Ohaiyo Japan! (1)

Ohaiyo!

Ohaiyo is the informal way of saying Good Morning in Japanese, the short form of Ohaiyo Gozaimasu. I won’t be teaching Japanese on my blog here, as I only know of a few casual phrases myself. ^^

 

Have you checked out our Kizuna 10 FB page? Check it out and LIKE it here if you have not!!!

 

Over this week, I’ll be uploading photos from the 10 day trip that my school mates and I took back in March. We were very generously sponsored and invited by Japan to be part of the Kizuna (Bond) project as part of 100 Singaporean students and tutors to visit and indulge in the rich Japanese culture and heritage! You can check out more of the Kizuna project here.

Without further ado, here are some photos from the 1st 2 days of the 10 day trip that my school mates and I took back in March! 🙂

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Japan Kizuna Trip 11th March – 19th March 2013 (Arriving back to Singapore on the 20th March)

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Pre-flight, with my lovely travel buddy Ying! 🙂

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The view from the plane as we were about to land in Japan… It was the end of winter and early Spring, thus the brown fields.

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As we near nearing, we can begin to see the plane’s shadow! So cute right? ^^

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This is how they unload the cargo from the plane! Yes, I had a very good view from where I was seating. ^^

Our plane landed at about 4pm and we were scheduled to reach the hotel by coach at about 6.30pm but due to peak period traffic, we reach only about 7.30pm! 😮

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Finally got the keys to our room in Tokyo Grand Hotel! I love how vintage the room keys are. ^^ The yellow book is our very detailed and informative handbook for the trip! My schoolmates and I were part of Group A with other students from Temasek Poly and Raffles Design Institute.

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 How the hotel room looks like! Small but well equipped. Beds were very comfy. Japanese style robes were laid on the beds for occupants to change into. The view from our room shows the office opposite and at 7.30pm we still saw office workers working away!

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 The toilet is clean and well equipped.

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As we reached pretty late, dinner was prepared in very dainty lunch boxes. It was far too much rice for us to consume… Heh.

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Post dinner, our first night’s activity began with convenient shops shopping! HAH. There were 3 convenient shops around our hotel and pretty much nothing else. We would soon realize that’s pretty much all the shopping we could do during this except for the last day at Tokyo. 😛 Here you see MUJI stuff at their convenient store! In Singapore MUJI shop has its stand alone boutiques in town, Orchard. The prices are definitely cheaper in Japan, almost 50%! ^^

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This, my dear friends, is one of my favourite food in Japan. It’s sold in the convenient store and you pick out what you want and place them in the containers provided, pour a little soup in and pay up. I bought the sausage and vermicelli  and they were AWESOME. Super tasty! ^^v

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We were told that Tokyo Tower was a 10 min walk away, so the Lasalle group decided to take a walk out together! We came across a subway station and decided to take a look and “recee” for our last night when we get back to Tokyo. 😛

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We made our way back to the convenient shops again! Check out the cup noodles from the land of Nissin! 🙂 Totally reminded me of my JC PW (for the uninitiated, stands for Junior College Project Work) where my group mates and I researched and presented on Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin cup noodles!

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My supper for the night! Tasty sweet courn noodles with dessert!

Day 2~!

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My outfit for day 2~

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Selca with cutie Ying~

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Candid of Lasalle peeps, Xav, Adeline, Alex and SJ, during our morning walk around our hotel! 🙂

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Even the dogs in Tokyo are cute!

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This photo commemorates our Lasalle hero, Alex who wore shorts out in the cool weather of below 15 degrees. *thumbs up* 😛

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Our resident cutie Desmond, with his ice cream and Alex photo bombing. HAHA.

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Billboard along the streets of real life Japanese criminal hunt list. :O It’s scary!

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The use of order, pattern and symmetry is found practically everywhere on the streets of Japan.

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Even the office workers smoke in an orderly fashion!

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The flowers along the roads are happy. ^^

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The waterworks covers are too cute! This one’s self explanatory, is for fire hydrant hoses in case of fire.

We had to attend a talk back in the hotel on Earthquakes in Japan, but I won’t be going into details about that. 😛

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Our sushi packed lunch, rice and egg and seaweed.

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After lunch on day 2, we had some free time so we took a walk around the hotel and we discovered this! The REAL Yakiniku (Japanese barbeque) which we often see in Singaporean malls!

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Our brave tutor/supervisor/”SUPER leader” Ginette took the first plunge. HAHA. AND boy it was GOOD. 😀 So we all took turns to buy one stick and shared with each other. ^^

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Here’s a random shot of Ying all happy and cute. ^^

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Look, Ma! Penang restaurant in Japan! 😛

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My buys of the day from convenient store shopping. HEH. Coffee, gums and sugarrr.

After attending the afternoon talk, we packed up and moved out on coach for our next destination for the next few days!

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We stopped at a pit stop during the coach ride and LOOK WHAT I FOUND. A basket of cuties!!!

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I simply couldn’t resist. So I brought one with me. ^^ It costs about S$6. And it has beans in the tummy! It’s happily on my desk now.

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We arrived! At Hotel Omoide Roman-kan, Daigo Town, Ibaraki Prefecture! It’s a Japanese traditional type of hotel stay.

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This is how the room looked like when we first got our bags in and trying to get them sorted~.

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The balcony area.

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The toilet area.

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And I realize in Japan, the exit is called “非常 阶段“ which when translated it means “not the usual steps” cool huh! 🙂

In case you were wondering, I can read and understand chinese characters and traditional Japanese characters use chinese characters. 🙂

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We quickly got things sorted and went down for dinner! 😀

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LOOK AT THE SPREAD YO. This one’s dessert cakes and the super yummy greek style yogurt in the steel bowl! ^^v

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Tomato pasta!!!

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Super yummy Japanese tempura (fried) sticks! An assorted choices of fishes and vegetables with the descriptions, if you can read, on the end of the sticks! <3

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Along the walkway you’ll find many pressed floral art like this! So pretty! 🙂 

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When we got back to our room… IT WAS TRANSFORMED! 😀

 

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We decided to try the tidbit offered in the room! It was complimentary. this one’s plum flavored soft pastry. Super nice, I bought 2 boxes back home before we left. 🙂

That’s all for today! Come back soon for my next update!

<3,

Ena




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