Sunday, August 30, 2009

Tokyo : Getting there and F&E itinerary



Since small , I have always been amaze with Japan and one of my wishlist is to visit the whole of Japan and experience it's culture. I was fortunate enough to visit Japan ( Tokyo ) when I was 7 years old but I hardly could remember anything from that family trip. It was not until 2006 where I manage to visit Japan again ( experiencing winter, spring and summer ) for work but what I could remember from those trips were ...........

Waking up ->WALK->train ->WALK->business meetings ->WALK-> train ->WALK-> business meeting ->WALK->train ->WALK->HOTEL->sleep ( Lunch and Dinner is slotted between the WALK )


Pic1: My First Shinkansen (Bullet Train) experience


Pic 2: Another Shinkansen Series

IF we are lucky to have a weekend, it will be only time for sight seeing and on one of those trips, we tried to do Tokyo in a day and another day to Nikko. But I was glad to be able to meet up with my counterpart face to face, given a preview trip of Japan and also trips coinciding with best friends business trip.


Pic 3: Odaiba Park


Pic 4: Tokyo Tower


Pic 5: Dinner in a Costume play shop in Shibuya


Pic 6: Dinner at Sumitomo Building at 59th Floor


Pic 7 : View from Park Hyatt Hotel.


Pic 8: Shibuya


Pic 9: Takinogawa


Pic 10: Odaiba

Pic 11: Raw Horse Meat experience. ( I did not take it mainly because I don't eat myself )



Pic 12: Nikko shrine


Pic 13: Hard Rock Yokohama

It was not until 2009 Feb, that I manage to plan a vacation to Tokyo ( 7 days/6nights Tokyo + Hakone ) and fulfilled part of my wishlist ( Note: wish list is whole of Japan eg Osaka, Kyoto,Nara, Hokkaido etc ) and I will share with you how I planned out my trip. Let me first share with you a bit about Japan.

Japan has a land area of ~375km2 but have a estimated population of 128M people in 2009. It is an island located on the pacific ocean on the east of China and Korea. Though physically small, it has manage to carve itself into the world as the 2nd largest economy in the world in terms of GDP.

Just in Tokyo itself, there is ~35M people living in the city and it has been recorded as the worlds most populous metropolitan and the worlds most largest metropolitant economy. In 2009, Tokyo is recorded as the world's 5th most expensive city in the world.
However travelling to Japan for Malaysians might not be as expensive as you think if you are on a budget trip. A lot of planning to be done upfront to know which season do you want to visit Japan & location where you plan to go to as you will find out later that transportation around Japan contributes to one of the highest portion of the trip budget.

I have decided to travel to Japan in Feb2009 ( Winter and also low season ) partly because I love cold weather and also it falls in the YJW ( Yokoso Japan Week ). Normally, you will get discounts ranging from hotel stays to transportation , entrace fee and also food. However if your trip objective is to see Sakura ( cherry blossom ) then, you will need to plan your trip around late March Early April when it blooms. Normally the Sakura's will bloom from West Japan towards North Japan in Spring.


Pic 14: Sakura Full Bloom at Ueno Park


Pic 15: Sakura Full Bloom at Ueno Park


Pic 16: Sakura Full Bloom at Ueno Park

Early this year (2009), my intention was to have my vacation in Macau/Hong Kong but I was amaze on the package offered from Hong Kong to Japan by Cathy Pacific (CX), Japan Airlines (JAL) and All Nippon Airways (ANA). (Note: Back then, the economy impact was not fully felt and fuel was all time high but then I do recomend to survey packages from HK since Air Asia flight kind of cost ~ RM300 return if you catch it during promotion when you book way in advance). I highly recomend the package because it includes 2 nights accomodation which could be quite pricy if you plan to stay in a 3-4 star hotel in Japan. Secondly, most of the flight from HK to Tokyo arrive at Haneda airport which is located much closer compared to Narita.


Pic 17: Odaiba Tokyo Feb 2009

To ease your planning, attached are some of the links I came across during my research.

Packages from Airline Companies includes

Travel Agencies offering Packages from HK to Japan.

If you decide to travel directly from Malaysia to Tokyo, you could also go with the airlines below
Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines, Cathy Pacific, Japan Airlines which most of them will arrive at Narita

My Itinerary : ( Feb 13th to Feb 19th )
Day 1 : Tokyo Tower, Odaiba
Day 2 : Tokyo Imperial Palace, Sensoji Temple Asakusa, Shibuya
Day 3: Tsukiji Fish Market, Ginza, Harajuku, Shinjuku
Day 4: Hakone ( Stay overnight)
Day 5: Gotemba, Gotemba Premium Outlet ,Disneyland Hotel
Day 6 : Disneyland or Disneyworld
Day 7 : Shinjuku Metropolitant Government Building, Shopping in Shinjuku, Roponggi

Did I make it to all? ....... I had to skip of the places for this trip since we decided that we do not want a rush trip like what we have experience for our Korea tour. Stay tune for more posting on the Feb 2009 Japan Vacation.

Tokyo: Day 1 Odaiba

Feb 13th 2009
Most flight from Malaysia/HK will arrive in Tokyo early in the morning. I really mean early (eg before 7am). The flight I took arrive in Haneda airport (Tokyo) on schedule at 6.30am. We took off from HK at 2am and given that the flight was only 3 hours, we barely could sleep on the flight. The food serve on ANA airways was quite delicious rice with fish, cold soba.

With all the planning done upfront, we know we had to take the JR line from Haneda to Shimbashi followed by a short walk to Daimon and take the "dark pink" metro line from Daimon to Higashi Shinjuku. It will aways be handy to carry both the Tokyo JR line and subway map with you whereever you go as you you will most probably be taking it quite frequently.

Pic 1: Tokyo JR East map for download.

Pic 2: Tokyo Subway Map

For this trip, I have converted some of my hotel points for free stay so I had to move around during my few days in Tokyo. The first 2 days, we were putting up at Sunrounte Higashi Shinjuku. For your planning purpose you can check out the best ways to get from one location to the next through this Train Route Finder website.

Hotel check in time in Japan is normally at 3pm. Most hotel will not let you check in earlier but you could place your luggage at the concierge, go for a walk and check in later in the afternoon. Alternatively, some hotel will let you check in earlier for a nominal fee if they have rooms available. Somehow, we were too tired so we paid ~1500yen (USD15) to check in at 9am.

Once we were fully charged up, we headed to Odaiba, a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay which is located across the rainbow bridge from Central tokyo. Located there is the Fuji Television Studio, Aqua City Shopping Center, Decks Tokyo Beach Shopping mall to name a few and it has very nice night view ( very romantic especially if you capture both the rainbow bridge and statue of liberty at the background)

To get to Shibuya from Higashi Shinjuku, we have decided to take the Fukutoshin metro line towards Shidome and change to the Yurikamone line from Shidome to Daiba.





Close by Odaiba there is Ooedo-Onsen-Monogatari (hot spring hotbath) and Tokyo Venus fort (venice theme shopping mall ). To fully see the Odaiba, do allocated at least 4 -6 hours to walk around.

We decided to have our dinner at the Aqua Shopping Center and found a okoyomiyaki shop on located on the 4th floor. The price for the okoyomiyaki was around 1200yen per person







After dinner, we decided to drop by at Shibuya before returning to the hotel.
Direction from Odaiba to Shibuya
Take the Yurikamone from Daiba to Shimbaishi and change to the JR Yamanote line from Shimbaishi to Shibuya.

Shibuya is one of the major shopping and nighlight area. The intersection in front of Shibuya 109 building location is normally selected for movie filming. Here you will find a lot of pubs, pachiko machine and lots of dining shops.




After walking around for 20minutes, we decided to head back to the hotel to rest as we have been out the whole day. For our journey back, we took the JR Yamanote line from Shibuya to Shinjuku and change to Fukutoshin line from from Shinjuku to Higashi Shinjuku. Sunroute Higashi Shinjuku is located just across the metro exit.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

31th August 2009 - My First Blog & My first piano recording!!!

I've created this account a month ago and was too caught up to post anything. Now that we (Malaysians) have a long weekend ( Happy Merdeka's Day ) , I am taking this opportunity to post something.

I like to share this song I heard over you tube few months ago. It is a very meaningful song sung by Justin(側田) and I was mesmerize by how ccystanley played the song on you tube. I decided to give the song a try on my piano. Since I have posted in Facebook declaring that I will be attempting to play this song and I adhere to "say what you do and do what you say", so here's the result of few months of trying. ( Few mistakes here and there, since I am playing by listening ). OK, I know I'm not born to be a pianist but at least I feel at ease eveytime I play the piano....My stress reliever.


I think the lyrics is very meaningful would be an excellent song to play during wedding or even proposal. Should I use this as my proposal song?
"我的双眼里 寻找到美丽之最"
My eyes have found the most beautiful thing ... during the redang trip???

I will probably blog more about this picture in another post.

Watch this song on YouTube



( I'm new to this and I am still trying to find out how to link youtube videos into my posting. For those who know, can you drop me a line. Thanks)




Here is the lyrics & english translation I have found from chinesemusicblog.com ( Its amazing that you can almost find any ping yin lyrics on the web today )

http://chinesemusicblog.com/lyrics/mei-lai-ji-jui-most-beautiful

English:
美麗之最 Mei Lai Ji Jui
Most Beautiful

手 愿意捐给你拓著头做你的安枕刚好足够
This hand wishes to be the comforting pillow for your head to lay on.Exactly like that. That would be enough

望你的天真可以永久
The day when I gaze at you could last forever

眼 看你半世还未够
These eyes can’t stop looking at you.[Lit. trans.: Eyes…Half of a lifetime is not enough to keep on looking at you]

喜欢你的眉头 哪怕皱起始终清秀
Like your eyebrows, no matter how wrinkled they are from one end to another.They are so elegant to me


在某天 未发展 在某间咖啡店
On a day when there aren’t much things going on We were in a coffee shop

尚记起坐你後面
I still could reminisce that I was siting behind you

习惯守望半天
For awhile, I was used to just looking at you from afar

望你从来都温暖
Gazing at you has always given me warmth

* 想一生看下去
I want to gaze at you for a lifetime

还会等一天八十岁
I am looking forward to the day we turn 80 years old

看你发端灰色的点缀
To look at your hair showing off its gray beauty

未来只有乐趣
The future is filled with delight

和你去拖手看新居
Walking hand-in-hand with you looking at our new home

双眼开始像饮醉
This pair of eyes begin to wonder[Lit. trans.: This pair of eyes begins to look as if they’re drunk]

尤如观星
It’s as if looking at the stars

你在这里
[That is the fact that] You are here

我的双眼里
My eyes

寻找到宇宙之最
have found the most beautiful thing in the universe

心 像太专心看你在忙
But my heart seems to be too focused looking at you busying [with your work]

望你不施脂粉多好看
You look so beautiful even without make up[Lit. trans.: Looking at you without make up so much more beautiful]

自信坦率多可爱眼光
[I love] your honest self-esteem and lovely eyes

你碰上挫折仍硬朗
You’ve bumped into setbacks yet you remained composed

不沮丧不彷徨
You are never dispirited nor miserable[彷徨 = wandering about/feeling miserable]

看你斗心多麽凶悍
Looking at your struggling spirit so tough

但你竟 用决心 任意放弃所有
However, you determined to give up everything

独个走 我要殿後 视线跟著你走
You walked away alone and I could only walk behind you and look at you, so I would never lose sight of you

直到你放开所有
Until you are willing to let everything go

*REPEAT

天真追我所追
I am going after something naively

只怕始终未登对
My only fear is that all this time, I haven’t been on the right path

仍然想讲我第一句
Yet, I want to say my first sentence

我的双眼里 寻找到美丽之最
My eyes have found the most beautiful thing

说过爱你要接受意外
For I have said I love you, [therefore] I am willing to accept all of the unexpected

总要挑战障碍比赛
That I’m willing to take on all challenges, barriers, and competitions

最怕看见你抱著决心离开
What I fear the most is to see you run away and leave me[Lit. trans.: What I fear the most is to see you make up your mind to leave me]

说过要与你赤道看海
For I have said that I want to take you to see the ocean at the equator

更说永远爱你未变改
I have also said that I will love you forever. My love will never change

等著你 目光未会离开
I will always wait for you. My vision will always be on you.

等你 回我身边继续回味
I am waiting for you to return to me, we will continue to have joy

眼里每种温馨好滋味
In my eyes, every kind of warm fragrant and good taste

未来只看著你
Only looking at you in days to come

微笑中班点会皱起 得我始终望穿你
Signs of age may appear when we are smiling [basked in joy], but I will always be looking at you

仍然想讲 最後一句
Yet, I still want to say, one last sentence

我的双眼里 寻找到美丽之最
My eyes have found the most beautiful thing [when I look at you]