Escalator

This is one sight u will never see in Singapore: In Japan, people actually keep to one side of the escalator. They even queue up to step onto the escalator...
In most parts of Japan, pple keep to the left:
Only in Osaka, pple keep to the right:
BTW, there is no sign around that says "Pls keep the the left/right of the escalator".
People just do it

Tokyo Dome

in Japan, Dome = Stadium

Its a huge place, with a DOME, shopping centre and a theme park combined in a cluster.


Night view of the dome (entrance)
And theme park:

More abt CATS

Today, 4 singaporens from NUS went to watch the musical CATS in tokyo.
Entrance of the theatre:
At the entrance of the hall:
Yup, its the same broadway musical that came to Singapore a couple of years back, but in Japan, all the music lyrics are dubbed in Japanese (the meaning is retained, though)
Take a look at this song "Memory" - the most famous song in this play
Original English version: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=cJHzoAmA8Ec
Japanese version(3min 15sec onwards): http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=PMo62DDyIh8

Another interesting thing we found in the theatre were these toilet signs with cat figures instead of human figures!!!

Kitty

Another blog abt cats...
Hello Kitty is every... it just gets scary after a while... There are hello kitty souvenir shops everywhere... and even a whole theme park delicated to Kitty.

All sort of souvenirs

Even in Universal studios, u see kitty mascot:












On some trains, this Kitty warning sign tells u to stay away from opening doors. "Dangerous"

Oh no, what did they do to kitty? bondage?

Enoshima

This small island near tokyo is indeed a nice place to visit.
Its linked to the main island by a bridge..

Nearby, saw some guys taking their motor boat practical test.. haha. berthing, manoeuvring, man-overboard drill... how nostalgic....

Main shopping street on the island.. .lots of food and souvenirs

A few temples(as usual) on the island
Nice landscape garden inside the temple I found this thing in one of the temples:

In order to "sweep away" bad luck, you have to walk through this ring in this manner. First anticlockwise, then clockwise, then anticlockwise agian.. Quite weird- and troublesome - but the small kids found it fun.. They were running around the ring and playing catching games :)

Many pple wrote their wishes on these cardboards. I took a peep, and found out that 80% of them were wishing for a good marriage or a good boyfriend/girlfriend.... hmmm... perhaps this shrine is famous for granting good 姻緣.

There was also a futuristic-looking lighthouse on the island

Scenary was great... you can see the whole bridge and Tokyo from here And it was also freaaakking cold, as the wind was very strong up there.

This is one of the few places in Japan where u can actually see stray cats around. In fact, this island is famous for having many cats...

Even the souvenirs are all cat ornaments This is the ticket booth to buy the ticket to go up the lighthouse. And this cat (i forgot the name) sits here everyday to greet the visitors... so cute.... It enjoys being pet on the head.
The security guard told me that this cat has been here for abt 6 months!!!

KTV

JApAN- Home of Keraoke !!!
KTV shops are just everywhere!!! and they have quite a good database of songs.. Japanese/english/chinese/....
Been to KTV 6 times since i came... yipes!! thats like almost once per fortnight : )
Gone wif different groups
with Japanese friends -> mostly Jap songs + some english songs
International friends -> only english songs
Singaporeans/Malaysians -> good mix of chinese, english and jap song..

haha. lesson learnt: one must always know how to sing diff language's songs in order to fit in : )

Here are some random photos:

The KTV machines here have interesting functions. For eg, they do give u a score after each song to see how good your singing was.

After each song, they also display the amount of calories burnt while singing that song... hmmm.. didnt realise that frequent visits to KTV can help pple lose weight too :)

FOOD: Part 2

This is another post about some of the food I have eaten here.... prepare to drool...

B'fest set (only 500 yen), very worth it. Bread, coffee, salad, bacon and egg. The bread is actually made according to one of the bread featured in the anime Yakitate!! Delicious~~!













Snacks/Finger food:


Green tea ice-kachang


































The size of the fish on the sushi is abt 3 times the size of the rice!!


Dons/Set meals: