[June in Japan] Day 3 – To Tokyo we go!

Huh… I thought I wouldn’t be able to post this entry until I go back to Thailand. WordPress has been giving me a hard time uploading images even though I’m sitting right beside the router…

Glad they are now all up there!

So here we are, the 3rd day for our trip from last June (I know, I know, but better late than never right…? ^^”)

But first, links to my previous entries on this trip:

Day 1 in Kyoto

Day 2 in USJ Part 1

Day 2 in USJ Part 2

I don’t think it will be a long entry either because we didn’t do much that day apart from sitting in a train and ate xD

We booked an early-ish train back to Tokyo, the Nozomi shinkansen left Shin-Osaka station at 9.10 so we had to be at Shin-Osaka before 9am at least. We ended up checking out pretty early and took the subway to Shin-Osaka.

We had enough time, in fact, to have breakfast!

Cue picture:

A classic Japanese breakfast with rice, grilled fish and miso soup.

We found a small convenient restaurant near our platform in the station itself which served Japanese styled breakfast pretty quickly so we ate there. I was happy because I wanted some Japanese styled breakfast at least once while I was in Japan.

Also had my favourite milk tea with me! I had nearly a bottle everyday for the whole trip! I’ve tried other brands too but this one is my favourite. And it was tricky, because not every convenient stores sell them… I mostly had to hunt for Family Mart.

Our train ticket

Lune and I talked about whether do we wanted to splurge a little bit more for the Nozomi train, which is the fastest from Osaka to Tokyo. The ones I’ve been on were Hikari ones which is the second fastest. The Nozomi trains are not included in the JR Rail Pass so never had the chance. We didn’t buy any Rail Pass this time since we only needed one trip into Tokyo so we thought, why not?

I planned on sleeping on the train, but somehow didn’t. No idea why… May be I was too excited to get to Tokyo…? ^^”

It was a smooth journey and we arrived at Shinagawa station before lunch time.

This was the waiting area where I sat and waited for our Shinkansen during my first ever trip to Japan. That was back in April 2011 and we landed in Tokyo but took the shinkansen to the Kansai area before coming back to explore Tokyo. So seeing this scene again brought back fond memories 🙂

We then took the JR train to Takadanobaba where our AirBnB was!

We passed by Harajuku on our way so I couldn’t help but to take a photo ;D

And look at what (or who, rather) I spotted on the train too!

May I introduce you all to Sakurai Sho, my favourite Jpop idol ;DDD I’ve really been into Jpop for over a decade now and that pushed my interests (and shall I say, passion?) for Japan and its culture to the maximum level xD

Anyway, our room was pretty nice. We actually booked the one in Shinjuku, because I love that area and it’s been a while since I got to stay there. But there was a change in the law or something about AirBnB in Japan so the owner has to shut that one down and moved us to this one in Takadanobaba instead. Apparently it was bigger and there was a king size bed and a sofa bed. There was a small kitchen and a washing machine too so it was great for me since it was summer time and I didn’t want to save all of the laundry for 10 days…

The owners were really nice and were kind enough to let us ‘check-in’ to our room earlier than normal so we went in, dropped our luggage, freshened up a bit and headed out for lunch again!

We headed back to Harajuku because Lune and I are fangirls and I wanted ramen xD

One of my favourite dishes to have in Japan at Jankara Ramen! This was recommended to me since my first trip but I didn’t plan on going to it. And then my family and I stumbled upon it by accident! lol It wasn’t until I sat down that I realised it was the same place as the one my friend recommended to me. And because the first time we went was in April 2011, we were the only patrons in the shop (granted it was around 2pm but the shop has never been that empty every since).

We can now request for the egg to be soft-boiled only too so it’s always heavenly to have this bowl of ramen.

IB grade: a strong 6

After a fulfilling lunch, we walked down Omotesando road to Kiddy Land. Where we proceeded to spend a few hours in, exploring each floor and Lune was shopping for a friend xD

However, the exhaustion finally caught up with me and I really needed a place to sit down so we walked back towards Harajuku JR station to Pablo cafe.

I told you we went to Pablo more than once during this trip! xD We also tried out their classic cheese tart as well as this scrumptous cheese honey toast. I had a pot of tea to keep the exhaustion and headache at bay too…

The cheese tart was ok, we were too full to fully enjoy it but we dug out every single cheese pieces in there!

The cheese honey toast though… Om nom nom… The honey actually made the taste more conflicting so I would highly recommend you to just have the cheese toast on its own. So good.

By that time, the day was moving towards the evening so we made our way back to our room. I had an important appointment to keep too. You’ll see.

There was a 7/11 convenient store on the way and because I’m a sucker for presenter/ads, I bought this energy drink.

Oh, it looked similar? Well, why don’t you scroll up towards the top and see.

Yeap, the same one that Sho-kun was a presenter off xDDD Solely the only reason why I bought it in the first place. And then I tasted it and was hooked! The jelly was so grape-y!!! It felt like I was eating a really delicious grape jelly drink. I bought quite a few of these during my trip.

We also bought our light dinner at the convenient store too so we can eat in our room.

So what was the appointment that made me go back so early in the evening?

VS Arashi is normally on every Thursday at 7pm on Fuji TV. One of my favourite shows of all time. It was soooo fun!! And even though I know little Japanese, I still enjoyed it massively. ;DDDDDDDDDDDD

And here’s dinner, salad with peach yoghurt (because you got to have peaches during a Japanese summer). I told you it was light! XD

All in all, not a busy day. We just started early so a reason to go back to our room and rest early was a good thing.

Just to show how much we walked that day.

We pretty much chilled around Tokyo for a couple of days before hitting Tokyo Disney Resort. It was still great fun to spend time with my wife in pretty much our favourite city 😉

And I think I’ll sign off here! I’m scheduling this post to go up tomorrow instead because I want to write something about my birthday over the weekend. But it’s 7pm already! Let’s hope that my internet is strong enough so I can do something on the bed instead of in the spare bedroom….

Hope you are all having a great week!

With love,

From GZ

PS – Flying home on Thursday! Whoop whoop!!

PPS – I actually finished this entry first before yesterday’s one about my birthday. But decided to postpone publishing this entry until today…

PPPS – 25 January is actually Sho-kun’s birthday so お誕生日おめでとうございます! I hope you have a wonderful birthday and a fantastic year ahead! <3<3

PPPPS – this entry was suppose to go up on the 25th of Jan but I just found out today (1 Feb) that it didn’t happen…. Why, WordPress? Why?