Yours Sincerely,: A Not So Hot(But Kinda) Summer. (Summer Trip Post)

Hello! So I guess I should write about my summer trip?? HECK YA. But like my winter post, I'll give you the short exit, if you're here for photos instead of my long(probably) writing regarding the trip, then will all due respect, go view my photos of the trip by clicking here!

So if you haven't known about this yet, well, during my summer break, I went to Japan with my family! Well not actually the whole crew, my brother's family didnt tag along bcs his daughter had like a test or something. Anyway the duration of the trip was 6 days, so I'll write about them day by day okay and who knows maybe this could be a rough sketch for you people planning to go to Japan.

21st August 2015 (Day 1)

We arrived at KLIA 2 (due to the fact that we bought Air Asia's flight tickets) around 12?? I don't remember but there was a slight problem regarding the flight that we took, originally it was a direct flight to Japan but I guess something happened that they changed our flights so we had to take a connecting flight to Japan via Bangkok. But like tbh the connecting flight wasnt a problem, the problem was we had to recheck-in our luggage. So like in KL, we checked in our bags and just hold on to our hand luggage, but then when we arrived at Bangkok we had to take back our luggage and recheck it back in, which was a pain since we brought kinda lot of bags and carrying it everywhere was not something we had in mind (well me and my parents weren't prepared so we were kinda shocked) but everything was ok in the end when we got to Bangkok. I also tried the pulut mangga there (that was my first time trying) (tasted amazing) (ok takde la amazing but it was nice I liked it). Im sorry I honestly forgot how long the flight took but long story short the first day ended with us still on the flight, on the way to Japan.

22nd August 2015 (Day 2)

When we arrived at Narita airport and we finally met with our tourguide, he took us to this halal-certified japanese restaurant in the airport. We ordered chicken curry, it was okay, 6/10. Then we bought(or rather, our tourguide bought) bus tickets to Shinjuku where we board the train to our homestay. Oh here's a fact about Japan's(or rather, Tokyo's) train-transportation-stuff, let's say we're talking about this one line, like from Seremban to KL? Ok so apparently, Japan has 4 kinds of different trains, going through that one line. They have the normal ones, the semi-express ones, the express ones and the super-express ones. All for the same tix. Like whaaat!!! Like the most express-er the train the more stops they skip. I guess there are other places that use the same system but I never knew about it that was the first time I was exposed to it so I was kinda impressed. Okay so I should have told this sooner, the flight that we boarded from KL was delayed by a few hours?? Long story short when we arrived at Japan, our plan for the day got screwed (kinda) a bit, supposedly, after we arrived at our guest house we we're supposed to cool down like for a few hours and then start the tour, but since the flight got delayed and we we're kinda jetlagged, our plan for the whole day went from screwed to cancelled. lol. which was hella sad though because after a few days I found out that the plan for the first day was to go to Akihabara, like the anime heaven or something, which made me feel kinda pissed bcs that's like one of the reasons I look forward to going there, but takpelah, takde rezeki I guess. So in the end, I just took a stroll near the place I stayed. And then I went out for a stroll(again) with my along's family and mum. We went to a 7/11 (yes!!!!! they have 7/11 there!!!). Anyway our 2nd day ended like that. I did wanted to point out that if we arrived earlier(or as planned?) we could have cooled down faster but ah well. Oh I almost forgot, the homestay we booked is located kinda outside of Tokyo, near the Noborito station. We booked the homestay via AirBNB(which, coincidentally was the same app we[me and my friends] used to book our homestay in Paris), I keep hearing the name Kawasaki in regards to the homestay idk does Kawasaki has something to do with the homestay in Noborito??? Anyone familiar with Tokyo would like to lend a hand?

23rd August 2015 (Day 3)

Ok let's move on to the good part (eceh). On the third day, we set out to Tokyo Dome! Which is where the baseball games are played, our tourguide (Amin) told me Japan is famous for baseball (which I did not know due to fact that I do not watch sports) but I'm sure what Amin was trying to say was that Tokyo's team is pretty bad ass. Not far from the Tokyo Dome, we went to a Jump Shop, which is like a shop dedicated for animes like Naruto, DBZ, One Piece and some basketball and baseball anime that I did not recognize. Imo the shop is kinda big but there wasnt much things to choose from. They have like a lot of stickers or keychains (but they do have official stuffs too, just maybe not as much) (which was disappointing to me) (I also wanted to buy some HunterXHunter merc but turns out they dont have those there???? like?????). OH THERE'S ALSO THIS HUGE Naruto and Goku and Luffy(yah I actually googled his name) statue where you can take pictures with! So anyway, after that, we went to Ikebukuro! Now, Ikebukuro was in my master plan all along, remember when I said Akihabara was one of the reasons why I wanted to come to Japan, well, Ikebukuro was the main reason. Why you ask? POKEMON, OFCOURSE. Hahaha when my sister introduced the idea of going on a trip to Japan, my mind went directly to Ikebukuro, because in Sunshine City Mall located in Ikebukuro, is where you will find the biggest Pokemon Center in the world, and I'm ngl, it's pretty freakin huge. But the merc there follow the current trend, which is both ok and not ok. The ok part is that they sell all these mega-evolved plushies (I would more get into the terms used in pokemon but I think it'd be better if you google them if you're interested) and they sell TCGs, figures, stationaries, files, socks(not the pretty ones imo) and more plushies!! And IDK what but that day, the day that I went there, was the last day of event Hoopa, idk more details about it but I'm sure there was some Pokemon event held there because the main part of the shopping mall they put up reaaaally huge balloons of the legendaries (OK I should stop I'm making this post more complicated with the terms) and there were a lot of people there. Ultimately, I only bought three figures and a plushie, which is not much if you ask me. Also, besides the Pokemon Center, there's this Anime-place called JWorld, where they show stuffs regarding Naruto and DBZ and etc and when I went in I S2G I SAW THE MERC SHOP AND A SECTION WITH HXH WRITTEN ON IT AND A PHOTO OF GON I WAS SO EXCITED but turns out it was just a section, they didn't sell anything HxH related. NOTHING AT ALL I MEAN ERGH. FRUSTRATION!! ANYWAY, BESIDES THE SUNSHINE CITY MALL, there are also many shops there in Ikebukuro, but I can see a LOT of claw-game machines. At first I was like "wow these people are crazy for claw game" but then I tried one - and I was hooked lmao. You should also know that the claw machines dispense limited edition/hard to find figures and toys and stuff so that makes it even more fun. Sadly I didnt win anything and I spent around 500 yen trying to win a mudkip haha! There were a lot of electronic shops and clothing stores and cosmetic stores too but they didn't trigger my fancy so I didnt took much notice of them. After some time, we went to Shibuya in search of Tokyo Camii, which is a masjid located nearest to Ikebukuro. It's pretty nice. We qada/jamak there and went home after. We arrived at our homestay around 8/9pm and called it a day. Too early, but all the walking did cost a lot of energy.

24th August 2015 (Day 4)

The next day, we didn't have to travel far to go to our next POI, because the bus to Fujio F Fujiko's Museum is located near the Noborito station. Yep, that day we went to the Doraemon museum(despite the fact that it's the doraemon museum, there were a lot of non-doraemon artworks bcs FFF didnt just made doraemon)! He(Fujio F Fujiko) also made Kiteretsu, and something that looked like Astroboy. What amazes me is that most of the characters he made, most of them are not different from the others, how do I put this eh, like in Doraemon, there's Doraemon himself, Nobita, Sizuka etc, and in Kiteretsu, there's Kiteretsu, the boy and the girl so pretty much the characters repeat themselves in other comics too. Most of the parts in the museum, people are not allowed to take photos so I also didnt snap about that. There's nothing much I could say about the museum, it was nice, I wanted to spend more time looking at his artworks and listening to the audios but time was pretty valuable so I just like skimmed through je. After the museum, we went to Asakusa, where the Sensoji Temple is located, and also the souvenir street!! I like to point out that the whole place looks pretty during the time I went, which made me mad, bcs it'll look much more prettier in autumn! or during spring when it's filled with sakuras D: I mean, that's what Amin said. Oh if I may point something out, the souvenirs here(or pretty much in Tokyo) are pretty expensive. Like when I went to Paris and London I could buy magnets in kinda large quantities with a low price but in Asakusa, one magnet costs around 450 yen, which was like rm12 that time. Pricy kan :S And at Asakusa also, was the first time I ever tasted Takoyaki. Amin bought it and offered it to me and I ate like more than I was supposed to and he ended up giving us the whole thing hahaha #SorryNotSorry. This was also the place my parents bought an umbrella that looked like a samurai sword. very kewl. So again, we went home early and called it a day.

25th August 2015. (Day 5)

Okay, before I go on with what happened this day, a little backstory: the homestay we booked was nice. Three-storeyed house, but it wasnt huge. And there are a total of two toilets, and one room for bathing. So with a total of 11 people (including children and baby) delays are prone to happen. One thing lead to another, what happened next, well, happened. Originally, we already bought bus tickets to Mt Fuji, but like I said, 11 people, one bathroom, we ended up missing the bus. So we(or like, my sister and her husband) improvised and went around Shinjuku. The first place we visited was the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, where we rode the lift to this specific floor and we could see a huge part of Tokyo from there. It was pretty nice. Then we went shopping(or in my case, just strolling and looking at stuffs, or looking for anime related shops) in Shinjuku. Needless to say, Shinjuku is pretty much like Ikebukuro, only bigger, complete with Red Light district like in Amsterdam LOL. I did a lot of strolling(but takdela dkt tempat red light tu obvs) and came across two anime-related shops but still no HunterXHunter merc. The second one tu actually supposedly ada bcs they have this shelf specialised for HxH but the only merc there was a hand towel errrrrghhhhhhhhhhh hahahaha. I guess you could say we spent the whole day there and only there, because then we went home. I also did not bought anything there. But during my stroll, I did came across a Starbucks so I went in and bought a green tea frap AWYEA. And I also came across a huuuuuge Uniqlo(there were tons of them tbh) and also a Kinokuniya(that I did not went in bcs idt i'd want to look at japanese books) but I also did found building, specially made for selling art stuff! Incredible. Bcs its like huge and it has 5 floors???? The first floor is for writing, second floor for painting, third floor for sculpting, fourth floor for sculpting and frames, fifth floor for larger frames. AND DURING THE STROLL I KINDA LOST MY WAY but I found a game place with the Pokken Tournament game but I didnt went inside to play bcs I wanted to find my way back(which I did, easily) (ceh bajet). Also, just like to point out, that Japan have such weird comics. Don't ask. Anyway, that's about it for that day, it's getting progressively slow eventhough we're heading to the end, dont you think?

26th August 2015. (Day 6)

Going Home Day :( We spent the day cleaning up the house bcs that's how they roll, we have to clean everything up the way we found it, or they'll charge extra for cleaning service they'll be doing. Afterwards, when we have around 3 hours to spare(I think) before we head to Shinjuku(to board the bus to the airport), me, alang and my parents decided to go and look around Noborito and see if there's any shopping center we can visit(note that I still havent find any anime places so I was pretty bummed) but turns out there was no shopping center in Noborito. And when I asked like a guard there(in english), I asked him is there any place I go shopping? He ended up pointing me to a semi-large convenience store and I was like -_- ya I went there yesterday to buy fruits and all(also they have these square-shaped bread with jams inside of them, ranging form apple, to blueberries to peanut butter and lemon!! kids love em, adults love em too! k takde la adults but I actually love them haha). But yea that's that, we went back in sadness and started packing and we head to Shinjuku, and met Amin there and we rushed to Penguin (apparently, its a store that sells lots of stuff ranging from clothes to electronics to toys), we went there bcs Alang didn't get a chance to buy her nieces a gift so last minute presents buying la kiranya. Then went back to the station and naik the bus to Haneda. OK HERE'S AN IMPORTANT PART YOU SHOULD TAKE NOTE ABOUT in Haneda, usually when you arrive 3/4 hrs earlier and then you have like 2/3 hrs left to spare, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE dont directly go into the departure hall, instead take a walk at the 4/5th floor if I'm not mistaken, go and take the map and explore everything before going into the departure hall. Supposedly there's this huuuuge(kinda) anime place and that was like my last chance but i missed it haha! But like that's okay, maybe rezeki lain hari heheh. And inside the departure hall, there are a quite sufficient amount of shops for you to visit, I bought instant Matcha powder there, and there's also a uniqlo that sells kimono for around rm50 I think (after convert). Along said that's the place to go la if you want to buy a kimono, bcs usually the kimonos are expensive. My mum bought the one from uniqlo! Though idt I've seen her wear it before. tak sempat kot, raya aidilfitri tahun depan mungkin? Haha. Ok, I'll put some photos, but tak banyak though, you can look at my travelogue for more Japan photos :)