My Japan Trip 2

haha.. this holiday has been a very eventful one..
I've been so busy that I dun even have time to blog..
guess i just want to do all the things tt i would not have time to do when sch starts..
alright back to Japan..

Day 2 - Sasayama ~ in Keiko Aunty's house
After breakfast, we went to the farm near Keiko Aunty's house to cut vegetables that she grew for dinner. There were brocolis, carrots and other vegetables. Japanese are very health conscious so most of the time they don't use any pesticides at all.


After that, we headed to somewhere in Kyoto where Crab Feast is a local goumet attraction. The restaurants lined along the beach where the locals cuaght fresh fishes and crabs. It was a very long journey. We slept throughout the road trip and my dad even snored. Hahahaha...

Along the way, we stopped by a famous temples on the top of one of the mountains. It is more of a local attraction since it isnt very accessible for tour buses due to the steep and narrow road up the mountain. Then, Keiko Aunty drove us all the way up the moutain to get a better view of one of the must-see sights of Japan. There is this long streatch of greenery that stretches between 2 area which separates 2 of the lakes beside it. We were told that the scenery will look better if we can try to view it between our legs. Haha... It was quite an awkward position but it realli looked better. Here's a spectacular pic i took:


Later, we headed for lunch! Unfortunately, when we reached one of the restaurants, they didnt sell the crabs that Keiko Aunty wanted to introduce us to. I guess we were too hungry. No one mind having lunch there. It was a pleasant surprise that they serve superb sashimi. It's so much fresher than what we have in Singapore, even better than Sushi Tei's. You could taste the sweetness of the sea.



Mom commented that I could come here with Mark for honeymoon in future.. wahahaha.. The restaurant is part of a resort here on the top of the mountain. I guess the place is quite suitable. There are other amentities like natural hot spa..

Keiko Aunty is one of the few Japaneses around who's exceptionally generous. She was so eager to treat us to the Crab Feast that she drove to a near by seafood market to buy fresh crabs for dinner. Gosh! She bought 2 huge crabs for 200+ Sing dollars each! OMG.. our dinner cost about 500 bucks!!! And we still have to cook! The weather was so cold that the ice packed with the crabs didnt realli melt. We even had time to make 2 stops along our way home.


First, we stopped at a shrine where we took a boat ride and got to see the coastal area of the entire place better. The place was named tian qiao li. Keiko Aunty said that it was named so because of the unique shape of natural ground linking the 2 island. Tian qiao means bridge in chinese and probably written the same way in Japanese.

Next, we stopped by at a western desert shop for some coffee and cake. Keiko Aunty sure lead an expensive lifestyle. We were served banana sponge cakes and either home made egg pudding or vanilla ice creams. The place was great. I managed to take a real nice shot of the local country side scenery.
Then we headed home at about 6pm for our very own crab feast!! It was sweet and fresh! Nothing like the crabs we have in Singapore. Though it was cold, it was certainly delicious.. I would definitely recommend it to my friends if any of them were to go to Japan in future.


Day 3- Tokyo ~ Shinjuku
It was a long long day! After breakfast, we left Sasayama and headed for Shinjuku by train. It took us about 3h by train. It was really a boring and stuffy ride.



I guess the fun part about free and east tour is that you have the luxury of planning where you want to go and when to about it. It was rather challenging initially for us to move around in Japan since eveyrhting was in Japanese. I guess mom was also tired by day 3. We started to "holland". Lol.. I took over part of the nagivator role and also found that it wasn't easy. On the whole, it was quite a good expereince. Shinjuku is probably like Raffles place in Singapore. There are many office buildings and shopping centres.

u can imagine how short the door of our hotel room is

After unloading our luggages in the hotel, we went for dinner and shopped around the area. Mom was obviously very hungry. We were attracted by one of the advertisements of a restaurant that offer a great variety of food like Shabu Shabu that suited Mom and I, Yakitori for Stessen and beef stew for Dad. It was quite a reasonably priced dinner. I thought my dinner was great. My Shabu Shabu pot was kimchi flavoured. It was exactly what I need. I guess it;s quite tough to manage a restaurant in Tokyo. There are so many around. The one that we went was he xiang feng ju jiu wu and it was located at 8th floor of one of teh buildings in the area. It's quite ulu. I think most people wouldnt know that there's a restuarnt there unless they tried or got to know about it by chance like us.


As the sky got darker, more youngsters appeared on the streets. they have a unique fashion sense and many had bizarre hair dos. It seems normal for all youth to be dressed like that. Most womena had make up unlike in Singapore. It's a form of showing courtesy. Even the japanese men trim their eye brows.

We didnt shop in the shopping malls because things are just too expensive in Japan. Instead we roamed around the streets and subway shops where we got to try some local delicacies.

~to be continued~