Tuesday, May 29, 2007

 

second day in Japan

I woke up around 3:30a and couldn't fall back to sleep. I kept myself busy watching 50 First Dates while I waited for my wife to wake up.
We eventually left the hotel around 6a to have breakfast. I was so surprised that around 6a it was already bright. I kept telling my wife that in Singapore 6a is still dark. Back to breakfast, we had a difficult time finding a place as almost everything seemed closed. We finally found a place that was open: Yayoiken. We had to order our meal tickets through a vending machine. It was an experience! I kept having this thought in the back of my mind that our food would come out of the machine. I know this wouldn't happen; otherwise what is the purpose of the kitchen at the back of the restuarant? But I couldn't help feeling that the food would eventually come out of the machine. Of course tickets came out instead which we then handed to the helpful waitress who initially directed me and my wife to use the machine.
Our orders came in about 5 minutes or less. My wife and I ordered some rice dishes. The waitress informed us that if we wanted some more rice, a large rice pot was behind us available for us to self service. I went back for seconds. The rice was very delicious even by itself.
We finally finished our breakfast and walked around. I saw a bunch of young boys wearing white hats and school uniforms. We were so surprised that they wore short sleeves and shorts as it was very cold for us and didn't understand how the boys can withstand it. I convinced my wife to follow the kids to see their school. After about 5-10 minutes we finally reached the school. There was a bright blue colored uniformed guard. He almost looked like he came straight out of an anime. He was greeting the boys and a few teachers as they entered the half opened gates. I remember when I was in elementary school in San Francisco there was no guard at the entrance. Once in a while there was the janitor, an old guy, who I recognized in the cafeteria and he would say hello to me.
We finally headed back to our hotel around 9a and checked out around 10:30a. We were headed to Osaka and had to take the train back to Tokyo Station in order to take the Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka station. I felt rushed and boarded the first Shinkansen we saw. My wife said it would leave at 11:56a. We first sat down and relaxed. Afterwards we tried looking for food in the train but couldn't find any. We realized the food was outside so we were wondering if we should go out because we would need to lug our heavy luggage also in case the train left. We decided to go and it was a rush to buy our bento boxes. My wife picked some meat box and I chose some vegetarian box. We were able to make it back on the train. The train left almost immediately.
I was so surprised later when I heard the train announcing all sorts of stops it would make. I remember the train I wanted was the Hikari one which only had 7 stops. I finally realized that I didn't take a better look at the schedule in front of me that I printed back home. We boarded the slower "K" train which made every stop along the way. As a result it arrived at Shin-Osaka an hour later than the Hikari train. I remember telling my wife we can board the later train if we needed more time to decide what bento boxes to buy. But I decided to rush it. Turns out if we boarded the later train at 12:06p we would have arrived an hour sooner at 3p and that was the Hikari train I wanted. Buggers and shucks!
To sort of make up for the lost time, I read our printed instructions to understand what local trains and tickets to buy to reach Nippombashi station and reach our hotel: Osaka Namba Washington Hotel. The instructions were easy to understand and we reached our hotel with ease.
After we relaxed and cleaned up we decided to head to Den-Den Town. After some walking we finally decided to have dinner. We spent around 1,300 Yen. I had this cold noodle dish as I wasn't very hungry. My wife had seafood noodle soup. At the end of our meal, I decided to go for ice cream after seeing the advertisement near our table. I chose green tea and she had chocolate.
After a yummy dinner, we did some more walking and I spent a lot of time in a game shop where I purchased(or rather re-purchased) the Japanese Legend Of Zelda classic for Game Boy Advance and Super Mario Land for Game Boy. I used to have these two games but I lost them somewhere. :( I was so glad to replace them. The shop was just amazing. They had so many games!! Too bad they were all in Japanese. When we left the shop the rest of the stores were beginning to close. I felt bad that my wife couldn't shop. We're aiming to get the Canon S5 IS for her soon!

Monday, May 28, 2007

 

first day in Japan

So exciting...
Took Keisei line to Nippori and then transferred to a different train called JR Yamanote to Ikebukuro. Had some difficulties finding our hotel, Star Hotel Ikebukuro. Ate at a decent noodle shop, then walked around the Tobu underground shopping area.

Arrived midday so quite tired now and heading to sleep soon...

Friday, May 18, 2007

 

Bought New Shoes!

I got an Adidas Campus low top basketball shoe. I bought it at the giant 24 hour Mustafa and Samsudin mall in Singapore for 101 SGD. Converted at today's rate is about 66 USD. Here's a link from Amazon for some pictures. The colors are the same as the pictures: white with light aqua stripes. I tried getting a link from the Adidas website but I couldn't find the shoe. Ugh, the site is just horrible. One tiny difference with the info on Amazon is the shoe's name is Campus 2. The name all over my shoes just says "Campus" only.

Before I chose this shoe, I also liked a similar model shoe also by Adidas. Here are the pictures at Amazon. Unfortunately Amazon only has the kids version. The one I saw at Mustafa was the mens version and had a different team, the Timberwolves. The colors were lighter blue(than the Cavaliers version at Amazon) and green stripes. I didn't chose this model because the sole was too flat. The Campus's sole was arched thereby giving me a feeling that it hugged my foot better. Admittedly, I tried the Timberwolves version first and didn't notice the flat sole. Then when I noticed the cool looking Campus model and tried it out, I noticed the difference.

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