Tag Archives: Tokyo

Inspiring, Travel

Ohaiyo Japan (5) Tokyo Senso Temple & Asakusa

June 24, 2013 Ena Teo 1 Comment

Ohai~~~~

It’s the last installment of my Japan trip blog series!

Without further a do~

DAY 9

Our breakfast at Tokyo Grand Hotel. It’s buffet as usual, and here’s what I picked out. ^^

I find myself fascinated when staffs are suited up! So… classic and professional. 🙂

Our Lasalle table, where we are busy filling in our thoughts and remarks about the last 8 days of Kizuna project.

Our final day began with an art exhibition commemorating the earthquake and tsunami disaster in an art gallery 3331.

I was curious what 3331 mean and the staff explained that it is the rhythm or claps that Japanese traditionally end their meetings.

It goes:

Clap x3, Clap x3, Clap x3 and Clap! Thus 3331. Cool huh! 🙂

It’s an art gallery housed in an old elementary school.

We were introduced to the current exhibition titled “Making as Living” which talks about how artists began socially enterprising businesses and artworks post disaster. It’s when the Japanese began to realize that when there’s nothing else you can do, you begin to make the best of what you have, you make, like how they start to make use of the wood from broken houses to rebuild things and thus Making as Living. It’s very inspiring.

A huge wall cover of a scene of Tokyo from the birds eye view. Very organized town planning as you can see, in a grid system.

This art work is a series of 3 long panels which showed the number of artworks, songs, shows. documentary about earthquakes and tsunamis since the 1950s or even before.

Then we came to this Indian restaurant for lunch near the Asakusa area! It’s very interesting eating Indian flavoured cuisine with Japanese ingredients like vegetables grown in Japan. Very fresh, unique taste. No photos but the food was good, tasty and authentic.

A pretty flower along the streets!

We came to visit the famous temple at Asakusa.

It’s said that the smoke gives you good blessing.

And so is the water from this fountain from what seems like a warrior from the olden days. 🙂

A sneak photo of Japanese ladies decked out in their traditional kimonos. Very pretty! 🙂

Another sneak picture of more Japanese girls. Sorry I am so sneaky but I don’t dare know know how to approach them to ask for a photo. >.<

The food stalls with very Japanese style lanterns and banners.

Cute bags of cotton candy with cartoons which I like, Hello Kitty and Marie! 🙂

Des, Calli and Ying looking, choosing Choc-coated Bananas. 🙂

Grego feeding Des? Heh.

Happy Des.

Cute dog along the road! Japanese dogs are so pretty! 🙂

Not sure why I was giving such a spastic face! And it was really hot here, like almost 30degrees! We were perspiring…

With Yings! 🙂

With the whole super gang!!! ^^ So much love.<3 <3 <3

Cute cartoons on vending machine.

Ice cream dispensers!

Amazing rickshaw pulley who is soooo skinny. >.<

Cute Yings with a sign that says “Get down the horse” kekeke.

Our dinner bento before we left for the airport!

Here’s a pic w our Super leader Ginette. 😀 She posted on FB saying she travelled to HK and Jpn with me. So blessed! :’)

A farewell pic with some of our fave people from the trip! Jacq, Beatrice, Dylan, Dominique , Myself and Ying. 🙂

We bought Tokyo bananas from the airport. Here’s the giraffe patterned, caramel flavour, its better than the original! 😀

And my goodies loot which I bought back for self, family and friends. 🙂

I am super thankful for the chance to travel to and experience the beautiful country of Japan. It was an awesome cultural experience and I love that the Lasalle group of us had so much fun together and even got together to finish the Kizuna10 project! May God bless the country and people of Japan! We love you Japan! Lots of Love from Singapore! 🙂

Ena

Ohaiyo Japan (4) Isohara Seaside & Tokyo Tower (enabalista.wordpress.com)
Ohaiyo Japan~ (3) Traditional House Tour and Glass Frosting Workshop (enabalista.wordpress.com)
Ohaiyo Japan~ (2) (enabalista.wordpress.com)
Ohaiyo Japan! (1) (enabalista.wordpress.com)
What’s Kizuna 10? (enabalista.wordpress.com)
Asakusa Day Out! (cosmiccheeseburger.wordpress.com)

Inspiring, Travel

Ohaiyo Japan~ (3) Traditional House Tour and Glass Frosting Workshop

June 20, 2013 Ena Teo 3 Comments

Hello!

Today I’ll be bringing you Ohaiyo Japan 三 , pronounced san in Japanese which is exactly the same as in Mandarin! 😉

I left off at the end of day 4, where we arrived at the beautiful Isohara Seaside Hotel.

So now for…

Day 5! ^^

Very tasty looking breakfast which I enjoyed a lot. Chicken, egg, wedges and banana.

A basket of really thick toast for sharing. The morning light is so lovely eh? ^^

Isohara Seaside Hotel’s entrance, taken from the coach.

And off we go for our first activity of the day, visiting students at Higashi elementary school of Takahagi City, Ibaraki Prefecture.

Guess who we saw from on the coach? Mr Green Bird! Kekeke. He was the mascot that joined us while we played with the children during our short visit..

Picture of the field where we lined up to wait for the children to join us. No photos allowed with the children, though we did take a few towards the end, but I won’t be posting here.

Another clearer picture of Mr Green Bird, that the children LOVED and bullied endlessly…… Kids will be kids, no matter the nationality! >.< Some tried to climb on his back, some tug at his legs (!!!) and some pulled his little tail endlessly. I felt so bad for him.

We were very very sad to part with our elementary school friends, each pair of us were grouped with 2-3 children and we transferred 3 pots of flowers into the planters that we made from the previous day.

After our elementary school visit, we came to tour a traditional Japanese house, the Hozumi Family Residence.

Signboard pointing us the way from where we alighted from the coach.

View of the grand house upon entrance. It reminds me a little of the traditional korean houses I watch on dramas. 🙂

Vintage photos of the house, its garden and its owners.

A drawing of the house, and it really still looks pretty much like this!

Photo of the current kitchen, which is updated with modern day sinks.

Television corner, where a sign says “No smoking.”

The tea corner, with tatami mats and traditional Japanese interior.

The same tea corner, but from a different view.

The fire place and an example of how the kettle is hung! Here I am excitedly standing under a plum tree that’s flowered in early spring. 😀

The next stop was Otsu port, where we observed and heard first hand experiences of the fishermen / staff of the Otsu port.

Here the two Otsu Port fishermen standing in the middle are sharing about how the crack in the ground where they are standing on, came about after the tsunami and earthquake.

Here we see where the arrow is placed, the height of the flood brought about by the tsunami back in 2011!

With Greggy, Ginette, Ying, Dez and Myself. ^^ We were FREEZING in the cold! Heh.

A castaway starfish on the gravel. This starfish has unfortunately dried and died. Reminds me of the inspiring story of the old man why the young boy why he is picking up starfishes along the beach and throwing them into the sea when it is impossible for him to clear all the starfishes on the beach. The young boy pondered for a moment as he threw in another and replied, “Well, I made a difference to that one!” The story is adapted from The Star Thrower story written by Loren C. Eiseley and it speaks of the idealism of children and youth that can change the world. :’)

The HUGE seagulls that were about the port. You can’t tell from this photo, but they were roughly twice the size of an average mynah or crow in Singapore. Probably because they thrive on the rich seafood in the area!!!

Here we see workers methodically packing away fresh octopus right from the buckets into styrofoam boxes with ice.

A boat docked along Otsu port, in the setting sun.

Then we headed back to our hotel for dinner!

A panoramic shot of our dinner venue in Isohara Seaside Hotel.

Tuna and mushroom pasta which was super yummy! I am not a fan of tuna but I am a fan of this dish. Infact I am a huge fan of Japanese and Western fusion pastas, like Spaghetti Goemon restaurant chain in Singapore. ^^

Not sure if this is a Japanese dish, but it sure looks and tasted like the Vietnamese rice paper spring rolls!

And yummy tempura fish with a very generous helping of tar tar sauce for sharing.

Super yummy cream puffs! 5 to a table, each of us took 2-3 and finished the entire plate. 🙂

AS IF we didn’t eat enough. 😛 We headed out because we wanted to try the sashimi plate at the neighbouring restaurant but we were a step too late as they closed at 9pm so we headed to nearby local Japanese fast food chain, Sukiya.

The boys, Greggo, SJ and Alex.

Adeline, me, Xav and Desmond. We look tired because we probably were but we didn’t want to waste our time sleeping in our rooms and wanted to experience more of Japan instead! 😀

Obviously we were stuffed from the spread at dinner, so we shared this one beef rice bowl with raw egg dip! 🙂 You can choose to mix it into the bowl or take the beef, dip in the egg and eat it with the rice, we is what we did instead!

Day 6

Our first activity of day 6 was to visit Glass Workshop Silica and attend a workshop to design cups that would be frosted!

The beautifully designed Glass Workshop Silica, with a modern, futuristic architecture.

My design, with a four leaf clover inspired design and “爱“ which stands for love, both in Japanese and Mandarin. The cups we design and frosted would be sold in the workshop and funds would go to the Kizuna Bond Project.

Here’s our group’s resident quirky girl Beatrice while she’s intently at work!

Here Dylan our fashion design extraordinaire is designing his cup.

And not missing out our super stylist Greg or aka Greggy Woo with his paisley inspired design. They were all too busy to finish up in the all0cated 45min to look up at me for the photos! 😛

I had minutes to spare so I walked about the workshop and snuck this photo with my #ootd and the simply breathtaking background scenery. :’) I would LOVE to wake up to a scenery like this everyday!!!

For lunch, we came by to this place Ichiba Shokudou which is located right next to a fish market.

It was a super Tempura spread!!! Xav, standing up with the other seated Temasek Poly (TP) fashion design girls.

Omo, omo!!! Fried wedges, fried CHEEZBALLS, fried fish!!! <3<3<3

Then we took a quick walk at the fish market and here’s a snap of fish sashimi for sampling! Thumbs up for fresh Japanese seafood!

Before our 1 hour lunch break was up, Ying and I snuck to this beautiful vast plain field for a quick #ootd shoot. My outfit’s inspired by Japanese school girl uniform, hence the school girl skirt, Peter Pan collar top, layered with a red cardigan with matching stockings. Finishing the look with my trusty coat and boots which I wore for everyday of the trip. Both the coat and boots I bought from my HK trip at Mongkok, Argyle shopping center for about S$20 each. ^^

After the workshop, we headed to Hitachi Civic Center to prepare for our presentation. No photos for that today, but there will be when we are back again on day 7.

Dinner time!

Delish fried fish and cookied veggies~

More tempura fish, mushrooms and sweet potato.

Chilled soba (Japanese for noodles) with soba sauce!

On this night, the group of us managed to make it on time to the restaurant next door for a platter of sashimi for sharing and ice cream! But I didn’t manage to capture any flattering photos as I was more caught up with eating. Heh.

After our 2 rounds of dinner, we headed back to our room, specifically the one I shared with Ade and Xav for our group meeting sesh where we prepared slides and props for our presentation on what and how we plan to share our trip in Japan when we get back to Singapore. That’s how Kizuna 10 came about! 🙂

And with that, sums up Ohaiyo Japan (3), days 5 and 6!

We’re more than mid way into our Japan trip, this series of photos are taking a lotttt longer to edit and caption than I’d expected! AND i am gaining weight while preparing because looking at all these mighty delish food keeps making me hungry and snacking. 😛 Hope you are enjoying it! ^^

Ena

Ohaiyo Japan~ (2) (enabalista.wordpress.com)
Ohaiyo Japan! (1) (enabalista.wordpress.com)
What’s Kizuna 10? (enabalista.wordpress.com)

Art & Design, Inspiring, Travel

Ohaiyo Japan! (1)

June 11, 2013 Ena Teo 6 Comments

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! 🙂

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

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

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.

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

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! 😮

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.

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!

The toilet is clean and well equipped.

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

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%! ^^

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

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. 😛

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!

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

Day 2~!

My outfit for day 2~

Selca with cutie Ying~

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

Even the dogs in Tokyo are cute!

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

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

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

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

Even the office workers smoke in an orderly fashion!

The flowers along the roads are happy. ^^

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. 😛

Our sushi packed lunch, rice and egg and seaweed.

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!

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. ^^

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

Look, Ma! Penang restaurant in Japan! 😛

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!

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

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.

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

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

The balcony area.

The toilet area.

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. 🙂

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

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

Tomato pasta!!!

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

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

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

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

Ena Teo | Enabalista

Tag Archives: Tokyo

Ohaiyo Japan (5) Tokyo Senso Temple & Asakusa

Ohaiyo Japan~ (3) Traditional House Tour and Glass Frosting Workshop

Ohaiyo Japan! (1)

Day 2~!

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