keep walking

journey to the land of the rising sun – part 1

it is finally time for me to put down my thoughts on my previous trip to japan. further delay may cause inaccurate recollection. LOL.

6 apr 08

that’s sunday.

our flight was at 6 am but we decided to meet up in airport way earlier. to save transportation fee (cab), i took the last bus and reached airport around 1230 am. jus, merv and song were already there.
i certainly looked dead considering that it was a long day on sat with unit outing and stuff.
anyway, song brought scrabble travel pack.. woohoo.. so we ended up playing scrabble all the way till susi came (which was about 4 am). i got the lowest point, but seriously i didn’t care. i was too tired to think and i fell asleep even before the plane took off. meals were taken in half consciousness.

fast forward >> we finally reached tokyo!

and the best part is.. we couldn’t find the hotel. haha.
it is so hilarious thinking back about it now.
we walked around the area for about 3 hours. it’s meant to be very near the station but we just couldn’t find it.
anyway there’s this vietnamese guy who’s willing to help us (though he seriously scared me off in the beginning cos he kept looking at me in the station). the problem is, he didn’t know the way too -_-
so he made us even more lost.
after a long exciting adventure at minami senju, God showed mercy on us and we finally found the place.
though the guy was not the best guide, we were still thankful to him, so we allowed susi to give him her email address plus a picture together. HAHA.

after dropping all our stuff in our super small rooms, we decided to follow lonelyplanet and had a sukiyaki + shabu2 dinner at shinjuku. i was seriously tired and cold, maybe that’s why the meal was heavenly… the grilled beef dipped into raw egg was superb… and i loved the onions.. ultimate.
well.. the meal costs us a bomb.
but it was our first day in japan.. so i guess we’re forgiven =P

7 apr 08

that’s monday. obviously monday comes after sunday.

we woke up early to take the morning shinkansen (bullet train) to kyoto. i had to say that i was pretty excited. a shinkansen. LOL. it looks exactly like how i watched it in anime.
we spent more time sleeping again on the train and reached in the afternoon.

to our horror, kyoto was raining.
thankfully we didn’t have problem in finding the inn this time and it was definitely more comfortable than our rooms back in tokyo.
dropped our stuff.. did some research.. and off we went to find our first ramen in japan and yeah it was really good. no joke.

unfortunately, walking in the rain (even with umbrella) was not fun. kyoto was freezing cold.
we decided to visit gion since it was pretty late. the shrines were closed but we managed to see the ‘famous sakura tree’ at maruyama park – just behind yasaka shrine. i’d say that it’s pretty mesmerizing.

i was craving for okonomiyaki so we had our dinner at this cool place selling it. the owner put a guitar as decoration. lol. and the toilet was definitely amusing.

*pictures compiled from 5 cameras are available on my flickr.