Day 2
Day 2 let's go! After an unfruitful night of tossing in bed, I managed to leave the room on time for breakfast, and not knowing where to meet, me Vishnu, Brenan, Ker Xi, Amirah, Yamunah, Viena went out of the hotel and waited outside like the previous day. After a while we were thinking, wait, we are clearly on time, and there's no other people except us, we are clearly at the wrong place. But luckily, we managed to get it right and went back into the dining hall.
One thing though I was kinda happy/sad at the same time is that they served us international buffet for breakfast. It was great that we got to eat something we're familiar with, but after being in Japan for 2 days, we haven't really had any actual Japanese food yet.
One thing though I was kinda happy/sad at the same time is that they served us international buffet for breakfast. It was great that we got to eat something we're familiar with, but after being in Japan for 2 days, we haven't really had any actual Japanese food yet.
The scrambled eggs are everything! It's super nice, love how it's still quite 'wet', and not totally solid hard, that's just chopped up omelette tbh. Haha!
#MorningSelfies
After a good breakfast, especially for Amirah, who can't eat alot of the things cause they weren't Halal, and it was so funny, because her tagline there was
'Eat as much as you can, cause you don't know when id the last meal.',
We got on the bus and took of to the Imperial Palace, or at least, the outside of it, and the weather once again, was beyond me. Seriously, ever since coming back to Singapore, the shit weather here just made me realise how much I love and miss the weather there.
Upon walking in, we see this statue of this, and the coordinator told us that this statue was created in honour of him, for being one of the heroes who help protect or conquered a land, and his act of bravery and sense of leadership recognised by the King then.
But the side view is pretty cool huh? So majestic and dramatic. After admiring this part for a little bit, we walked up to see the rest of the palace, which essentially is the door and the scenery. I thought this was a little bit rushed, because as soon as they finish explaining they asked us to move move move, and bloop, we gotta go back to the bus.
While walking up, we passed by a few of the trees, and see how nicely groomed they are?! From what I've heard, Japanese take a lot of pride in grooming their plants, and it costs a hefty sum to get their plant trimmed. A small home-sized bonsai can easily cost S$90 per trim! Imagine how much it costed to trim the big trees! Now that's good business.
The walk up to the place was tiring, but the grounding was not the normal paved roads, but small gravel and stones, and I was thinking if anyone slips and falls here, IT IS GAME OVER for the face.
I look like a bumble bee in these photos, I mean WHAT IS THE POINT OF WEARING sunglasses when you can still see my eyes?! OMG, so fail! Hahah!
After a quick tour around this area, we hopped on the bus again to go to Asakusa, and also their temple 'Sensoji'. It was a cool place, because we got to see their temple, and it was so grand and big and amazing.
Look at the woman go! While walking in to the temple and area, we saw this rickshaw rides, and initially I just looked away, but I had to relook, because IT WAS HUMAN DRIVEN. In Singapore, we all took the easy way out and ride people around with bicycles, and some even more hi tech, motors, but really got to take my hats off for these women, running around the streets of Tokyo while ferrying a passenger and that rickshaw that looks like it weighed a hundred pounds! Now that is amazing.
We're given an hour to roam around before we have to meet up for lunch. And this is the part where I really liked about the entire trip, we're given free time and left with our own devices to get around, which I prefer, to get closer with their culture, rather than having to walk in a group and not having enough time to look at something/take photos. Plus point!
While walking, we heard this loud shaking sound, turned over, and we saw this!
A fortune telling station!
So here's how you do it!
Look at Ker Xi go!
And me, being the forever unlucky bitch that I am, I shook the thing TWICE somemore, and both times, I got this
Lucky number 97, and my fortune turned out to be
BAD FORTUNE, and I was praying for success ok. Does that mean I'll forever be working for someone and my blog will forever be mediocre?! NOOOOOOO. T_____T And guess what, Ker Xi did it twice too and she got GOOD and PERFECT fortune. Why god, why?! And pay close attention to the words on the paper ok!
'THE PERSON YOU ARE WAITING WILL NOT COME',
'IT IS BAD TO MAKE A TRIP'
'YOUR WISH IS HARD TO BE REALIZED'
I don't even want to read the rest. Hahah! Once we're done getting our fortune told, we walked into the main temple, where you can see the gold statues of the gods and make prayers.
After doing our rounds at the main temple, it started to rain! :( Being the lazy creature(s) that we are, we decided to just run through the rain and not take our our umbrellas. #LazyLife Walked around the street stores instead to see what they have there!
The time we're given is super not enough, because after walking around the temple, we only had 10 minutes to shop! And the shopping area was HUGE, since it is a tourist spot anyway, and in the meanwhile, we had to fight the rain! Saw some nice Japanese apparels I wanted to buy, but didn't get to do that! And we were late, but who cares! And when we reached the meeting area, we saw this guy, who we thought was a local celebrity of something, cause people were taking photos of him, and his face is FLAWLESS, and not just that, IT WAS GLOWING, G-L-O-W-I-N-G, no, not oily or dewy, but glowy, probable had make-up on too, but seriously.
Walked to the restaurant, and they booked out the entire place for us, which I really didn't understand why, because there were only 20+ of us altogether, and the place can easily sit a 50+.
Lunch! (Photo Credits : MaryN)
Not trying to be a mean person about it, but the lunch, was pretty bad. Ok, I may be biased because once again, THERE WAS NO MEAT! *cries fucking hard*, and it was just pasta, salad and water. And I always prefered my pasta with mushroom sauce, because I'm not a big fan of sour sauces when I have pastas, so you can say I didn't enjoy the experience. I was kinda curious why we haven't had any Japanese food by then, cause I thought this is a Japan-based trip anyway. But you know, that's my own problem lah.
After we got out of lunch, we saw a poster from the restaurant, and the meal we had basically was a set lunch for 1000 yen, around S$12. I felt like the 1000yen could be put to better use, but that's just in my head. Cause for the same or less, we could all flock down to the nearby BK and have meat in our meals, and a side of soda.(Ok, actually I'm just hungry and that's what I wanna eat now.)
After which, we hopped on to the bus again, after a long walk under the rain, and my camera, my dear DSLR was under the rain, and I only thank god it didn't spoil, we go on the bus, and contrary to my thoughts, we were the first few people that got on the bus
Me : Eh oh my god, Amanda look, a train station!
Amanda : Tradition?
Me : Alamak, TRAIN STATION LAH.
See lah, this woman is clearly getting old.
While walking, we saw this Japanese couple wearing the traditional Yukata. I think it's so cute that young people still embrace traditions. Just so cute I can't!
While on the bus ride which took some time, I got the opportunity to catch up on a little bit of sleep, and upon hearing the word uniqlo, my eyes, went *ding* and I immediately woke up. The thing is you see, my thoughts on Tokyo was like lights, city, action, but we went to a more quieter area, with malls a few stations and stops away, so I was excited when we saw something more modern. Hahah!
Fast forward to when we reached, the dreaded(for me), Japanese lesson. Dread because I was firstly, SUPER SLEEPY from not having much sleep the day before, and secondly, it was 5 HOURS, and with absolutely no Japanese experience, it was going to be super hard to even digest anything.
5 hours passed through just like that, in the middle of it I just couldn't keep my eyes open and just had to put my head down and doze off during the group activity. Now I feel bad! Haha! It was pretty hard for me because the entire time I had question marks in my head, which is translated through my face of confusion.
But the trainer that day was super nice to us, like I feel even worse, cause for the whole 5 hours, she was so patient and smiley at us. Even though I think inside she was judging us and cannot wait for it to be over.
Here's one of the later parts where she asked some of us to act out scenes using Japanese, thank goodness I got the called only once! On top is Gwen, Zhi Xiang And Michael doing one, see how Gwen still poses for the photo, so cute right! I feel like the sad thing is, after the class I didn't remember much, but thankfully we had a lot of worksheets that we did and can always refer to it!
After the 5 hours that I never thought I was going to be able to survive through, we bused our way back to the hotel for dinner, and this time we went back to the restaurant and is just a 100 step walk away, the same restaurant that served us the all vegan, tofu lunch the day before, but this time luckily for me, they served chicken!
(^Photo Credit : Jeremy)
See that pile of veggies on the side, I personally didn't eat a lot of it, but Amanda Ambrella, took it down like it was chocolate milk, good on her man. Since activities ends at 8 and we sorta got the groove of that after 8, we're free to explore the city by ourselves, and I really wanted to go shopping for clothes a little bit, cause the next day we're flying to the designated state and we're coming back to Tokyo only on the last 2 days, of which we're moving to a different hotel then!
So after dinner which was 7:30, we rushed off to get directions. Since the SIT people were planning to go sight-see me, Manders and Viena decided to join them. After asking and getting directions to Uniqlo, and the people at the front desk was super nice, we realised the malls there closes super early, like Uniqlo closes at 8, which meant we're gonna be there just nice when it closes!
Since I haven't had sleep the previous night and the lack of sugar in my blood, I had dizzy spells and was feeling so lethargic, I opted to stay in and just rest. Saw some of the photos they posted though, and it was truly quite the view.
Back in the hotel room, I took a nice shower and laid in bed pretty much the whole time and watched a few Wendy Williams show and visited Viena, Yamunah and Amirah's room and chatted for a little bit. And thank goodness I went over, cause they gave me like a sleeping tip : listen to music, and it worked! I really slept well and blocked out all crazy thoughts.
