25 February 2016
Kanazawa
I don’t think doing Kanazawa as a day trip from Tokyo is a magnificent idea… But as I was on my own and had a JR Pass, I figured why not?
There were some pretty views of the countryside as the bullet train hurtled towards Kanazawa.
24 February 2016
INUYAMA: Meiji-mura
I made my way from Tokyo to Inuyama to visit the Meiji-mura (literally “Meiji Village”)… And I wish I could remember the exact route I took -__-
Based on this picture, I was at some point taking the Nagoya Meitetsu line. hahah Read More
23 February 2016
DISNEYLAND (Part 2)
Amused myself with more people-watching before the afternoon “Frozen Fantasy” parade.
Twin Belles, this time. That cape!! I love it. This one’s better than the other one because it has fur instead of ruffles.
23 February 2016
DISNEYLAND (Part 1)
I have nearly zero resistance to spending a day in Disneyland, especially when on my own in Tokyo.
Arrived at Disneyland with time to spare before the “Happiness is Here” parade so I bought myself a snack and settled down to wait.
“I feel like I’ve seen that duck before…”
People-watching at Disneyland is always fun.
22 February 2016
… Yes, this is VERY late.
I didn’t do much of photographic interest on the fourth day. It was mostly shopping. I went to the 8-storey Uniqlo at Ginza, looked at a couple of art and stationery stores, and popped by the Mugiwara store at Shibuya. And yes, I bought stuff 8D
^ The iconic Ginza Wako building.
21 February 2016
On this day I went to Harajuku, poked my nose around Yoyogi Park, then walked from there all the way to Shibuya, where I wandered into the Disney Store and Uniqlo. Exhausted myself thoroughly because I spent quite a long time in Yoyogi Park and only sat down for maybe 20 minutes over the span of 5 hours.
^ The Rockabilly club was out at Yoyogi Park, as (seems to be) usual for them on weekends.
^ Yoyogi park was full of people doing a variety of outdoorsy things, which apparently includes rehearsing dance steps…
Waaaah. Massively delayed blog posts on my Japan trip from the end of February 2016.
Start with Day 2 because I arrived in the evening of Day 1 (after flying in on business class. 
Yay for a lucky bid on my MAS flights this time). It was really cold and I didn’t feel one bit like walking around in the cold night. So I enjoyed my hotel room, Japanese TV channels, and some bento and convenience store snacks.
On Day 2, I met up with my friend, S! First, brunch at a kaiten-zushi (conveyer belt sushi) place in Ginza:
The wifi password was “sushilove”. This amused us.
I learnt that Ginza was a mere 10-minute walk from Tokyo Station. Probably less than 10 minutes if you’re familiar with the route.
Ginza on a cloudy day:
My favourite manga is the epic pirate fantasy, One Piece, and it so happened that the One Piece “theme park” at Tokyo Tower opened on the Friday of my visit. Friend S was keen to check it out too so we hurried there after the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Museum.
Entry tickets come with various One Piece characters printed on them. I didn’t get my favourite character. Darn. But I could have gotten one with characters I dislike so getting one with a character I’m ok with is fine. haha S got a ticket featuring all the characters of the main pirate crew (including the one on my ticket) – that was pretty cool.
Picking up where I left off!
This area within the Tatemono-en is called the Shitamachi-naka Street. (Looks fairly quiet here but within 15 minutes of so the crowd grew quite a bit. Presumably people finished looking at the Ghibli exhibit and came out to enjoy some sunshine.)
I met up with my friend S on my last full day in Japan. We took the train out to the Koganei suburb and after a bit of hunting around the small station to locate the right bus stop, we decided to have brunch at a bakery there.
From left to right: S’s cup of coffee, the pepper shaker, and my glass of apple juice. That is one large pepper shaker…