Posts Tagged ‘Shinjuku’

Tokyo – Day 9 of 9: Harajuku, Shinjuku

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Out last full day in Tokyo. We had covered all the areas we wanted to so today we decided to go back to Harajuku and Shibuya.

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One of our first stops was this cafe which serves the nicest egg and cheese on toast! There’s just the right amount of mayo to sweeten things up! As you walk down the main street, Takeshita-dori, from the station, it’s the first cafe on the left!

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I also decided to have my last crape for the trip. And while waiting in the queue, I noticed the cherry blossom tree which was in full bloom. Beautiful.

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After that, it was on with the crape! yummy and delicious. The cream they used was one of a kind.

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It’s always fun walking along Takeshita-dori street. There’s heaps to see and the shop fronts are always very different.

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Sometimes you may even bump into hot Japanese school girls!

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After walking along Takeshita-dori street, we decided to check out some of the other back streets. Most of which are quant areas with heaps of smaller shops. The street shown above is Cat Street if I’m correct. I recommend checking it out as there are quite a few shops selling unusual stuff, as well as some unique looking buildings.

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One of the buildings that popped out of no where was this Nike Shop. They were having a sale, and as usual, the locals love to wait for good things.

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There was even a toy shop which sold some vintage and hard-to-find toys.

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Back on the main road, Meji-Dori, you may come across the Audi Forum building or even this shop front which reminded me of the scrolling text in some of New York’s Times Square light boards.

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Harajuku is packed to the max on weekends as you can see on the street side as well as outside the train station.

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We checked out the nearby Yoyogi park were there were heaps of festivities. Apparently the locals love to spend their weekends in the park and they stream into the park in hordes. They lay out mats and congregate in groups eating and drinking away! Some practise their dancing while some practise their juggling skills.

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The entrance to the park is lined with food stores selling all types of Japanese street food. Like the yakitoris above. Yummmm.

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And of course no trip to Yoyogi Park would be complete without cosplayers. Though for some reason we saw hardly any. I took pics of those we did see though. Love those Elvis impersonators.

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We had a great day out and was kinda sad to have the night ending on us. For our last meal we felt like tempura. We walked all around Shinjuku looking for a good place to eat, but couldn’t find any place that specialised in tempura. It was only when we decided to check out 1 last obscure corner did we finally find the place. It was the same chain of restaurants that we had the best tempura a few days back. Yeepeee!

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Shinjuku was a great place to stay and as a base of operations, it was very well connected.

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Our hotel, Sunroute Plaza Hotel Shinjuku, was also very comfortable and reasonable in costs. The location was great as it was about 5 mins away from Shinjuku Station.

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Narita Airport in the morning, waiting for our flight back. Dreading going back to Singapore.

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Checked out the food court at the airport and they had this pretty cool technology. For every order, they pass you this small device. You can walk around or go back to your seat, when your food is ready, the device will beep and vibrate signalling for you to pick up your dishes. Good idea!

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The huge A380 waiting for us on the tarmac.

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The view from the top is truly one to savour. Can anything be as blue?

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The new inflight entertainment system on SIA planes rocks. Over 100 movies, tv programmes and games to keep one occupied. The screen is now bigger and even has a small light below for your reading purposes. You can even connect your iPod or USB drive to read video, mp3s and documents!

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And that’s it! Our last pic of our Tokyo trip. It was a fantastic trip and we had great fun. 9 days exploring Tokyo and eating Tokyo. Heh,, we wanna go back!

Tokyo – Day 6 of 9 : Ginza, Odaiba, Shinjuku, Advertising Museum

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A day of sightseeing to some famous spots in Tokyo, Ginza & Odaiba.

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Tokyo trains, they run faster than our MRT’s and most of them have real time maps on a screen which tell you what stop is coming up next.

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Having just arrived at Ginza, we saw Cherry Blossoms. A good start to the day. And better yet, a traditionally dressed Japanese man under a Sakura tree. nice.

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We came across this Mochi shop in Ginza which had the loveliest shop front. They had Strawberry Mochi’s, which sadly wasn’t ready when we were there. So we grabbed some apricot and sakura mochis. Both were very delicious.

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Our first stop was the Sony Building. I had read stuff about how this show room was state of the art and had really cool interpretations of Sony’s new tech. Well, none of that, it’s just an over glorified showroom. yawn yawn

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The famous Ginza 4-chome intersection.

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It seems that every luxury brand in Tokyo has their own big building in Ginza. Good to know how rich they are and that at least some of them have the decency to have unique buildings.

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The Advertising Museum run by Dentsu, the advertising agency. The building, or should I say skyscraper the museum is located in is owned by Dentsu. Yes, they whole freaking building. Anywayz, the museum was pretty interesting. Showing ads done by not only Dentsu, but other ad agencies around the whole. It showed the evolution of ads from the past to the present. A pretty interesting museum and good to help inspire your creativity.

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The Venus Fort mall at Odaiba. It has some nice interiors. But on the whole, a bit of a boring place and a tourist trap. lol Decks and Aqua City nearby are much better.

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The famous Rainbow Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Yups, New York and Paris are not the only places you can find the statue. This one was given to Tokyo by France.

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The FUJ TV Headquarters, known for it’s unique architecture.

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There was a beautiful sunset by the beach, and I decided to play with some of the camera settings. Nice.

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Back to Shinjuku after a day of sightseeing. Shinjuku is one of those places that never seems to sleep. The neon lights light up the streets and locals come out in force at night.

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Down at the Isetan basement, we were checking out the huge variety of food. And came across Strawberry Mochi’s!!! Woot! We bought 6 to go and boy did they go… down our throats. They were extremely delicious!

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Nothing better than ending the night at our fave BBQ place. Look at the amount of meat that is about to be gobbled up!

Tokyo Toy Shops – 1 of 4 : Nakano & Shinjuku

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Nakano is not as well known a place to find toys, but down at Nakano is Nakano Broadway with 4 floors of toy shops. Mandarake’s main shop is situated there amongst a variety of shops where you will find anything from Star Wars, Macross, Otaku, transformers, 12 inch figures, etc. I found this place has some rare finds as well as some good vintage toy shops. So how do you get there? Well Nakano lies 3 stops away from Shinjuku station on the JR Chuo line (Rapid). You can also take the line from Tokyo or Kanda station. The line is the orange coloured line. One you reach Nakano station, there are only two exits, North or South.

Jan 2010 UPDATE: Updates in Blue. Check the pics out below! :)

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Take the North exit and you will see the crossing and building as in the first picture above. Walk towards the glass covered walkway and walk all the way till you see Nakano Broadway as in the visual below.

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Once you enter there is an escalator on the left. That will lead you to the 3rd floor right to Mandarake.

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Mandarake has smaller shops on the other floors as well. Altogether, check out the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors. You can use the staircase to navigate thru the floors.

I took more pics of Mandarake to give you an idea of the kinda stuff you can find there. Boxes and boxes of 2nd hand stuff. Some brand new too!

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Just opposite the main store, Mandarake also sells comics! Though mainly Japanese comics with some english ones spread about.

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Mandarake’s smaller stores on the other levels are themed and specialises in different toys and genres. Below is the vintage toys store.

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Below is their store which has more mainstream stuff, especially new and old Transformers!

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Below is one that specialises on SciFi stuff, including 12 & 31/4 inch toys. This has pretty cool stuff! New and 2nd hand.

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And of course there are the random stores that sells all kinda stuff, heaps of Star Wars toys, Gundam, 12 inches, DC, Marvel, Marcross, Transformers, etc. I could keep on going.

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Below is where it lies on Google maps. Nakano and Akihabara are the places I recommend to visit if you are short of time.


View Tokyo Toy Haunts in a larger map

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I couldn’t find many toy shops in Shinjuku except for two. Yodobashi is basically an electronics store which has a pretty neat toy section. The store has a few shops in the buildings around the area, you can check the store’s map when you get there to find your way around. The toy section lies in the basement of the section that sells the PS3, Wii and Xbox. It has a large variety of Star Wars, Gundam, Macross, Otaku and many others. Worth a look.

Pics of the Macross shelf. :)

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View Tokyo Toy Haunts in a larger map

Tokyo – Day 3 of 9 : DisneySEA, Akihabara

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I’m finally back in Singapore and I thought I’ll continue to post pics of my Tokyo trip.

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We had to wake up extra early in order to catch the bus to DisneySEA. It has been quite some time since Jas and me visited a Disney park and we were both pretty excited. DisneySEA is the newest addition to Tokyo Disney parks and it is the only one of it’s kind worldwide. The entrance to the park was packed to the max and as soon as the gates opened, the Japanese visitors literally started running to the various rides to queue. The pic above shows the massive crowd entering DisneySEA.

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The DisneySEA worlds are all themed after various aquatic lands. In the middle of the park is the huge volcano.

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You can see how much effort went into designing the park when you walk around. From the top two pics, the Arabian Coast, Mediterranean Harbour and Mermaid Lagoon. Mermaid Lagoon was a spectacle to behold. You literally felt that you were underwater.

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They even had this real cruise chip, the SS Columbia which was docked in American Waterfront. Managed to take some pics on the ship.

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What I really liked was how each of the Disney shops kept to the theme of the various lands. From the top, American Waterfront, Arabian Coast and Mermaid Lagoon.

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Of course any trip to a Disney park would not be complete without the rides. And we managed to catch the main ones. The Indiana Jones Adventure was the main attraction with queues up to over 3 hrs with the Fastpass ticketing running out before noon.

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Though even with the queues, the rides were worth waiting for and a whole lot of fun!

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The landscaping of the park was also one to note with beautiful Tulips, Sun Flowers, etc. blooming here and there.

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On the whole, DisneySEA was heaps of fun. A bit more adult oriented, but still good for the whole family!

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After DisneySEA, we had a bit of time for my first of 3 visits to Akihabara, famous for it’s electronics and toys

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Yes I was more excited about the toys, but I’ll leave that to another post soon.

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We ended our day with some Krispy Kreme that was kinda opposite our hotel. There were queues for the donuts 2 years ago when I last visited, and there are still queues after all this time. Even in the freezing cold (8 degrees) of the nite! I was happy that they gave out fresh hot donuts while we waited in the queue. Goooo customer service!

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Nothing better than watching the donuts that you are about to buy come straight out of the production line. yumm

Tokyo – Day 2 of 9 : Harajuku, Shibuya

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The day started at Harajuku with me and Jas braving the mass of people. From Harajuku we walked to Shibuya. It was a long day of shopping and eating. heh.

First up was the crape in Harajuku, I previously tried this 2 years ago and it was lovely then. So I had to grab another one when I saw the stall was still around. Strawberry crape. Nice…. The whipped cream is deadly! So so rich.

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The thing about Japan is that there are so many weird and wonderful things to see. I came across this shop which had the cutest matches,,,, with faces!! Would you even want to light one and burn them up? lol

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No trip to Shibuya would be incomplete without two pictures, one of the famous Shibuya Crossing, the largest and busiest pedestrian crossing in the world.

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And the other pic would be a pic of Shibuya from the crossing at night.

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After a tiring day, the best ending would be great food. Jas and I walked around the streets of Shinjuku and saw a Yakiniku restaurant that looked good the night before. So tonight we went there. From the pic you’ll see it’s a smokey place. It’s in one of the back streets that it’s almost impossible for me to give you accurate directions to the place.

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The food was simply excellent! I love eating Yakiniku back home in Singapore, Robertson Quay and Holland Village both have good places. But this little place in Shinjuku was awesome! The food was good quality and cheap! And the atmosphere was second to none! Small, smoky and full of Japs! We’re definitely going back there before the trip is over.

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Tokyo – Day 1 of 9 : Shinjuku, Ikebukuro

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I’m in Tokyo and loving it! It’s pretty cold here, about 9 degrees averaging, brrrr. So I may or may not update my site for the next 2 weeks. The pic above is Shinjuku by night. Staying very near by.

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The flight over on the A380 was great. Sat on the upper deck, it’s everything that SIA say’s it is. Love the new inflight entertainment system.

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And Shinjuku by day. Tomorrow is Harajuku and Shibuya. Will catch the cosplayers. I hope to check out the great toys and action stuff on this trip as well. Can’t wait!

Some other random pics as a sign off for tonite!

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