7-day Japan Exploration :Tokyo Disneyland

28th April 2014


Last attraction but not least, the trip would have not been a complete one if we didnt include Disneyland in the itinerary, surely?


This is the second trip for me to Disneyworld after Hong Kong.

So these are some of our exciting moments that we managed to capture, the rest of the activity were queuing after long queue after next long queue. But that wasn't the reason for us to stop enjoying every ride possible in this Disneyland, even though some of them are quite similar to the ones in Hong Kong Disneyland.

If last time we stuffed all of our food in one go before entering the park in order to save the money as best as we could, but this time around, we have upgraded the meal time into  having a proper lunch... A-haaa...Luckily the vegetarian meal is available in one of the restaurants. Alhamdulillahh..

And another remarkable convenient here is that,they reserve a quite a multipurpurpose room to visitors too. So we didn't have to go to some much hassle (like one in Hong Kong Disneyland, as what I've wrote here many years back ) to get our religious obligation fulfilled.

We took one-day pass for this visit, and apparently it wasn't enough time to cover all the rides due to soooo long queue that we have to endure. Nevertheless, it was still worth it for we all have the full package of fun,with satisfactory amount of shopping for family members,which I was missing during last visit.

7-day Japan Exploration-Tokyo city

26-27th April 2014

Our stay in a fairly quiet neighborhood in Kyoto came to its end and we packed up our stuff to move and experienced one notch busier place of Tokyo metropolitan city. As usual, it was time for us to snap some pictures with the girls in kimono. I mean, this time has to be proper ones instead of candid that I showed in previous post during check in.Hihi..

 

It took a while to wait for the arrival of shinkansen. The passers-by who looked at us in bewilderment were not the reason for us to just sit on the floor instead of using the designated seat nearby. Oh, all of them were occupied,anyway. Yes, save the energy while it lasts. 

Finally we arrived at Tokyo after almost 2 and half hours of travelling.( I hope I remember it right, huhu).

We recharged and refreshed at the lodging before resuming to hop on the next train to Shinjuku station. In here, we were eyeing for some souvenirs, and lucky enough, the efforts were a bit fruitful than the previous hunt in Osaka. :)) Nevertheless, there were not so much of price haggling can be done here, and same goes to other places when we purchased the souvenirs. Other than that were restaurant, clothes with brand names that were not familiar in our knowledge.

We were done with this place and next place was to find the BBQ halal restaurant in Shibuya. Being in the busy town like Shibuya, even when we were guided with map in hand, apparently finding the restaurant was not as easy as we thought. Another tool was missing, that was GPS. Dila then approached the Japanase fella to seek for help.

And it took a about another half an hour of walking ,yes, half an hour or so with growling stomach to reach the isolated restaurant. Azab!

 

After a few times of asking the helpful japanese on the distance, at last we reached the restaurant. Fuh!!! Unfortunately he refused to join us enjoying our barbeque dining , instead he resumed to his destination afterwards. Haishhh..

We were super starving like nobody's business as we were served with salad for the starter. Plateful of fresh salad vanished, like in a split second!

A few hours in the restaurant having the delicious fresh meat and chicken, finally we started to move to next destination. Did I tell you how much this dinner costs? 3000 yen per pax. Pfttt..But it was worth it!

Next place was Hard Rock Cafe in Roppongi. All the ladies bought stuff for themselves, and I, on the other hand just managed to catch something for Ju Zie. Nothing to my likings or collectibles to buy.Hmmpphh..

(Hye, can you please snap picture of us and Hard rock Cafe sign pls ? ) to the passers-by. As usual.

The following day in Tokyo, our attention was caught by the city skybus. We instantly agree to use the service to get around Tokyo city in a day. After all, we need to save the remaining energy to explore Disneyland on the next day.

There were a few sky scrapper tower in Tokyo, and Dila suggested for all of us to visit on of the towers, that was Sky Tree Tower. Not a bad idea.

 

So we thought we have saved our energy for riding the skybus, but no, we we quite wrong. Apparently we were forced to queue in a super long line to reach the counter,I would say almost 2 hours perhaps, or more, I felt like going berserk. Grr...

But the chances to see Tokyo from helicopter view was indeed spectacular! Again, the experience was worth the long queue.

And there is also glass floor, spot some faces controlling the gayatness? heheh..

The tour resumed to interesting places around Tokyo city such as...



Tokyo Central Railway Station...

Tokyo tower...

and et ceteraa et ceteraa..

We completed the city tour in the evening before we started to find place to eat.So we have kebab for the day. Annnndddd... birthday surprise to Zaira too! Hihi..

7-day Japan exploration -Osaka

25th April 2014


We started our day very early. One of us has to start rising from bed as early as 3 in the morning, local time (which is one hour ahead of Malaysia time) to catch Fajr prayer and taking turn to the one and only bathroom in the house.

Our next destination started from hopping onto subway at Gojo Station,heading to JR station to catch train to Osaka city.

So at 5 o'clock we have already on the road.Oh man, even at this early hour, the city and the people were no less busy. Pfftt!~~

The day was still early when we arrived in Osaka. The men in suits were seen everywhere rushing to work, I guess.

We wasted no time and headed to first destination of the day, Sumiyoshi-taisha shrine. It was a looonng walk in the sunny yet chilled day. But at the end of the search for this place, we were thrilled upon seeing the spectacular view inside the area.

The following destination was Shittenoji temple. By this time, Kak Gee already gave up from resuming the tour and returned to Kyoto instead due to the pain at her ankle. So we continued with the remaining 4 of us walking to the next attractions. We dropped by at 100 yen shop and I was so glad that finally I found the dried seaweed, one of items that I was looking for eating in Japan! Munching them throughout the walk, I forgot the hot day instantly.

The next attraction in list was to go to Shinsekai. There was nothing interesting here.Since we have reached here, so we took picture featuring the Osaka Tokyo as the background.

We then proceeded to Shinotteji Temple, and saw the locals were crowding some sort of  flea market selling pre-loved books.

 

Quietly, I eyed for any interesting English books that might be sold, but no luck. And one thing I amused most about this market, it was very quiet, despite so many buyers were coming in! Truly, I have never seen the situation of its kind at so many countries that I have visited!

 

Spontaneously we toned down our voices, excitement to pose and laughter to fit in the quiet crowd. Kih kih kih.

We were ready to proceed to Shinsaibashi. We were told that we can buy the souvenirs here, as there were available at this place.The idea of having some shopping after exhausting walks has really uplifted our mood meter which were already half red.Grrr..

However, in order to reach Shinsaibashi, we need to walk across Namba Walk, at almost 30-45minutes. Thankfully it was under roof and there were shops here and there to stop.

Zaira and Fiza had shown vital sign of exhaustion. Seriously we never walked this far in our lives, except for marathon or walkathon. That is an exception, as we were not really mentally prepared that our tour would be this farrrrrr away to reach by foot. *gasp*

Out of the spirit to find for the said souvenirs shops, we toured round and round Shinsaibaishi, but at the end of many hours navigating the area, the efforts were fruitless. I didnt know where it went wrong, but somehow we felt like we were at lost in the crowd with map in our hands.

So we returned to the bus station to hop on the bus to our final destination of the day, Osaka mosque. It was the right bus, all of us were alert. But again, the bus  kept moving on and on and on for almost an hour, until we saw the signage "Kobe". O.M.G!

I started to feel goose bump on my skin, as the day was getting dark and our journey in the bus did not show any good sign that we were heading to the right destination as we left Osaka further and further away. We tried to communicate in English with the local teenagers next to us, but they seemed having difficulties to understand us.

We do not want to be dragged further in the bus, so we hopped off the bus in the middle of nowhere.

I was started thinking that we might ended up sleeping over at the roadside if the bus was not available to return at the hour.

The information board was written in Japanese, so I have no other option but to hail for the passing cyclists, a few times being ignored until a teenager who was willing to stop and help us. The bus was still available, but we have to wait until its arrival time, 20 minutes or so, he said in chicken and duck way of communication. pffttt....

At last, the bus arrived, punctually and we returned to the bus station where we started this haywire journey. Not so much of a good day today in Osaka. Bye.