you can not even change the position of your hand. The only thing that u could move is only your fingers. Imagine that!!

12am finally reached the place we stay. Setup WiFi,  send text messages to everyone that we r safe. And oyasumi nasai.  :)

1st wing Chun exam

Last Sunday I had my first wing Chun exam after been practicing this art for almost 2 years plus.

Sifu Klaus Brand came all the way from Germany.

The session starts at 9am, at the upper floor of the CRC Restaurant. It started off with sifu teaching us and going thru all the basics with us, starting from a punch, and then 小念头。His detail explanation really gives a lot of insight to me, especially now I get to better understand what each real function of the techniques , and how it's best being applied.

Later on we did some techniques practice , followed by the exam.

I would say that even though it costs USD120, the detail explanation and the experience of learning from our grand master is really worth all the money.

Ocean's 4th jab

2 days ago Hiro had a fight with Ocean.
And ocean's gingivitis came back again.

I am suspecting that ocean is getting stressed whenever there is a fight , which eventually causes his immune system to drop , and his gingivitis to come back.

We brought him to Hope Vet after work. It's only 1month plus since his last jab. Doctor advice that thus doesn't look good as its getting more frequent.

We really will keep a very close eye on the contact between Hiro and Ocean from now on. And let's see will this jab last longer this time.

Hiro 1st steroid jab

Hiro has been having mouth pain for the past few days. And it's being getting worse lately.

We brought him to vet, and the doctor said that the gingivitis was very bad. He suggest that a jab is given to him so as to suppress his pain , and then after that we could follow up with some antibiotics.

DIY Replace Water Taps

3.5 hours of hard work.
Blood and sweat.
And this is what we have.....

A new water tap for our master bathroom
A new water tap for our guess toilet
And a twin head water tap for our kitchen

Not to shabby eh....

:)

RIP Kaliko

Received a call from Ming yesterday morning. Told me that she found her cat kaliko at the garden of her apartment. Apparently she mist have slipped off the window and fell of from her apartment.

Really came as a shock to us.

Hope kaliko will have a better life in her next reincarnation .