Day 1 15/10/2019
So, for the first time, my mom stepped into an airport lounge before a flight. We went to the SATS Premier Lounge at Terminal 2 – and the food was really quite disappointing to her. She liked the ambiance and atmosphere, but the food quality was really quite bad.
Nope, no pictures of the food because… they were really bad.
I bought our airtickets from ANA this time, because it’s an airline that I always wanted to try, but they were as expensive (or even more expensive) as SQ’s. I got them at a relatively cheap price – about S$789 per pax, from SIN to NRT, then CTS-NRT-SIN on the return leg.
However, I’ve learnt my lesson… never ANA again, unless there’s really no other choice. You’ll read more about my decision on the last day of the trip.
So while we were in the lounge, Bruno was somewhere else because he didn’t want to pay to get into the lounge (I can only get one pax in for free). After we got out of the disappointing lounge, we met up with him and off we went to our first stop – Tokyo.
The reason why I wanted to head to Tokyo first was because I had ordered several stuff from Amazon JP, and sending them to Tokyo was actually a tad cheaper than sending them to Hokkaido. Also, I wanted to bring Mom to Niki no Kashi where she can decide if she wants to buy any of the Moonlight cookies that she loves so much.
Can’t expect much from anything that comes out from SATS or DNATA airline catering kitchens in Singapore, to be honest. The food was just decent, at best.
We reached Tokyo in the late afternoon after an uneventful ride, and it’s just taking the Keisei Skyliner again to Ueno. From there, we dragged our luggage through Ameyoko and checked in to our hotel Tosei Hotel Cocone Ueno, which was a relatively new hotel in the area. My mom and I stayed in a room, while Bruno stayed in another. The hotel upgraded our room from a deluxe twin to a Japanese twin, which unfortunately to us, felt more like a downgrade. It was cumbersome to keep climbing up and down the sleeping area, and the space was really tight to place two luggage thanks to that ledge. It was horrible – I shouldn’t have accepted the upgrade, sigh.
After we settled our luggage and rearranged our day bags, we then went over to Ameyoko to check out Niki no Kashi and to grab dinner. I picked Tonkatsu Yamabe as our first dinner in Tokyo because they had rave reviews about how authentic and traditional the shop was. It was really good, but my mom didn’t seem to be very impressed. Bruno and I enjoyed it a lot though. The place was very popular with locals, and I didn’t really see that many tourists or foreigners there. They do have an English menu, so tourists will be fine. I managed to speak a little Japanese to the crew there too, by asking for half portion of rice in Japanese. I’m sure it wasn’t quite proper Japanese but at least she could understand me. Yay!
Day 2 16/10/2019
Got up early today to go Ueno to collect our JR East-South Hokkaido rail pass – only to have the collection delayed because Bruno forgot to bring his passport. Hurhur. He ran back to the hotel while my Mom and I browsed at the FamilyMart opposite our hotel. Her first experience of just how muddleheaded this guy can be. She could fully understand why I would get so frustrated and angry with him now, LOL.
But the nice thing about Bruno is that he literally does everything that I instructed him to do. No, he doesn’t take initiative, but he would follow orders pretty well. I told him to look after my mom and to accompany her wherever she goes while I go queue to collect the rail passes. and he really did. I was able to queue and fill in forms in peace (even though I struggled a bit as I had to fill in 3 different forms and had to juggle with several passports), knowing there’s someone with my Mom and that she’d be fine.
I got us the tickets, as well as the pre-ordered seat reservations after about 20-30 minutes, We then proceeded to take the metro to Asakusa where I brought my mom to Nakamise shopping street and Sensoji. Temples are places that my cousins would refuse to step into so it was a first time visiting a temple in Japan for my Mom, even though she went to Japan more times than I did. I thought she’d be interested in Nakamise shopping street, but she’s not very into it after all. She’s really more interested in the temple. She even did the incense ritual after I told her that many locals do it so that their pains and aches would go away. Haha!
No pics of Sensoji, by the way. Had plenty of those pics last year.
We explored the small gardens around Sensoji a little, and found a nice little pond with a stone bridge. All 3 of us actually spent quite some time taking photos there… it’s amazing how much time Bruno and my Mom would spend just taking photos of one single place.
One of the highlights (read: headache) of this trip was to bring both of them to a very good unagi place. I personally am not a fan of unagi (in fact, I kinda really avoid unagi whenever possible) because I had an issue with swallowing bones, soft or not. Yes, I know they can be eaten, and I can still feel the bones, even though they are supposed to soft. But anyway, I decided to go for Koyanagi as it’s very near to Sensoji and we could get there in the queue early so that my mom didn’t had to wait too long.
We were the first in the queue as we reached at around 11:15am, and subsequently the people who queued behind us were all locals – we were the only foreigners! We waited till 11.:30am and the restaurant opened its doors on the dot. We were being given English menu after I asked for it, and they provided hot towels too.
I ordered medium while my mom and Bruno both ordered large. The price was quite steep but it was really worth it. I finished it to the last grain of rice even though I’m not a fan of unagi – that says a lot! Their tamagoyaki was lovely too. Bruno ordered the mushroom miso soup and said it’s very good as well. This meal was perhaps one of the best in our trip – definitely well worth the money and headache that went into researching for a good unagi place!
After lunch, we then slowly walked over to February Cafe to get my second dose of caffeine of the day. Mocha for my mom, and latte for both of us. Biscotti was of course, Bruno’s. We managed to get seated outside the cafe again, so it was great! Cold weather and hot coffee just go together so well.
After coffee, we went to Ueno park for a walk aimlessly – but there’s nothing much to see, considering my mom was not interested in Ueno zoo, and that there’s no autumn foliage yet in Tokyo in mid October. We went back to the hotel to rest a little before heading out to Ueno station for dinner. This time, it’s Bruno’s “must-go-when-in-Japan” Ichiran Ramen again. Since it’s the first time that my Mom visited it, we opted for the one-person booth experience so that she can experience it for herself. It was nice seeing her surprise and her adaptability. She was perfectly fine with the idea and thought it was a very novel experience.
We were lucky to skip the queue too, because we were there early, at around 5.30pm. There was literally no queue outside and we were seated after a 5 min wait after getting the food tickets from the vending machine.
I accidentally took them to a rather long detour (I remembered the wrong intersection), but they were busy chatting with each other that they did not noticed (ha-ha!). When we were back at the hotel, we went up to the highest floor for the rooftop view – it was pretty nice. I got to try out the night mode of my Huawei Mate 10 too!
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