Back in Tokyo

Got back to Tokyo 3-4 days ago after a 34 hour journey from my friend's place in Norway. Europe/Scandinavia was amazing, and it was so comfortable and wonderful to catch up with my friends there. Yet, the more I travel, the more I realise I don't know anything. Scandinavia is really quite an eye-opener.

Been busy rushing 2 presentations for tomorrow and well, still working on the 2nd one now. After tomorrow will be 2-3 weeks left of school, which means 2-3 weeks of deadlines, papers, and exams. Oh wowee.

Some photos to come after tomorrow!

Kyoto 23-25 Nov

Apologies for the recent neglect - caught up doing too many things and nothing at the same time heh.

Last Wednesday (23 Nov) was Labour Day and a public holiday, and since I usually have no classes on Tues and Thurs, that left me 3 days free, so I went on a solo trip to Kyoto! =)

Days 1 and 3 were on my own, but day 2 I was lucky enough to have Sze Ping come down from Osaka to join me. It was great catching up with her =)

Anyway here's some pictures from Kyoto. Even though it's supposed to be the start of the perfect momiji (red maple leaf) season, but the unusually warm weather so far meant that it was still pretty much multi-coloured with just some red trees. Still pretty though:

Famous Kinkakuji

Sze Ping and I at Toufukuji

The thousand Torii Shrine - Fushimi Inari

Kyoto Imperial Palace

It's Autumn =)

Europe next week on, but I still have lots to prepare. What's new? Heh...

Midterm Red Magic at Nikko

The past four days were the first school break in a while. Thursday was Culture Day - Bunka no Hi (文化の日); Friday was a school holiday in preparation for the Waseda School Festival on the subsequent Saturday and Sunday. So yay, no classes for 4 days in a row, and since I usually have classes 10.40-12nn, and 2.45 to 4.15pm on Saturdays, this was my first ever free weekend!

Thursday was spent recovering from the all-nighter that I pulled on Tuesday night that preceded a 9am-6pm day (with 2 reports and 1 presentation due), and so Friday we went off to Nikko (日光）to see some of the autumn red leaves.

Nikko National Park is quite an interesting place actually, with a World Heritage area, theme park area, onsen, mountains of deciduous forests, Lake Chuzenji, plateaus and waterfalls too. Definitely worth a second, and much longer, visit, but for now, mission accomplished.

More photos up on facebook.

Too bad but am now back to reality of more midterm reports, assignments and presentations.

Norwegians, Yokohama & Curry Party =)

Today was a busy but fulfilling day - spent alternatively with both internationals and Japanese.

Sissel - my norwegian friend from floorball - came back to Tokyo last Friday, and 5 more of her Norwegian teammates tagged along for a holiday! They all turned up for the recent Monday's practice, and it was seriously the best that I've ever had in floorball memory. Each may not have seemed individually dazzling, but just having their presence and inclusion in the line up, made a huge difference across the board amongst our own players!

Today, woke up a tad late but made it to Yokohama's Minato Mirai to spend time with them + Yui. Had Krispy Kreme, then made it to Chinatown (Chukagai) for a lunch buffet, which turned out to be just so-so. Have to say the best I've had is still the one near dorm/school. Really really glad to have spent the time with this group of very friendly Norwegians though! Would love to visit them in Norway one day! Hopefully =)

Here are some pictures of them!:

(Ivonne, Rebecca, Yui, Bea (spelling?), Sissel)

(At lunch, L-R: Ivonne, Lotte (sp?), Rebecca, Bea (sp?), Ello/Elizabeth, Yui!)

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Time for Curry - Curry Party!

Since I still had that few packets of curry gravy that Nobu so kindly brought/bought from KL on his last business trip, I decided to whip up some curry and invite Japanese friends over to try what curries in Singapore might taste like. Japanese curry is really quite different - thick, chockful of curry-powder taste, mildly spicy and sweet.

What began with just 3 of us Singaporeans (Isabel, Rachel & me) + 4 Japanese, somehow grew to 16 people in total! Some joined in the morning, others just in the last hour of meeting, and even some just in the dorm. Included 3 Thais, 1 HKer too. So the menu was:

- normal (red) chicken curry with potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onions

- beef + chicken rendang

- lemak (coconut milk) chicken curry with potatoes and carrots.

- rice

- baguettes

- simple zucchini salad

- plus roomie Rach added a chicken curry of her own as well.

Seemed like a pretty good success on the whole I think! Ate, talked, had icecream/desserts/cheesecake (thanks to Hiro!) and ended up playing Murderer game (that Isabel and I taught some of them the last time at the recent Paddy camp). Decided to move on to the more complex game of Polar Bears, and it was pretty fun! Things rounded up at 10.30pm~ish since some had to catch last train, plus Manager-san started to make an appearance/hint for us to finish up.

Such fun! Really wanted to take some photos but completely forgot amidst the rush to cook 3 curries at one go, and serve and try to be a good hostess and teach/play the games!

Really glad that everybody seemed to have enjoyed it though! First ever time for me to 1) organise a large party 2) cook most of the food 3) cooked for THIS many people 4) cook curry. =P

Happy dappy! =)

Hiroshima Trip 23 Mar to 27 Mar 2010

There's a special kind of train ticket that's only sold 3 times a year during the school holidays: seishun 18 kippu 青春18切符 (Youth 18 Pass). It allows 5 non-consecutive and non-user-specific days of local train rides (in this sense, local means any type of train even express local trains, except Shinkansen/bullet train). So armed with this exciting pass, we (me and 2 other female friends) decided to make our way further further south to Hiroshima. By the fastest Shinkansen, it takes about 4.5 hours 1-way and 18,000yen; with local train rides, it took about 14-16 hours and 2,300yen. Thank goodness for the overnight train that runs during this special pass season, thus allowing us to use just 1 day of the pass each, instead of 2! 1 pass costs 11,500 yen so each day (5 days total) cost 2,300yen and the original journey cost about 10,000yen to 17,000yen - woohoo or what?!

So off to Hiroshima we went - and despite the tiredness of sleeping on trains and transferring on and off, there was a much more credible sense of travelling, of a journey undertaken. Many times, when I've sat in the window seat on the aeroplane looking out over the ocean and islands below, there's always been a surreal feeling. Especially when they start making the announcement "We have now arrived at XXX Airport. Thank you for flying with XXX Airlines. Please wait till the ...". Inevitably I think,"that's it?? we're here?!". Somehow there's no sense of a day passing, no feel of the geography, no idea of the cultures/people we might have flown by along the way. Now, passing by small fields of tea, and rice, cabbage, and chugging slowly by platforms that look different from the flashier city cousins, spying mountain ranges in the distance, and even passing by the sea glittering with sunlight - one could not help but feel, "yes, I'm travelling!" I'm traversing not just space, time and land; but cultures, people's lives, history and even the present." Yes, I'm travelling. I've never thought much about travelling in Europe before (except to visit Italy and Spain for food *slurp*), but now I'm starting to see the charm of taking a train across Europe.

Okay enough babbling and some pictures from the Hiroshima Trip:

1) On one of the trains to Hiroshima! Behold the fields of green and mountain ranges in the distance.

2) Himeji Castle - about midway on our journey to Hiroshima, so we stopped by to take a look. Especially since it will begin 5-year renovation work starting April 2010, so we were really lucky. Also known as the "White Heron" (due to its distinctive white walls) and is probably one of the few (or the only?) castle that has kept its interior intact. Very interesting castle - very defensive on the inside.

3) Lunch at Himeji - Anago Don. Unagi is freshwater eel, whilst Anago refers to saltwater eel or conger eel. Supposedly one of the local produce of the area. Both are equally tasty in my opinion, though anago is supposedly less fatty/oily than unagi.

4) Hiroshima-Okonomiyaki: Perhaps the most famous food dish in Hiroshima. Quite different from the Osaka version, in that it has just a thin layer of flour (the round white piece), usually includes noodles and more cabbage. This was served without mayonnaise too. We tried 2 shops: first was the very famous Mi-Chan and the other was Okonomiyaki-MuraChou (お好み焼き村長の店 = literally the Okonomiyaki Village Headchief's Shop). Funnily enough, I prefer the Hiroshima-okonomiyaki that's near my school in Tokyo instead! =P Like how I preferred the okonomiyaki I had in Tokyo compared to the one in Osaka! 0.0

5) Of course we took a walk around Peace Memorial Park - (clockwise from bottom left) Golden crane under the Children's Monument, walking the solemn path on a drizzly day, the Peace Bell, the Peace Monument, Aioi Bridge - the T-shaped bridge that apparently became the A-bomb's target, the Peace Memorial Museum from afar, and the A-bomb Dome.

6) And of course we entered the Peace Memorial Museum. 2 of the several things that struck me so much: (top) a clock stops at 8.15am; and the whole city has since stopped with it. (bottom) the self-sewn uniform of a 13-year-old girl that died from radioactive poisoning. what struck me was not so much her death in itself, but the tiny size of the uniform that looked more befitting of a 8-year-old perhaps. The costs of war...

But that aside, although the museum was so strongly geared towards peace and quite objective in its exhibits, I found that it was ultimately still a Japanese museum, and it served - albeit very subtly - to still further the Japanese story of WW2: Japan is an innocent victim and one that should be pitied and sympathised with for the very fact that the A-bomb was dropped upon her. Hrm, not denying this, but it'll be nice to have the whole story please.

7) Hiroshima's also known for oysters - we often saw oyster 'bed racks' floating about in the sea/river. So here's a meal with steamed oysters on rice. Not bad. Also tried grilled oysters in the shell in Miyajima, and Oyster Fry (deep fried oysters in batter).

8) Unlike most other cities in Japan where an extensive network of subway and train system exists, the tram/streetcar is the way to go for Hiroshima - largely due to the fact that Hiroshima is a delta, making it difficult and expensive to construct such a subway system.

9) Usually, every city/area in Japan has its own distinctive design for manhole covers. Hiroshima's is - surprise surprise - one of colourful cranes.

10) We also made the trip out to Kure City, to visit the Yamato Maritime Museum, which basically documented the importance of the Kure Naval Base to the WW2 and Hiroshima then. Interesting perspective. It also had an entire area for interactive play experience mainly for kids, but we 3 had a smashing time there. And I learnt alot about the science that makes shipbuilding possible. Neat.

11) Having made our way to Hiroshima, we could not possibly miss out the day trip to one of the top 3 scenic spots in Japan - Miyajima. Famous for its beautiful scenery and the Itsukushima Shrine with the bright orange torii (or Japanese Shinto Shrine Gate) out in the water. It was a welcome change away from all the peace and war. (And look mum! I'm wearing the giraffe dress! =) ) Miyajima by day was pretty but slightly crowded; Miyajima by dusk/night was breath-taking and awe-inspiring...

12) Besides tourism, another major industry in Hiroshima is none other than Mazda!

We took a (free -yippee!) guided tour around Mazda's factories, facilities and museum. Learnt more about car-making and got to see the assembly of cars in real life! The engineers are really quite amazing. Whilst alot of the big parts were assembled with precision robotics, highly-skilled workers were still necessary to put in the small screws, bolts, attach the dashboard etc etc. Each person only had 1min 48 seconds to finish doing his specific part on the conveyor belt!

13) Also chanced upon this special exhibition in Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art. William Kentridge is a South African, and his works - especially his animated 'videos' - reflect that. Really thought-provoking exhibition. The permanent exhibition was not bad as well - focusing on the theme of "Boundary" yet somehow the curator (unsurprisingly?) managed to incorporate the idea of 8.15am once more...

14) A good trip on the whole - and I do quite like Hiroshima. Oddly enough, what I find sad about the city is not the whole 8.15am A-bomb milestone event; but the fact that everywhere, everything was about that ONE fateful day in 1945, August 6 at 8.15am. As a history student, I certainly appreciated coming to Hiroshima - if not just to learn how subtle biasness can be so skilfully delivered. But on the whole, I really did like Hiroshima. Not for any of this war and peace business, but for the spacious wide thoroughfares that criss cross the city; and the graceful bridges that arch above the water ways; the quiet buzz of her people - completely opposite to the 'loud' mass of Tokyo.

How sad that she can't seem to move past her past though. For today's Hiroshima is almost as if characterised only by that one mushroom cloud that dominated her past, haunts her present and will probably shape her future.

Back from HK

Arrived back from HK 2 days ago. It was... okay on the whole. Felt like I went there to do grocery shopping lol. List of what I bought in HK - supposed shopping paradise:

- 1 jacket
- 1 long sleeve top
- Body soap
- Shampoo
- Contact Lens Solution
- Pimple cream
- Bourjois silver eyeliner
- Lip Balm

Grocery shopping huh? =P


Well but there are a few highlights of the trip:

1)The Aviary in HK Park



2)The expensive Sunday dimsum lunch at Hoi King Heen, Intercontinental


Hmm but honestly, I don't think the food in HK is anything special. Maybe I didn't get to try the bestest of the best, but I guess I've been having really good Cantonese food, Hakka food in Singapore,Penang,Ipoh since young so this was really nothing mind-blowing.

3)A slight, comfortable familiarity with back home; but yet very much a sense of I'm-glad-I-stay-in-Singapore-slash-Tokyo-and-not-HK

I've always thought Cantonese to be such a pretty dialect - singsong, tonal and refined. HKers obviously showed me how wrong I was. Not just about the language, but the people too. I've never seen a kid 'fight' to race to an empty seat in front of an old woman before. Amazing really...

I'm sure HKers themselves don't think too highly of mainlanders; but for me right now, I don't see much difference between HKers and the stereotypical image of the uncultured, civic-mindedless mainlander. And perhaps even if there might be any subtleties, I don't think I'm interested enough to uncover any further.

A Quick Note

Just a quick Hello to say I'm still here!

Updates for Korea Trip, Paddy Ski/Snowboarding Camp and Ming's visit to Tokyo will be up soon. Highlights include eating still-wriggling octopus tentacles sashimi, falling at least 121 times in 2 days, and visiting the Beatles Cover Pub + John Lennon Museum!

In other news, my laptop's been crashing alot the past 2 days - the blue error screen keeps popping up. So worrying ugh. Wonder what hit it. Been trying to fix it or find the cause but to no avail - evidently me is no techie genius raa. So I've been backing up important data instead oh well.


Good night, world =)

Day 1 and Day 2 - Seoul

Day 1

Arrived in Seoul last night - cold, cold, cold. -2deg to -6deg I think.

Dinner with Ingle, a Dutch girl that I coincidentally met at the bus stop whilst we were both feeling lost and finding the same hostel. Dinner was good - grilled korean bbq with lettuce and kimchi, and a sweet sukiyaki-like beef stew with tanghoon.

Korean Air stewardesses are pretty - very much the idea of the Korean beauty - and their uniforms are a very smart beige formal blazer skirt type. Nice.


Day 2

Ming arrives. Nandaemun window shopping (everything is really so cheap! and nice!) and tried alot of food. Fried chewy dough balls in sugar, roadside kimchi soup noodles, meat patty with tteok in the middle, then bimbimbap for lunch and got canned sikkhae and seujeounghwa from the supermarket to try as well. Interesting!

Will be watching Nanta - a nonverbal comic performance with kitchen tools - with Ming and Ingle soon! Then probably dinner/supper. I like Seoul =)

Spring spring -boing!-

Just a short post to say I'm doing okay - more than okay actually... I'm doing great for some reason! Every day has been a pretty good day so far with many great moments and surprisingly quite abit of interaction with Japanese, Koreans and Norwegians.

Last Friday went to the Studio Ghibli Museum with Seunghee and co, then got called in last minute for my first ever part-time-job.
Saturday was floorball training in the morning then cooked phad thai for a few friends that night.
Sunday was Chofu Recreational League in the evening and a quick curry dinner with Sissel - floorball goalkeeper from Norway who used to be on exchange here at Waseda just up till last August before I came!
Monday was Karaoke with Seunghee and Paddy members (as a sort of farewell since she was leaving on 10th), followed by floorball training which turned out to be one of the best I've had since starting last October. Timely too - the last training before our first Japan Cup match this Sunday 14th Feb. Came back that night and managed to book my ticket to Korea for the cheapest price and the perfect flight timings! How lucky am I really...
Tuesday was spent sleeping late and weather was so good at 20deg that I dragged Isabel out to go randomly walk around for 3-4 hours with me. Exploring is fun - just grab a friend, a random direction and a Mister Donut (popular donut chain here)!
Wednesday was spent meeting Donna (a Singaporean friend studying at Monash, who came here to travel with her cousins) and Donna's Japanese friends and my friends. The "party" grew to be pretty big towards the afternoon, with 2 Japanese, 3 Singaporeans and 1 Canadian. Went to Ueno for a stroll, then to a calligraphy exhibition and a small art exhibition, followed by a walk to Akihabara (electronics place), then went to see the Imperial Palace and even visited the "entrance examination" deity shrine en route. Finished up with warm cuppa cocoa at Starbucks at Tokyo Station. Really comfortable company for some reason. Rushed back to near the dorm to meet my Norwegian floorball friend Sissel. Took her to try the new Chanpon (a Nagasaki Chinese-origin dish reminiscent of Hokkien Mee!!) place near the dorm, then she took me to a bar where she used to frequent and we got a drink called Sugar and Spice. Pretty name and delicious drink. Dropped by Picasso for a while for her to reminisce about staying at Hoshien just last year.
Today was spent with 6 Japanese friends from Paddy (my english conversation circle at Waseda) and Isabel - and the 8 of us went to Yokohama to play the arcade (cuz it just HAD to rain ugh) then did 2 rides in the cold, feathery rain; took purikura (neoprint) and found out how well Sou knew how to use those machines; then went down to Chinatown - biggest one in Japan - for dinner to 'celebrate' an early CNY.

A spring break travel report: I'll be going to Korea next Tuesday 16th Feb till following Monday 22nd since one of my friends from hall was free to travel too!
At this rate, I just know I'm going to have to work hard and find a stable part-time-job (not like now) once school semester 2 starts again in April >.< May not actually be bad at all - just the searching part is so tiresome.

But till then life is great =) Good night world.

Winter Break Trip - Osaka/Nara/Kobe Part 2

Second day in Osaka was spent at the rather famous Osaka Aquarium.
(Osaka Aquarium - Otters, dolphins, sharks, rays, penguins, jellyfish etc...and more. )

Ate 串かつ(ku-shi-ka-tsu) for lunch. Kushikatsu is apparently another Osaka specialty, where most of the food is served on skewers and you dip it in batter, then panko flour (something like bread crumbs) and deep fry the stick in a small fryer in front of you at the table. Interesting.


(The number of skewer/sticks on the girls' side of the table. Yum.)

After that was mostly spent walking around in Ame-mura (short for Amerika Mura; mura = village) which is a shopping area. Osaka fashion is somewhat louder and more colourful than Tokyo's - almost like an ahlian version, but it could be said that it's a much more individualistic and self-confident image than Tokyo's depressing sea of black coats. The people seemed more friendly and direct too, quite in contrast to Tokyo's politeness and keep-to-oneself feeling.

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Day 3 was spent at Nara - famous for its free-ranging deers and ancient Buddhist temples/shrines. Visited Todaiji, apparently the oldest and biggest wooden temple in the world maybe? Very pretty. The deers were some sort of nuisance though, especially if one was carrying a handful of the deer crackers - they'd come chasing after you.

(The beautiful Todaiji - biggest wooden Buddhist structure in Japan and maybe in the world too.)

Can't say I really liked Nara much - seemed too much like a tourist town, a town that never developed it's own modern character beyond displaying it's old glories. I had very yummy omu (shortened from omelette in katakana) rice there though. Omu rice is usually a fluffy fluffy (japanese call it fu-wa fu-wa) creamy omelette atop a mound of 'chicken rice'. Their chicken rice is basically rice with chicken meat and 'fried' in tomato sauce. The whole thing is then topped with demi-glace sauce. Somehow the whole dish just came together as a pretty delicious combination. No pictures sadly - ran out of battery and too busy eating heh.

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Day 4 was mostly spent walking around Namba/Amerika-mura area for shopping since one of my friends really liked to shop there. The 3 of us spoke to a shopperson for almost 1 hour. Osaka people really seem more curious towards foreigners - perhaps maybe because Osaka isn't really crawling with foreigners like Tokyo sometimes seem to be.

In the evening, took our backpacks/duffels and boarded the local train for Kobe! Kobe - port city with the "exotic" atmosphere - was quite a change from either Tokyo or Osaka. Dinner was at a small individually-owned (not franchise yay!) and dinner was good. =)


(The menu was written/printed in beautiful calligraphy script on what seemed like shaved wood.)

(My dinner - The lovely udon set meal. Came with so many things - rice topped with 1 prawn and omelette shreds, abit of tempura, udon and a mix of sushi!)

(A sashimi mix that I ordered and we all shared. All was good except for the squid/ika.)

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Day 5 was for Kobe and it was a surprisingly very likeable place! Despite all the 'what are you going to Kobe for? it's boring...' responses that we got prior to the trip. Beautiful mixture of architecture, many tooth-decay inducing patisseries, restaurants of various cuisines, a quietly vibrant frequency, sake breweries, the red port tower... and last but not least, KOBE BEEF.

(The entrance of the sake brewery museum we visited. Free entry and free sake-tasting. I like!)

(Before dinner, we went walking about Kobe - saw the European houses, Kobe's signature Red Port Tower and Nankin-machi, Kobe's Chinatown. As gaudily red and exaggerated as the place was, there was a sense of familiarity and comfort. =) )

(Last dinner of the trip in Kobe - went to a steak place and despite the hefty price tag of 4,500yen, I decided I really just had to try Kobe beef because once I got back to Tokyo, I just know I would never be able to willingly spend so much on it again. Normal price of 1 piece of Kobe beef is about 10,000yen anyway, so I went ahead and tried it. The moment I bit into a piece, I immediately thought: "I am NEVER going to be happy eating any other type of beef again...". It is THAT good.I still think about it.)

Winter Break: Osaka/Nara/Kobe Trip Confirmed!

Was planning and settling our rough itinerary with Isabel earlier just now - and so now winter break trip is confirmed!

We will be going to Osaka for 4 days 3 nights, of which one will be a day trip to Nara, then on to Kobe for 1 more day before coming back to Tokyo. Tried to get the cheapest hostels available and transport as well, so we're staying in dorms and taking night buses (8-9hours) rather than the Shinkansen which would take a mere 2.5 hours but cost about 2-3 times more. Nevertheless, this 'cheap' accommodation and transport still cost about 20100yen (~350sgd) so I'll be leaving myself about 200sgd more for food, admission fees, subway tickets, souvenirs and miscellaneous expenses.

This is so exciting! Will be my first ever trip in Japan - yay!

Upcoming Plans!

Today was a good day in all - pretty yummy curry with rice set lunch at Khana (Nepali, Pakistani Restaurant near school) with Japanese class classmates, and a comfortable izakaya dinner with WF, JF and Isabel. Food always tastes so much better with laughter and good company.

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Winter break will be coming up soon - from 23 Dec to 5 Jan - and plans are in the making for a trip to Osaka & Kyoto! Have yet to finalise transport and accommodation but hopefully soon! Can't wait!

The Japanese have a saying that goes:

“京の着倒れ、大阪の食い倒れ。”

Basically translates to "Shop till you drop in Kyoto (on Kimonos), Eat till you drop in Osaka."

Wonder if that is indeed the case - will find out soon!