Tokyo Trip

It's been a long time since I last blogged. Life (or laziness) has finally caught up with me. Anyways, let's start with my Japan trip. Just over a month ago now. No pics in this blog. They can be viewed on my facebook.

Japan was a little gift from my sister for her annual birthday trip. I know, how does that work? I get a gift for someone else's birthday. Not only was it just a trip, it was a business class flight, in a 5-star hotel with spending money type gift! Thanks sis :D

I flew into KL to meet the rest of the gang at the Golden Lounge for the business class flyers *ahem* and our holiday begun with the comfiest seat on the plane. It was the best 7-hour flight I've ever been on. I got served a 3-course meal with the best Pinot Noir I've had and I get to recline my seat to a horizontal position for a snooze too.

We arrived at Narita airport in the evening and headed straight to the Imperial Hotel at Ginza where we were staying. We got to the hotel at 9pm and feeling pretty hungry. But all the restaurants in the hotel shut at 9.30pm! We eventually managed to find one which opens late. It was a 'western' restaurant. Although I wouldn't recommend eating there. The food was ok.

We then experienced our first earthquake on the first night!! I was asleep and about midnight, I felt these tremors. I thought, hmm... earthquake, keep calm. One of my colleagues worked in Japan for 2 years and said it happens all the time. And it wasn't like the building was crumbling down around me, and I was knackered (yes, I know, even after an extremely comfortable sleep on the plane). I was about to doze off when my sister got up, turned the lights on and went 'SIS, THERE'S AN EARTHQUAKE!!' All I could muster was a 'It happens all the time, go back to sleep' and so we did. But the building did creak, the bed did shake but we sustained no injuries. Apparently quite a number of people died at the epicentre.

The next morning I decided to get up pretty early for a swim in the hotel pool. It cost about SGD12 to use the hotel pool which I thought was a bit of a rip off seeing as I was a guest at the hotel. There were about a million rooms to go through before you actually got to the pool. First there was the locker room, then the changing room, the powder room, the toilets, the showers, the sauna, the bath (!!) before you get out of the ladies 'changing room' from the other end to get to the pool. Of course, before you get to the pool, there's the shower (MUST have a shower before jumping into the pool), then you get to a stepped pool of water which comes up to your thighs, just to make sure that your doubly-cleaned, before you walk to the pool to pick up a swimming cap before you jump in for a swim.

You'd think after all that, I would've had the best swimming experience ever. Well, it's the tiniest swimming pool I've ever seen. Probably only about 20m long, will fit about 4 people before it feels like a can of sardines and it's actually a prefab pool, i.e. a metal tin plonked into a hole in the floor and filled up with water. After the swim, I went into the sauna for a bit and thought better of jumping into the 'baths', inviting as they look. When I went back to the locker room to get my stuff and put my sandals on. The only other woman in the locker room looked at me in disgust and said 'Shoes are suppose to be worn outside'. She was Japanese. I wasn't sure whether I was more shocked about missing the sign which says 'No shoes' or the fact that she sounded very American.

We went to see the fireworks on the Sumida River on our second night. It lasted an hour and a half. The first fifteen minutes were pretty good. After that I thought it was never gonna end. But it was a great experience. Sushi and tempura dinner on the boat, fireworks in the night, plenty of beers and sake to go round.

On the third day I went shopping in Omote Sando. I got a the underground from Ginza to Omote Sando, a 15-20 minute ride. When I got to the underground at Ginza, although I had a map on me and knew exactly where I was going, I thought I'd ask the ticketman the question anyway. Don't want me getting lost in Tokyo underground. All he managed was to point me to the barriers. I f**king know I need to go through the barriers. So I gave up, found a ticket machine, got a day ticket and jumped on the train. Omote Sando is quite interesting. The main road is filled with Burberry, LV, Chanel and the likes. A bit like Knightsbridge. But off the main road there were plenty of quaint and quirky little shops selling all sorts of interesting stuff and clothes.

Fourth day, my last day, we were suppose to meet at the hotel lobby at 6.45am for a trip down the fish market and have extremely fresh sushi for breakfast. My little sis cannot stomach raw fish first thing in the morning. So she set the alarm for 5.30am to try and catch the first breakfast in the hotel at 6am. Unfortunately she turned the alarm off and we went back snoozing for five more minutes. Turned out to be an extra hour and a half. When I woke up and looked at the clock, I yelled 'Jo, it's 6.44!!!!!' I have never seen my sis jumped out of bed (literally) so quickly and proceeded to get changed right in front of me. I had to knock some sense into her and told her we weren't gonna get ready and get down to the hotel lobby in ONE MINUTE. She could actually take her time to get changed.

We got to the fish market. Packed, busy and all the teeny sushi restaurants had miles of queues. Poor sis also had to stomach raw fish as she didn't get any breakfast beforehand. We were then taken to Shibuya for a bit of shopping. We were in a extremely trendy tiny mall packed with teenage wear. It was probably heaven for little sis, except that my other sister's mother in law was with us too. Kinda kills the shopping mood a little. I then made the mistake of telling our guide that I wanted to buy a ninja outfit if I came across one. They took us to a supermarket type place which sold everything under the sun. Everything except for a ninja outfit. My sis' mother-in-law asked afterwards 'Did you manage to get your Ninja Turtle outfit'. Ninja Turtle!!! So much for the stealth if you have a shell on your back!

In the evening, my sisters and I sacrificed dinner and went shopping in Ginza, near our hotel. It was the sales in Tokyo, we couldn't miss it. I bought three pair of shoes (they all hurt!). Somehow the thought of possibly never being able to shop in the Tokyo sales again (not true) makes you just wanna over indulge a little. Not to mention the fact that we shopped in Printemps, which is not even a Japanese department store.

And that was my Tokyo trip. I'd definitely go back there again. Most definitely couple it with a dive trip in Okinawa. If given the opportunity, I'd even work in Japan for a couple of years. But learning Japanese is a must. I don't know how I managed to get back without speaking a single word of Japanese.