Golden Week Photo Slideshows

For readers interested in more photos of Tokyo and Kyoto, I have three slideshows to present!



Kyoto

Tokyo 1

Tokyo 2



Enjoy the beauty of Japan!

Last Day in Tokyo and Way back to Hiroshima

This was the day I had my last meal at Ookubo's place.. We were deciding between eating at restaurant and cooking at home.. And we settled for eating at home so that we could have slow chats and Obaa-chan could join us.. So by night time, there was a feast prepared.. It was Chirashi Don!

Otousan cut beautiful sashimi for us to eat with rice and there were egg and cucumber.. There was also this piece of meat from clams which I can't remember what its called.. But its the piece of meat stuck to the shell when you eat clams which you wun bother eating since its really stuck on the shell.. So light, so fresh.. Eating food for its natural flavour.. That's authentic Japanese food..
And Okaasan bought me a farewell gift.. :') I was so touched... I will let you know what the gift is later..
After the wonderful dinner, we had to make our back to Hiroshima.. Tat-chan had to make a 12 hour drive.. So we were geared up for the long journey.. Its really tiring... We left the ookubo's at about 10 plus.. and made our way back to Hiroshima..
So after a 14 hour drive inclusive of rest stop breaks, we finally reached Hiroshima! My home in Hiroshima!! Before I left Ookubo's place, I was presented with all these gifts from Ookubo's family.. They wanted to let me bake in Hiroshima and also have good food... Nozomi-chan gave me vanilla sugar (which smells so good!!), wedgewood's blueberry jam (I used to think Jams are all the same. But this one wasn't too sweet with all the blueberry pulp inside!), white chocolate for baking, danish bread(Damn good!!! I can't find it in Singapore.. I declare it the best bread in the world!!), Mango slices, milk, etc... So touched...
On top of that, Okaasan observed i love apples and she bought me so many to bring back to Hiroshima.. I'm so touched!!! : ' ) And the well known expensive melon!!!!!As for the farewellgift I mentioned.. Guess what it is... Can you read this? Its a COACH key chain!!!!

And apparently Spring is coming to an end soon.. Sakura trees are now green with Sakura leaves and the weather is getting less cold, my coat was getting out of use...Summer is coming soon... And so is my report due date!

Tokyo Day 5: Trip to Shibuya and Shinjuku

Another night of endless baking.. and ting!! I had 2 special pop outs from the oven..

First, I stole a recipe from the fat-free bakes book and baked the

Ginger Chiffon Cake

Hours later, I stealed recipes here and there and created the

Red Tea Meringue Tart

As pretty as it looks, it tastes wonderful!!! Red tea curt in a baked tart shell, topped with egg whites meringue scorched by Nozomi-chan's wonderful oven! After baking the tarts, Tat-chan drove me to the JR station at Koiwa 小岩station.. タッチャンneeded a day to settle some personal stuff like study his English Proficiency test, so 望美ちゃん Nozomi-chan specially took a half day off to meet me up and take me around!! So on my own, I took the JR to 原宿(Harajuku) to meet Nozomi-chan..
We went walking towards Omotesando and saw some nice clothes and fashion shops.. and I saw interesting manequinns hanging on the ceiling.. Now that's probably the world's most interesting mannequins..
After some walking around the nice shops, we went for lunch! And Nozomi-chan treated me to a nice meal of Sandwich at anderson's
Look at this beautiful sandwich lunch set!!! coupled with a cup of coffee or tea, this is fantastic! My first meal at Anderson's in Tokyo but not in its place of origin, Hiroshima.. Haha...

After lunch, we spent a very long time at a five storey Kiddy Land along Omote sando.. And they sell alot alot of toys, souvenirs, notepads, stationary, miniatures.. Things that just make you say "Awwwww..."
After Kiddy Land, we headed towards Shinjuku.. and I found this cute display made from chocolates and macarons beside Kiddy Land.. Its actually a French Sweets shop...

After a 10 minutes walk towards shibuya, we passed by a uniclo sub-shop selling nice inspired vintage tees and a small range of other types of wear.. I felt the floor was interesting with all the comic prints on the floor.. Imagine customers reading the floor.. Haha.. Floor advertisements... Hmm interesting!
And this is how the vintage and inspired tees are sold: in nice capsule containers with red caps... I found a cupcake shirt which I could not resist getting for Sihan.. Haha..
And here is Shibuya 109, the building of beauties.. I should really take photos of the girls in there cuz they're all pretty, but I'm so shy about it.. But its a criteria to look pretty to work in those shops.. I heard there are shops there that earn $5million dollars a day! Girls there? Well, I can only decribe.. Tanned skin more beautiful den any sentosa beach gal, wearing heels 7 inches or higher, big eyes that sparkle with super long eye lashes, perfect complexion, 3 times the volume or length of average girl's hair length and the voice of a doll? Makes me wonder how long they take to dress up everyday though..

After that, Nozomi-chan had to go for a dinner, so I had to make my way back to Koiwa station where Tat-chan would pick me.. On the walk to the Shinjuku station, I observed a bunch of interesting guys.. Look at the sign boards they're holding.. They were trying to attract hugs.. Ain't that cute and funny? I wonder how wld Singaporeans react if people did this in Orchard Road..

7pm was the packed period and this was how I squeezed with everyone else in the station...

After like 30-45 minutes, I reached Koiwa station and Tat-chan drove me home to pick Okaasan and we all went out for dinner!!! Yay!!! Hurrah! What's for dinner? Taiwanese Food!!! Which wasn't very far from our Tze Char.. Except the same dishes tasted much better in Japan.. Maybe its the wonderful ingredients that Japan manages to cultivate...

Tokyo Day 4 Part 2:お台場！to high class dinner!!

As mentioned, I would show you the view from the Ferris Wheel. People often enjoyed watching views at night where you see night lights of different buildings... But after I told Tat-chan its a pity tat we cannot take the Ferris Wheel at night, Tat-chan told me something which changed my preference for high altitude views.
"I prefer the day because you can see everything the way it is.The sillouette of the buildings and the colours are clearer in the day." That made alot of sense to me. I often take such high altitude views at night and rethinking this made me realise that I'm always looking at night lights.. Unless there is a building with special lights like hong kong or Esplanade, there is nothing special about such night views.

So here are some of the views and how the inside of the Ferris Wheel look like.. :P The ride is about 900yen which is S$12? Not that ex right? Well the Singapore Flyer is half hour though.. Think this one is 15 minutes..

After the little Ferris Wheel, we went to the Toyota museum where Tat-chan was so attracted to Toyota Crown.. So we tried to reserve a slot for the test drive.. We had wait for two hours before our turn comes though.. So we went Venus Fort, another area in Palette Town to take a nice walk..

Make a guess.. Is Venus Fort and indoor or outdoor attraction?

Actually quite obvious right? The lighting on the ceiling made the sky look quite fake.. Haha..


This one looks slightly more natural.. But the sky's colour is beautiful... And it makes no sense the lighting for my photo is so bad if the sky is real.. So haha.. yahz.. its a painted sky..

In Venus Fort, there was the Toyota museum where we saw alot of historic cars, racing cars... cars cars cars... As a girl, interest in the car museum wasn't on the top of my favourite attractions list.. Well, its free, so its not so bad right? HAha.. Mazda museum is more interesting since they highlight the production process of the cars.. The road you see on the level below is the test drive circuit.. Haha..


We kinda realise that if we were going for the test drive, there was no time to go Fuji TV..So we decided to skip that and check out Fuji TV before running off for dinner treat from Okaasan... I took a photo of the maritime museum from the monorail on the way to Fuji TV... I thought it looked really nice.. The car park had so many lots!! But parking in Japan is never by per entry, so i guess that explains the huge vacancies there..
At Fuji terebi, there were alot of vans parked there, selling food.. And I spotted the BAKUDAN.. Which means bomb!! Well, its just a takoyaki that's really huge.. As you can see from the sample, the takoyaki is humongous!!
On the left is Fuji TV building up close.. I made Tat-chan struggle to capture the globe of the building.. Haha..
By then, it was time to rush of for dinner.. So there was no time to take picture with the fake statue of Liberty.. Here's a game.. Can you spot where is the Statue?
We made it in time to meet Okaasan for dinner!! Think the restaurant we ate at was on the 49th floor or something.. Not exactly very tall, but we do have to keep in mind that Japan is an earthquake prone place..

Woah... Now this is really scary!!!
Not sure if you noticed, but Nozomi-chan, Tat-chan and Okaasan really look like each other... Replicas of their mother... :P

Tokyo Day 4 Part 1: Making fat free bread for breakfast plus trip to Odaiba!!! お台場！

Tat-chan's internet was down, so I couldn't bake anything since I could not surf the net for inspirations.. However, Nomi-chan has a few recipe books for me to browse!! Except its in Japanese.. Well, my efforts in knowing what most ingredients are in Japanese and steps to making the different stuff helped alot.. So I made this wonderful fat free bread that the Ookubo family loved so much.. Nomi-chan even brought it to work!! Some of the filling was actually Tat-chan's breakfast.. since he left the tamago(egg) untouched.. Otousan who often slept in late woke up to the fragrance of the bread leaking from the oven to eat the freshly baked bread.. Haha..
My only regret was forgetting to copy down the recipe.. boohoo..


This is another map of the metro subway which makes people confused.. But I shall just follow Tat-chan, since he is a Tokyo Boi.. Haha.. But I think this was the day he lost his way.. did he? Can't remember.. :P

First stop: Shinbashi!!! From there, we take the monarail to odaiba!!!!
This is the Shinbashi station.. Not exactly very glam... But Odaiba is much nicer.. The monarail station for Odaiba are like the ones we have for seng kang and dover.. And Odaiba is actually a man-made island in the south of Tokyo...
This is the monarail!!! Very fun and comfortable.. You can literally just sleep on the monarail as it travels to and fro.. The view is nice, air con at the right temperature, crowd ain't too much... So? Sleep!

But its expensive to buy invidivual tix for travelling around this area... Its more worth it to spend 900 yen (S$12)on the multi-pass and spending an entire day there from morning to night...

The maritime museum, built on a ship... There are alot of free entry museums opened by the big corporations like Toyota, Panasonic and Shell..
This is Fuji Terebi (Fuji TV), where my dearest Dohmoto Tsuyoshi 堂本剛　works at... Its really special... Cuz of the glod you see standing at the centre left of the building... This globe was built separately and lifted by a crane, and placed in position in the gap created for the globe.. After that, they welded the bridges linking to the globe...
We arrived at our first stop.. I forgot what it was called... But I noe we were walking to the shopping centre called decks... And there was this interesting array of arches that led to a garden (which we din go)

Hilarious moment of Tat-chan scratching his leg.. Haha.. I'm sure he's gonna call me from Japan to remove this picture.. But its so funny... I can't resist not uploading this.. :P
This is decks, the shopping mall we visited and ate crepes at... We had lunch at a Hong Kong restaurant... And we had dim sum!!! SUper expensive Dim Sum!!! But super delicious too!!!
And Japan's biggest Ferris wheel!!!! Lose to our Singapore flyer though.... Too bad... :S
To get to the Ferris Wheel, we must climb this flight of stairs leading to Palette Town...
Palette Town indeed lives up to its names cuz its a really colourful place... Can tell from the Ferris Wheel right?
Well, we're gonna board the Ferris Wheel soon, I will put that under part 2.. Too much to show about Odaiba.. So gotta wait!