Last day of our Japan trip! Sad to leave but I am glad that now my happy memories of Japan has replaced my dark, gloomy, depressing past I spent in the country.


( last day of our trip )

We supposed to be going with a 8.10 bus but we were already running late when my brother asked me where the tickets are and I realized I left them on the table at the hotel. Stupid! My brother made a quick run to the hotel, and still that couldn't help us to make it. It was 8.20 when we arrived at Shinjuku and the bus already left. I felt bad for my sister and brother, it was a stupid mistake. We got into the next available bus which was at 10.10. We got to Fujikyu at 11.30 and we immediately queue for Fujiyama, which was the best roller coaster there.


( Day 7 )

( more on what we did after )

In the morning, we finished packing everything we could into our suitcases leaving just the stuff we need for the last 3 days. Today we went to Ueno Zoo! Finally.




It was... underwhelming, sadly. The zoo was old, the cages were small with very tight bars and the animals looked depressed. I was also depressed seeing them like that. We walked around and made our way out before the zoo was closed. We were so tired from the day before and compared to Disneysea, the zoo was so boring and made us sleepy. We stayed until it was closing time anyways, and made our way out as the announcement of the closing commenced. We visited Ameya Yokocho shortly, and then we went back.

Day 5! We went back to Tokyu Hands Ikebukuro, and the person at the information counter confirmed that they had the shopping bag we left there. I only need to write a lost and found form and we got our bag back. We went to Tokyo Disneysea after! I wasn't so excited about it because it was expensive as hell, and I've been there. I thought the place is too crowded and we're spending most of our time lining for the rides. Turned out, my brother LOVED the place. As I said in my entry, excitement is contagious so I felt happy and excited as well spending the whole day there. And lucky for us, it was not so crowded. I was there in summer last time, and the lines were 90 minutes long. This time it was not that bad, the longest we lined was 40 minutes, and other rides were much shorter. We got to ride Storm Rider, Storm Diffuser(?), Indiana Jones, Journey to The Center of The Earth, 20,000 Feet Under The Sea, Tower of Terror, Journey of Sinbad, and watched magic lamp performance.


We wanted to get home early because we have to pack our bags to send to the airport by early morning tomorrow. So we ate at Saizeriya in Ikebukuro, and then went home. I was exhausted so I chose to sleep instead of packing like my sister and brother did.

We supposed to go to Fujikyu Highland today, but I changed our bus reservation after looking at the wheather forecast and it said that it's going to rain in Fujigoko area. We were still so tired, I went back to sleep after cancelling the bus reservation and slept til 10. At 10.30 without any fixed gameplan, we first went to Shinjuku again to pay for our bus and Fujikyu tickets. I also bought a new camera! It's pink! It has flipped monitor! we decided to go to Ueno Zoo, just to find out that the Zoo is closed on Mondays, lol. We then changed our plan to visit the most famous tourist destination of Tokyo, Asakusa and Tokyo Sky Tree.




Asakusa was crowded as usual. The wind was strong they closed Tokyo Sky Tree for that day. Which was fine by us because by the time we reached Sumida river, our feet hurt so much we knew we couldn't walk further. We decided to go back to Ikebukuro and explore the area. It was closer to our hotel and there are a lot of places to see without getting too tired from the crowd. We grabbed a Turkish kebab around the corner before we continued our trip by subway trains.

( the rest of day 4 )

Today was the third day of our Japan trip. We left the hotel pretty early in the morning after we grabbed some onigiris from nearby supermarket for breakfast. After that, we went to Ochanomizu because my sister wanted to see Ochanomizu guitar street and she also wanted to buy some guitar accessories.


We walked to Akihabara soon after, and we met with my friend Dina then. After taking some photos and lunch, we went to Yodobashi, which is like a mall of its own and it's full of interesting stuff. My sister and brother bought some souvenirs for their friends and I bought a Doraemon shape postcard.


After exploring Akihabara, we traveled by train to Tokyo station. It was my first time seeing it after its long renovation which was finished in 2012. It was grand and massive, so many people were taking pictures in the front of it, foreign and domestic tourists alike. On the right side of the building, was Tokyo Central Post Office!! Inside a mall (?) named Kitte (stamp)! I enthusiastically entered there and spent a significant amount of time choosing stamps and postcards.

( the rest of day 3 )

This was the second day of our Japan trip, and I was so excited about it. Our hotel was 10 minutes from Ikebukuro, so any trips we made we went through Ikebukuro station. We first made our trip to Shinjuku, an area I was familiar with since I worked part time job in West Shinjuku many many years ago. It was still my favorite place to hang out, too. We first heads out to The Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. The building has a nice architecture to it, it was not crowded unlike most of tourist attractions in Tokyo, and most important of all, it was free. They have observation deck on the 45th level, nice souvenir shops, and a Tokyo tourist guide booth which provides maps, suggestions on where to go, discount vouchers, and other useful informations. And I did I mention I LOVE maps?


( the rest of day 2 )

I'm back in Japan again. This year marks 10th year of my first time in Japan. I made my first step on this land in October 2004, and I still remember it like yesterday. I was just an ordinary person from a tropical country who had no experience dealing with four seasons. The day I arived, it was autumn and the rain was pouring. Naho, my tutor, picked me up at the airport and we made our ways all the way from Narita to Arakawa carrying my huge suitcase and while fighting the cold temperature. I was in a T-shirt and a jeans jacket, which then I learned, did not help with the cold at all. The smell of autumn will always reminds me of that day.

I have been wanting to take my brother to Japan to travel for a while. He graduated from university earlier this year, and I thought this was a good chance to actually go. But of course, my sister didn't want to be left alone so we are travelling together. We got budget airline tickets, and we also booked an hotel/apartment for three for a week. We got on our plane at around 9 in the morning, and we reached Kuala Lumpur for transfer at about 11. It was my first time in KLIA 2 terminal and that place is HUGE. We barely had enough time to look for food, eat, and find our gate.

( this is my travelogue from day 1 of our trip )

I really want to blog more, but between work, slow internet and broken camera I just couldn't. I miss blogging (regularly) (T_____T). Anyways, updates on stuff!

Korean Class Level 2!
Classes for Level 2 has started \o/ The sonsengnim is young, very pretty, funny and talks really fast. She constantly talks in Korean and assumes that every one of us is an avid Korea loving fan who understands everything she's saying. I'm the oldest of everyone in the class. And as a non-Korea loving fan that I am, I'm out of the loop most of the times. But I'm a good student and I do love to learn languages. Oh and, I sprained my ankle trying to catch a bus to the class yesterday (-____-) I hope the pain goes away soon.

JAPAN!
I'm going back to Japan!! For real and for fun this time, with my sister and brother next month :D Me and my sister are very excited for this, we're preparing itinerary and completing documents for our visa application. 一年半ぶりの東京へ行くぜ！

Camera Problems
So ... after a while owning this prosumer type camera, I'm not sure if this camera fits me best. I love it, I use it all the time. However, the size is not really compact and using an additional case makes it even more bulky so I usually just slam it inside my bag. I'm the type who likes my camera with me all the time, so imagine that it's inside my bag almost everyday, with my other stuff like books, umbrella, pencil case etc. One day ... it broke. The buttons wouldn't work so I took it to the service center. The person there said there's no serious problem, it was just dirty and suffered from daily careless treatment. Maybe I need something smaller and more compact.