Tokyo City Tour

Been to many places in Tokyo, ah, new Japan, a big city filled with concrete buildings, much much shopping to do if you got lots of Japanese Yen to burn. Am actually quite sick of the city till I got to Harajuku today. A place where people indulging in cosplay gather. There is also a Meiji-shrine where Japanese weddings are held. This shrine is massive and comes with a garden.

Tomorrow, we are going back to nature, getting near to Mount Fuji. We will try to trek up Mount Fuji if the conditions permit. Well, it's a good break from the hustle and bustle of the huge city.

Marco

Japanese Subway Metro

In this still very traditional Japanese society, it is interesting how the ladies are treated in the Subways.

Shibuya, Tokyo, 109 Tower

Shibuya, you get the cross junction where you cross the streets diagonally. In our orchard road, it seems that we are trying to imitate this right? Am I right? Ha.


There is this big display window with live models inside. They seems to be dressed up like singers and it was a massive 'greenhouse' in the middle of the streets.


109 tower is where you get all the tanned Japanese girls. They are called the 'black-face' and they have a typical look. Everyone tries to grab attention and stand out from each other inside the mall. It was a women's mall, only selling ladies wear. It seems like this is a success and there is actually a Shibuya 109-2, catering for menswear.

Tokyo Tower

It was a rainy night in Tokyo, was cloudy and parts of the tower was covered. Still, the pictures turned out fairly nice with lights that the tower illuminate, giving it a orange skyline.

Posting from Ginza, Tokyo Apple Store

Hi guys, Ginza is the up market store in Japan and we are in the flagship store now. Power. Now, this is life. Mac is selling a lifestyle to the Japanese.

May Mac take over the world.

Marco

Shinjuku, Tokyo Japan

A vibrant shopping district with a Isetan Mens department store, where it is a shopping heaven for the guys, you can find the latest major and causal brands here. Everyone there are dressed up, so it is advisable to dressed up to do your shopping. Remember to get your tax refund back, though you have to watch out that the tax refund counter closes around 6pm.

Have a walk into Kabukichō after the shopping hours and you are at the red-light district of tokyo, the neon lights are colorful and the crowd is interesting to watch.

As you walked through Kabukichō, you will see lots of Love hotels around the region, completed with Pachinko and amusement parks, you even get rooftop futsal court and a baseball driving range.

At the end of Kabukichō, there is this Golden Gai,where there are lots of small pubs. The pubs are so small and it only fits in like 10 adults in the small space. There are news that the pubs only take in regulars but you could still check out the individual pubs.

Golden Gai

Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo

Visit the site here for the exact date that you are setting out for the Tsukiji Fish Market. There are certain days on weekdays even that Tsukijishijo is on off.

Time to smell the roses

Remember, no matter, how busy you are, tale time off to smell the roses*literally*, below are pictures of white roses that were in bloom around the Nakono, Japan

 

 

Baseball Range in Kabuki Cho, Tokyo

 

Irony: Picture This

 

The thing says no photography, but still..

Japanese Toys

Transformers



Doraemon

 

AE86 - Initial D

 

Apollo 13

 

 

Second World War Scene

 

 

Of Takoyaki and Okonomiyaki, Osaka

 

 

 

 

Traditional Japanese Wear: Kimono

 

 

 

 

Kyoto, Japan Day 4

Kyoto is a nice place to see old Japan. The Gion area is a traditional town with lots of Buddhist shrines. One shrine of interest in particular is one which pays tributes to the batteries of artillery soldiers and horse-riding soldiers of the second world war.




Shrines

Stone statues and carvings are erected in the premises of the shrine as a memorial to the soldiers of specific battalions and batteries.

The bigger shrines are of the Buddhist and the traditional buildings which houses them are more refined and elaborate than in Osaka.






Where's Weipeng? Try to spot him in the photo above.

Wedding ceremony in a Shrine

Japanese in traditional dresses hold their wedding ceremonies in the shrine, the ceremony is formal and solemn. There is a aura of dignity and happiness in the ceremony. The aura is not broken even when lots of tourists,both local and foreigners, are taking photos of the event.






People

As it was a Sunday, they was a huge crowded and it was a definite good choice to visit on this day. You will see kimono-clad ladies and even geishas if you are lucky. The young Japanese ladies had fun dressing up and shopping for traditional cakes and pastries.


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The entry is incomplete due to the lack of internet time. Internet is very expensive in Japan and it is not readily available.

I'm guessing it is due to the fact that Japanese are holding highly fanciful CDMA phones which allows them to surf the internet and watch TV, Wi-Fi is not widely available.




Marco
Osaka,after day trip in Kyoto May 08

Osaka day 3

Still in Osaka, woke up late today, visit a couple of Shrines today, have been pouring today, and we are stuck in the Shinnoen-jo, This is a big shrine with many small temples around.Its 445pm and the rain feels like it will go on for a long time.

Terrain pool, memorials, graveyards and huge Buddhist statues. The shrines are more modest compared to the golden temples that the Chinese built in Mount Ermei. The Chinese tend to construct and paint their statues gold while the Japanese have their statues carved out of stone.

Japan has longer days and it is still bright at 8pm. Comparatively, Japan time is one hour faster than in Singapore.

Language

To me, the Japanese government has done a good job in granting foreigners' Visas, the only minor twitch is that there is a huge language barrier. Japanese only speak their language and they do not bother to pick up another language. There is a huge number of tourist in the city here and businesses may be missed because of a miscommunication.

Considering the many countries, many tourist attractions will put up notices and explanation boards in 3 main languages namely Chinese, English and Japanese. They are pampering the Japanese and putting them in their comfort zone.

Nevertheless, we had a Japanese, a Kyoto native, who speaks English coming up to us and speak to us. That was because Stuart was holding his 'trusty' Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook. Now, this is one of the few Japanese that could speak good English. He had stayed in a few english-speaking countries before. His view was that Japanese are shy and afraid to converse or take up another language.

We met fellow travelers who have differing views, some had picked up Japanese and are looking forward to learning mandarin. Well, I say picking up any other language will be useful.

Signed off
Marco

Second day of Osaka

The first day of Osaka was sent mostly on orientation and settling down. It was a hungry day as we walked around comparing prices of food and lots of moving around by foot.

Second day of Osaka

Osaksa is a port city, and Shinsaibashi in the Minami area is a fantastic place and you could do people watching for the whole day. This is comparable to the Orchard Road in Singapore. Umeda is in the Kita area of Osaka and its is the CBD area of Osaka.


Commuting

You will be commuting with countless of Japanese man in full business suits. On the streets will be business suit-clad men and high-heel ladies cycling on the pavements. Their bicycles have a distinctive basket at the front. Parking of the bicycles will be outside their office buildings. There will be rows of bicycles on the sides of the pavements but you will see much order in the parking.

Food

In the morning, we visited the Hanshin Shopping area in the Umeda Station. Its like a huge takashimaya with 16 times more food. Food in Japan is not cheap, its about 20% more in Singapore, but I must totally compliment the pride that the Japanese put in serving and preparing their food.

It is in the shopping center's supermarket that we met with the SGD200+ rock melon. Ok, the skin of the melon is exceptionally beautiful, like those you would see on the delicate egg shell carving. We had big big apples that cost about SGD2 each and extremely sweet strawberries. Benny never like strawberry until he tried the Japanese version. Well, May is a good time to visit if you like strawberries as it is in season now.

At night, we went to have sushi buffet, but its actually quite disappointing as the variety of the sushi was not much and the quality is poor going by the Japan's standard. Nevertheless, it was a fine meal as the soup was good and there had like 5 versions of puddings. It was really good.

Hangzhou Xi Hu

Hangzhou is a nice place with very nice scenery, the only complaint would be the weather, the difference in temperature between the day and night is pretty huge. 32 degrees Celsius in the day and about 16 degrees Celsius at night.

As the wifi area is going to close soon. The entry will end here. Good night guys,

Sign off,
Marco

P.S. There are many things to blog about actually, the delay in flight, irritating co-passengers on plane, pretty Hangzhou ladies. Nice food.

Arrival in Hangzhou

A quick update!

We are in Hangzhou. Interestingly, The shuttle bus taking us from the flight gate to our plane rammed into some cargo vehicle and we had to swap to another shuttle. It wasn't bad though and no one was injured as the bus was on low speed. On the same flight as us was a celebrity host who has her own talkshow and a book. We didn't noticed her until 2 airport staff went to get her signature, followed by a swarm of Chinese travellers jostling to catch a glimpse, photos and more signatures... Right now, we still don't know her name. She juz bears a resemblance to Sun Yan Zi in terms of frame and hair.

Our flight was scheduled for 805pm but due to an overload in the number of flights leaving Chengdu, we took off only around 1015pm. During that time, we were stuck on the plane for an additional 2 hours. Arrival at our inn, Tour An Backpacker's Hostel, was approximately 215am and the taxi got lost trying to find this place. Pretty modern decor this place has. Will be having to seek a new lodging place today as Tour An hostel is fully booked today. We had only booked for a day. After this we should be grabbing a bicycle and roaming around the key attraction, Xi Hu (Western Lake).

Catch us again later.

Stuart

Chengdu Bicycle City Tour

Riding a bicycle is so distinctively China, it is a culture of the china people, there are motorbikes and bicycles lane for the people.

Its a leisure to enjoy the city while waiting for our flight. Airport operations have been restored and we will be flying to Hang Zhou, China on the 16 May 2008.


By the way, the lovely ladies you guys see in the pictures never join us on the bicycle tour today, they are the little owners of Sim Cozy, cute huh? They love us, haha, keep coming to want to play with us.