Second trip to Japan – this time only for 7 days (around 5.5 full days to be exact).
After the lesson learnt from our first Japan trip, we dare not take red-eye flights again. This time we took a morning flight at 8+am. Due to the last minute decision to go Japan instead of Hong Kong, Singapore Airlines no longer have good prices for their flights. Hence after much consideration, I went for JAL instead. Around S$700+ per pax – which is pretty much still reasonable (compared to over $1000 per pax for SQ).
Instead of always reaching the airport super early to enjoy the lounge, we reached the airport at almost 6am. After collecting the mobile wifi device and checking in our luggages, we did checked into the SATS lounge but the food offered was nothing much to shout about. Bruno was more interested in reading Reddit on the large Samsung Galaxy tab provided at the booth seats.
We barely stayed for an hour, before we left the lounge and walked around the transit area where the shops started to open one by one. Before long, we found ourselves boarding the plane. JAL provided rice crackers instead of the usual nuts as snacks, and they were actually pretty good. For lunch, I chose their unagi option and gee, it was one of the best unagi that I’ve ever eaten, for real. Unfortunately it’s just two small pieces….. if only they had more! I finished everything that they served… except for the salad. Oh, and they provide Haagen Daaz ice cream too.
In the middle of the flight, they served yet another snack – this time it’s sponge cake. From the picture, it looks like purple right? Almost like sweet potato… but ultimately I think it was green tea flavour.. haha. It looked pretty plain, but it’s oh so soft and heavenly! I loved that sponge cake so much. How I wish I could buy it…
While we were flying over Japan, we craned our necks to try and catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji… and we weren’t disappointed!
OK if you can’t see the peak, here you go…
I have no idea how or when I took below photo but damn it’s very nice isn’t it? *hugs my Mate 10* Best camera phone ever~
And so we reached Narita Airport. I had a huge headache over how to get to our hotel at Asakusa from Narita Airport, considering our timing was not that great. By the time we landed at Narita, we would have missed the limousine bus that goes straight to Asakusa View Hotel (which was within walking distance to our hotel), and we also would miss the direct commuter train from Narita airport to Asakusa station. In the end, I decided to take the Skyliner to Ueno, and then probably cab to hotel from there. We booked our Skyliner tickets online for some small discounts, so we had to drop by the ticket office to exchange for the actual tickets. The queue was okay, not too long but there’s still a couple of tourists in front of us who didn’t seem to know what they were doing or where they were going. (I hate to be queueing behind this kind of tourists, really… c’mon, is it so hard to do your homework before you travel?)
By the time it’s my turn at the counter, we had to give the nearest-timing train a go because it would be too rushed to get to the platform. So we went for the next timing – which gave us about 20 minutes to spare. We made our way to the platform, only to find that there wasn’t much standing space or sitting area. So we went back up to ground floor and spent our time at the vending machines, looking to get some bites and drinks, since we only had “brunch” on the plane and nothing else. I honestly had forgotten what I bought… I know I bought some coffee (which was totally forgettable), while Bruno bought apple juice and tuna mayo onigiri. (Bruno said I also bought baumkuchen but I really don’t recall eating that, so…)
Anyway, we managed to get on the skyliner which we reserved our seats, and we munched and drank our way to Ueno. That’s when the nightmare started *sigh*. Once out of the skyliner gantries, we had to look for a cab stand. But there’s none outside the station. We dragged our luggage back and forth, even asking passerbys, but most of them also had no idea where the taxi stands were. Tired and hungry, I got Bruno to go into the Ueno JR station to ask the information counter, and after following the directions given to us, we found a small, unassuming cab stand at a very ulu corner of the whole station…
Meh.
I showed the driver our hotel’s address, and he drove us straight to the doorstep. I had pre-ordered a lot of items from Amazon JP, and the hotel had already signed for them on my behalf. I had three big boxes to carry to the room, as well as my luggage. So just on the first day, my luggage was already full of “loot”… hurhur.
The hotel we stayed this time is Red Planet Tokyo Asakusa, and it was a twin room. It was actually very small, even the shower cubicle is small. So small that I would bump my elbows all the time while lathering myself…
After unpacking the boxes, we then left for dinner, which we already previously decided on Asakusa Gyukatsu, because Bruno missed Gyukatsu very much. The restaurant was pretty near our hotel, so by the time we reached it was about 7pm. There was a pretty long queue ahead of us, but since Bruno insisted on eating this, we queued as well. The queue was almost unmoving, until there’s one whole big bunch of family who left the restaurant after about 20min wait (for us). We managed to get into the restaurant after that.
Their menu only had 2 items – spicy or non spicy. So the food came really quickly… and then we realised the meat was really a tad to raw to be eaten just like that. We had to grill them more ourselves on the stone “stove” in front of us… er, novel experience, yes, but I prefer to have the chef do the cooking, you know? That’s why I’m paying them? Sigh. Needless to say, we won’t be heading back there again.
While queueing, the Tokyo Skytree was actually almost just right in front of us (even though it’s quite a distance away). It wasn’t that pretty even with all the lights on, to be honest…
As it still wasn’t too late, we crossed the road and walked around Kaminarimon and Sensoji, taking some night photos of the temple and it’s surrounding, before we head to the 24 hours Don Quijote near the hotel. I managed to grab a Tiger hot flask for Miao at a huge discount, so yay, one item off the checklist.
We then went to Family Mart to get their Instant Yasai Miso soup – something which we drank every night during our last trip in Japan. Unfortunately, they seemed to have change some recipe and it just didn’t taste as good anymore… Sad.
For more photos for this day, as well as for the full sized photos in this post, please visit this Flickr album: Tokyo 2018 Day 1 (15/11/2018)
To return to Japan Trip 2018 content page, please click here.
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