Dear1 Dear2

…continued from Day 1-6

Day 7

The Ltd Exp Super Hitachi bound for Sendai. We got off at Mito station after a 70 minutes ride.

This was an unexpected find, the Mito bus 1 day free pass. But we were lucky to have bought it. Kairakuen was really not within walking distance from Mito station.

We started the day by taking a train to Ueno where we transferred to the Ltd Exp Super Hitachi to Mito. This would be the last day of our JR East Pass. Our purpose to Mito was to visit one of the three great gardens in Japan, Kairakuen. We had intended to walk from Mito station to Kairakuen, but we noticed two salesperson selling Mito Bus Free Pass at the Mito bus interchange. This pass was specially introduced during this time of the year because of the Plus Blossom Festival. Yes, Kairakuen is a famous plum trees garden. We decided to buy the free pass for 400 yen per person.

A bridge, a small river and plum blossoms along the sides. So tranquil.

A close up of the plum blossoms.

We managed to spot this trail in Kairakuen with pink and white overarching plum blossoms on both sides. It looked like a romantic scene in a Japanese movie.

The mixture of different shades of pink and greens creates a beautiful canopy. We were there a bit too early and the plum blossoms were not in full bloom yet, otherwise it would look even better.

We would spend the whole morning at Kairakuen. The scenery was spectacular. Both of us liked it a lot. The plum blossoms were not at full bloom yet but it was already showing the colours of spring.

The sudden heavy snow. The snow had already started to accumulate on the the roads and vegetation.

This is Izuei Honten at Ueno where we had quite an unforgettable unagi experience. We even printed out a discount coupon from the internet that allowed us to get a free beer or soft drink.

We headed back to Ueno in the early afternoon by the Ltd Exp Fresh Hitachi. It started snowing on our way back. This was the heaviest snow that we experienced in Japan. Within 30 minutes, the snow was heavy enough to accumulate on the ground and also on the vegetation. At Ueno, we decided to go for an early dinner at this Unagi specialty restaurant. Having two pieces of unagi on the rice *and* two more pieces of unagi below the rice was just heavenly.

This is the pond at Ueno Park. We still dunno what were those brown tall plants growing out of the pond. From a far, it looked like a padi field, but its definitely not.

We tried to visit the Ueno Park, but the weather was simply too cold to walk around outdoors. So we turned back towards Ameyoko to seek warmth in the narrow alleys. It was still too cold, so we decided to head back to Shinjuku to do some indoor shopping. We also bought our Disneyland tickets in advance at the Disney shop at Takashimaya Times Square. An interesting observation: tickets for 14 March (White Day) and 7 March (the Saturday before White Day) were sold out.

The Krispy Kreme conveyor belt. After eating about 6 different types of donuts, we found that the original glaze tasted the best!

We ate our first Krispy Kreme in Japan. The shop was about 2 minutes walk from our hotel. At the hotel at night, we decided to check out the weather for the day as it was really cold outside. Air temperature turned out to be a low of -5 degrees Celsius to 5 degrees Celsius. The wind temperature was lower than that. News described the day as a full fledged winter day. No wonder we were freezing.

Day 8

We bought our Kamakura Enoshima Excursion ticket from the Shinjuku ticketing office. This pass will be worth its money if we took a train from Shinjuku to Kita Kamakura, a train from Kamakura to Hase, then Hase to Enoshima, a monorail from Enoshima to Ofuna, and finally a train from Ofuna back to Shinjuku.

We caught a glimpse of this large Buddha statue at Ofuna station. Not really sure about its history and significance though.

As usual, we woke up early. Luckily it was to be a bright sunny day. We bought our Kamakura Enoshima Excursion Ticket from the Shinjuku JR Office and set off to Kamakura. We manage to sight this large statue from Ofuna station where we were transferring to another train.

A nice day with good weather, best for our Kamakura walkaround. This is the steps leading to the Hachimangu Shrine, one of the few free entry shrines in Kamakura, and so it was very popular among locals and tourists alike.

The shopping street in one of the back alleys. Its called Shopping Town. You can also see the rickshaw trade off to the left side of the picture. The rickshaw pullers were generally young men.

The great Buddha. Truly quite majestic looking. In fact, the temple itself was destroy several times by earthquake and typhoon, but the Buddha statue survived through all these years.

We started our walk from Kita Kamakura and walked all the way to Kamakura station while visiting shrines along the way. At Kamakura central area, we stumble upon this interesting shopping alley crowded with people as oppose to the relatively quiet main street. We had lunch at a curry house in the alley. We explored Kamakura until late afternoon, visiting the Great Buddha and also the beach.

The famous Tokyo Tower at night. We didn’t take the lift up to the observatory, we just admire it from the foot of the tower.

A major junction at Roppongi with Roppongi Hills on one of the sides. Roppongi Hills was very much like Lan Kwai Fong in Hongkong. Lots of pubs, lots of foreigners.

We returned to Shinjuku by the transferring from Shonan Monorail to JR lines. In the evening, we visited the Tokyo Tower and walked to Roppongi to visit Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown. A letdown of the day was that we saw a lot of ang mohs today, both at Kamakura and Roppongi. It made us suddenly feel very touristy and not the kind of blend-in-with-the-locals feeling we had earlier in the trip.

Day 9

Akihabara! There were so many of such buildings there that we became confused pretty quickly. We had intended to look for the Ishimaru building but then we realized there were not less than seven Ishimaru branches in Akihabara.

The @home maid cafe at Donki that we visited. It cost 700 yen just to sit down in the cafe, and there was a time limit of 90 minutes. No photography was allowed inside so I had to take this photo from a bit further out.

The first stop of the day was Akihabara. There were indeed a lot of electronic shops there but I was rather surprised by the lesser number of anime and manga shops. Perhaps this really is Electric Town and not Manga Town. Anyway, the main street was not opened to pedestrians after the Akihabara incident and somehow the atmosphere just wasn’t as lively as seen in the many Youtube videos. We also dropped by a maid cafe to enjoy being “masters” for an hour.

Takeshita-dori where lots and lots of young people gathered. This place was filled with small shop selling young fashion, much like the kind of shopping we have over at Bugis 3rd floor and Hereen 4th floor. The difference is that Japanese fashion was much more cool and stylish looking.

The famous Prada building at Omotesando. Even in the picture, it looked like some kind of bubble building. Very unique indeed.

The afternoon brought us to the Meiji Shrine and Harajuku area. We had a Tokyo local food, monja-yaki, for lunch and spent our time along Takeshita-dori and Omotesando. Somehow, Omotesando was rather boring for us.

The famous junction at Shibuya with the 109 building as the backdrop. We crossed this street quite a number of times, vertically, horizontally, and diagonally, just to experience the Japanese crowd. We even tried crossing the road when the green man was flashing and had to hastily run across the road together with the locals. :D

In the evening, we visited Hachiko at Shibuya station and enjoyed ourselves crossing the famous Shibuya pedestrian junction many many times. So many people, so many people. After hours of shopping, we retired to our hotel early to rest for a long day the next day.

Day 10

The live fish auction at Tsukiji market. The fish auction area was out of bounds for tourist so we had to watch this from the carpark. The workers there were also handling dangerous looking hooks to transport the tuna around. Its really quite a harzardous place for so many tourists to be around and being an obstruction to these working people.

Alarm clock rang at 4am in the morning and there was only one place we need to go this early, Tsukiji Fish Market. Luckily, the subway was just at our hotel entrance and we took the subway to Tsukijishijo. The market was a bit confusing and I think we got lost a few times. We walked all the way inside to catch a glimpse at the live fish auctions. Dear1 initially wanted to hug the giant tuna for a photo but it was precisely for that reason that tourists are banned from entering the auction area, too bad for Dear1. ;P

The famous row of fresh sushi breakfast restaurants. We ate our share of fresh sashimi from the most famous of them all, Sushi Dai. It was also the only stall that had a queue that day.

We had breakfast at Sushi Dai after a 20-30 minutes queue and then set off to our next destination for the day, Disneyland.

The castle at Tokyo Disneyland. Definitely much much grander than the one at HK Disneyland. And we had nice weather for the day too!

There was an afternoon parade in celebration of Tokyo Disney’s 25th anniversary. Mickey rode the last car of the parade.

This was one of the many many story displays at the Winnie the Pooh ride. We queue about 20 minute just to get the Fastpass for this ride at about 9.30am and the timing we got was 1.20pm. Definitely one of the more popular rides in Disneyland.

Then there was the regular night electric parade. We can’t really see the Disney mascots at night because it was too dark, so its more of seeing the parade car displays.

We arrived at Disneyland just before its 9am opening. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw so many people at Disneyland at 9am in the morning on a weekday. Can’t imagine what its like for it to be sold out on White Day. We would spend the whole day in Disneyland. Luckily, it was a sunny day, but the winds were chilly. There were two parades (one day and one night) and one fireworks show. This was our second fireworks of this trip. We attended all the live shows for the day but only managed to take 2 Fast Pass rides because we didn’t know how to fully exploit the system. In total, we managed to take 13 rides and 7 shows at Disneyland. We left Disneyland around 9.30pm and headed back to our hotel after a long but enjoyable day.

Day 11

The Imperial East Gardens. Well, we actually found it rather unimpressive. Maybe we should have signed up for the free guided tour that would bring us into the Imperial Palace itself.

Another famous landmark, Kaminarimon at Asakusa. Truly impressive lantern, but there was another bigger and grander one inside, at the entrance of Sensoji Temple. Surprisingly, there were quite many Japanese school girls at this temple place.

The first stop of the day was the Imperial Palace East Gardens. After a brief walk, we took the subway to Asakusa where we visited the Kaminarimon, Nakamise and Sensoji Temple.

We took the Sumida river cruise from Asakusa that would bring us down the river and also cruise pass no less than 10 bridges. The ceiling of the boat was also transparent so that the passengers and look a closer look at all the unique bridges along the river.

Another unexpected find, a large flower bed in Hamarikyu. Really looked like those in the movies. Its actually not to vast like those in the countrysides, but it was really a nice surprise to be able to see so many flowers and this vibrate yellow. Brightens up our day.

After lunch, we walk to Sumida Park and took a river cruise bus to Hamarikyu. At Hamarikyu, there was also several plum trees but we were most surprised to find a flower bed there. It was surreal, such a large flower bed in the backdrop of modern skyscrapers. It was a pity part of the garden was under renovation and there were construction vehicles everywhere, spoiling the scenery.

The futuristic Fuji television building in Odaiba. We took about 30 seconds to admire it, really nothing much, overrated.

The night view of the Replica of Liberty in the backdrop of the Rainbow bridge. This was easily one of the best views of Odaiba.

We walked to Shiodome station and transferred to the Yurikamome to Odaiba. We then had both our lunch and dinner at Aquacity where there was a ramen competition going on. We had a chance to try different styles of ramen from different parts of the country there. On the whole, we found Odaiba rather lonely and deserted. And one thing that irks me was that there were a lot of Mandarin speaking sales staff in Odaiba, and a lot of Mandarin speaking tourists as well. Not my cup of tea.

No, I didn’t take this photo from a helicopter. Lol. This was a scale model of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building found in the North Observatory. The night was too rainy to see very far and the photos turned out bad, so I took a photo of this scale model instead.

On our way back to the hotel, we dropped by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building to visit the free observatory. But it was a rainy day and visibility was very very poor, we couldn’t see much of the night scenery. Moments before we reached our hotel, it started snowing again.

Day 12

The morning at a Kabukicho bus stop. Kabukicho is a famous red light district in Tokyo, and just like any red light district, there are great entertainment and food here, but the problem was, they open only after 7pm.

It was to be our last day here and the flight was 5.45pm. Taking into account the check in time and travel to Narita, we only have a morning left in Tokyo city. We decided to stay in Shinjuku and explore the east Shinjuku area as well as Kabukicho in the morning.

We took the Keisei line back to Narita airport. There’s a choice between Sky Liner of Ltd Exp. Sky Liner is about 10-15 minutes faster but cost roughly twice at much. We took the Ltd Exp. If boarding the train at Ueno station, its almost confirmed got seats.

Needless to say, Kabukicho was quiet with nothing much going on. We did our last minute shopping at Odakyu before heading to Ueno to catch the Keisei Ltd Exp back to the airport.

Our plane home. :(

At the airport, we ate our last ekiben in Japan while shopping for goodies to bring back for our friends and family. We bought 5 boxes of Shiroikoibito and also Tokyo Banana amongst others. We bid farewell to Japan and eagerly started to plan our next visit to this great place.

Day 13

The end of our trip, we miss Japan. *Sob*

We arrived at Changi Airport around 12.30am and had to take an expensive midnight cab home. -_-” Remember to factor this in as part of the air ticket prices if you want to fly by Northwest Airlines.

-Dear1

We are back from Japan! :D

What a trip! After spending 12 days in Japan, our bodies are tired, our pockets felt lighter, but we really enjoyed ourselves. What was unexpected was that it rained most of the days that we were there, and it snowed on at least 4 days too. I think we’ll have a lot of thoughts and emotions to write regarding our honeymoon, so let me start the ball rolling by doing a quick itinerary recap. Here we go.

Day 0

Our flight with Northwest Airlines departs at 6am, so in order to save on taxi fares, we decided to travel to Changi Airport the night before on the last MRT around 11pm. We spend the night wandering the 3 airport terminals and finally checked in at around 3.30am and spend the rest of the time inside the duty free area.

Day 1

Breakfast from Northwest Airlines was really bad. Egg was grossly overcooked and hashbrown was soggy. If I need to pick the best of the lot, it would be the instant sugar which I added to the coffee.

The view from our seat about 20 minutes to arrival at Narita. You can see a small Japanese island in the ocean.

Northwest Airlines food sucks. We arrive in the early afternoon and went straight to the JR ticket office to exchange for our 4 day flexi JR East Pass. We also reserved our train seats for the upcoming few days. And we bought the Narita Express & Suica Combo too. And off we go to Yokohama.

Upon arriving at Yokohama station, we experienced our first culture shock. There were so many many train platforms and we totally didn’t know where to go. Luckily, the staff at the station was very helpful and guided us to the correct platform. We boarded the train for Kannai, and checked in to our hotel at Toyoko Inn Yokohama Nihonodori-eki Nichigin-mae.

After a short break, we went to Sakuragicho to visit the famous Yokohama cityscape. After dinner, we decided to head home as we were tired after the 7 hours flight.

Day 2

Our first Japanese breakfast, taken at Toyoko Inn. Rice balls tasted surprisingly good and we really liked the tenderness of Japanese eggs.

The empty Yokohama Chinatown in the morning that we went.

The famous skyline of the Yokohama Minato Mirai area. This picture was taken from Yokohama International Passenger Terminal.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then spent the morning exploring the Chinatown area and the Yokohama bayside area. By late morning, we had checked out of the hotel and enroute to Odawara on the Ltd Exp Odoriko. We saw Mt Fuji from inside the train, and it would turn out that this was the only time we got to see Mt Fuji throughout the whole trip.

Odawara Castle was about 3 minutes walk from the North Entrance of the park, and about 10 minutes walk from Odawara Station.

At Odawara, we visited the Odawara Castle and also bought the Odakyu Hakone Pass. Next, we took a bus from Odawara station directly to our ryokan for the night, Ichinoyu Honkan. It was still early to check in, so we left our luggage at the lobby and went out to explore Hakone.

The view of the streets of Hakone on our way climbing up the steps from our ryokan to Tonosawa Station.

We had made our way to Sounzan without knowing that the Hakone Ropeway was closed. We were rather angry that they didn’t have a signage at Gora to inform us about the closed ropeway. Or maybe the announcement was made in Japanese?

Originally, we had intended to complete the famed Hakone round trip before dinner, but unfortunately, the Hakone Ropeway was closed due to strong winds. It was a pity that we couldn’t visit Owakudani to observe the volcanic sulphur pools and eat the volcanic eggs.

This was the port at Togendai where we missed our sightseeing boat after making a long detour from Sounzan to Gora to Senkyoro-mae to Togendai by bus.

We took a detour to reach Togendai to take the sightseeing boat around Lake Ashi only to miss the last boat of the day by 5 minutes. Since it was going to be dinner time soon, we headed back to the ryokan.

The private onsen at Ichinoyu was a great way for us to get into the culture of hotspring bathing. We were still not very comfortable with the idea of going naked at a public bath yet.

That night, we have a sumptuous feast at the ryokan and also enjoyed our first onsen experience at the private family bathroom within the ryokan.

Day 3

It was a rainy morning at Motohakone port. The Hakone Shrine was nearby but we didn’t have enough time to visit it.

We woke up early to try to use the private bath again. Luckily, no one was  using it at 7am, so we went in for it again. So relaxing. Next, we had breakfast at the hotel, checked out, and took a bus to Motohakone. From there, we took the sightseeing boat that we missed the previous day to Togendai to enjoy the views of Lake Ashi. From Togendai, we took a bus to Gotemba station. It was raining since the morning, and it would continue for much of the day.

Gotemba Premium Outlet is a huge discount shopping village, almost like a shopping theme park.

At Gotemba, we took a shuttle bus to visit the Chelsea Premium Outlets. The prices there were at a discount but we couldn’t find anything suitable.

The sewage covers at Kawaguchiko were decorated with the scene of Mt Fuji. In fact, images of Mt Fuji can be found everywhere, on signages, traffic lights, instant noodles, soft toys, etc.

At around mid afternoon, we boarded a bus from Gotemba station that would bring us to Kawaguchiko station. At Kawaguchiko, we bought the retro bus free pass and checked in to K’s House where we will be staying for 2 nights.

It was to be the last fireworks of the winter to mark the end of winter and to welcome the spring season. The fireworks lasted more than 30 minutes and it was truly spectular to see the fireworks standing at the edge of the lake.

In the evening, there was a fireworks display at Lake Kawaguchi and we had the opportunity to witness the wonderful fireworks in Japan that was often the romantic scene in J-drama and anime. I managed to upload the video onto Youtube, so enjoy. :D

Day 4

Mt Fuji can be found everywhere. :D

A model of Mt Fuji outside the Nature Living Centre at Kawaguchiko. It also says that Mt Fuji Day is celebrated on the 23th of Feburary every year.

Our plans was to spend the entire day exploring Kawaguchiko and Fujiyoshida area. In the morning, we took the retro bus from terminal to terminal to view the areas around Lake Kawaguchi. It snowed today, the first time we saw fresh falling snow.

The Kawaguchiko retro sightseeing bus. We happen to be the only young people on board. The other passengers were all Japanese senior citizens.

This is the shop where we ate the handmade udon at Fujiyoshida, 1 minute away from the station. It is managed singlehandedly by this kind old lady. We were able to have a good chat with the stall owner as we were the only customers at that time. She even gave us a page of the magazine where her shop was featured in several years ago.

The weather was cold and the wind was chilly so it didn’t make sense to ride such a tall and high speed roller coaster. Excuses. :P

In the afternoon, we took the retro bus to Fujiyoshida and tried the famous handmade udon at a little shop own by a nice old lady. We also stopped by Fuji Q Highland but the rides looked a bit too scary, so we didn’t go in.

The retro bus schedule ends early at around 4.30pm so we had to make our way back to Kawaguchiko earlier than expected.

The weather was cold so all we had to do was to leave the juice next to the window to enjoy cold apple juice the whole night. Slurp!

We dropped by a supermarket on our way back and it was having its evening sale. Most of the shelves were already emptied and a lot of Japanese aunties were rushing to grab the last of the discount meats with their already fully loaded shopping carts. Even the bread counter was swiped clean. In the end, we were only able to get a packet of apple juice at 88yen, cheap!

Day 5

Satou Steak House at Kichijoji where we had matsuzaka beef for lunch. At ~SGD80, it was definitely the most expensive piece of steak we had ever eaten, and it was truly the best beef we had ever eaten.

We woke up early today to catch a train to Otsuki where we would transfer to the Ltd Exp Kaiji for Mitaka, and transfer again to Kichijoji. We stopped by Kichijoji to try the famous matsuzaka beef. But we had to leave Kawaguchiko area without even seeing Mt Fuji once. :(

The Shinkansen Max Toki which we took from Tokyo to Yuzawa. Total duration was 77 minutes.

The foot of Yuzawa Kogen resort. This is the lift for the easiest of the beginner slopes. Also the first time we saw so much snow. Mountains of snow!

After lunch, we continued our journey to Tokyo station where we transfer to our first Shinkansen of the trip to Yuzawa, Max Toki. We would reach Yuzawa in mid afternoon and checked in to Hotel Yanagi for the night. We spent the rest of the day exploring this snow town. It was the first time we’ve seen such thick snow. In the evening, we decided to go to the hotel onsen as Yuzawa is known to be an onsen town and our hotel had the baths on the second floor. Truly relaxing in the winter cold. Somehow, the onsen warmth was able to penetrate into our bones and rejuvenated our bodies.

Day 6

Fresh snow fell through the night and continued in the morning. The snow flakes here were much finer and firmer than those at Kawaguchiko. The snow flakes would literally bounce off our winter coats upon contact. Breakfast was provided at the Izakaya within the hotel.

We took the Yuzawa Kogen Ropeway to the mountain top. The weather was too foggy and so skiing was prohibitted. We threw our skis down and played in the snow instead. Snowballs fight. Go Go Go!

In the morning, we went skiing. Neither of us knew how to ski, but we still went ahead and took the lift up the slope. It was so scary becos we didn’t know how to stop and the snow felt so slippery. After 5 mins of struggling, we decided to detach our skis and walked down the slope where we would spend some time practicing first on flat ground. By the time we got the hang of it, it was already noon and we had to catch our train back to tokyo. Lesson learnt: half a day is not enough to enjoy skiing.

The view of Yuzawa town taken from inside the Yuzawa Kogen Ropeway on our way down to the foot station. Indeed a town built in a valley, bordered by mountains on both sides.

In between, we also found time to ride the largest gondola car in the world, the Yuzawa Kogen Ropeway. The view of the town from up in the mountains was breathtaking.

Wako building at Ginza. It looked very outstanding because of its more historic architecture in the midst of all the standard rectangular modern buildings in the Ginza area.

Dior building in the picture. While we were at Ginza, we were somewhat shocked by the size of the showrooms of these big brands. They don’t just have a shop space like in our Orchard Rd. They have the whole building to themselves. Floors and floors of Dior was just mind boggling.

We took the Shinkansen to Shinjuku where we checked in to our hotel for the next 6 nights, Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku. In the evening, we took a train to Tokyo station and explored the area and south towards Ginza before calling it a day. We made a last stop at Meguro station to try out a famous tonkatsu shop there too.

to be continued Day 7-12…

-Dear1