Posts Tagged: tokyo
Japan 2016: Food Highlights :d
Is this what you’ve all been waiting for? The foodie post? Well, I’ve gone over the Hiroshima okonomiyaki, yummy tacoyaki among other things at Nishiki Market, and the kaiseki in Kyoto at Gion Nanba, so I’m going to post some pictures here and talk about some of the other nice meals we had. We also had omurice, tempura, ramen, and pizza/pasta but I don’t have pictures or specific memories of those so won’t bore you with nothingness.
Kyoto
Coco Curry
Coco Curry
So back to Kyoto, between instant noodle and/or toast breakfasts, bento boxes from department store food courts, we managed to squeeze in a visit to the famous Coco Curry. We didn’t quite understand how to order but managed to get ourselves a curry each (including one for Oscar), everyone got a mild curry so it was basically gravy, but it was still yummy, this was probably Oscar’s favourite meal of the whole trip as he ate all of his serve and then some.
I ordered a set meal but this didn’t specify the spice level, while everyone else ordered from the combination menu which allows you to choose a base curry, and select the spice level, and then extras and add-ons to spice up the meal (pun totally intended). And yet they still just went with mild curry, but anyway, it was definitely an easy meal.
Kineya
Udon at Kineya
The only other picture of a meal I have is from our old favourite udon restaurant in the Porta Shopping mall, just outside Kyoto Station. We had quite a good recollection of eating udon here the last time we were in Kyoto, the memory was so good that we just had to come back. In reality though, we remembered that there was a pretty good udon place in the Porta shopping mall and didn’t want to run any risks as we were kind of in a rush and needed something that Oscar would likely eat.
That’s not to say that the udon here isn’t good, it’s plenty good and very possible that in a similar situation next time we are in Kyoto we may visit again. I had the cold noodles this time with a chicken katsu set, the noodles are so thick and chewy here, I like it.
Kawaguchi-ko
Even in a relatively small town (or perhaps especially because) like Kawaguchi-ko there are specialties to try. The specialty of the area (Yamanashi) is hoto, which is a type of noodle similar to udon, but the noodles are flatter and wider, the broth is usually filled with seasonal vegies and root vegies (especially pumpkin) and pork based.
Hoto Fudo
Hoto Fudo Kitchen
Hoto Fudo
So we were strolling around on that cloudy day in Kawaguchi-ko looking for something to eat when we stumbled upon this hoto restaurant just near the train station. We definitely remembered how yummy hoto was, so we stepped right on in and tried this one out (it’s only open from 11am-7pm). Compared to Hoto Kosaku, the actual bowls are a bit bigger (with the amount of food being about the same), there are not as many broth or add-on options here, but it still hits the spot if you’re after pork or vegie based noodle soup. The price for two bowls was about 25$ AUD (or a bit over 2,000¥), I would expect that we would drop by again next time we’re in Kawaguchi-ko :D.
Hoto Kosaku
Pork Hoto
This is the hoto restaurant that the hostel always recommends, and with good reason, the hoto here is bloody good and there are many options for broth (whatever you can think of really) as well as extras. We’re always a little price conscious so we didn’t splurge on the higher priced dishes (can’t remember off the top of my head but maybe something like crab or goose, something kind of exotic), I just got the stock standard pork hoto, and Emmy splurged on the seafood hoto.
This place is super busy but the queue moves quite quickly, you basically walk in and have to put your name down to reserve your spot. Once you’ve got your table though, you should quickly work out what you want and flag a waiter/waitress down to make your order as they’re super busy and not looking for customers with empty tables.
Seafood Hoto
Some tables on the sides have pits where you can dangle your feet but both times we’ve been there we have not had the fortune of such a luxury and had to sit cross legged on the floor. The noodles here are super luxurious, they’re probably wider and flatter than the ones at Hoto Fudo, the broth very sweet and tasty, this is a can’t miss in Kawaguchi-ko. These two bowls cost us about 40$ AUD (or 3,500¥) so a fair bit more pricey than Hoto Fudo for a similar quantity, it’s your own choice whether the extra options are worth your hard earned.
Tokyo
We mostly ate in the shopping mall food courts in Tokyo, but there are plenty of tasty options to be had there as well, although a bit pricier than some of the places you can find elsewhere.
ABC Canteen
One such place that was actually memorable was this place on the eighth floor (if I remember correctly) of the Lumine Est shopping mall (how many times have we been here?). We were kind of stuck for a place to eat and decided to just pick a place on this floor, there were a couple of good options but in the end we were won over by the plastic food of this place.
Roast beef salad
Funnel Cake
I had the roast beef on rice (with a poached egg) and side of sald, while Emmy had some kind of deep fried chicken. The beef was pretty tender, but the slices were pretty big and a bit chewy so it wasn’t the easiest thing to eat (no knife either), but it was quite tasty. Meanwhile, we ordered some dessert for the age-old reason YOLO! I’m never going to argue against waffles, and especially not when they are covered with other delicious walnuts, cream, caramel?, and iced cream. This was only the half dessert option, there’s no way we could have done the whole cake, although I’m sure Oscar would have tried his best.
Tsukiji Tamasushi
The highlight of the Tokyo eating time was definitely this place, one which comes with the advantage of knowing a local, as this was a recommendation from Emmy’s friend’s husband. We went looking on a Tuesday night for some izakaya, but his preferred haunts were all full up so we had to settle for a sushi restaurant. Judging by the name this place is in Tsukiji (we were in the Ginza/Tsukiji area), it was definitely worth the money we forked out.
Omakase sushi
Omakase sushi
More Sushi
Tsukiji Tamasushi
More Sushi
As you can probably tell from the menu pictures, the food pretty much matches the picture (maybe with a variation or two possibly due to seasonality), but the big thing to note is the price. Mine is a ten course omakase for 3,100¥ (approximately 40$ AUD), for the same thing here (albeit perhaps served with a bit more pomp) you’d expect to pay upwards of 90$. So what if it was all served at once on one dish for me, it’s fresh and well made and only 40$. That eel (the big one) on Emmy’s dish had a really tasty sauce on it too.
Unknown Okonomiyaki
Monjayaki
Finally, we have an unknown okonomiyaki restaurant in Yoyogi, this place was near our accommodation which made it easy enough. Emmy wanted to try out this dish, monjayaki, which is sort of similar to okonomiyaki but has different ingredients, but still fried on a flat grill. As you can see from the picture it pretty much looks like vomit, but I can assure you it tastes a hell of a lot better.
I’m not really sure what’s in there, cabbage, probably egg to bind, I think this was a mountain type or something so it had ingredients that you find on the mountains. We also had a couple of okonomiyakis after this because they weren’t too filling. This was a very Japanese restaurant as there were only locals eating there and the staff (all women interestingly) didn’t speak any English. They did work out that we needed an English menu and that we probably needed them to cook for us though (unlike the locals who grilled for themselves), I think we can probably do it for ourselves next time if we do visit another such establishment. There isn’t that much to it really, just stir it a bit to mix it up real good then pour it on to the pan and flatten it out, let it cook until ready. I actually got to do the flip on one of the okonomiyakis, and it was spectacular!
That’s it, it’s only taken three weeks to complete my holiday rundown, that must be a record. I may add some more picture posts as I go through my photos more thoroughly, but for the most part, I’m done, until next time, and there will be a next time.
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Japan 2016: Drinking Tea, Rainbow Bridge, and a Stroll Through Shinjuku Gyoen
NTT Docomo Building trying to hide
As I said before, we didn’t do too much in terms of touristic things in Tokyo, shopping and eating is sort of touristy but you can do that anywhere. We attended a tea ceremony lesson (thanks to Emmy’s friend), decided to have a quick look at the Rainbow Bridge from Odaiba Marine Park one night, and I took Oscar to Shinjuku Gyoen our last afternoon in Japan to try and chill out before going home. And even that isn’t really that touristy since a stroll through the park is a normal thing anywhere.
Chrysanthemums
The tea ceremony is an interesting thing, and the tea ceremony lesson is possibly even more interesting. We were invited (I think) to attend the lesson as guests so we didn’t have to do anything except drink tea and eat sweets, although we did have to stir our own tea one time. I was sitting there observing it all, and while it didn’t look like much, I am pretty sure pretty much everything the teacher was doing was following a very specific routine, e.g. which hand to use to place a hanky down, and which hand to lift a bowl, and when to move this or that.
It had to be very precise, I’m sure of it, I’m not making it more than it was, the Japanese are very OCD like that, it would seem to be very easy to mess up while learning, but after enough practice it would become a habit to follow all the steps precisely I would think. We got to eat some yummy sweets and learn how to stir the green tea (not in a round motion, but back and forth) before heading out for dinner (more on that in a later post).
One evening we were at home, I think it was the Tuesday, the weather was clear and we were just going to go shopping, but I thought it might be a good idea to visit Odaiba Marine Park and get a view of the Rainbow Bridge from across the bay. The train ride was an interesting one as it is on a newer train line that runs on different tracks (or something), and even goes over the Rainbow Bridge. Turns out that we were far too late as the nightly light show had already finished and it was pretty dark with nothing much to see. We walked along the path and headed toward one of the boardwalk piers, the bridge was still illuminated so there was at least that to look at. It did look nice, though it probably would have been worth spending a half day in Odaiba and finishing with the night view of the bridge.
NTT Docomo Building Koyo
Our final full day in Tokyo (and Japan) we did some shopping in the morning (yay for me! I got some stuff), and then after lunch Emmy carried on with that while I took Oscar to Shinjuku Gyoen for a good wander. It closes quite early 4.00pm (gates close 4.30pm) and having only arrived at around 3pm I didn’t have as much time as I ended needing, as I had to rush about before I even got to enjoy the Japanese Garden portion properly.
I think next time I’ll definitely try to arrive at around 1.30pm or so, then I can take my time and enjoy it more peacefully. Even so, we were able to follow the route and see several areas of the park, including a few ponds, bridges, and maple trees, and with the NTT Docomo Building poking its head in. There was a chrysanthemum flower festival or something as there were many displays with all different kinds of chrysanthemums, some growing at very peculiar angles, they were quite nice, although I’m sure Emmy would not approve. I was really impressed by the park and will definitely make it a higher priority next time I’m in Tokyo.
That’s pretty much it, the tour is finished, but, I will regale you with more details on some of the food we ate as well as the places we stayed in the next couple of posts. Kaiseki in Kyoto wasn’t the only delight we lavished on ourselves, in Japan, there is always something delectable around the corner, and the same can be said of dtraCorp :D.
Rainbow Bridge, Odaiba Marine Park
Odaiba Marine Park
Shinjuku Gyoen
Shinjuku Gyoen
Last train ride to Narita
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Japan 2016: Ghibli Museum
Fantastical Ghibli Building
Let’s be clear, we didn’t do a lot in Tokyo, mostly shopping and eating, we had a quick ride to Odaiba marine park (at night) and attended a tea ceremony class, but otherwise the only tourist thing we did of any value was visit the Ghibli Museum. We originally planned to visit Kamakura for a day trip but after all of the travelling we’d done up to this point we thought better of it. This was almost an absolute disaster, we didn’t buy the tickets online from Australia (they were already sold out for the time we were going) so we managed to ask one of Emmy’s friends who lives in Tokyo to help us buy a couple tickets. But it turns out that the museum is quite strict on people buying tickets and requiring identification to match the purchaser of the tickets (to reduce scalping).
Soot Sprites
After asking us a few times and realising that it was going to be nigh impossible to gather the necessary identification the security staff was kind enough to let us through anyway (we really had no idea), it was probably fortunate that Oscar was there, he probably took pity on us because of that.
You can’t take any pictures inside the museum, which is quite small (three levels), so all you can do really, is enjoy the museum. It’s full of pictures and little models, and elaborate re-creations of Miyazaki’s desk (I’m guessing), among other things. Two exhibits in the first room (full of models and some movie projector type things) were quite the standouts.
There was a wall with a bunch of windows into tiny rooms, each room has little models of desks and people at work (I presume of Ghibli employees), they were very intricate and detailed which made them very nice to look at. The other great thing in that first room was the animated model, I don’t even know how to describe it, basically it’s a wheel with many models of the cat bus from My Neighbour Totoro, that spins around at high speed and then combined with lighting effects you can see how the animation works. It’s sort of like stop motion, very cool.
Totoro at the ticket counter
Another highlight was the short movie that was screened in the Saturn theatre (entry comes with a ticket to the movie) which is a ten minute film that has three screenings per hour (I think). Apparently it is an original Ghibli animation that is not screened anywhere else. I’m not sure of the title of the short we watched but it had a dog in it called Toro (or Koro) and it was about how he got lost but managed to find his way back home. It was Oscar’s first time in a movie theatre and I’m not sure if he actually understood what was happening, but he pretty much lost it when the dog was hit by a bicycle, he started wailing but managed to regain his composure and continue watching pretty quickly. He cried a couple more times during the film but only very briefly so I don’t think it distracted anyone, but we can only assume that he understood what was going on and felt great empathy with the puppy.
Robot
The other highlight for me was the big cat bus (kids 12 and under only) that kids can climb and jump on to their heart’s content, for about five minutes. Oscar was by far the smallest one in his group (all the others were probably between 4-10 years old) and he was quite nervous (but also excited). He would wait until the bigger kids were all jumping on the other side of the bus and then give the cat a big cuddle, he managed to climb into the bus very briefly and also kissed one of the rats up on the cat’s head, this was for some reason an extremely emotional thing for myself and Emmy and definitely one of the highlights of our trip.
There’s a stall that sells milk flavoured iced cream (not vanilla, so I guess it’s the same as vanilla but without the vanilla flavouring) and some drinks, while the cafe is quite busy and has its own undercover waiting area, we weren’t going to wait for that.
Pumping Water
There’s the robot from Laputa on top of the museum and actually a nice park just next to the museum as well, we waited there as we were about thirty minutes earlier than our entry time. The museum is small but we managed to spend about two and a half hours there wandering around, it’s interesting and certainly worth a look if you’re a Miyazaki or Ghibli fan, or even just a fan of animation or film.
Keep your eyes peeled though because there are many displays that are very small and intricate that you could easily miss.
It’s about a twenty minute train ride from Shinjuku and then a 5-10 minute bus ride from Mitaka station, there is a shuttle bus that takes you right to the entrance. For lack of anything else interesting, my next post will include the three other touristy things we did, visit Odaiba marine Park (very quickly for twenty minutes or so), attend a tea ceremony class, and a visit to Shinjuku Gyoen (a large park). And then I’ll do some foodie posts and accommodation stuff to conclude this trip, and start dreaming of the next.
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November Holiday Time: Japan
Hi again, I stopped procrastinating and decided to post this otherwise it would be another two weeks at least before anything went up, so yes, we are visiting Japan again for our annual-ish holiday. This time, we are re-visiting a bunch of places from our first visit but at a slightly later time of year, hoping for that koyo (Autumn colours).
Sleeping caterpillars
We’ll be stopping at Hiroshima (just for a very brief one night stopover), then Kyoto, Kawaguchi-ko, and finally Tokyo. I already sort of regret going to Hiroshima as it just doesn’t seem long enough to see Miyajima, Shukkeien Garden, and the peace memorial, among other things, but we booked the accommodation already so no going back. We’ll be doing some different things in Kyoto and Tokyo this time, less temples and more just taking in the culture, hopefully seeing Himeji which we missed last time due to renovations.
Emmy will be celebrating her birthday over there so hopefully it will be one that she can remember for a long, long time, if not, then I’ll probably be in hiding for a while. This time I will definitely be posting more content (not hard since I barely posted anything last time we did this trip) as I could barely find any references for this trip from my previous post. We’re also taking our parents, so this could very well be the greatest disaster ever known to man, wish us well!
You may wonder what the picture has to do with this trip, well, this is some kind of fern (in our garden, native I’m guessing), I think it has a very zen feel to it and is very Japanese in its simplicity and shape. But really, I took this picture a couple months ago and never bothered to upload it, so now that I have a chance, there it is ;).
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Japan 2015: Tokyo :( means home time
And so the final days of our trip would be spent in Tokyo, the metropolis to end all metropolises, a shopping heaven, and an hectic place of noise, lights, and people. We didn’t do much sight-seeing considering we only had two and a half days there, we were pretty pooped from all the sight-seeing that we’d already done, we considered Asakusa and Meiji shrine/Harajuku, but after visiting Asakusa on our first full day, decided that our time would be better spent shopping :D, we’d already visited Meiji Shrine and Harajuku last time any way.
Uniqlo Mothershop
Kaminarmon
Shopping street near Kaminarimon
Senso-ji and Tokyo Sky Tree
Lantern at Senso-ji
Pagoda at Senso-ji
Tokyo Sky Tree
Street Lights near Kaminarimon
Air conditioner repair man
Shinjuku night lights
Sushi Train
Moon and the tower
Staying at City Hotel Lonestar in Shinjuju (near Shunjuku sanchome station) we were very close to the Shinjuku shopping district which was very handy. The hotel itself was pretty so-so, the continental breakfast consisted of croissants, herb bread, toast, and some other rolls, all of which needed to be toasted in the old fashioned small grill type oven, which if you leave the croissant in there for one second too long, it’s charcoal. The air conditioner in the room was weird, but did the job, sort of, it was a pretty small hotel with stairs at the front, so you have to carry your luggage in, it’s not too bad (about ten steps) but something to be aware of.
On to Asakusa, at least we did one touristy thing in Tokyo, although we will all admit that it was a bit of a letdown, the gate is nice, and the shopping street has some nice shops selling some cool stuff like prints, and yukatas, delicious red bean cakes, etc. The temple of Senso-ji is not what you expect from a Japanese temple, it’s loud, busy, and full of incense, it’s very busy and very un-zen, it’s much more like a Chinese temple. And so, we cut our visit to Asakusa shorter than we planned and headed back to Shinjuku for some more shopping, which is probably what we really wanted to do :D. But not before we saw a caricature drawing business, and got a picture drawn of little Oscar to go with our Kyoto picture we had drawn last time at Nishiki Market.
With only one and a half days of actual usable time, we spent all of our shopping time in Shinjuku so as to minimise travel time, and it still wasn’t enough, I hardly got anything :`(. This is a note for emmy for next time, don’t bother with Odakyu, Lumine 1 or 2, or any other shopping malls, just stick with Lumine EST and be done with. I was a bit disappointed with the range of shoes they had at ABC Mart, we went to all of them (at least all the ones we could find) and not one of them had a decent pair of Adidas Superstars for a reasonable price (I ended up getting a pair from Eastbay which I may or may not post about late, hopefully I do). We even found the sushi train restaurant that we went to last time, with it’s super cheap reasonable but not great sushi (something like 108 yen for the cheap plate, and 250 yen for the expensive plate), we’ll take that. We also went to Tokyu Hands which is like an upper class Daiso and spent a bunch of money there (probably my favourite shop along with Uniqlo/BIC Camera), although I didn’t get my umbrella despite it being one of the four things that I listed as must-buys :(.
And that was it for our latest sojourn to Japan, we got a return ticket on the NEX train when we arrived so we just needed to reserve our seats and wait for the train to take us to Narita, all very easy, not quite as good as going to Haneda but beggars can’t be choosers. Not sure if I mentioned it in the original Japan post, but Jetstar uses terminal 3 at Narita which has only a small selection of shops which have a very limited selection of goods, there’s a good book/magazine shop though, which is one of the negatives of flying direct with Jetstar. ANA and Japan Airlines both have direct flights from Sydney to Tokyo and possibly even arriving in Haneda, so that may be the option to go with next time. So with that, we say good bye to Japan again, and now we sit at home and wait until December when we next head to Vietnam, but don’t fret, I’ll try to keep this blog updated with great content :D.
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Central Japan return post
And we’re back, two weeks travelling around central Japan was fun, but taking a 14-month old baby with us certainly made things more challenging and cost us some opportunities. But it was well worth it even if we didn’t get to do all that we had hoped.
Holiday Route
Flying Jetstar and arriving at (and departing from) terminal 3 was already less than ideal, although terminal 3 doesn’t have any of the good shops that terminal 1 and 2 have, so we weren’t able to do any last minute shopping before leaving the country, but at least Jetstar has direct flights. That was a plus considering that the flight was only about ten hours each way (the return flight during the day was much more bearable than dealing with a tired and extremely cranky baby on an overnight flight).
This was the first time that I’ve ever flown Jetstar on a long haul flight (I’ve flown to Tasmania domestic a couple of times) and I’m really not sure that I would do it again, even though they have the direct route to Japan. Once you add in all the extras it’s only slightly less (a couple hundred bucks each) than a full service carrier so in terms of value it’s definitely out the window. The direct flight option is where it has the advantage, Singapore is always the number one option, but Japan Airlines has direct flights from Sydney so that might be a better option next time.
Pond in Central Park, Nagoya
In the end, the main issues we had were that our (sometimes) cranky baby needed to be baby-sat/fed at the most inopportune times, such as dinner time (sunset) and breakfast times (sunrise), the best times to go anywhere because of:
- Heat, the Japanese summer is blisteringly hot (and stuffy)
- Lighting, for photography the golden hours and the blue hours are the best times to shoot during the day, but perhaps due to poor planning as well we ended up out during the hottest, brightest times of the day (the middle).
As always though, Japan is so much fun, and so amazing in almost every way, it really is like a giant theme park, the food is delicious usually, and relative to Australian prices for similar food, it’s a bargain. The shopping is endless, and the way that nature, history, and technology come together is something magical (usually). I really hope that next time we can go in Autumn or Spring (cherry blossom) season to avoid the heat, and also see some different colours on the natural side of things. Not sure where we would head next time, maybe Hokkaido, or somewhere else based on further reading. Any way, I’ve got lots of pictures coming so I’ll be breaking those down into several posts over the next couple of weeks.
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Photos from Japan
Originally I was going to post a few separate posts of our trip to Japan but having completely lost the motivation, I’m just going to post one overview with the whole gallery of photos selected for this site (photos for Flickr will continue to go up at the normal rate). Tokyo was crazy, just consumerism gone mad, millions of people going everywhere all the time, endless concrete and steel, girls in short skirts/shorts (though not revealing tops), millions of umbrellas (different coloured), shops with absolutely every thing you could ever need (and a million different colour and style options), no rubbish bins, weird and unusual shops, and an amazing train system. We spent most of our time in Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Harajuku, though we did make our way to the Tsukiji fish market for lunch one day where we had some amazing sashimi. We also visited Roppongi Hills to go up the Mori Tower, went to Meiji Jingu, but didn’t see too much else in Tokyo. We decided not to try and climb Mount Fuji and instead just stayed nearby at Kawaguchi-Ko before heading to Hakone for a night in an onsen ryokan (which was bloody great) that included a kaiseki dinner. Hey, we also got some clear views of Mount Fuji so that’s something.
So after two days of country-ish life we headed for Kyoto where we would spend the majority of the next six days, this was certainly a very good decision in hindsight. Kyoto is a reasonably small city with an abundance of world heritage listed sites and a great selection of food options, and is also near many other beautiful and significant tourist sites. We loaded up our JR passes and used them every day we were in Kyoto (except one when we travelled around on the bus), visiting a bunch of temples and shrines including Kinkaku-Ji, Ryoan-Ji, Tofuku-Ji, To-Ji, Kiyomizu-Dera, Fushimi Inari, we spent a day in Nara wandering around the sites there and saw the Daibutsu at Todai-Ji as well as a few others. We also went to Osaka for a day trip as well as Kobe, where we sampled Kobe beef teppanyaki style, which was bloody sublime! Osaka wasn’t particularly interesting, like a smaller Tokyo, while Kobe was at least a bit less frantic. After all that, and some shopping, we headed back to Tokyo for one more day before flying back home (via Singapore where we visited the Gardens by the Bay near Marina Bay).
The weather was as you would expect at the end of Summer, start of Autumn, pretty warm and a bit humid, it seemed like every second day it would rain (even though the rainy season had already passed), but it was at least warm. The bullet train was something else, fast and comfortable to sit in, and exhilarating to watch fly past. The food was amazing, I think we had one bad meal during the whole trip which is a pretty amazing hit rate, the portions weren’t as small as everyone (not sure who, but that seems to be the stereotype) says, and you gotta love the plastic food displays outside the restaurant looking exactly like the meal that was served. Favourites? I don’t know, udon of any kind, sashimi (super fresh), Mister Donut custard donuts, tempura, katsu don, white peach sorbet, they don’t seem to eat any vegies we noticed, next time I think I will try some different stuff, non-traditional stuff like Japanese burgers, pizza and/or pasta, just to see what it’s like there, as we ate (except for one meal where we were tricked into Korean Nabe) Japanese food for every meal. I would be remiss not to mention the amazing people, so polite and so neat and so nice, I have to add strange as well, but I’m sure that comes from living on a remote island, and it’s not like they’re really strange, just a bit peculiar, very funny. Any way, I’m sure I’ve missed a million things here, but let’s let the pictures speak for themselves, I wish I had more pictures of food to post here, but I already put them on facebook.
Accommodation
In Tokyo for our first go-round, we stayed at Hotel Villa Fontaine in Shinjuku, we booked it online before going, I think it was a book early special price, and because we booked for four nights we got a discount for that too, it was ok, had breakfast included (a sandwich delivered by the staff), an awesome bathroom, and a nice enough bed, a cosy room. We stayed at K’s House in Kawaguchi-Ko for just one night, and stayed in a private tatami room which was nice, and had free wifi so that was good, nice enough place and it’s a chain throughout Japan so I think you’ll be safe with them throughout Japan. We stayed at Fujimi-en Lodge (the onsen ryokan) near Hakone for one night, the onsen was hot, but had a view of Mount Fuji (when it was clear), every room had a view of Mount Fuji, no breakfast but I would recommend to book with the kaiseki dinner option as the dinner was absolutely super! In Kyoto we stayed at Capsule Ryokan, pretty close to the train station as well as the two (free admission) big temples (Nishi Hongan-Ji and Higashi Hongan-Ji) near the station, pretty reasonable pricing, with free wifi in the lobby and a nice shower :D. Also had a nice free kimono dress up which is nice for the ladies :). We didn’t stay in any ultra-budget places, and I’m not sure there is anything that is really cheap in Japan, but all the places we stayed were very clean, neat and tidy.
Transport
We used the train system in Tokyo solely (as well as walking), and fount it pretty easy to work out after our initial apprehension, although not super cheap to be buying tickets all the time, perhaps the SUICA card might have proved better value. We got a bus from Tokyo to Kawaguchi-Ko, and then a bus from there to Hakone, from Hakone, we got a bus to Gotenba, and then one more bus to Odawara station, before we pulled out our JR passes to use the train for the next week. With a JR pass travel is reasonable between big cities (and fast), and also on the JR services within the cities it is very useful. Transport is super safe and clean in Japan so you never have to worry about any of that, just making sure you get on and off at the right stops/stations and on the right buses/trains of course.And that’s it for my lame Japanese overview, now for the pictures, also remember to keep an eye on my flickr stream as I’ll be uploading (around 70-80 I’m guessing) pictures there over the next few months.
Lonely Shibuya Crossing
Dragonfly at Meiji Jingu, Tokyo
Koi at Meiji Jingu, Tokyo
Tokyo from Mori Tower, Tokyo
Spider, Kawaguchi-Ko
Red tree, Kawaguchi-Ko
Mount Fuji, Lake Ashi
Garden, Hakone
Shinkansen bullet train, Odawara
Nishi Hongan-Ji, Kyoto
Kyoto train station
Torii tunnel Fushimi-Inari, Kyoto
Guardian statue Todai-Ji, Nara
Todai-Ji, Nara
Water wash, Nara
Little shrine, Nara
Little shrine, Nara
Horyu-Ji, Nara- Kinkaku-Ji, Kyoto
Ryoan-Ji, Kyoto
Nishiki market, Kyoto
Osaka-Jo, Osaka
Osaka-Jo, Osaka
Hikone-Jo, Hikone
Green Hills Kyomizu-Dera, Kyoto
Kiyomizu-Dera, Kyoto
Kyoto Tower
Reiun-In, Kyoto
Tofuku-Ji, Kyoto
Tokyo Tower
Amazing view of Mount Fuji (from our plane going home)
Pitcher Plant at the Flower Dome (Singapore, Gardens by the Bay)
Pink Flower at the Flower Dome (Singapore, Gardens by the Bay)
Ferris Wheel Marina Sands (multi-exposure shot)
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Back from Japan
Bleh, just got back last Sunday and we’re already missing it, the udon noodles, the cute and weird and crazy and funny Japanese, all the other yummy food, the toilets, the showers, the everything-is-so-neat and tidy gardens, the millions of slightly different options for everything. Oh well, it had to end some time, now we just have to work out how we can get back there and see more of this beautiful country. I’ll be updating the site with plenty of pictures and more stuff about the trip, what we saw, what we didn’t see (and wished we did), what we ate (hehe), but for now I’ll just leave you with a quick shot of Shibuya Crossing (not the full tide of people version, just one with some Japanese ladies :D), this one doesn’t have so few people because it was raining just because the lights had already changed red.
Japanese Ladies at Shibuya Crossing
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