Tokyo 2012 - Day 7

We were woken up by vibrations and a shaking of the room at around 7 plus 8 am. I experienced my first earthquake! We were half asleep and dazed; I had to ask V if it was an earthquake. Come to think of it, it must have been quite strong to feel it like that, waking us up, like someone shaking me. I went back to sleep shortly after that though. Ha! We found out later that it was a 5.5 near Mt Fuji area. Good thing it only lasted a short time and the picture above our beds didn't drop on us. Imagine if it were any worse, my last words might have been my post last night. Well, another different Japan experience.

V went out before me as I slept in, again. Lazy me. I decided to explore the other half of the Southern Terrace and found an Afternoon Tea Room there. I've seen many branches of this around and have been curious to try it, so I went in and ordered a cream tea set which was tea with scones. Service was impeccable and they even gave me a blanket to cover my legs from the cold! There was another cafe nearby, called Delirium Cafe, but that looked more like a beer place.

I also discovered that there was an entrance to the JR Yoyogi station, so I went there to go to Ebisu to meet V to visit the Aronzo Aranzi shop.

After that, we went back to Harajuku to look at the Uniqlo t-shirt shop (UT). Bought a few t-shirts including one for a friend. Hope it fits. I loved the yellow submarine one but they didn't have my size. :(
Oh, before we went to see tees, we stopped by a dessert shop, Kyobashi Sembikiya, for a banana waffle and strawberry shortcake. The latter is slowly becoming our  winter dessert in Tokyo. The desserts were quite delectable and I think I had eaten too much cream for the day.

Didn't really do or buy much today. Well, I think I've done too much shopping already. Think the fact that we'd soon be going home is setting in. *emo*

For dinner, we went to Nijyu Maru. The izakaya (高田) we went to 3 years ago was no longer there, so we came here instead. I really liked that old place. Well, it belongs to a chain, so maybe we can try elsewhere next time.

I felt I didn't do much this trip. Wanted to visit the Imperial Palace East Gardens, but guess have to miss that. Anyway, think it'll be freezing cold walking through a park now. And they close rather early during winter, like last admission at 4pm. Think I must do more planning and wake up earlier next time.
Oh, starting my conversational Jap class coming Friday. Hopefully I can understand something too by then!

Think this should be my last post on this trip since we'll be flying back tomorrow, late night, and I won't be having any Internet access till I'm home.

Sayonara, for now.

Tokyo 2012 - Day 6

I started the day with the nearby Krispy Kreme where I ordered a maple cake. My order of hot tea became coffee though.

It was souvenir day and I went to Odakyu to help a friend to buy Mariage Frères tea, the Earl Grey French Blue blend. The sales assistant let me take a whiff of it and I bought one tin for myself. A tin of 100g cost about ¥2500, so that's about S$40-50? Well, you can't get it in Singapore and it smelled really good. Wonder if our TWG would cost as much. I also bought some Japanese crackers for the office.

On the way back to the hotel, I couldn't help but notice a small little shop, Baneo, at Mylord (Mosaic Street?) that sold cute pouches. Bought some for myself and some as gifts. Thought they'll be good as a phone pouch, at least for my future phone, the Xperia S (ya, super kiasu...excuse to buy it).

We met up with a new friend (and her friend) that V got to know via twitter, who had helped us source for the YG Family Concert tickets on Day 1. We had tunch at Wired Cafe at Mitsukoshi. Had a good time chatting and getting to know each other. Nice people and hope we can really keep in touch. At least now we're following each other on twitter! So unexpected to make new friends here.
Anyway, we ate some nice stuff at Wired Cafe. I was hungry and ordered the hot tuna and cheese wrap while V had the lemon custard chiffon cup cake. We also ordered salt caramel potato chips (the picture in the menu set us drooling) which came with ice-cream. Nice. Chips in dessert form. We also tried the warabimochi which was nice, served with azuki and ice-cream and coated with matcha powder.
Time flew by and we spent about 3 hours there?

We had to part eventually and the two of them were so sweet to give us some snacks as parting gifts.

After bidding our farewells, V and I walked around the area and I finally went into H&M and bought some clothes. We weren't hungry and felt lazy, so we just bought some stuff from Family Mart (again) to eat in the hotel.

Tokyo 2012 - Day 5

Another late morning and well, didn't have much planned since I visited the 2 museums I intended to visit on this trip already. But I did want to visit L'occitane Cafe again, so I went to Shibuya again to just go there and have brunch, but not without stopping to take a pic of the statue of Hachiko, the loyal dog at the Hachiko exit. I ordered their soup of the day, the Croque du L'occitane and their L'occitane au lait tea. I was lucky to grab a window seat and watched the Shibuya crossing while I ate my brunch.

 

Another reason for visiting Shibuya again was to look for a Yoshii Mami shop at Markcity. I didn't bear much hope as I couldn't find it on the directory anymore before coming. Looks like the only spot I know of is at Yokohama Bay Quarter which is quite far from Tokyo. And indeed, it was not there. Markcity is really small, but there are quite a lot of restaurants there.

It felt a bit more chilly today. Not sure if it's because I was using my new coat or it was really colder. Or maybe I was feeling emo. Why do my thighs feel colder than the rest of my legs which is less covered? Considering it has more fat and it was covered by my coat?

Anyway, I went back to the hotel empty-handed and soon headed out to Ginza with V, but not without stopping over at Tully's at Roppongi for a matcha latte. It wasn't intended, but since we had to exit the station to change train, we might as well stop by Tully's.

In Ginza, we just walked around a bit, browsing and taking some photos, like of the Apple store.
We stopped by Uniqlo (again) and I bought a pair of chinos on sale. Oopsie, it's getting "dangerous" for me to enter Uniqlo here. Always coming out with something. I've not visited H&M yet...don't know what that would bring. But trying clothes in winter is super leh cheh.

I think the highlight of the day was dinner at Genkatsu in the area. I ordered the layered tonkatsu with yuzu while V had the black pepper. I liked my yuzu tonkatsu which tasted rather refreshing and less heavy. Juicy too, as V described. I also ordered the oyster where I ate both since V doesn't eat oysters (they came in twos). All I could say was that they were super oiishi! I was quite "感动" by it. The oysters were fresh and the texture was just nice after frying, soft and firm and light on the palette and a joy to bite through, yet not losing the oyster freshness taste. Very nice lah. It was even more delightful than the yuzu katsu. Enjoyed dinner very much, thanks to V's recommendation. A good alternative to Tenjin which had since closed.

Another day has passed and it's already coming to the end of the week! So fast. Why is the holiday ending so soon?

Tokyo 2012 - Day 4

I woke up later than expected and set off rather late. Seeing it was almost 12pm when I reached Roppongi, I decided to have brunch at Midtown. Came across this bagel place called Junoesque Bagel Cafe and they had a lunch set at ¥800 that came with a bagel, fries and soup. I picked the Pumpkin & Earl Grey bagel and clam chowder soup.

 

Didn't really taste the pumpkin or earl grey in the bagel, but there was a nice light fragrance to the taste and it wasn't overly heavy as bagels usually were (or maybe because I was hungry). They gave a rather generous dollop of thick cream cheese which I now regret not spreading everything. And the fries. They were one of the best fries I've eaten. They were the shoestring kind and so crisp and full of flavor. That was rather unexpected. A rather enjoyable meal except for the matcha cafe latte that I ordered separately. Matcha and coffee don't really seem to mix well. I shall stick to simply matcha latte next time.

After the brunch, I proceeded to my intended location, the National Art Center, Tokyo (yes, I'm not going Roppongi to shop...those shops are just way above my limits).

There were a few exhibitions going on, 2 paying ones and 1 free one. I decided to go for the Hiroji Noda exhibition (¥1,000) as recommended by the information staff. It was a good choice and a few of his artworks gained my fancy, even though they were contemporary in style. The exhibition included more than a hundred pieces of his works and they were mainly a very different acrylic on canvas series, some involving mixed media creations. No photo-taking allowed though. When I have time, I will do a separate post on it. That took me almost 2 hours, and after that, I took a quick walk around the free calligraphy exhibition by their artists' association before rushing off to meet V. It was huge! I nearly got lost finding my way around. I'm not well-versed in calligraphy even though I used to do some of it in primary school, but it was interesting seeing some of them; there were really colorful ones that they looked like water colour paintings and the subjects painted were rather different from the traditional ones we're used to.

The rest of the day saw me shopping again (at Shibuya) where I bought quite a few t-shirts. There was a nice tee shop (Arton) that lets you pick from a whole range of designs and once you pick your design and tee, they will print the t-shirt there and then. I think it's a great concept so you don't waste the t-shirts. But it's a bit pricey though at ¥2,500 for 1 piece, so I only bought one. You get discounts though when you buy more. I went to Uniqlo (again) and bought a wool coat on discount at ¥5990 (about S$100), which I think was quite worthed it, considering it stated it was 100% wool. Also bought 2 t-shirts there. Shucks, think I'm buying too many t-shirts already. But the Uniqlo t-shirts were just ¥990 each and had Snoopy characters and Winnie the Pooh, not that I was a huge fan of the latter, but my nephew is.

Dinner was at Watami which was super cheap! Ok, we didn't order much and shared our stuff, but the bill came up to only ¥1,200 which works out to be only ¥600 per person. My afternoon tea at Tully's with just a tea and donut was already that amount.

Tokyo 2012 - Day 3

It snowed again! Only a little in the morning but still pretty.  Took a quick bite at Cafe Veloce. Matcha latte and a random bun, that turned out to be filled with rock melon cream! The sweet surprises one gets when you can't read Japanese.

Off to Edo-Tokyo Museum in the Ryogoku region, the sumo district.

But I didn't really have time to explore sumo land, only the museum which I took about  2.5 hours. It was a tour of the history and culture of Edo (Tokyo). The entrance fee was ¥600 for adults for the permanent exhibit.  There were English write ups for the exhibits, so it was still understandable.

 

By the time I came out it was already 3.15pm and I went off to Harajuku to meet V for shopping! And shop I did.

My first stop was Gap directly opposite the exit. I had been wanting to get a black pair of jeans but they didn't have that many choices. However, I was persuaded to try their Ultra Skinny which I could amazingly wear! I had never really had success with skinny jeans as they were always too narrow and I could never get it up all the way comfortably. But this was so stretchy that it easily fitted, even when I was wearing tights! So obviously, I had to buy it. My 1st, and probably the only pair of skinny jeans I'll ever get.

My next purchase was inevitably, agnès b bags. I bought two in fact. Hmm...should I even consider going back to the shop at Odakyu since I spotted some stuff there before? Anyway, that wasn't all as I bought some tops from Zara and also accessories and socks while passing by some shops. Did managed to shop for some souvenirs for the dept though. Did a lot of damage today in my terms - more than ¥40K yen. *gulp*

Dinner was at a ramen place that V brought me. It was pretty good, except that the egg was fully cooked. And I enjoyed the music very much - The Beatles. Haha, this was of course better than the cup noodles and convenience store oden we had for the past two nights.

Tokyo 2012: Day 1 & 2

Off to Tokyo! Why waste a super long weekend right? So I flew off straight after an early reunion dinner.

My, was my first day exhausting. I didn't really sleep much on the plane or at all (no, not because I wanted to catch as many movies as I wanted, but I couldn't get to sleep) and didn't sleep till like 2am the following night. That's almost 40 hours without proper rest! Haha, I could practically take a seat and doze off at any time at some point. Anyway, what exactly did I do to warrant such fatigue?

Once we touched down, we took the Narita Express to Shinjuku. The limousine bus to our hotel doesn't run till afternoon, so we had to take that. Those planning to take the Narita Express should consider buying the "N'ex + Suica" package where you can buy the N'ex ticket and Suica card (like our Ezlink) for ¥3,500 (one-way) or ¥5,000 (two-way). The Suica card would come with a stored value ¥1,500 and is very useful for getting around the city via The JR line. You can find out more from the Narita Express website where I found out this good deal.

Anyway, when we reached the hotel, we couldn't check in yet, so we left our luggage there and went for an early lunch at our "usual" tempura shop.

We also took a short turn at Tokyu Hands at Takashimaya which was very near our hotel. I couldn't resist buying a number of Tintin file folders and some other cute stationery. After that, we went to check in and quickly rushed off to try to get tickets to watch a K-pop concert. This was quite off-the-fly in a way even though V had intended to catch it but we didn't get tickets. We tried our luck at the venue where we asked around for people selling tickets. No, not really black market stuff and we found someone who was willing to let go of pair at cost. So there! We secured our tickets for my first K-pop concert, the "YG Family Concert in Japan".

The YG Family is the entertainment company that manages groups Big Bang and 2NE1 and also other artistes like Gummy, Seven and PSY. Well, I'm not a fan of K-pop, but I was game to experience the glitz and ra-ra which I knew it would pack. And indeed! It was a very enjoyable concert as I fell under the spell for 4 hours with the flashy lights and catchy beats. You fall into a mindless high, dancing along with the songs. We practically stood for the whole 4 hours. Well, I must admit that the singing wasn't great as there were parts that you knew they were out of tune, especially the group segments, but it was still fun. And my, were most of the boys pretty. I felt that Tablo's songs were quite nice and Gummy was one of the better female singers (she reminded us of Tanya Chua). There was even a special appearance of Tetsuya Komuro playing the piano, a famous composer from Japan, as Gummy sang a cover of "Departures", a song he composed for Globe.
After the concert, I realised that it was actually quite an expensive concert at 12,800 yen. Wow! That like S$200 plus!

I was really tired after all that standing and lack of sleep, plus hunger was setting in as our last meal was the tempura about 9 hours ago. We were simply too tired and the shops were closing anyway, so we settled at getting cup noodles and oden at the Family Mart just opposite our hotel.

 

That was about 10pm or so I think and by the time we ate, bathed and dilly dallied a bit, we were totally concussed. V had to wake up early to go for her 1-week Jap class but I dazedly slept till 12pm. Ha! I had intended to wake at 9am but that obviously didn't happen.

Anyway, we decided to take it easy the next day and just walked around Shinjuku a little bit after lunch. It was raining anyway so the mood for shopping wasn't that great plus we started out late. I must get up earlier the next day! But I did buy more stationery and bought a heat tech camisole and scarf at Uniqlo, plus some items friends asked me to help them get. Dinner was again oden from Family Mart as we wanted to go back early. Guess what! I believe it started snowing not long after we got back. We would have missed it if I hadn't saw on the TV news that it was snowing, by which we gathered at the window to see it.

My first snow in Tokyo I believe (saw some forgettable ones in Fukouka and lots in Hokkaido before though). Hope tomorrow will still be snowing so that we can touch it.

Ok, so that's it for the 1st two days in Tokyo. Good night.