Tokyo day 3 - 03 April 2016

8am woke up.

10am walked to nearest 7-11 that we visited last nite. Hitting our luck and ask the joy if he sees a dropped pasmo card here last nite.  After some challenging effort to make him understand pur request, To our surprise he really went to find thru a box full off lost and found and show us the card.

He asked us how much credit we have to validate, and then returned it to us. Man. That is so so so incredible. 

11am First stop. Shinjyuku goen(park). Some labeled it as the most beautiful park in Tokyo. 

Entrence fee is 200¥ per adult,  and free for golden age and disabled.

And finally this is where our selfie stick shines 

There was a Traditional Japanese Tea house there for people to experience the correct way to enjoy Japanese green tea.

700¥ each.

The bowl of green tea is served along with a small piece of dessert which is something like a mochi or maybe moon cake.  It's sweet, and the smooth and slightly bitter green tea makes it a very good compliment. 

A small piece of the mochi, let it melt in your mouth while u slowly pick up the warm green tea bowl, take a deep sniff of the fragrance from the bowl, let the smell travels through your nostrils up till it gets to your head.

Now sip a bit of the tick green tea. Let the bitterly smooth texture neutralize your sweetened taste buds. 

Perfect combo. 

(Hanabiramochi means "flower petal mochi". It's traditionally served at the first tea ceremony of the new year. This tradition began with the Imperial Family. Hanabiramochi has a distinctive shape and color. It's filled with mung bean paste. The shape and colors of the hanabiramochi have symbolic meaning (related to a new year).)

After the tea ceremony, we joined with thousands of other people picnic and had our lunch in the park.

Here's the place that we had our lunch, and our sushi lunch box which we bought near our place we stay.

... and then we spent the rest of the time at the park taking NatGeo quality of pictures. 

3pm-5pm we visited Meiji Jingu  Shrine.

Some photos from the main Entrence ......

It takes a while (long walk along the forest) to reach the inside.

Sat down in one of the rest place for our first ever Sakura Ice cream.

And here's the inside of the shrine.

Here after, Everything looks almost the same as in the Yasakuni shrine we visited yesterday, only that everything was in a smaller scale.....

Here's the place to do some wishing....

... and here's the place where people scoop water and wash their left and right hands.

OK. Now before I write this. Please hold on to your seat tight so that u don't fall off after hearing the stint we did.

We wanted to visit the infamous Calico Cat Cafe. We found it in Google and it says 45min walk.

We did not question it and just walked....... all the way from Harajuku to Shinjuku.

Actually we couldn't have taken the subway if we din follow what Google says. Nonetheless we saw a lot of interesting places along the way. Like this one....

...and this one , which Danielle spent 30min in that shop and bought some souvenirs from Kiddy Land. It's all worth the walk.

Finally we reached Shinjyuku around 8pm.

And this is the first thing we see.

The gozzila hotel.

With the help of Google map, and with some challenges and some luck, we finally found the Calico Cat Cafe.

It's already fully packed.

We have to book our slot and cone back an hour later.

1200¥ per person per hour to let the cat serves you. 

Well, we walked down to find some food.

There are a lot of red district area there.

Although I don't understand what those guys are talking, I am quite certain that those are those red district area. Because all their pamphlets and their shops are in red color.

Along the way, one shop happened to caught our attention. The jazzy music that flew thru the Entrence of this shop led us into their shop underground.

Kuriya.

One word. Awesome.

Good service.

Nice food.

Cozy environment. 

This is a plate of fried salmon with fried vegetables.

And this one really stands out.

It's served like a friend patty, 2 layers.

The bottom one is a layer of avocado.

The top layer is fresh tuna, sprinkled with fried almond, green onions and fresh tomatoes.

The combination is really wonderful.

After the food, we went straight ahead to Calico Cat Cafe.

It's sad to say that the cats hardly come to you if you don't have any treats. Lol.

With 300¥ , we get ourselves a box of treats, and viola, we are the most served customers in harem.

I'll let the photos speak for itself. ....

This is Kamachi. He is wearing a red scarf. All cats that wear a red scarf is not suppose to be fed with treats because they have kidney problems. 

This is the fattest cat. It's definitely not fluffy.

After the session we went for some shopping around shinjuku before we head back to our house.......

....... only to find out that Danielle somehow forgot where she left the omiyage that she bought from Kiddy Land. 

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.  :)