I’ve always wanted to have a go at the snow mountains and I’ve been pondering about it for years but I couldn’t find the opportunity nor the company to go with. Last month, my mate from Perth suggested that we should take a trip to Mt Buller when his wife and himself drop by to Melbourne for a  little R & R. And I thought, “why not”? On the eve of the trip, I went off to some ski shops near my home with my sister to rent the ski equipment and waterproof clothing. It ain’t cheap but it’s better than buying my own $500 ski jacket and pants.

Mt Buller is about 3 hours plus from the city of Melbourne. We started the journey at 4am and rode all the way through the country side, admiring the breathtaking morning dawn. We knew we’ve reached Mt Buller when we saw traces of snow along the elevated and winding road. Woohoo!

The weather was sunny and according to my mate, there was lesser people than the last time he came. That was a good, good day to enjoy ski-ing.

I’m a first timer (a la noob); I absolutely know nothing about the techniques nor the basic moves of ski-ing. Everyone suggested a ski lesson (at least an hour’s worth) and being a cheapskate, I’ve decided to rely on my mate and my beloved sister to guide me away from snowballing down the moutain. On the first two runs, I ski’d backward, crashed and burned froze while struggling to learn snowploughing and avoiding the people around me at the same time. On the third run, I’ve made it!  Time to go steeper and higher (and crash harder, faster)

When we returned to Melbourne, we had a nice, steamy spicy meal to warm back up our tired bodies. The next day, my mate and his lovely wife left for Perth.

Thanks to Alfred Low (My Thoughts Inexactly) for the photos via his brand new iPhone 4.

(The long stretch of shopping arcade underneath Namba)

From left:
1. Another fav of mine. Taiyaki with cream and chocoloate fillings
2. Some dancing fountain in the Namba Station shopping hall. I was enjoying the taiyaki there
3. They put up something nice to read along the construction area
4. A glance at Minami

From left:
1. Interrupted Elmo’s lunch.
2. Another arcade and pachinko outlet
3. Took this because I like the sculpture on the left. Reminds of the the African people in Doreamon
4. A shop that sells your favourite comedian/actors in a biscuit.

From left:
1. Mmmm, takoyaki
2. Decided to visit one of the cybercafes. It is cheaper to stay in the cubicle at the cybercafe than spending the night at a capsule hotel (~3800 yen)
3. My dinner. A complete 3 combo: Rice with fried egg, ramen and cold soba plus some radishes.
 

It was a good a day trip in Osaka. I didn’t bother to go to Disney Japan since it’s a long was to the west so I went back to Kyoto with an evening train.

Osaka is about 20 minutes away from Kyoto via Shinkansen so I decided to take a one day trip to visit the industrious Osaka. That day was a gloomy day unfortunately; it drizzled for the entire day, restricting my choices of place to go.

First stop: Umeda Sky Building. According to the guidebook (yes, I bought a Lonely Planet travel book), this building is a must to visit. It housed 39 floors of busines offices while the observatory at the top of the floor was opened for visitors to enjoy the view… for a price of course. Nothing’s free. 700 yen.

(It’s not haze, it’s the mist)

From left:
1. One of many angles you can observe the city of Osaka.
2. Not sure what it was but my first assumption was “Up yours!”.
3. On the way up to the observatory via the escalator.
4. Uh uh, see through eh?

From left:
1. Long way down
2. Some showcase at the base of the observatory.
3. The big dude’s eyes moved!
4. Ah, the famous Glico brand.
 

From left:
1. Seats provided if you are interested to observe the sun set in the evening.
2. Funniest menu I’ve read so far.
3. The miniature model of the Umeda Sky Building.
4. There is always a mascot for every building, district, etc. It has personal details of um, itself.

From left:
1. Solely meant for children, but I can’t help myself stamping the mascot and bring it home
2. Some fortune telling corner. I took a paper slip and didn’t know I have to pay to bless with good luck. Mua ha ha, free fortune telling.
3. Now I regret for not paying a dime for a blessing.
4. The telescope was free of charge. There are many things you can do when you are too free, like perving spying unsuspecting locals. Unfortunely, the locals who stayed around Umeda Sky Building knew about this and kept their doors/windows shut. Bah.

There was a staircase that led me to the top of the top of the building when I could freely roam around a small section of the area out in the open. It was raining pretty hard by the time we got there, and obviously no one would bother to venture outside. Me and my mate were arrogant enough to do so. We walked the four corners of the rooftop, pushing against the spitting rain along with the raging wind and we came back with a couple of silly shots.

The security guards there had a good time watching the two gaijins making a fool of themselves.

(Extreme wind + spitting rain + roof top of a tall building = A real dumb shot)

(The infamous klutz in the Windows family, Me-tan)

From left:
1. Nendoroid Binchou-tan
2. Nendoroid Haruhi
3. Revy from Black Lagoon
4. Saber from Fate/stay Night

From left:
1. Netrunmon’s Firefox-ko with little Thunderbird-ko plushie
2. Aries (or Aerith) of Final Fantasy: Advent Children
3. The annoying Kon from Bleach. A better plushie than the ones sold at Manifest.
4. The forever-hungry-Windows-OS, XP-tan

(Some Maneki Nekofor my laptop and PCs)

(Studio Ghibli Museum main entrance)

Getting there from the hotel was a little far off. I had to switch two trains and the journey took about an hour and a half. At Mitaka station, I had to board a special bus (Neko bus, as they described it) that ferried us the visitors to the museum which was about 5-8 minutes away for a small fee. 

(The Neko bus)

Once again, photography within the museum is a no no. Here’s a link for you to catch a glimpse of how it looks like.

For a short period of time, the museum offers different short films (about 15 minutes), screened in the theatre room. I get to watch a small ‘sequel’ of Totoro.

From left:
1. Some huge door in the museum compound.
2. Totoro was being stared at by many
3. Some old fashion water pump that works
4. Some cats staring from the window

From left:
1. The soot creatures from Spirited Away
2. Top view of the Museum
3. An over-priced cafe that I didnt bother visit
4. A star walk? ;D

From left:
1. The logo emblem of Studio Ghbli
2. Some sort of garden and a shed
3. A logo emblem on a brick

From left:
1. Some weird language written on a big cube.
2. The giant robot from Laputa.

And hence, marks the endth of yer two-week break away from Australia. I departed for Melbourne a few hours later (loved the rush from Mitaka back to hotel and then an hour ride to Narita Airport) and two days after that, I was right behind the working desk once more. T.T

(Thin slices of juicy sizzling beef)

From left:
1. Kimchi. A good way to open up your appetite
2. Beef tataki
3. Raw beef anyone?
4. Four different parts of the beef and a total of 8 slices on each plate. This cost us 3,200 yen each. We had a few.

(The hand that couldn’t wait for me to finish my snap shot)

And of course we left the restaurant with another new experience, for me that is. For the first time in my life, I’ve tasted the state of being a drunkard. Usually I controlled the intake of alcoholic beverages but during that estatic night, I crossed the sanity line. All thanks to the mugs of Asahi beers and sochu that made me puked at every train station stop. All the good beef wasted. Grrr.

My mate had the best night, enjoying my agony and drunkenness state as we I tried to get back to the hotel in one piece.

Lesson learned: If you want to get drunk, do it at home.

The buildings and the decorations in Akihabara outmatched any other districts that I went. A very busy district filled with electronic and anime/mange otakus. Just the kind of place that I’ll dwell. I came here twice and twice I went back to hotel with bags of goodies. After two such visits, it was enough for me to decide that I will definitely return here again on the next trip (if there’s one).

Reasons:
#1: There were chicks scattered around Akihabara
#2: There were chicks behind the shop counters attending the customers (me!)
#3: There were chicks dressed up as cosplays
#4: Meido cafes to visit!

 
Okay okay, I admit I didn’t achieve reason #4 above. No guts to step into that unholy domain without a solid knowledge of Japanese.

Around Akihabara

The shops

From left:
1. Melon Books, a doujinshi shop. It was small and crampy but that didn’t stop a horde of hard core otakus. It opened my eyes on the extremes too: Plenty of overweight, sweaty and smelly lechers (sad to say, no females in that shop) patronising this shop. A lot of H-doujins sold. *wink* *wink*
2. The popular Gamers. They already queued outside on an early weekday morning waiting for it to open, 1 hour later.
3. Anime figurines on display.
4. Cosplay costumes (strictly no photography, but that doesn’t apply to me)

From left:
1. An anime figurines shop. Every different genre was divided into different floors such as fantasy, sci-fi, school, maid etc
2. You can guess which floor would be my favourite.
3. Old skool consoles for sale!
4. Used games for sale!

Anime food(?)

Even the sale of food contains anime elements. Who wouldn’t want to have a bite of cookies that a maid eats? ;D 

Life size Haruhi 

Somwhere along the streets of Akihabara, I discovered a huge, awesome Haruhi Suzumiya statue outside a game shop.

 
(Ze life-size Haruhi)

(I must thank my mate for such a “professional” shot. Marvelous indeed)

(Zojoji Temple)

There was nothing to see during the day as the locals were busy preparing the stalls and set ups for the New Year celebration so we left for Shinjuku and returned back to the temple around 9.00pm. In Shinjuku, we finished the Silent Hill arcade game for the second time.

Around Zojiji Temple (Day)

From left:
1. Jizo statues next to the cemetary
2. More Jizo statues
3. It was empty during the day.

Around Zojiji Temple (Night)

From left:
1. Entrance of Zojoji Temple, 3 hours prior to New Year
2. The crowd was swelling and my camera is bad at night shots to capture the people.
3. Some ritual prosession. The blurring thing behind the drummers IS NOT a ghost. My camera sucks, that’s all.
4. I tried to take a shot at the Tokyo Tower at night. I only got the 2008 sign.

I couldn’t penetrate deeper into the Temple. There was too many people trying to enter into the temple to pray for luck and practically, I was like trying to squeeze through multiple human walls to get there so I retreated for good. Food comes first, pray later.
 

Food, food, food

From left:
1. Yaki soba. This guy was going cheap on soy sauce, meat and veggies. All we had was coloured noodles.
2. Takoyaki. This is one of the best takoyakis I’ve tried so far.
3. Ingredients
4. Takoyaki was stuffed with a whole octopus, the most generous one of all.
5. Manjuu again. Queue was too long to buy and he’s too slow.

Yaki soba was a rip off and it cost us 500 yen each. Each stall’s queue was so long that it took us 30-40 minutes to buy our food. We abandoned the yakitori and ice cream stalls. Too popular.

Mochi

There was a mochitsuki ceremony at the Zojoji Temple that night. Any one can join in and pound the mochi.

From left:
1. Dough was mixed and ready to be cooked
2. The dough was soaked and steamed
3. The steamed dough was placed into a mortar (usu) and pounded with a mallet.
4. Whack, whack, whack.

From left:
1. Massaging the mochi, oohhh…ahhh.
2. The pounded mochi was then sold with a few different paste: Red bean, in soup (salty not sweet) and peanut powder.
3. Peanet powder mochi, yumz and they pounded well.

(It was worth it celebrating New Year in Japan)

My mate wasn’t too happy with the New Year. He claimed that it wasn’t celebrated as grand as anywhere else. Of course he needed to gripe a little since he was conned by the disgusting 500 yen yaki soba.

I didn’t go to top of the Tokyo Tower. Initially I planned to but after observing the long snaky queues and fleets of buses coming in with tourists, I abandoned the idea and enjoyed the view at the foot of the Tower instead. 

Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower surroundings

(A shopping mall in Roppongi)

The outside

Inside the ‘food court’

From left:
1. Biscuits/Pastries for 3900yen
2. Steamed rice with different flavours.
3. Cakes, cakes, cakes
4. More cakes!

From left:
1. These are real spring roll. I thought it was for display only.
2. More confectionaries. They really know how to decorate a shop.
3. Fruits are luxuries items. A small watermelon is at least 2500yen
4. Liquor store

For lunch we had Australian food at the Outback Steakhouse. This is ridiculous, some would say. Of all types of food that I can enjoy, I ironically ended up eating food that is easily accessible back home. Not sure why we chose this, it was pretty random. Oh yes, now I remembered. I promised myself once to try out western meal at least once.

From left:
1. Bloomin’ onions
2. Aussie cheese fries

Once again, I screwed up the Japanese’s drone-like, clockwork mind. Typically for a western meal, they always expect one to order an appetiser and a main course for each. We decided 3 appetisers to be shared between the two of us. The waitress blinked for a while when I gave that order and took her 5 seconds to recollect her thoughts. Then she asked if one of these was to be my main course and I said no. She stoned for a moment again. Then I said, “I waaaaant (stressed) these three to be shared. No main course please”. Finally she understood.

The food was good. Too good and we ordered too much: we miscalculated the portions of the appetisers again.

(The missing corner credit card)

I used my credit card a couple of times when I travelled to Japan but this ordinary credit card returned back to me with unexpected yet an interesting feedback. This is what happened. 

After some long thoughts, I have decided to purchase the Nikon DSLR at one of the biggest electronic store, Sofmap. When I showed my credit card, they were so astounded and surprised that they never seen a curved cornered credit card, let it be a young or an old sales person that attended me. Twice I used it, twice I heard “sugeeehh” which roughly translated as awesome. They held up the card, stared for a moment and showed it to his colleague before finally he realised the customer (me!) was still standing right in front of him, waiting for the bugger to complete the transaction. After the processing, they took a final look before handing the famous credit card back to me.

I wonder what happens if I use the National Bank Mini Visa card the next time I travel there again.

(Source)
 

(The city that never sleeps)

The facets of Shinjuku:

From left:
1. A random shot using my new DSLR
2. Illumination ‘circus’ as they call it
3. Bunch of happy penguins

From left:
1. Krispy Kreme. As usual, the queue is long and to avoid a stampede from the hordes of customers, they only allowed a handful of doughnuts lovers at a time to enter into the shop.
2. Fancy ice-cream with a half loaf of bread?
3. Hell yeah I gonna try one of these. I did. The Mega Tamago.

(Their Maccas here put the Australia’s counterparts into shame)

Usually when I’m done with my meal, I will be nice enough to dispose the trash into a bin and return the tray but Japan’s Maccas gave me more work.

I have to:
1. Dispose the trash (fries boxes, serviettes, etc) into bin A
2. Discard the cap of the drink and the straw into bin B
3. Empty the cup and dispose the ice into bin C
4. Dispose the cup into bin D

 
I chucked everything into bin A. Mua ha ha.

(As usual, the crowd is killing)

From left:
1. One of many cinemas in Ikebukuro. I went one (Toho Cinema) to watch “I am Legend“ and it cost me 1800 yen a ticket. That’s almost twice as much I have to pay in Australia!
2. Some politician trying to make her point
3. The streets in Ikebukuro
4. Some performance in a large shopping centre World Import Mart.

From left:
1. It’s not cheap to play cosplay
2. An anime shop specially for females, filled with shounen stuff.

Fast food for lunch the Japanese style

(One of the most hardworking and dedicated worker I’ve seen so far)

I’ve tried a couple of times and I liked it: fast, simple and cheap. An average Japanese quick-to-get meals. One of them is Yoshinoya, a large chain beef bowl restaurants. They said Yoshinoya is a common and economical cheap food in Japan and I couldn’t help laughing when I heard the ones opened in Malaysia where it was treated as gourmet, luxurious restaurants and they were not cheap.
How it works:
1. You pick your desired food from a vending machine.
2. Put some coins (some accept notes), press the relevant button and ticket is given
3. Pass the ticket to the attendant, and he/she will serve you the dish you’ve chosen.

Simple eh?

The photo above shows the inside of a typical fast food joint, run by 2 persons only. An U-shape table with a front attendant serving the customers while another handles the kitchen. This lady is handling 3 things: serving food/drinks, cleaning up and kitchen hand, everything at the same time. At peak hours, the table is always filled with people as they come and go. No matter how many customers there are, just the two of them is more than enough to take care of the business. One word: respect.

(My life is confused now)

Now I’m contemplating which journey of life should I attempt to.

(Ayumi Hamasaki is everywhere!)

The aggresive promotion drive for Ayumi Hamasaki’s new album Guilty was really overkilling. Posters, mobile signboards and promo music via a mobile trucks/vans were seen at every corner of Shibuya (as well as other districts that we’ve visited).

From left:
1. The crowds in Shibuya
2. JR Train station for Shibuya
3. Arcades for the kids and Pachinko for the older ones
4. Live comedy stage. I do not know who they are but everyone laughed at every single sentence that come out from their mouths.

From left:
1. I should have returned to Shibuya during the day time. I missed this one!
2. Another part of Shibuya
3. Who gonna pay 580 yen to eat garlic?!
4. Deathsmiles, a recent popular arcade game that we wasted our money to play. And no, we didn’t finish the game this time.
 

We didn’t return back to Shibuya for a morning trip: Running out of time.

I took a brief walk around the popular fashion street, Harajuku. Nothing much to see unless you’re into fashion. I’m not. Probably I was way too late to be here and missed all the happening events during the day.

From left:
1. One of the streets in Harajuku.
2. Yoyogi National Stadium
3. Free hugs are cheap to come by here.
4. A shot over a pedestrian crossing bridge

Once again, the cousin surprised us with this fact. This Asakusa Temple has no major significant history attached to it except it is built for tourists, meant for tourists (what the…). You can safely bet that 80% of visitors are not locals. He said not many Japanese would attend for prayers here since the temple is solely for fishing unsuspected tourists, especially the shops around it. Need to confirm this hidden relevation.

From left:
1. Inside the temple
2. The pagoda inside the temple
3. Not sure what it is, but my first thought was a giant straw sandal.
4. The shops that squeezed the tourists dry. We prevailed! Muahaha.
 

This is the same guy I mentioned about that corrupted influenced us into purchasing a DSLR. Took some artistic potshots of us while we’re distracted.

From left:
1. Okay, this one we obliged to do it.
2. How a photographer expressed himself behind a camera. You don’t see that everyday
3. Not sure when he got this but I know I was busy perving.

Next, breakfast. There are hardly any cafe and restaurants opened early in the mornings except fast food joints. And that’s what we had.

From left:
1. Original recipe KFC.
2. Black pepper style KFC. Nice.

(Asahi Beer Headquarters)

The cousin said it’s the Asahi Beer’s headquarters in Japan and that funny looking structure is the froth of their beer(?!). If he didn’t tell me that, I would have thought it’s a turnip. I came back and asked some of my friends and my sister.

Their best response:
1. Housemate – Carrot
2. Sister – Carrot
3. HK friend – Flying s**t
4. Friend – Cloud

Update (26/02/2008): I was misinformed…again. The froth is actually on a giant-bee-mug-looking building (partly shown on the left) which is next to this giant golden ‘flame’. A better view can be seen here.

During the last ride, I noticed many of the passengers bought these bento boxes from the train stations and had their lunches in the train and they looked appetising. As I left Kyoto in the aftenoon without lunch, the curious me decided to give it a try.

From left:
1. Bento box A
2. Bento box B
3. Bento box A: Sushi with beef
4. Bento box B: Assorted ‘healthy’ variety, steamed (but cold) veggies, onigiri, some fish and a, um, snail.

(He’s French-wannabe!)

There’s nothing much to do on the train and it was so warm, we both slept through the journey. Once the train reached Tokyo Station, I spent some time familiarising their train maps and lines and then headed to Bakuro-cho station, a couple of stops from Tokyo station where our hotel was.

My mate has a cousin who studied and now working in Tokyo. We met up, we had dinner, we chitchat and guess what, he’s from Ipoh. He said he’s on holiday now, so he’ll be bringing us around Tokyo city. Gladly, we accepted.