Tokyo Day 6 – Aug 6 2009, Thu – Part II

Brunch at Sanrio Puroland, turned out to be a pleasant delight for me (not sure if it was as delightful for Yh, maybe it was disgustingly cute for him), instead of being just a normal procedure of filling our stomachs. Part II will focus solely on our brunch since many photos were taken at the venue.

This was the exterior of the restaurant. Looked damn plain and antique-looking from the outside.

The window display just outside the restaurant. Not as cute as those in Disneyland and Disneysea leh.

Food samples. All look soooo small.. Jialat for our growling stomachs.

Looks very buffet-style. The interior did not impress me much.

Just pick something from this revolving tray and proceed to the cashier to pay. My eyes started to light up a little bit after seeing all the “hello-kitty-foods”. Don’t grab everything that you see and like, because food there was not cheap.

Wished I could collect all the different character cups home but my husband does not own the gold mine.

At that moment, I felt that the picture below, was the one worthy shot which justified the cost of my entrance ticket. Hahaha. Frankly, though I went on to take many pictures with Hello Kitty, Dear Daniel, etc. later on, I still felt these two shorties really made my day, instead of the other characters. They were so cute and bouncy, probably because of their height. I had the urge to just lift them off the ground. Haha. I felt like a giant next to them, so I had to squat down to get closer to their faces. Who were actually inside them huh? So short and adorable right?

Didn’t know Mocha can be so cute!! I am beginning to love her too. Oh no… spells trouble for Yh. Hahaha.

Btw, only guests dining in that restaurant can take pictures with Sanrio characters during selected hours. I don’t know when the characters appear too, but I think it was around 10.45 am when we entered the restaurant. We were so lucky to catch hold of them just before they walked out of the restaurant.

Next we proceeded to one of the tables to have our brunch.

Not many people inside on a weekday morning…

Another picture, like dining in a greenhouse.

Can’t wait to dig into the food.

Food for both of us. I tell you all, putting aside the kawaii factor of the food, this meal turned out to be the worst in terms of taste, throughout our entire Tokyo trip this time. It looked 100 times better than it tasted… Hahaha. Even the orange juice had a strange taste. Bleah…

See my Hello Kitty bento. I was a bit paiseh to eat that because the little girl sitting at the next table was eating exactly the same thing as me. *throw face*… Haha. We can bring home the lunch box after finishing the food. Not a bad deal. Tokyu Hands does sell this lunch box too; I think it was 800-900 yen, if I remember correctly.

My dessert served in the cute Hello Kitty cup. The size of the cup was so small, more for drinking espressos. The dessert was some rather hard and not very nice strawberry mousse. I forced Yh to finish it up for me so that we won’t waste food. Hahaha.

“Nah, show you all the cute nugget, before it lands up in my stomach.”

My mini apple juice, the cute serviettes  and cutlery. I know I am cheapskate for doing this, but I can’t help it as I love that spoon! I actually brought home the cutlery set… back with me to Singapore.. And I did not bring home the serviettes though I would love to as well, that would be ultimate-cheapo! Hahaha.

My bento consisted of the cold nugget, the soggy fried prawn, the cute sausage, tomato, rice and green peas with minced meat. I could even count the green peas, 2 in all. Haha..

Picture of the set taken from my hp camera.

Zooming in on the prints on the food. Very exquisite…

This came with the bento as a set. A dorayaki in the shape of Hello Kitty. Ermm.. Did not taste fantastic as well. Hahaha.

The paper plate was very cute too. I was seriously considering whether to bring it home too, but it will probably get crushed in my luggage. Haha. So this was spared.

It looks odd seeing an adult drink such a small apple juice. 🙂

After finishing the meal, we quickly walked out so as not to miss all the fun outside. On our way out, we saw some plates for sale. They were not cute enough to entice me to bring them home. Fragile items need extra effort to lug them home ok, so we had to seriously consider if they were worth our efforts.

Told you the plates look so-so only..

Some shaved ice and ice-cream samples. Would love to try if we had more time.

A final picture of the restaurant taken before walking out…

Hopefully they do some renovation and design an even cuter restaurant.

The view from outside the restaurant:

The kitty head was formed using many pink and white ballons. I liked that!

The sweets dispenser machine was made out of a kitty head too. Damn cute.

Caricature service. They will draw us to look more innocent and baby-ish, and not to look like hello kitty okay…

That’s the end of Part II.. Part III will show us touring the Puro Village. It’s a parade venue and also a place where there are many rides and shops. 🙂

Follow me into Puro Village….. (in part III)

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Tokyo Day 6 – Aug 6 2009, Thu – Part I

Main highlights:

• Sanrio Puroland
• Ikebukuro for shopping and dinner

As many photos were taken at Sanio Puroland, I have to break up day 6 into several parts or the entry will be too long.

The last time I visited Sanrio Puroland was about 8 years ago, with my aunt. We followed a tour group and I think the way tour groups schedule itineraries is way too rushed to enjoy everything thoroughly. For instance, I remember that the tour guide brought us to Disneyland around 10 or 11 am, when the park has opened about 1 to 2 hours before that, and hence it was already so packed that we could not play many rides. To make matters worse, they made us leave the theme park at around 6 to 7 pm, for dinner at some other place, thus leading us to miss the parade and fireworks. 😦 I will never join a tour group again, unless I am really so phobic about touring a place free and easy. This time round, I managed to put aside half a day of our itinerary to visit Sanrio Puroland again. 🙂

If you have no intentions to play all the attractions/ride inside, 4 hours should be more than enough for you to watch the parade, take pictures with the characters and anything else interesting inside, shopping and have a meal there. As I have gone through the website beforehand, I feel that the rides tend to be a bit childish and more for kids, so in order to save money and time, we just bought the usual welcome ticket which was ~3000 yen per person. That’s still SGD $45 / pax, not very cheap indeed.

Part I is quite boring because it only shows pictures of our journey there (including train and walking) and the entrance of Sanrio Puroland. The theme park is not exactly near Tama Center Station and some walking is expected. I took about 10 to 15 minutes to walk there. Imagine all that anticipation along the way. Couldn’t wait to fly into the park to see Kitty-chan!!!

To go Tama Center, take the Keio train, which is another operating company apart from JR. Don’t mix it up with JR Keiyo line. The inside of the train looks different too.

Inside the Keio train. You can eat and drink inside, unlike in our MRT trains. Their trains still look very clean though. Can hardly find litter on the floors.

The journey took about 45 minutes. Nothing to do but taking pictures lor.

At the Tama Center Station.

Don’t exit by the wrong exit. Take the South exit. Walk towards the staircase behind me.

Tama Center Area Map. You will see it after stepping out of the station. Kawaii!

Long long long journey to Sanrio Puroland.

Turn left and you will see many low rise cute-looking buildings. Mainly shopping places.

More walking to be done. At least we were starting to catch sight of the theme park.

Tada! Sanrio Puroland!

After 8 years, Sanrio Puroland still looks the same as before. To be frank, it still looks as run-down. Haha. Some areas need some repainting and renovating already. Hopefully the next time I go back, it will be a refreshing change.

More pictures of Sanrio Puroland from the entrance…

Posing behind the pink lamp post. See, there is a crack or stain on the lamp post. Tsk tsk.

A closer look at the entrance. It’s actually a dull-looking rainbow roof up there!

Me staring at the admission charges, wondering if there are cheaper packages. So damn expensive and yet still no major renovations done. Frankly, I feel that Disneyland/sea’s admission charges were far more worth it than Sanrio Puroland’s. At least more to play, eat and shop. Orbi-good (i.e. serves me right) for falling in love with Hello Kitty since young… No choice but to pay lor. 😦 We also noticed that Sanrio Puroland’s staff’s service standard lose to those in Disneyland/sea. They had less smiles and were less polite, and most of them looked very dull and lethargic.

A blur shot of the entry gates.

Enjoy the next few pictures which will show what you will see upon entering the entry gates.

This picture above shows how small the theme park is. Probably Sanrio should “recruit” more cute characters to be under its wing so that they can expand.

Pom Pom Purin and Badtz Maru at the entrance of one of the shops.

As both of us had not had any breakfast beforehand, we were quite hungry and quickly searched for some cafe or restaurant to settle our brunch. They don’t have many choices, but I was hoping to see some cute foodstuffs like those in Disneyland. We quickly went upstairs in search of food.

Some posing at the staircase. I didn’t look very happy because a hungry person cannot possibly be all smiles.

Walking up the other side’s staircase carefully. There’s some painting on the wall above. Rainbow again.

Small “Cinnamondreamcafe”. Hmm… Sounds very dreamy.

*faint*. They sell so little things. Alot of mousse, cream and pudding. I don’t fancy those for brunch. Definitely cannot satiate us. Their serving was also super duper small, for super duper small eaters. Okay lah, to be fair to them, they sell hotdogs too, if I remember correctly. They don’t look very appetizing though.

Very cute mugs, but you can’t eat them however hungry you are. Haha.

This is the cartoon picture above the entrance of the park. Can you spot the blue penguin in the picture? It’s an ancient (really very long-time-no-see) character which is almost extinct already, Sanrio stopped selling products with that penguin on it. Those born in 197x and 198x should have seen it before. They really ought to repaint that mural with some newer characters, like Cinnamoroll and Charmy Kitty.

A very cute ornament. I think it’s something to do with their Japanese religion.

Since that dreamy cafe was such a letdown, we had to look for other places to have our brunch right? Part II will tell you where we had our brunch. Unforgettably cute experience. Stay tuned!!

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Tokyo Day 5 – Aug 5 2009, Wed

Main highlights:

• Bought limousine bus tickets from the hotel bell captain.
• Akihabara.
• Garden Walk Outlet.

The itinerary for day 5 was planned in an impromptu way. I think we only discussed where we were going on that morning itself. The past 2 days of Disneyland and sea had depleted us of all our energy and we actually slept till around 10 am that morning. I still think it was a wrong decision for us to go Gotemba on day 2 because it was not only costly to get there, it was a waste of time and energy. We were seriously exhausted by the end of day 4.

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More thoughts on Gotemba Premium Outlets: (Skip if you are not interested)

Come to think of it, Gotemba premium outlets is not so bad because it really has many brands, but unless we have many days to spare in Tokyo, I think we will give it a miss in future. 🙂 The only brand at Gotemba premium outlets, which I feel will be a pity to miss it, is Samantha Thavasa. Hahaha. Other than that, the other brands are quite standard and can be found at other outlets places too. If, 1) there is no traffic jam in getting there or going back via the bus, 2) there is no rain or hot sunny sun, 3) there are more eating places and choices there, and 4) there are fewer people there (we went on a Sunday you see, haha), I think we will like Gotemba premium outlets much much more.

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Before we set off from our hotel, we went to the bell captain at our hotel to buy the limousine tickets to go Narita airport on our last day. Typically, tickets should be purchased in advance and reservations made earlier so that you can secure seats on the limousine bus. If the bus is too crowded, I think they will arrange another bus, but then again, that is not guaranteed. Anyway we won’t take chances and might as well buy the tickets early.

Japan is a high-tech city, even buying tickets from the hotel is automated, done using this machine below.

My funny husband took this picture, he kept saying this machine is so cute. Hmmm?! The only cute thing is the model of the limousine bus placed on the top of the machine lor. Haha.

Our first destination for the day: Akihabara. I have always liked Akihabara though it is more of a guys’ place.

Men like to go there mainly for these few reasons:

1. Japanese Manga and anime,
2. Japanese toys (those collectibles like figurines, army tanks, etc.),
3. the many maids’ cafes located in the vicinity, and
4. technological products, like accessories/consoles – PC, wii, PS, etc.

As for me, I like it there because they sell many cute and innovative computer stuffs which can’t be easily found in Singapore. For instance, many years ago, the sushi-types of thumbdrives were rather popular in Japan and in particular, you can see a large variety of designs at Akihabara, all exquisitely made. They had the finger thumbdrive, the duckie thumbdrive, the tamago sushi thumbdrive, the ebi sushi thumbdrive, etc. I was more after cute things then (more than 3 years ago), so I bought a pink rubber duckie thumbdrive which lights up whenever you insert into your USB ports, and also a Disney Marie thumbdrive which will display a cute Marie animation on my screen each time my PC detects it. Yh also bought a very plain and neat laptop bag for work, which surprisingly was very cheap, around SGD$40! Felt it was a good buy that lasted for years.

This time was our second time at Akihabara, and we were still amazed by the cute Wii accessories at Yodobashi Akiba. Goodness, they had a pink Wii remote strap! So girly! They also have other colours like light blue, light green, and the usual white. We also bought a nuchuck back because we thought our nuchuck was spoilt, but it turned out to be not. It was slightly cheaper than in Singapore. I also pestered Yh to let me buy many stickers, which are actually Hello Kitty protective stickers for my wii remote and nuchuck. So kawaii! Can’t bear to use them. 😦 Btw, the latest Wii console and accessories in Japan are in black now. Yh found them so cool but he did not buy any of them because they would be a mismatch with our current Wii console..

The pink wii remote strap. Wasn’t cheap, I think about SGD$5. I bought only one.

One thing about the Yodobashi Akiba store. I think I was a bit angry (because I am a petty woman) over the tax refund policy in the store. They kept announcing that they have a tax refund policy, somemore in various languages, and that to enquire more about it, approach any of the staff in the store. WAH LAO, the irritating thing was, I really approached a few staff in the store, but none of them seem to understand/speak English! How to even ask them about it huh? Hahaha. In the end when I mentioned “tax refund”, they answered me with very basic English, “No” and crossed their hands. WTH.. I don’t know how to qualify for the tax refund in the end and lost motivation in spending more than 10,000 yen there. Bwhahaha.

On the 7th or 8th storey of the store, is an entire storey of restaurants. Tokyo has lots of departmental stores with this concept, like in Tobu Ikebukuro, Isetan Shinjuku, etc. where there is one whole storey dedicated to Japanese restaurants. We visited this ramen restaurant that was located opposite Pepper Lunch, and there was always a queue, but a fast-moving one.

The front of the restaurant. Each bowl was about SGD$12. Reasonable price right?

The restaurant was small but cosy, and most of the patrons sat round the kitchen, at the counter. There were some table seats but not many in all.

Our ramen with lots of ingredients in each bowl. Our soup bases were different but both were tasty. I wouldn’t say they were exceptionally good, but okay lah. Thought the standard was similar to that in Hakata Nihon Ryori at Mohd Sultan. I reviewed Hakata here previously.

A very nice old uncle sat next to Yh and he helped us take that picture above. He was very cute. Haha. I saw him reading a whole passage of English while queueing to enter the restaurant and he could converse with us using basic English. He told us every restaurant in Japan is good because it is very competitive in the F&B industry there. Any lousy restaurant there will close down very quickly. He also told us that his colleague just came back from Singapore, and his review of our food standard was – cheap but standard-wise, “so so”. I think he went to places serving mediocre food. What a shame.. *throw face*… But I really agree with him leh. You just step into any restaurant in Japn, everything is really tasty! Nothing was really disappointing there. In Singapore, it is easy to be disappointed by the food standard here generally. Unless….. you are willing to make effort to research on reviews of good restaurants online, willing to pay for tastier food, and willing to travel to secluded corners of Singapore in search of the restaurants. With all that effort, I might as well eat the tastier and cheaper char kway teow, carrot cake, and hainanese chicken rice in many hawker centres. Haha.

Next on our itinerary was Garden Walk Outlet. It’s very near the JR Kaihin-Makuhari Station, we went there via the Keiyo line. We had not had enough satisfaction from shopping at the outlets, so we targetted Garden Walk next. It has brands like Agnes b, Vanessa Bruno (star attraction for me), Adidas, Jill Stuart (clothes only) and asics (nice Onitsuka Tiger shoes there, prices only slightly lower).

All smiles because I am going shopping next!!

I always have a problem, I don’t have the mood to take any pictures when I am concentrating on shopping or food. So the above was the only shot we took at the Garden Walk outlet. Hahaha. We spent about half a day there, and it was evening by the time we left the place. We were dead beat. Although it did not look like a big place, we actually did a lot of walking and standing (while browsing through the items on sale).

Inside the JR train, on the way back to Shinjuku. Really really very tired then.

See what I bought from there!!! *excited* Agnes b stuffs were generally going at less 30% and Vanessa Bruno bags were at less 50%.

Agnes b bags first:

Vanessa Bruno bags: (I have always liked their bags because of the sequins. They make the bags look bling bling.)

The colour was pinkish-beige.

The same bag as above. I put the remote control next to it just to show its size. It’s really very small. The larger size for this colour was sold out, so I had to make do with this mini size. 🙂

I am crazy I told you. I bought the larger size bag, but in brown. This photo’s colour is not so accurate.

The actual colour of the bag, and its size.

I also saw this shop selling racks of clothes, all at 2000 yen (~SGD $30) each!!! I bought 2 skirts at one go, same design but different colours. Haha.

 The 2 skirts were clipped together, one was light yellow, the other was light grey. I like to wear such skirts, especially if they are not too short.

For dinner that night, we did not go any restaurants, but went Takashimaya basement to buy many bento sets. I think it is a very good experience though the food was eaten cold. We always do that for at least one of the nights each time we are in Japan. Many Japanese always buy bentos home for their meals and it’s like us “dabao-ing” (i.e. takeaway) food home for dinner from hawker centres or food courts.

Our sumptuous and filling dinner for the night. We were eating comfortably in our hotel rooms. Finally can rest our feet.

What’s worth mentioning is, all the salads I ate there were really very very nice! That night, we bought some big prawns salad which was not very cheap but it satisfied our taste buds thoroughly too. It was not just the ingredients used, their salad sauce was very well-suited to the ingredients. Even the macaroni salad purchased from the convenience store at the basement of our hotel was very nice! Anyhow grab one also can grab something so tasty. Hahaha. That’s why we love going Japan. 🙂

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Tokyo Day 4 – Aug 4 2009, Tue – Part III

After taking all the rides that we had planned to take (except Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, because the fastpass return time was supposed to be 3.35 pm – 4.35 pm), we went to eat smoked turkey legs and shopped a little at World Bazaar and Adventureland, before going back to visit Pooh’s Hunny Hunt.

You can only find smoked turkey legs at Westernland’s Chuck Wagon.

The turkey leg tastes really good, in fact it tastes like chicken drumstick to me. The meat is tender and well-marinated. Costs 473 yen per leg, iirc. It’s a large portion, so it can be quite filling. I spent about 30 minutes savouring the entire thing. Yh finished his very quickly and was staring at me slowly chewing the meat. The seating area near the Chuck wagon is quite small, so it may be quite hard to find a seat to eat the turkey legs. We walked quite far before we found an unoccupied bench at Adventureland to sit and enjoy. Everytime we go Disneyland, we will definitely not miss this.

Went to Snow White Grotto which was nearby. It’s rather quiet there, as compared to other areas in the park.

You can see statues of Snow White and the 7 dwarfs. Do you notice that Snow White appears rather short as compared to the dwarfs?

I like to be in the picture too!

Some walking around the park before heading to World Bazaar. Took many pictures along the way.. 🙂

Our backs were facing the front of Cinderella Castle when taking this picture. What you see above is World Bazaar. It’s a huge shopping “district” in Disneyland. Shop till your legs break and you will probably still not be able to cover every single item sold there.

Facing the front of Cinderella Castle. It’s hard to take a picture without any people in the foreground. These people were probably waiting for the performance later in the day, which will be staged directly in front of the castle.

Slowly progressing to World Bazaar so that I can start shopping a little.

Our first stop: The Home Store. This store sells Disney stuffs meant for your kitchen, bathroom, dining room, etc. That is the fireplace within the store, just for decorative purposes and it fits the theme of the shop.

Inside the Home Store. Neat looking shelves with items like towels and photo frames.

That is chef Mickey on top of the table. Although I find their plates and mugs very cute, I have to say that they have too few varieties in terms of sizes. For each design, they usually have a standard size for the plate, the bowl and the mug. It would be better if they offer a few difference sizes for us to choose. I usually like larger mugs and find the size of their mugs too small.

That machine can make Mickey waffles! I love it so much and the price is not steep at all. I remember that it costs less than SGD $100. A pity the voltage requirement is not compatible with Singapore’s and meant only for usage in Japan.

Posing at another corner of the Home Store. The display was really pretty and girly. The design on the plates, mugs and flasks is a donut in the shape of Mickey’s head. Can’t buy home the entire set or it will be a huge clash with the theme of my home.

Another display inside the Home Store. The bathroom looks so girly too!

We walked to the nearby Refreshment Corner. Wanted to drink mineral water but they don’t sell that..

The next store we went to was Disney & Co. We spotted a cute cap and Yh sportingly posed with it. Haha.

Went to the one and only Magic place in Disneyland –> Magic Shop. The magician will perform some magic once in a while and children will crowd round him. He will of course converse in Japanese only, so we couldn’t understand what he was saying.

I like this Pooh bunny in a magician’s hat. It was not cheap at all and I didn’t buy home because I have no usage for it. It’s not huggable at all. Haha. The picture was not nicely taken because that particular corner of the shop was not well-lit.

Walking towards the shops at Adventureland. We have been to Disneyland 4 or 5 times, and that was our very first time walking in that street. We had never stepped into those few shops at Adventureland before this trip. Haha. Somehow they’re like our blind spot.

The decor of this street made us feel like we were at some native or tribal area.

Posing outside the beautiful window display of the shop, La Petite Parfumerie.

Even the shop’s signage is so nice.

At the entrance of the shop. I think ladies will be attracted to this shop but not men. It’s too girly. The weird thing was, we went inside and did not take a single picture of the interior. Hahaha. It was very small inside and somehow we finished touring the shop in a few seconds, then walked out immediately without taking any photos. They sell soaps and perfumes, and is probably the only shop in Disneyland selling such items. The shop was also well-hidden in a secluded corner, so it was our first time visiting it.

Items for sale at “Cristal Arts”. Look very exquisite right?

That’s Cinderella Castle. The real thing is prettier than in the photo above.

We had to interrupt our shopping abruptly and rush to Fantasyland as it was almost time for us to ride Pooh’s Hunny Hunt. Quite many pictures for that ride as Pooh is my favourite Disney character, if you have not already known. Haha. I will save that for Part IV. Stay tuned.

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Tokyo Day 4 – Aug 4 2009, Tue – Part I

Main highlights:

• Tokyo Disneyland

Q: Many people may be wondering, “If I have a tight itinerary, which should I visit? Tokyo Disneyland or Disneysea?”

A: I think it depends on what you expect to see. If you like cute stuffs, and want more fun rides to play, I would think Disneyland is more fun, although there are a few far more thrilling and scarier rides (like Raging Spirits, Tower of Terror and Journey to the Center of the Earth) at Disneysea. So Disneysea is more for those bravehearts. Disneyland’s Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain pale in comparison in terms of scary-ness.  Generally, I find Disneysea’s rides very boring and nothing makes me really look forward to playing again, except Journey to the Center of the Earth. At Disneyland, I am always repeatedly playing the same few rides – Peter Pan’s Flight, Pooh’s Hunny Hunt and Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters but I enjoy those 3 rides very much still. When it comes to night time, I would think Disneysea’s night view is more awesome and worth catching, although Disneyland has a beautiful Cinderella castle that lights up every night. Disneyland has a Electrical Dreamlights Parade, which consists of various Disney characters in very bling bling floats moving round the Cinderella castle, while Disneysea’s BraviSEAmo! is very spectacular and something you won’t commonly see in Singapore. I am not sure if our musical fountain at Sentosa is as good or even better, but I like the BraviSEAmo!’s rythms and movements of the fire and water. Not forgetting the catchy Disney type of music during the performance. However, Disneyland’s food is DEFINITELY better than in Disneysea. There are pizza spring rolls, smoked turkey legs and Mickey waffles/pancakes and desserts which cannot be found in Disneysea. 🙂 Well, saying so much, I think I have strong reasons to like both parks, so each time that I go Tokyo, I will make sure I allocate 2 full days for both parks. (Last year, we nearly wanted to give Disneysea a miss, but fortunately we didn’t or I would have regretted missing BraviSEAmo!. Hahaha. Instead, we went shopping in the morning and entered the park around noon time, which meant we missed many rides there.)

Similar to the previous day’s arrangement for Disneysea, we had to board the shuttle bus from our hotel to Tokyo Disneyland. We reached the park super early, at around 7 am, when Disneyland was supposed to open at 8.30 am that morning. At 7 am, as usual, the outside of the park looked very quiet.

If you walk inwards, where the gantry gates are, you will be surprised (or maybe not) that it is already pretty packed! Do note the photo below was taken at 7.05 am in the morning, about 1.5 hour before the park opened.

That morning was drizzling a little, and hence both of us chose the sheltered area to queue up to enter Disneyland, even though other queues were slightly shorter. Top left hand corner shows the queue that we were in.. About 20 people in front of us.

Those people  queueing outdoors were crazy, some of them did not even have umbrellas and braced the rain while waiting for 1 hour +.

It was also during that morning that we saw some ugly behaviour by a Japanese woman holding the hands of her two young boys. She was cutting the queue of the two girls behind us. Those two girls were obviously unhappy about it and stuck very close to our behind so that they couldn’t squeeze in when the gantry gates open. During our previous trips to Tokyo, we used to hold the impression that majority of Japanese were very nice and conscientious people, but this trip made us notice many black sheep among there. For instance, we used to think that whenever we were taking pictures, like Yh taking a picture of me and vice versa, they will not walk through the front of the camera and intercept our picture-taking. Usually, they would walk a longer route behind the person holding the camera. This time, we noticed so many rude Japanese cutting into our paths and ruining so many of our pictures. It was not like that during our previous trips. Sigh… It didn’t just happen once or twice, but many times. Was it because of the hot weather that made them reduce their “nice” factor? Hahaha. Or was it the economic downturn that made them more selfish and behave differently? There was indeed a change in them this year, and we could sense it.

While queueing up, I noticed the mother in front of me having a Disneyland passport ticket which had the character Boo on it. Ours was Mickey and Tinkerbell. Tsk tsk. I like Boo!!! So, I asked her politely if I could take a picture of her passport and she kindly obliged. 🙂

Boo on the top right hand corner. Hope I get her on my next Disneyland/sea passport!

By being rather early in the queues before the gates, we caught glimpses of many characters like Mickey and Pooh. Couldn’t get a good picture of Mickey from our videos as a Japanese guy lifted his daughter on his shoulders and blocked our videocam’s view. As you can see in the picture above, people are waving to the characters! My favourite Pooh was looking so round and cheerful as usual.

As it was drizzling that morning, the Disney characters did come out to wave to everyone before the park opened but they went into hiding once everyone rushed in. There was no photo-taking of Disney characters during rainy conditions! Tsk tsk.. We were targetting to have a photo taken with Minnie.

Quickly putting aside our disappointment, we channelled our energy towards the new attraction in Disneyland –> Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek! (Newly opened in Apr 2009) The description on the website sounded pretty vague. It says something about boarding the tram and playing flashlight tag with Boo. I thought it was a similar concept like Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters, the shooting game where you shoot various targets and earn points, just that this was probably using a torch to shine at Boo to earn points. I was wrong.

Anyway, the Japanese were crazier than us about that ride. Many of them were also first-timers like us, and they were actually RUNNING, SPRINTING, JUMPING, HOPPING, whatever, all the way to the fastpass ticketing booth of that ride! Once the park opened, almost EVERYONE was running towards the same direction, all cutting through World Bazaar, turning right at the cross-junction. Fortunately the pavements there are wide, or there would have been a stampede already. Some mothers were dragging their children along with them as they ran, as their children couldn’t run fast. Hahaha. I couldn’t beat the enthusiastic Japanese at running, so I told Yh to run first and I would meet him directly at the fastpass ticketing booth instead. When I reached the booth, he was already queueing up for it, and there were so many people before and after him. In the end, though he reached the ticketing booth at 8.35-8.40 am, our fastpass returning time was at 10.35 am. This meant that so many people before him had gotten fastpass tickets for the ride. Super competitive. Hahaha. Later on, we learnt that all the fastpasses for the ride had been given out by about 11+ am, and standby entrance’s waiting time was as long as 150 minutes to 180 minutes..

Mad rush for these — Fastpasses for Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek! To prevent delays due to any guests not knowing how to obtain fastpasses, there was a staff stationed at every booth to help us insert in our passports and hand us our fastpasses.

After the rush, we slowed down our pace and started looking for nice cafes or restaurants nearby to have our breakfast. Previously we have had Mickey waffles at Great American Waffle Company and Mickey pancakes at Center Street Coffeehouse, so this time we wanted to try something different. We went to Sweetheart Cafe and instead of choosing the normal-looking breads and pastries for breakfast, we chose the desserts that had some Disney themes to them. Haha. Eating desserts in the early morning? It was a holiday, we just did whatever made us happy!

Two of us with our “breakfast”.

That pretty cup on the front left is coffee jelly with vanilla custard and the swiss roll on the right is Monsters, Inc. swiss roll. Look at its colours, all following closely to the colour theme of Monsters, Inc. The colours of the swiss roll were what drew me to buy it! As for the coffee jelly, I felt the strawberry heart shape on top was very pretty, it was actually just a cookie but I loved it! The total damage for that water, milk, and the 2 desserts came out to be 1380 yen. Not cheap but you can bring home the Monsters, Inc. plate beneath the swiss roll. Despite looking pretty, they tasted only average. Haha. Looked better than they tasted.

A closer look at the Monsters, Inc. swiss roll.

A closer look at the coffee jelly.

That’s my husband looking like he enjoyed the coffee jelly. Haha. I did not like it so I passed it to him to finish up for me. Hahaha. It looks funny seeing a man eating something so girly. He seemed happy eating it though. 🙂

Done with breakfast, we moved on to play and take pictures in the park. Enjoy the pictures.

Some photo-taking along the way to Fantasyland. Behind me was World Bazaar. My stomach still looked big here ‘cos I had not output for days. Haha.

That’s Cinderella’s Castle behind. It looks so small compared to my big head, as I was standing really far far far infront of it lah. Haha.

Many more photos of the castle below. Some taken at different angles and places. We simply liked its architecture. The previous previous round, it was still under renovation, and last year I don’t know why we didn’t take many photos of it too. Haha.

Notice the kawaii garden outside the castle? Is that a rainbow-shrub? Haha. (I mentioned in my posts last year that Tokyo Disneyland is full of interesting looking plants, in various shapes.) Even if you’d like to enter the garden outside Cinderella Castle, you can’t as it is out of bounds. All fenced up. 😦 

Wah didn’t realise my face was so oily. It was hot that day too. Hope I blotted my face from then on so that other pictures won’t have the shine.. Haha.

Saving the other pictures and words for Part II onwards. Although Tokyo Disneyland is not as pretty as Disneysea, the cuteness of it still keeps me deeply attracted to it. Hahaha. I am a big child at heart.

 

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Tokyo Day 3 – Aug 3 2009, Mon – Part VI

The sky was getting dark and most of the photos began to appear gloomy. It would be best if Yh and I could run from places to places so that we could capture more nice pictures, but as much as our hearts wanted to sprint, our legs could not carry us any much faster. We were simply exhausted and our legs were really aching. During the evening, we had spent all our time at Port Discovery (just passed by it briefly to get to American Waterfront) and American Waterfront. After our dinner, we proceeded to Mediterranean Harbour and went on in search of churros in Disneysea while also getting ready for the night performance, BraviSEAmo!. After that 20 to 30 minutes long performance, we went on to take more night photos in the vicinity of Mediterranean Harbour, as well as complete my quest in intensive shopping at Disneysea. Haha. This time round, we managed to cover every single pushcart/wagon and shop in the themepark successfully. (Some shops are different from others, as they may sell stuffs exclusive to the shop alone. Of course, there are also many repeated items which you will find in many other shops.)

One of the pushcarts at Port Discovery, Skywatch Souvenirs. Port Discovery is supposed to look futuristic and modernised, unlike the other parts of Disneysea. Definitely not a kawaii-looking themed land. Haha.

You can see a bit of the “ice-kachang” volcano from Port Discovery. The main colour of the Port Discovery seemed to be that deadly green colour. We didn’t take many pictures there.

Was walking towards Discovery Gifts, and after that I will be done with all the shops at Port Discovery. Don’t know what that thing in front of the shop was. Meant to tell the wind direction? It was just for decorative purposes.

That is where StormRider is located. Took that many years ago and found it stupid. It was jerking you up and down in your seat and was meant to simulate a storm crisis impending. Then you will also feel some water droplets splashing at you from the ceiling. Long queue for that, worth it or not? You’ve got to sit to decide for yourself. For us, nope.

Aquatopia — the cutest attraction at Port Discovery, since there are only 3 attractions in all over there. Haha. It reminded me of Sentosa Siloso beach when I was young, when they used to have those peddling vehicles, and you had to use your legs to peddle to move the vehicle. This one is fully automated and the vehicle will move around in the water and look as if it is going to bump into one of the surrounding rocks before making a sharp turn away. Not a scary ride, but quite fun and interesting. Expect to get wet during summer. There are water spots hidden near the rocks and as your vehicle gets near, there will be water mist sprayed towards you. Hahaha.

The other attraction at Port Discovery: Disneysea Electric Railway. Wanted to try that, but no time. However, it would be good to take videos while sitting onboard the train. Next time perhaps. 🙂

A fake lighthouse painted with the design of the American flag. We had finally arrived at American Waterfront. I want to go up so that the light can lead me and provide me with clearer directions in life. Hahahah. Anyway I didn’t go up lah. That was the furthest I went as my legs were too lazy to climb up that short flight of stairs.

Walking on and on…

It’s a waterfront! You are bound to see many ships docked at the wharves.

Nearby was Aunt Peg’s Village Store. The store that specializes in selling the ever-so-popular Duffy the Disney Bear.

Duffy can only be found in Disneysea, and as far as I know of, only this store and McDuck’s Dept Store, and probably 1 or 2 more stores in Mediterranean Harbour, sell Duffy. The Japanese are crazy over Duffy. Last year when I was at Tokyo Disneysea, I had already seen many Japanese carrying that bear in Disneysea AND Disneyland. This time, the craze had not subsided. Everyone was buying it and carrying it around. I find it cute but not cute enough to lure me to bring it back to Singapore. It wasn’t cheap. The normal sized one was about 4000 yen, iirc (if I remembered correctly). And that was the price of a naked Duffy. Most people would buy clothes and accessories to dress up their Duffy.. $$$

I am cheapskate I know. Taking photos in the shop was free. 🙂

The bear was there for us to pose with? Taking pictures with the big Duffy was also free. Seriously, Duffy felt quite nice to cuddle and looked quite cute. But it was seriously overpriced leh! Why does everyone like it so much!? I really wish to know.

Titanic has set sail to Disneysea. No, that’s Ship Columbia, which was also the place we had an expensive lunch during our previous previous trip there. The name of the dining place is S. S. Columbia Dining Room. Posh and high-class looking interiors.

A closer look at Columbia.

That’s the scariest ride in Disneysea –> Tower of Terror!!! Never fails to instill fear in both of us. Hey no joke ok. Vertical free fall. Of course there were still many brave souls who dared to take that ride.

Was having some twisted expression on my face when he took the picture of me. 😦 Look at that great height behind me. Somemore is drop TWICE during the ride.

Some framed display outside the Tower of Terror. Must be talking about its heritage or founder.

Next was shopping at McDuck’s Dept Store. This was the store which I took pictures of previously, which has pillars coiled with strings of cold coins. Fake gold coins lah. Haha. It looks so grand inside right? The upper storey is out of bounds. Only one level of shopping.

Even the cashier counter in McDuck’s looks so antique. Every store in Disneysea has a certain theme to follow.

To fill our partially-full stomachs, we ate some smoked salmon sandwich and macaroni salad at New York Deli. The front of the restaurant displays a mini Statue of Liberty. Haha. Btw, the salads in Japan are fantastic!! Especially their shaker salads and macaroni salads.

That’s me posing inside the restaurant. Love the way they decorated the walls, like walls of haunted mansions in America during the 1950s or 1960s. Haha. Lots of wood everywhere.

We had to quickly eat and leave New York Deli as it was soon time for BraviSEAmo! Before we started looking for a good spot to take videos of the performance, we were looking around for churros to satisfy our cravings. Strange, it was so tough to find churros in Disneysea. It was hidden in a corner of Mediterranean Harbour. Hmm.. Very tired but satisfied. 🙂

In my next post, I will post pictures that we have taken during night-time in Disneysea. I always tell many people that Disneyland is definitely much more fun than Disneysea, but Disneysea’s night scenery is its redeeming factor. It is awesome, spectacular and romantic (if you are there with your partner). So sweet. A pity that this time that we were there, there were no fireworks in both parks, probably because it’s summer?! Anyway, no matter how tired you are at Disneysea, don’t leave early or you will miss BraviSEAmo and all that pretty sight. 🙂

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Tokyo Day 3 – Aug 3 2009, Mon – Part IV

After all the rides, we went on to eat! We were focusing more on taking pictures, doing some light shopping, watching performances in their theatres and resting. Main aim was to recuperate before we went on to do intensive shopping in Disneysea. Pictures below were taken mainly at Mermaid Lagoon and Arabian Coast.

We went back to Sebastian’s Calypso Kitchen for lunch. I really liked the clam chowder and I remembered that during my previous trips there, I enjoyed their calzone and shrimp cutlet sandwish, which was shaped like a seashell. I was looking tired, hungry and very thirsty.

The three shops below are inter-connected and all are related to Little Mermaid. I guess most girls love Little Mermaid, hence these 3 are a must-visit for female bodies of all ages. 🙂

That’s the Sleepy Whale Sloppe. This cute whale shuts his eyelid most of the time and every few minutes, the eyelid will open for a few seconds and then shut again. So cute! I liked watching his eye “perform”.

Mermaid Treasures. This shop is well-liked by Disney-fans who love the various Disney accessories. Most of them were of very girly and sweet designs, mostly silver- (925) plated.

Kiss de Girl Fashions. My impression of this shop is that they sell mainly towels and tee-shirts. Upon comparison, we think that Sanrio (Hello Kitty) towels are generally of better quality than those in Disneyland/sea. And cheaper too. 🙂

We were leaving Mermaid Lagoon to visit Arabian Coast for the first time that day. I was standing on the bridge leading us to Arabian Coast. We were dehydrated so we bought another bottle of the deepsea water. *Thirsty* The Disneysea staff at the right hand side of the picture is a photographer. He can help you take photos using his professional camera, at a cost. Were those buildings at Arabian Coast supposed to be mosques? Anyway they’re so pretty to take pictures of. IMHO, I feel there is totally nothing nice to eat, shop and play at Arabian Coast. (We ate before curry rice there, thought it would be Japanese curry, but it was Indian flavour, and tasted damn gross.) My personal preference again. Just a place for photo-taking.

You can see beautiful scenery from the same bridge.

Another angle.

While walking, we saw a pair of twins, two girls, well-dressed in burberry dresses. One of the dress was with short sleeves, while another was sleeveless. So cute! Their mother was wearing a pair of burberry 3/4 pants too.

Resting again once touching down on Arabian Coast. There is a mini water fountain there and many people like to sit there to rest, including me! The girl on my left in a checkered red dress was very adorable. She has a sister and both wore such cute and brightly-coloured dresses. They were each munching on their own box of popcorn happily. The children in Disneysea were so well-dressed!

That’s the Magic Lamp Theater in the far background. Not seen in this picture is the Caravan Carousel, which is actually to the right of this picture. Just horses rotating in circles, we have always played them when young. 🙂

Btw, Arabian Coast has a boat ride called Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage. It’s really a damn slow voyage. Found it even more boring than Disneyland’s It’s a Small World. I remembered sitting in it during one of my previous trips and Yh dozed off while I was trying hard to stay awake.

There was a long queue for the Magic Lamp Theater. These people were really enthusiastic. They were actually queueing up under the hot sun (some with umbrellas) for the performance. We went to take fastpass and shopped nearby while waiting for the fastpass returning time to be up.

Casbah Food Court!! That’s the restaurant that served the horrible curry! It is always not full-house, probably an indication of its popularity.

I was holding my self-prepared Disneysea notes in my hands. Basically I went to Disneysea website and compiled all the attractions’, restaurants’ and shops’ descriptions together so that it would be easier for us to know where to target within that limited time frame. Did the same for Disneyland too. The Disneyland/sea English guides were not as detailed as what I had prepared. Do “homework” before going to maximise your fun there.

“Lelong Lelong! Who wanna buy these copper pots and pans from me?”

 

Shopping in Agrabah Marketplace. Nice decor inside, especially their ceiling.

Yh was striking a comical pose again. They have many such costume accessories in the shop.

Hey I like that tiger! It is Sindbad’s loyal tiger cub named Chandu. Disneysea made the tiger look so cute by giving it a colourful coat and putting the red turban on its head. Didn’t buy it lah, no more space at home 😦

Genie had to do his job too by coming out to greet Disneysea guests and taking pictures with all. “Can I not have a picture with you? All I want is ….. To have all my wishes granted.” 🙂

Time to enter the fastpass entrance of the Magic Lamp Theater.

In the 3D specs. The specs had a gold frame, very “Aladdin” huh. Haha. Overall, the performance left us with many ??? throughout due to the many Japanese dialogues between the cast.. You don’t expect English dialogues in a Tokyo Disneysea right? Haha. I think we will skip this attraction the next time. 🙂

Leaving more walking and shopping for Part V…

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Tokyo Day 3 – Aug 3 2009, Mon – Part II

Part II’s pictures will focus on Mermaid Lagoon, and it’s a rather dimly-lit area. We used to take photos there using a Canon Ixus camera years ago and the photos did not turn out well. I think you’re supposed to have totally non-shaky hands when taking the pictures, or get a camera with higher ISO. I’m a photography idiot, so I am not sure about the reasons for the lousy photos in the past. Anyway, we bought a new camera last year, a Fujifilm F10 or F100 or F20 (I don’t remember the exact model), and it claims to have wide-angled lens with high ISO settings. That camera is definitely serving us well at such dark places. At least the photos now appear much nicer.

Another Fujifilm photo spot. This is taken at Mysterious Island.

We headed to Mysterious Island first because of gyoza sausage bun. Everytime we’re at Disneysea, we are bound to see a queue for these buns at Mysterious Island’s Refreshment Station. Hmm. Turned out to be disappointing, nothing fantastic. There was no real sausage, just the bun on the outside layer and the inside was some steamed minced meat, a little like our chinese meat buns.

Walking into my favourite themed land of Disneysea –> Mermaid Lagoon. Definitely a cool and welcoming shelter from the heat outside. You will see later that we kept choosing here as a place to rest throughout the day. There is aircon indoors and lights are also dim, so comfortable! 

My cute husband playing with the dunno-what-fish. I think he’s so creative at posing yet he hates to be taken pictures of. 🙂

Come, follow me into the dark Mermaid Lagoon…

While walking down a slight slope inwards, you will see some interesting displays, all marine-related. 

I’m not pretty like Little Mermaid and I don’t belong to the sea, but I definitely like it here! It’s colourful and cooling in there.

Btw, those spinning “teacups” constitute the ride “The Whirlpool”.

 Just posing for the fun of it. The lights made my skin look blu-ish as well.

Taking a break at Sebastian’s Calypso Kitchen, one of the best eating places in Disneysea. Seats aplenty here and we can also enjoy the aircon environment while eating rather tasty food. In this picture, I was about to drink my favourite milk and try out their clam chowder. The clam chowder was surprisingly quite nice!

There is a “play” area inside Mermaid Lagoon, more for little children to run around in those cave holes. We went in just to see see look look. There was this slimming mirror that can distort one’s appearance and make one slimmer.

Another photo taken before we left Mermaid Lagoon.

We had to move on to other areas outside, although it was blazingly hot. No wonder why there are more freckles on my cheeks now. Tsk tsk.

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Tokyo Day 2 – Aug 2 2009, Sun

Main highlights:

• Bought Disneysea and land tickets
• Went Gotemba Premium Outlets via the Odakyu Sightseeing Bus to Hakone

Yh and I usually plan a brief itinerary before every trip, but we don’t stick to it 80% of the time. On our day 2, we decided to go shopping at Gotemba Premium Outlets, which was located along the way to Mt Fuji.

First of all, I have somethings to clarify to everyone who is interested to visit the Gotemba Premium Outlets. I must say the Gotemba Premium Outlets’ Access page has really brief and confusing information on how to get there. They listed many methods to go there by bus or train but when you really go to buy the train tickets and/or bus tickets, you will surely be blur. In fact, looking at the page right now, they have misleading information. The impression one will get from the Access page, is that the bus you board at Shinjuku will bring you directly to the outlets. That was not the case for us.

Therefore, prior to the trip, we had already researched online on various forums and websites on people’s comments on how to get there. We targetted to go by bus as the trains may worsen the confusion. Well, all the research made us even more blur. Haha. Some people say, go to the West exit to buy the bus tickets, some say New South exit, some say the bus only has 1 timing to get there from Shinjuku and 1 timing to return to Shinjuku, some say it’s a direct bus, some say you need to take another shuttle bus. WAH LAO… It’s really shit. On a particular Singapore popular ladies’ forum, a few ladies actually recommend going Gotemba because of the bargains, but for me, I personally don’t like it. It’s not worth the  transport fare to get there (2900 yen per person to and fro) and the time (We were supposed to spend only about 3 hours 20 mins for the total to and fro journey but ended up spending almost 5 hours on the bus due to the traffic jams) and the effort (We walked till our legs wanna break and yet didn’t buy many things). It should be our first and last time going Gotemba Premium Outlets I think.

Anyway read on for exact details on how we survived in reaching Gotemba Premium Outlets and returning back to Shinjuku sucessfully. *Phew*

Rise and shine, we woke up around 9 am so that we can go to the Odakyu counter at 10 am to buy the bus tickets bound for Gotemba. As mentioned above, someone on some forum scared us that there will only be ONE bus timing that goes there and it will be at 10.45 am, so we were trying hard to catch that bus timing.

This is the view we get from our hotel room. Many tall buildings nearby. Mainly office buildings. Our hotel is at the West side of Shinjuku.

** Yh told me the one on the left is Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. People can go up to the two top floor observation decks to view Tokyo’s scenery for free. We didn’t try that out. No time. Heard it can be quite crowded too.

As it was only our 2nd day and we only knew how to go to the South exit from our hotel that day, we proceeded to ask one of the JR Station guys at the South exit on how to get to the Odakyu Sightseeing Service Center. We even showed him a map of Shinjuku station (a simplified version) and the map shows that the counter was located near Odakyu Shopping Center. However, this blur guy (who can speak very little English only) pointed to us another Odakyu Service Center which was located at the South exit. Wah piang, we really trusted him and proceeded to that counter to enquire on purchasing the bus tickets. It turned out that the counter’s staff CANNOT speak any English. Not a single word and we were really having a hard time communicating with him. Fortunately there was an old auntie who could speak a bit of English and she was trying hard to help us. She was a bit blur and kept thinking we wanted to take the train to Gotemba. No no no no…. We spent 15-20 minutes struggling at that counter before clarifying everything. The guy told us that the counter was wrong (It was meant for Odakyu line train tickets bound for places, incl. Gotemba) and that we should go to the Odakyu Sightseeing Service Counter located at the West exit; Then the kind old lady led us the way to the West exit. She didn’t exactly bring us to the counter directly, but at least she was very kind to point to us the direction. Imagine our panic during then as we were rushing to catch the bus at 10.45 am.

 

This is the correct counter to buy the bus tickets. You will see many foreigners queueing up as the buses also go to Hakone. The staff at this counter can speak English fluently. The location of the counter is near the West exit of JR Shinjuku Station, somewhere outside Odakyu Dept Store Level 1 (where all the branded boutiques like Chanel are) entrance within the JR Shinjuku Station.

There are SEVERAL bus timings to go there, not just the 10.45 am bus, and we booked the bus at 11 am instead, as we wanted the half an hour buffer time to quickly walk to Takashimaya Times Square to buy the Disneysea and land tickets. Booking a round trip is cheaper, and we also booked the 7.45 pm bus to return to Shinjuku. 7.45 pm was the last bus from Gotemba. The lady told us that the bus will drop at Gotemba Station (It’s not a train station but more like a small bus terminal). After that, we were supposed to take a free shuttle bus from the Gotemba Station to the Gotemba Premium Outlets. When returning, we were also told to take the shuttle bus from the Outlets back to the same Gotemba Station and board the Odakyu bus back to Shinjuku. Okay sounds clear so far right?

** Clarify a bit more, the Gotemba Station is NOT a train station. Take note. It is more of a shabby looking bus stop but I think many people seem to address it as a Gotemba Station. We were also quite confused by the terms. You won’t see trains there. Just buses.

After we left the counter, we quickly rushed to Takashimaya Times Square to buy the Disney tickets, as we had made arrangements with our hotel to take the Good Neighbour Hotels Shuttle bus to go Disneysea the next day. Times Square was not near that Odakyu ticket counter lor. I walked so quickly during that short span of 20-30 minutes till my birkenstock sandals gave me blisters. Die die need to get the Disney tickets or it may be troublesome to buy from the park directly the next day. I will explain why in my next post.

How our Disneyland and Disneysea tickets look like. Do note that if you are buying a 2-day passport, you will have to specify the dates you will be going and the specific park you will be visiting on those dates.

The tickets come in a nice and neat long envelope, as the envelope also has to store some long brochures/guides (in Japanese language).

The day started off pretty hectic and rushed. We did not like it at all. 😦 So much walking done within that hour before boarding the bus.

At 11 am sharp, the bus left the bus stop no. 35 located in front of Odakyu Halc. You must trust the punctuality of the Japanese. All their buses and trains really leave on time. If you miss the bus, that’s it. I also don’t know if you can change the bus timing. Anyway, the seats are already pre-allocated and your seat number will be printed on your ticket. Do buy some water before boarding the bus. We thought the bus journey would only be around 1 hour 40 min, as stated by many people and various websites, and hence we thought we could bear with the thirst. Unfortunately we were caught in traffic jams!!! *kwah kwah*… We were thirsty throughout the 2 hour + journey.

Pretty excited as it was our first time going to factory outlets in Japan. We had hoped to find some cheap and nice things to buy.

The arduous bus journey. It was drizzling that day! We were lucky that while walking back from Takashimaya Times Square to the bus stop no. 35, we bought an umbrella. It came in handy throughout the day. Along the way, you can see some mountainous areas. Don’t think that’s Mt Fuji lah.

There are signs within the bus that say that you need to press the buzzer when approaching your bus stop. Apparantly the bus also goes to Hakone. Very few people alighted at the Gotemba station leh. This is how the station looks like.

Didn’t take the interior of the station. It really looks very run-down and quite dirty. Very small place too. We were too thirsty and quickly bought drinks from the vending machine inside it. Various buses bound for other places stop at this station too.

P.S. I repeat, THERE ARE NO TRAINS HERE. It’s just a bus-stop.

Every 10 or 20 minutes, a Gotemba Premium Outlets shuttle bus will come. You will know it is a “Gotemba Premium Outlets” shuttle bus as the words will be printed clearly on the bus. What was confusing was, some of these shuttle buses are not bound for the Outlets, they are bound for other places. You have to take the correct direction. Do not board the buses stupidly without asking. We nearly boarded the wrong bus too but fortunately we did ask the bus driver and he just shook his hands. He also cannot speak much English.

We eventually reached Gotemba Premium Outlets after about 10 minutes of the shuttle bus journey. Oops, just realised we didn’t really take many photos of the Gotemba Premium Outlets. You can see how they look like on the Gotemba Premium Outlets website. They have many brands there, such as Gap, Coach, Samantha Thavasa, Franc Franc, etc. Thought I can get some nice Samantha Thavasa bags, but they were all not very nice. Probably leftover designs. Disappointing. In the end all I bought were some Biotherm whitening products. Really cheap in that store named “something Cosmetics Company”. Yh bought a pair of black Adidas sneakers but later on we realised that some Japanese sites are selling the same pair online at the same disounted price. WTH…. Due to the high exchange rate, we also didn’t find the things in Gap cheap leh, around the same price as in Singapore, after their store’s discount. Even Longines and Tag Heuer watches were also slightly more expensive (after discount) than the exact same models in Singapore. Coach wise, definitely not cheaper than in Singapore too. So you tell me, what can we buy there right? Nothing lah! Waste money, time and leg muscles walking so much there.

Probably we would feel happier if there was good food there. You will be disappointed if you were there for any good food. There were so few eating places there! Only a few restaurants and an expensive foodcourt.. We passed by a pasta/pizza restaurant and regretted not going there. Thought the food court would sell nice and cheap food, and with greater variety, but we ended up eating expensive Japanese curry rice. Total damage was 2240 yen for 2 curry rice and 2 soft drinks! The pasta/pizza restaurant’s pasta was only about 1000 yen, and it was a table-service restaurant! What made us even more unhappy was, it was so difficult to find seats in that food court though it was quite huge. The japanese there simply used it as a place to rest their tired feet. Many of them had completed their meals but refused to leave, even if you were circling round their tables while carrying your tray of food. Tsk tsk. Thought they were very conscientious and zidong people. Anyway, we managed to find a seat after about 10 minutes of waiting and walking around, till our curry rice was getting colder.

The lousy and crowded foodcourt. So many people are just sitting around and chatting or resting, while others are standing and waiting.

 I was too hungry to stop and pose for the camera. The curry tasted like those instant types that any cooking-morons can cook at home. The types sold at NTUC supermarkets also can produce that standard of Japanese curry.

After lunch was more shopping and photo-taking. They have a nice fountain there. Hmmm, but not worth travelling all the way there to take photos of it right?

Haha I look fat as I had not “output” for a few days as of then.

I like this photo of us as we looked very happy and sweet together. Hahaha

Posing at the bridge that links the East Zone to the West Zone. There is a ferris wheel in the background. I was actually feeling quite cold that day as it was raining.

There, another picture of the bridge. It’s not a long bridge, but not a short one too.

Quite a nice feeling to look at all that greenery.

More of what you will see along the bridge.

If you are tired there, you can take a break at one of the many benches located outside the shops. 🙂

Both Yh and I loved a certain aspect of the Gotemba Premium Outlets. Only one aspect. And that was Crazy Crepes!!!!

The small shop front. It’s located at West zone, near the entrance to the bridge that links to the East zone. They have a branch at Ikebukuro too, near Sunshine City, somewhere diagonally opposite Matsumoto Kiyoshi, but I don’t know if the standard is as good.

Choose from many desserts crepes and food crepes. We wanted to try the Teriyaki Chicken crepe.

The Crazy Crepes’ crepes were really so good that we went back for another one after finishing the first one. There is usually a queue but don’t worry, it will not be a long one. We tasted both the teriyaki chicken egg crepe and the teriyaki chicken crepe but the one without egg was nicer. The egg was just mashed egg with mayonnaise and it did not seem to blend that well with the crepe leh. The chicken and the teriyaki sauce was superb! It was only about 450 yen per crepe. We also ordered some chocolate and maple syrup waffles as snacks to munch on on the bus journey back to Shinjuku but they were only average. Did not take photos of the waffles.

The precious Crazy Crepe in my hand. 🙂

We were both loving it!!!

To go back to the Gotemba station, you need to take the shuttle bus back again. Ask the Information counter people for information on where the bus stop is located. It is quite confusing as they have  bus stops with numbers, and some bus stops have no numbers. Not much English information at the bus stops. We boarded the bus from the bus stop that has no bus stop number. The lady recommended us to take the 7 pm bus back, even though there was a bus at 7.20 pm and 7.40 pm. Later on we realised that it only took 5 minutes to reach the station from the outlets.. Wasted 40 minutes at that run down station waiting for our Odakyu Sightseeing bus back to Shinjuku. Tsk tsk. What a lousy day.

(Picture deleted because … Hahahaha)

That is Yh sleeping on the bus. It was another long bus journey back, about 3 hours to get back to Shinjuku. We hate the jams!!

Overall, it was a very bad experience at Gotemba, it was crowded, there was nothing much to buy, and the bus journey was super long. Add in the lousy food and the bad weather, our mood was really no good that day. I heard that if the weather was good, we ought to be able to take nice shots of Mt Fuji from there. So disappointed that we were unable to see anything as it was too misty. 😦

By the time we reached our hotel that day from the Shinjuku bus stop, it was already 11 pm. Ultra tired. We still had to wake up early at 6 am the next day morning to board the 6.30 am bus to Tokyo Disneysea. 😦  

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Tokyo Day 1 – Aug 1 2009, Sat

Main highlights:

• Reached Narita Airport, checked into Keio Plaza Tokyo at Shinjuku
• Went for dinner nearby

I can’t sleep on planes most of the time unless I am super duper tired and restless, which is quite impossible to be if we are heading to Kawaii-land –> Tokyo. How restless can I be when I am actually looking so forward to going there? Haha… So I usually like to take the morning plane there, i.e. leave Singapore in the early morning and reach Tokyo in the late afternoon. Anyway, our JAL pilot somehow could not land on time at Narita because there was no landing space or something like that, so he went flying in circles before finally landing about 15-30 minutes later. After collecting our luggages, it was already 5 pm. That meant that we were late for the 5 pm airport limousine bus, and had to catch the 5.45 pm one instead. *no choice loh*

I’m seated just next to the window and though I had only slept 3-4 hours just before flying, I was still wide awake and excited. *Wheeeee*

While waiting for the bus, we waited inside the supposedly air-conditioned indoor area of the airport to drink some Sapporo melon cream soda (hmmm not very nice in my opinion) but somehow it was super hot indoors. I was thinking the aircon was probably not working well due to the summer heat outside. I was wrong manz. We went outside to wait for the bus and there was actually non-stop blowing wind. It was so cooling waiting outside compared to inside! Our initial fears that Tokyo would be hot, even hotter than Singapore, were starting to dissipate. I actually liked the weather there that day!

Two limousine bus tickets in my right hand, to Shinjuku – Keio Plaza. In my left hand is that lousy melon cream soda drink.

We were both happy to be back here for the 1,408,709th time in Tokyo. Kidding, it’s only our 4th time in Tokyo. In the background of the picture is one of the gift shops located in the airport. You can buy gifts and drinks in the shops, but don’t bother to do intensive shopping there. There are many better shopping areas in the city and other parts of the airport.

That’s the orange/white limousine bus at the right hand side of the picture. The uncle in the uniform will help you to tag your luggages, pass you the tags to claim them later at your destination, and load them onto the baggage storage area of the bus. Hassle-free for us! 🙂

Note: We took the NEX train before from Ikebukuro to Narita airport and though you can avoid the woes of traffic jams by taking the trains, we personally didn’t liked pushing the luggages around on our own. The price was also similar to that of the limousine bus fares. Unless you are Hercules pattern and you like to show off your muscles by carrying lots of weights, I wouldn’t advise the trains. Of course if you are super eager to reach your destinations and/or rushed for time and/or hate traffic jams because you have needles on your butts and cannot sit in your seat for too long, then take the train. But a holiday should be all about enjoying every single moment and relaxing. What for cheong so much right…. 🙂 Ok, the above are opinions of a lazy traveller who will rather get stuck in jams than to carry heavy things around.

Anyway, just some interesting things we spotted about the limousine bus. Many may find the bus expensive but come to think of it, the cost is used to offset the cost of the expressways’ gantry gates, something like our ERP system. We saw the bus pass by a few gantry gates and each gate cost about 1500 yen (for coaches); This meant that if the bus for a particular trip has only 1 or 2 passengers, they may probably lose money.

The pilot was late in reaching the airport, and the limousine bus driver was also late in reaching the hotel due to several traffic jams in the city area. Probably because it was a weekend evening. We finally reached the hotel at 7+ and proceeded to check-in. I was so excited when I saw our room. It was the nicest and biggest room I have ever stayed in Tokyo!!!!! The bed had a comfortable Simmons mattress, it was king size, there was a wardrobe with lights that lit up each time we opened the doors, there was a small pantry area for us to make our coffee/tea, a writing desk, a coffee table, a couch, and the bathroom was also very huge! I think the standard and appearance of the bathroom in the hotels I stay in is very important to me as I tend to judge the entire room by its bathroom only. Haha. This bathroom had a super large bathtub (It was at least double the size of the bathtub at the Ikebukuro Theatre Hotel, the one we stayed in last year), a large separate shower stall, a huge basin and vanity counter top, and the rest are standard (wc, shelves, towel racks, etc).

Some pictures of the hotel room:

That’s our huge room!!! *WOWWWWW*

We didn’t spend much time in the room after checking in as we were eager to rush to Takashimaya Times Square, to buy our Disneysea and land 2-day passport tickets for Aug 3rd and 4th respectively. You can buy the tickets at any Disney stores in Japan, and our nearest branch was the one at Taka Times Square. We left our hotel at 8 pm, and despite not knowing the fastest way to reach Takashimaya Times Square from our hotel, we still managed to walk so quickly that we reached there at 8.15 pm. Thought they will close at 8.30 pm on weekends, but turned out they had closed at 8 pm. Sigh. Wasted trip… Tsk tsk.

To fill our hungry stomachs, we just anyhow entered one of the eateries located near our hotel. Don’t know the name but the outside of the shop displayed some gyu don (beef with rice) and to order, you just press some buttons on the vending machine that will later dispense some tickets after you have paid the sum. Japan has lots of such eateries. Vending Machines aplenty. We orderd the rosu katsu set and chicken katsu set. Tasted not bad, though not the most fantastic meal we had. Definitely better than many expensive Japanese restaurants in Singapore. Haha. Btw, such eateries are usually cheaper than the usual restaurants in Tokyo. For e.g., our total meal at that place came up to be around 1000 yen for 2 of us.

When you are hungry, any food tastes good. 🙂 I love the egg. It’s wobbly and nice.

After dinner we just went to some nearby convenience store to buy my favourite Kirin milk tea and milk. Couldn’t find the Meiji Hokkaido milk that I like leh. Fortunately we slept earlier that night, in preparation for the nightmare that was to come next day…..

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Back from Japan

I am back from Tokyo finally, after a 9D8N trip… *sad* Each time I return to Singapore I become a little gloomy (or maybe a lot) and a little crazy over my loot. *grinning*

Anyway, we took many photos this time and if not for the hot and sometimes wet summer weather in Tokyo, I think this would have been my best trip ever. We covered Tokyo Disneyland + sea, Sanrio Puroland, Gotemba Premium Outlet, Mitsui Outlet, Ikebukuro, Ueno Ameyoko and Atre, Akihabara (many cute Wii accessories!!), a bit of night shopping at Shibuya, a lot of shopping at Shinjuku and Odaiba. Will talk more about them in later few posts. This time, we also ate a lot of good food. Somehow every restaurant there serves fantastic food. We had omu rice, tonkatsu, ramen, cold udon, ebi tempura and fry, hamburg steak, spaghetti, crepes, bentos, cakes and breads, cute looking food at those theme parks, etc. Despite walking alot till our legs were breaking, we still managed to put on weight with so many meals a day! Just kept eating, shopping, taking photos and videos (bought a videocam prior to the trip)…. Hehe 🙂

Talk more later, gtg have lunch and then do some unpacking. We just touched down like less than 10 hours ago only…. *still tired* The stupid plane was delayed and we left Narita airport late.. This time we were damn unlucky and met with a lot of delays, traffic jams, etc. Sigh.

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Mum’s best dish

I look forward to eating my mother’s nasi lemak because it is simply the best home-cooked food prepared by her. Just to illustrate how it looks like..

Coconut rice beneath, on top were egg, asparagus, potato, chicken wing and the special chilli.

I love the potato especially. It is mashed and then fried. The chilli was also specially cooked and tastes slightly sweet, goes well with the entire combination. I’m not a food critic so I’m unable to describe its goodness. Anyway, even if I were to put on weight and grow pimples by eating that, I think it’s still worth the extra weight and additional pimples gained. 🙂 Hahaha.

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