As the year comes to a close, we just thought that we would want to recap on all the things that we did on 2013, as anyone would really.
One of the most fun things we managed to do was to travel to The Land of the Rising Sun together, on our virgin solo trip. You know, the one where you're not accompanied by any authority of any sorts. Yes, it's an amazing experience. And yes, you should cut down on your video game shopping to save up for trips like these because they are so worth it!
Anyhow, for this entire stretch we will be posting all the photos we have from our trip everyday until the year ends.
Hopefully this will help you should you intend to fly there any time soon, which you really should if I may just reiterate.
We managed to visit a great number of parks all around the city of Tokyo, ranging from amusement parks to the famous ones with gorgeous scenery.
First up was Puroland, otherwise known as Hello Kitty Land to the rest of us. Mandy is mad over Hello Kitty so we ended up taking a train to Keio-tama station, which is pretty out of the way from Tokyo. Do take note that also that tickets are pretty expensive, est $40 SGD so you may want to reconsider if you're not a huge fan of the franchise.
As for ticketing, you have to head to Lowry's or any other convenience store to buy them from machines that are entirely in Japanese. The staff are amazingly helpful as always, so you can ask them to help you. We were blessed to have a Chinese staff help us out (I know, what are the odds right!) and buying tickets for Puroland and the Ghibili Museum was a breeze.
As you can see the place also is host to a multitude of cartoon characters under Sanrio, which is great news for people like me who prefer Cinnamonroll or any other cartoon besides Hello Kitty.
We were very, very fortunate to be able to snag tickets for the famous Ghibili Museum as well. I am a huge fan of Studio Ghibili films - Spirited Away, Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa, Ponyo and Howl's Moving Castle, just to name a few.
It's incredibly affordable with entry tickets being priced only at 1400 Yen or about $20SGD or less, depending on the exchange rate.
However this museum is usually packed to the brim. Tourists or even the Japanese themselves have to book tickets about 3 months in advance, and if you're the anxious type I have heard of sites that sell these online ahead of time. Being the reckless youth we were we only bought them 3 days prior to our visit, and lo and behold we were blessed again to snag tickets even at the last minute. Even the person helping us purchase the tickets was surprised.
Unfortunately, photos were prohibited. Trust us however, when we say that it was stunning inside and definitely worth a shot if you love Hayao Miyazaki's films. It was nothing short of dreamy, complete with European influenced architecture, plenty of greenery and warm sunlight all around.
On our way to the Museum, we stopped by this gorgeous organic coffee cafe to get Mandy her caffine fix. The weather was so beautiful that we just had to snap a few shots here and there too.
Why can't Singapore be as gorgeous? Damn.
Lastly I had dragged Mandy to Yoyogi Park, which she was so reluctant to go to. She isn't much for greenery being the city girl she is. The place proved to be one of the best photo shoot locations ever, and we had a great time just lazing around to shoot aplenty whilst having some food in between.
Oh and for those of you on a budget, you'll be happy to hear that entry is free (:
I have this habit of snapping the locals too, and we spotted this handsome looking couple and this little boy. I just love their fashion sense. I mean, don't they just look so good together?
It makes me happy every time I look through our Japan trip photos. We really had a great time at all the different places we visited and we are really glad that we can share them up here and tell you all about them! We hope you will stick around for the rest of our Japan photo logs coming to you everyday till 2013 is up! Have a great night ahead, everyone and we'll see you here again tomorrow with more of our favorite moments in Japan.
Love,
Brendy
