Day 3 (17th July 2011) - Todai & 池袋

Went to Tokyo university to show She around as he wanted to enroll there. Saw some filming going on at one of the anime buildings near our hostel, something on yoyo...



Headed over to Hongo San Chome station and walked over to the red door. Seems like She might not enroll after the tour haha. the whole school was big, with a dirty murky forest/park. We went down to the murky pond to find his 龟仙 only to discover some father happily catching tadpoles with his son.

saw some statues which i didn't see before though.





We ate at the shokudo there, and in she's opinion, a military canteen.food is so-so but cheap... x_x





After we grabbed some todai souvenirs, we Went over to ikebukuro and it seems like there were some Full Metal Alchemist movie promotion going on! Turns out there's a new movie coming out and Toyota car salon has collaborated with them to do an exhibition. (",)



my edward!







and fma cars! how cool!





and the figurines and picture displays









We walked around to get answers for 2 quiz questions, which entitled us to a sort of lottery where we received a post card, and stayed around for bingo (didn't win anything) then it was time for Animate.



Not much for Animate except there was an event on this new anime called Exorcist which looked pretty nice. Bought a pixel squall hp chain and my usual magazines.

We then headed to namja town. Tickets were 2,500 yen after 5pm an 3,900 yen before that. It was a huge mistake to buy the passport as the place was full of games we didn't understand and you had to run from station to station to play virtual games or analyze stuff. It wad not possible to go to certain astound without completing the prequel. Would have been much better to just pay the 300 yen entrance and enjoy the food instead...





There was again an FMA theme for the food so we tested the gyoza (normal, should have gone for the cheese), the burger was nice and the crepe was normal. Saw a cute Edward manjuu but it was just too expensive.







this burger is quite nice!!







alphonse gyoza??







crepe is not too bad. like the pudding inside...



games were really lame. can't be bothered to take pictures of them...

some detective room...





and we wanted to play the simulator but you had to complete a 45mins long ghost buster prerequisites (walk around listen to some device telling you what to catch etc). sianzzzzzzzz





After we were done with namja - refused to leave without playing at least 3 games to get our money's worth but got a bigger headache trying to decipher what was happening - we went to find ramen. Yasubee was sold out!! Thank goodness nakamoto was still opened (with a long queue). They were having some ladies sey special, which was a half-ramen, but turns out it came with rice and mabo tofu as well... Do the ladies here eat as much?! Had ramen and went back hostel for the day.

1st nov
we reached home and slept around 6am, then woke up at 10am to meet mingeong for breakfast/lunch around sakuradai.


had sukiyaki udon

and oyakodon/soba set

not so bad for my last meal in japan

stella looking chui

then i went to cancel my softbank account only to realise i couldn't access the data inside anymore with the sim card gone... sighsss. so all my contacts are gone gone gone.
around 1pm, stella and mingeong sent me off to ikebukuro to take the airport limousine to narita.
my luggage was horribly overweight but through an hour of discussion with the supervisor and my travel agency (mandarin world, DON'T ever ever buy from them, they like to shirk responsibility and are damn rude. located in orchard) i was finally granted 30kg, but i had to hand carry the rest. ughhh.
and so my 6hours long flight began... i was sad that i couldn't taken pictures (it was in my luggage above, and i didn't want to trouble the people to move away so i could take it...) of the plane food because there was an appetizer which had a hotate and salmon. i love flight food.
and i finally reached singapore at 12am, my family being there to fetch me.
we went to eat roti prata at this crispy prata house and went home around 230am.
i'm finally back in singapore. so i guess this blog would have less and less updates since i won't be snapping so many strange photos again.
it's back to my singapore life (;_:)

31st october
stella took the day off to accompany me on my last day in tokyo. we decided that it would be a eat-a-lot day so we started off wandering in ekoda (cos we saw a good ramen review in a ramen magazine)
bought a yakisoba bread (it says okonomiyaki bread actually...) at a random bakery

we chose this ramen restaurant cos it looks pretty appealing




ordered the limited autumn edition

it looks really awesome but actually it's one of the worst ramen i've ever tasted. it's supposed to be a thin shoyu flavour but the soup was horribly salty and stank of tonkatsu (pork). luckily we shared a bowl if not i would have died.
after lunch, we headed to ikebukuro and shopped around tokyu hands looking for stella's big birthday card. i saw a couple of posters which i took a liking to and started snapping them. luckily i wasn't caught ;p

they just look so marvelous... i wish i could create something like that...
we then stopped at a cream puff cafe and slacked there for a while. stella was again studying her menu as usual.
she had a cream cheese ice cream puff with mixed fruits, and a matcha bubble tea

while mine was a matcha puff with mixed fruits

we stayed there till we felt there was too much smoke polluting our personal space and left for dinner at this tendon ya. i hate restaurants which allow smoking, it doesn't really make a difference whether you have non-smoking spaces/smoking spaces because once someone smokes the whole place becomes a smoking area.



shared a bowl of tendon (lots of mixed tempura), it only costs 500yen and it tasted great

stella finally drank her chocolixir but she said it wasn't very good. i find it not so bad, just a tad too sweet.

back at sakuradai, we found a ramen shop that has a lot of people queueing for it


wowwwww... we didn't to eat it eventually cos it was closed the next day (;_;)
later on, we went out again to meet stefan and daeyoung for karaoke till dawn xp
we bought lots of food in

the new mac's corokke burger was great

the manager of the store realised we had a lot of outside food and gave us a warning. seems like there are cameras in every room... scary.
we still had fun singing anyway.
stefan's german song

daeyoung's korean song

and stella's chinese song (ye zi by the twins, quite nice)

and my blood+ i was too excited with the animation scenes :D

no idea what's with stella and her raise-your-hands though.