Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Japan Streetlight



One of the streetlights in Tokyo...Soon to upload photos from the trip to Japan! =D

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Oh my god my internet has gotten expensive!

So I can't post in detail anymore... 10mins/100yen. QQ

And wah lao. I haven't looked at my keyboard for so damn long can. Now that I'm using the Japanese keyboard, I keep having to look at it, and I even had to google for an underscore just to log in to my Yahoo! Mail. (Who the hell still uses it!?)

So, in short, yesterday Day 7, we rented bicycles at 500yen each and cycled to the Imperial Castle, then to Kinkakuji, followed by Gion, and finally Kiyomizudera. No details since no time...so this is just for my personal reference xD

Booked out early this morning to catch the 10.20am bus to Tokyo. Reached tokyo at 7+... Kns it's almost 3hrs longer than our trip to Kyoto!

Now at Jimbocho's Sakura Hotel. And washing clothes...and I just watched Japanese dubbed Pirates of the Carribean end of the World xDDD

...So sad. Can't post until I come back.

Byebye!!!

Friday, April 9, 2010

Day 5 - 6 In Japan!

...Good evening. I just came back from a whole day trip a couple of streets down Kyoto and my feet are hurting like soggy banana. And after I dumped in 100yen into the machine, my blog conveniently appeared on the main page. (Which means...nobody touched the computer since I touched it yesterday O.O) Thank God. Or they'd be reading about boo-boos.

So, we lingered around in Kyoto Station in this hotel I never knew the name from 5+ till about 6.40am xD The weather was friggin cold and we didn't really want to go out and face the weather... Eventually the sun came out and we went out with a crude directions given on a flimsy piece of paper. Walked past the Kyoto Tower (I think it's the name of the shopping mall), then the Higashihongan-shi (I think...I only remember the hongan part xD), and finally came to a little alleyway. We couldn't find our place of residence so we continued to walk in circles and finally found it... Ikoi no ie! (I kept reading it as Ikoi no le -.-???) For some funny reason, the reception area was another corner down the street... .

The reception was open at 7am but the friggin room was ready only at wtf, supposedly after 1pm. ZZZ!!! ZZZZZZ!!!!! I was exceptionally grumpy due to lack of sleep, thus the lack of energy and the resulting susceptibility to coldness. Haiz. Super sian. We sat around the common area and waited around... My mother wanted to go jalan jalan but I wanted to KO until room was ready. There were two computers in the common area, but I didn't have 100yen and my mother didn't want to give me =/ I tried to access the wireless via my psp and it worked but thanks to psp's retarded online function, I could only read my blog but not log in and post -.- Then I fell asleep on the chair...

...until my sis violently smashed me awake, telling me about my morning alarm from my handphone in my bag. Best part? Three Caucasians were in the common area with us, and the ringtone was some really weird song that was obviously European and had funny lyrics "Aqua bomb~" ... ... Okay. I heard one of the Caucasians wondering to himself, "aqua bomb?" Worst was I couldn't find my friggin phone the entire time until the alarm was over. (And the ringing volume was set to ascending. Tmd...)

In the end, I was dragged out into the coldness. I don't remember most of what happened here except the fact that we hadn't bathed for 24hrs and we hadn't even washed up. Went to the nearest 7-11 to buy something so I could get 100yen to use internet xD

With the Higashihongan-shi as the most obvious attraction in the area, we went over and took a look. Friggin' pigeons are damn obvious with their request for food... But well, to be honest, the Temple was huge but generic; nothing too interesting. D= We stood around trying to hide from the wind and trying to absorb the sunlight...but I think my low energy was so bad I still felt cold =/ We went outside and sat near the fountain...and my mother and sis almost dozed off there -.- How do they do it?!

Then we wandered around, found 100yen shops, Pasco (something like our Yes Supermarket), and erh I don't know, some random shops. Super LOL when my mother taught my sis that chopsticks is kitte, and so she went to ask the cashier as Pasco for kitte. I think the cashier is called Nagata. My sis did this funny action showing chopsticks, and Nagata-san asked back, "Hashi?" She gave us chopsticks...and it was printed on it, "HASHI."

Then I stared for a while before telling my sis, "You know? You just asked the cashier for stamps."

Conclusion? Mother + Japanese = No no. Don't listen to her when she tries to teach you Jap. I can't remember the number of times she said something looked exactly like the one we had in our hands and the difference turned out to be that of oranges and apples.

We went back to near the 7-11 (cuz it's the landmark that marks the pathway to our hostel) and went to eat the ramen at the Ramen King Shop. <-- We'd been waiting for it to open at 11am. Ahh. It's the first time I could tell the difference between good noodles and bad noodles...! It's nice! Tasted strangely like ba chor mee (how do you spell it huh).

And thank God!!! The hostel was ready by 12+ and we could check in!! YAY! Ugh passing time literally became a learnt skill by then... We went to our room and it's pretty nice xD For some weird reason, we had a bathroom to ourselves, but the toilet remained public -.-??? Shortly after we settled down and washed up, I pulled down my futon and then everything was a whirlpool of conscious void. (???)

When I woke up I finally went to bathe xD Then...we went out to...erh...I don't remember. I think we went to the same friggin' department stores to buy bento and whatnots. Wahh speaking of bento, we ate them again this night -.-||| Something that I think is nice once in a while, but eating it all the time? No thanks man.

Wtf!! 40% of online time left!!

Then we came back, ate bento, washed clothes...and came down to use the internet. And played PSP and went to sleep.

OMG! I finally can catch up with my day entries! Left out a lot of details, but I guess that'd have to wait.

Today, we woke up to breakfast at the...Ramen King Shop all over again. (Tells you the time we woke up huh) Then we began our day trip to Nijojo (Nijo Castle)! My sis pulled out a map and we started deciphering the map...and started walking. Aouh man. The map looked so small. The roads... ... ... I guess we felt pretty healthy.

Kyoto is damn nice! It's very neat, making our sparsely marked map look super accurate! (Okay... We did debate for a while where we were but anyway) The streets are so much more interesting to look at than Tokyo!

Then we got to Nijojo and bought the admission ticket via a vending machine at 600yen per person. Wow. Let me tell you...if you ever go to Kyoto...GO TO NIJOJO!!! It's highly inspiring!!! Sadly, photography is allowed only on the outside, and not the interior, so I can't show you what it's like... I took the photos of the outside though. (Gotta wait till I come back from Japan) Hopefully I can remember it enough to sketch it out. (Amazingly, it wrote "no taking photographs, and no sketching in the interior")

It's amazing though. The entrance area was for visitors. The floor is made of nightingale wood or something like that because it makes sounds that warn them of intruders sneaking in. Damn cool! Then they have separate rooms for official workspace, meeting room, shogun lounge and messenger room. Damn nice xD If you're wondering what they look like, they look vaguely like Fatal Frame rooms. Haha!

While I'd like to describe more, it's 20% time left tmd. Short points!
- Went to Kyoto Imperial Castle but the gate to the main castle was closed at 3.30pm and we reached only at 5
- Headed to Ni something Food Market and walked around the Teramachi shopping arcade. Very big, very nice, very Bugis and I want to watch a Japanese dubbed Sherlock Holmes! xD
- Walked all the way from there back to our hostel

GAHHH 20% is blinking! I better post now! xD

See you tml hopefully~

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Day 3 - 5 in Japan!

The fact that I'm posting means we lived through the ordeal....

Actually, is it the 5th day? Let me do a quick review.

Day 1 - Shinagawa (Arrival)
Day 2 - Shinagawa
Day 3 - Shinagawa (Switched hostel)
Day 4 - Moved out to Kyoto
Day 5 - In Kyoto

Hmm yeah. Wow it's day 5/14 (or was it 15? I forgot).

This is the continuation from previous entry! And sorry, no photos cuz I'm using hostel facilities. Zzz 100yen for 40mins internet.... I guess it's still much better than my trip 4yrs ago when it was only for 10mins...

Time to speed blog before I continue slapping Elmdor and his loonie parties apart!

So, in the end, the hostel guy helped us buy tickets to Kyoto and we didn't bother with the return trip =D We stopped by this small ramen shop for dinner and wah lao. I ate their miso ramen. The amount of douya (taugay?) they dumped into my bowl is like my whole year's worth of douya combined I ever ate. Tmd I didn't know if it was miso ramen or miso douya.... BLARGH. Then we wandered out of the shop and went out to find our next hostel. And once again, we wandered in 8 different directions and never found the damned hostel.

So we retreated and asked the hostel guy... Apparently we're all blind asses at night hahaaa. So we delayed searching for the hostel.

After bathing was our first battle with the 200yen washing machine.

Wow.

City kids are extremely stupid, period.

Sis and moi brought down our laundry and came face to face with the money eating brown colour painted machine. We dumped 200yen in before we started reading the instructions... It said something about pressing a certain button within 10 seconds after we put in the coins. Wow we did that only after a minute and there was no reaction. We stared at the water puking out and mixing and making out on its own while the laundry was still in our hands...and we stared for 5mins before we wandered what was supposed to happen. The instructions said something about not putting in soap and clothes first so we didn't... ... ... Yeah, 200yen wasted.

We came down 10mins later with the washing machine "madly spinning in place" and wow, the water had drained and was refilling so we poured clothes and soap in... and yay, it was a patronising rinse before the machine puked our clothes out with soap on. ... Thus, we restarted the whole process, this time pressing the damned button.

In the end, the stupid button's function was to pause 30 seconds to let us dump clothes and soap in before they started spitting water. Wowww city kids are stupid.

We also served a bit of net before going to sleep...and my old habit of playing psp before sleeping kicked in DX

Woke up at 9+ and check out time was 10 aaahahaha. Did a quick clean up, quick pack up and ate cup noodles before we left the hostel. This time sis handed me the sketchy map the hostel guy drew for us and woot! We found ze sister hostel!

...It was amazingly...big. Literally. Unlike the previous hostel, the hostel obasan didn't speak English but her house had good amenities! Even had this super big TV in the room we stayed in O.O The toilet was just outside.

This is a separate note on its own... In Japan, never fear for the quality of public or house toilets. They are all...automated, and wonderfully sanitised. And in this time of coldness, in this time of need, most of them if not all...warm your asses. It's a wonderful invention royalised (?) in all its rightfulness. And no, I don't care for the function of spraying water at your ass or playing music in the middle of boo-boo.

So, this hostel lady owns this cute dog! Which, sadly, I didn't take a photo of. Either it's just me or all dogs in Japan are docile blur and kok. (!?)

So, being lazy asses, we crashed into bed and slept until 1 +__O

I forgot what we did the whole day. I think we went out to Tokyo main station to check out the place to take the bus in case on the day itself we couldn't find it. (Searching for hostel freaked us out) It turned out surprisingly easy to find though.

We had an inner battle for like 10mins before we decided to check with the Ticket Information counter for the ticket from Kyoto back to Tokyo...cuz y'know, we couldn't really speak Jap for nuts. I think we stood there thinking how to say "Kyoto kara Tokyo made no basu kippu wo uttemasuka?" In the end we went up to the guy and asked, "Do you speak English?" Wow thank God he said, "A little bit." Hahaa throughout the whole thing, he was so serious, sincere and battle like it was kinda funny. I think when we were done and thanked him he was kinda amused too xD

Started shopping at the Yaesu shopping basement or something. Ugh. My feet never hurt so much before. Ass. Friggin long shopping malls.

While I wanna talk more about my shopping trip, frig I'm left with 40% of 40mins to blog and I haven't even talked about getting to Kyoto. So I'll talk about it when erh...I'm accessing internet again.

Ever snipped, we once again ate Bento dinner and wah lao. Is it just me or the soft bone or boneless Unagi all decided to unanimously extinct?!

We watched variety shows back at the hostel over dinner... I don't exactly remember the titles but we watched 3 variety shows:
1. Love Mail?
2. Artistes' past
3. Some challenge thing
Gahhh hh h no time to talk about them xD Would go into more detail later hahaa. Damn funny can. Hopefully can find it on youtube next time.

The bathroom is super old type, but the hostel lady sealed the bath or something. Seems like the standard thing about every Japanese bathrooms is a bath tub, a stool and a shower system that involves both shower head and a tap connected. So you can either bathe standing or sitting. And bathing at old style bathrooms past 10pm is friggin creepy. If horror games ever included Japanese bathrooms...

OH NO!! 20% left!!

...So, we woke up, put our luggage with the hostel lady before wasting our lives away at shopping malls. For some funny reason, my mother and sis both didn't sleep while I was dead as a log, and all 3 of us were supposedly sick, or rather "heaty"...

...

Nooooo. I think I'll log in tomorrow. 5 mins left!

Anyhoo. Waiting for the 10pm bus was the most gruesome time of my life. And the next most gruesome thing is? The trip was from 10om to 6am+. The bus seats...were maybe 3/4 or 2/3 of Genting buses and could not really stretch. D= And the whole bus only stopped once at 12 for a toilet break before it never stopped. I couldn't really sleep -.-||| And frig, they reached at 5+... But check in time for hostel was 7am!!!

We were cold...and tired...and hiding in the corridor of another hotel xD Surprisingly, the staff that walked past didn't find us suspicious and even said good morning .......

...And thus, my online time ends.

More updates hopefully tml! xD Goodnight!