Tokyo Trip Day 5 (DisneySea)

I read lots of blogs and reviews recommending Tokyo DisneySea as the best Disney theme park in the world, therefore I had been really looking forward to this day. I would say that it was the highlight of my Tokyo trip even though I had enjoyed many other places in Tokyo as well, the reviews were not overrated at all and DisneySea was simply AWESOME! First of all, we are really not fans of theme parks and our previous visit to Legoland (Yucks!) and USS left us feeling dehydrated, tired and we couldnt wait to get home. But DisneySea was so different, we left the park feeling that we did not have enough of it and we were actually sad that it was closing. On top of that, we were still suffering from the aftermaths of Joypolis when we first reached the place, but DisneySea made us fall in love with its ride.


As usual, we did not wake up early enough. I read blog posts of how those Disney gurus conquered the place, they actually got there half an hour before the theme park even opened. But for us, we tried waking up early and failed miserably. Luckily, DisneySea closes at 10pm so that still leaves us plenty of time to explore around, even though we reached at almost 4pm.

We took the longer way to Tokyo station, taking the usual JR Yamanote line as we did not get to the right platform for the Chuo Rapid line. Tokyo station was huge and we did a lot of walking before we got to the Keiyo platform for taking the train to Maihama.




We started to get excited once we got nearer to the Resort Gateway Station, Disney festive mood was in the air! The Disney resort rail was in a cute white colour and there were cute handholds in the shape of Mickey. We bought a 2 day pass with special Tinklebell design but we only realised we bought the wrong pass when we used it on the second day. The adult pass should cost 800Y instead of 400Y, oops! The ultra friendly station staff stopped us apologetically when she heard the chirping sound as we passed through the gantry, indicating that a kid's card was used. It was only then we realised that the machine selling the cards had an English option but we overlooked it the previous day.



The only complaints that people had about DisneySea was the sea of people everywhere, the locals simply adore the place and they are the greatest fans of the Disney theme parks in Tokyo. As you could see from the board, we went on the right day as the longest queue at that time was only one hour. I had done some research and checked the crowd predicting website, the crowd on Tuesday-Thurdays are usually not as bad as weekends. The weather on that day was cooling, perfect theme park day! We were really lucky and happy to be there, its a good opportunity to go on all the rides since the queue were not really long, but P was still traumatised from the queasy feeling he got from the rides in Odaiba, so he did not want to do anything except for looking around.





 I had done some research, and saw the area for Journey to the Centre of the Earth/ 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea. But alas! P was adamant that we were not going to take any roller-coasters and I guess I cant make my only companion feel sick for the rest of the trip. We stopped to take some photographs at the 'photography points', I must once again compliment the good service of the Japanese as the janitors cleaning the park were very willing to stop and help us take group photos.

We passed this stand selling flashing lights and I was so tempted to buy those as its really cute!! I really had to restrain myself from getting those cutesy stuff as I know it'll be pretty useless once we were out of Disney. 

We stopped to observe this whale for a short while and its eyes actually opened and closed. 

 Even though we decided not to try the rides, we still enjoyed walking around and taking photographs. We saw this 'uncle' dressed like a normal janitor in the park, but he's actually a comedian. He did little performances as he walked around the park and a small group of on-lookers will actually gather around him to watch. There were even some of them like us who followed him for awhile as all his little 'tricks' were different, and there were accompanying sound effects. I have no idea how he activated those, but he was really really talented and we had fun just watching him.

Another highlight of Tokyo DisneySea/Land was the snacks. The popcorns were hugely popular and the best thing about all these little snacks was the fact that its really affordable. We went to other theme parks and some SG attractions that are like tourist traps, charging exorbitant prices for snacks. I found the prices of the ice-creams/popcorns quite reasonable (around 310Y), therefore I made it my personal quest to try as many snacks as I could.
The popcorns came in very interesting flavours, I bought the melon flavoured ones, it tasted quite good and I tried to find the milk tea flavour as well, but we did not see the popcorn stand selling those. We saw other stands selling caramel/salt/strawberry/curry popcorns, we decided we'll skip those.

Of course with my sweeth tooth and perpetual craving for desserts, I would try out their ice cream too. The packaging and the Mickey on the biscuit looked so good that I was unwillingly to sink my teeth into it. Its quite a big piece of ice cream and not just a miserable small portion for the 310Y. Thumbs up!

This sticky rice snack with hotdog is super yummy, its a must try! :D

It's a pity P didnt even dare to go for the easy rides such as Toy Story Mania even though I tried to coax him into it. 

Since we were not going for rides, we try to catch as many shows as we could. This was one of those at broadway theatre, the Big Band Beat. There were some dancing and singing but nothing too spectacular. Nevertheless, still a good experience. 

The lively atmosphere really got to us after we came out from Big Band Beat. I saw so many girls in those cute Disney capes and I couldn't resist it, I got a Minnie one for myself at one of the carts. I really have to stop myself from getting those cutesy hairbands though.  

Shortly after that, the fireworks parade at the outdoor area started. It was really a amazing orchestra of lights, songs, music, fireworks. Really "Happiness on High"! 

We also got kind of happy and high after "Happiness on high". P was finally convinced to go for some ride at the last operating hour of DisneySea, especially when he saw someone of his Grandma's age going on the Sindbad's Storybook Voyage. It is a easy boat ride telling the story of Sindbad, but I was really amazed by the details put into the different segment of the ride, the mechanism behind this is really not simple. Even though everything was told in Japanese, I really marveled at how everything was put together. 

After Sindbad, P was already in the mood for rides, but we only have time to go on one ride as its half an hour before the closing time of DisneySea. I was only hoping to go on some simple ride such as Toy Story but to my pleasant surprise, P chose the House of Terror. Its this tall and prominent structure in the middle of the whole theme park. In the daytime, we can see part of the ride from afar, it will open near the highest point and there will always be rows of people strapped in and screaming on their seats. We were telling ourselves that we most certainly cant go on this ride after dark as it'll be super duper scary. Nevertheless, with our hearts thumping with excitement, we went into the tower. Usually this ride requires a fast pass or long hours of queue, but we were really the last 2 to squeeze past the entrance and started queuing for the ride. At this time, there were still many people ahead of us, it took about half an hour before we got to the ride.

There were various rooms which they ushered everyone into before entering the cabins for the ride, this is to build up the atmosphere. Even though everything was in Japanese and we could only guess what was going on, I would say there was really this spooky creepy feeling, like we are invading into a tower full of spirits filled with hatred. Finally, after we got strapped to our seats in the cabin, my hands went cold as I gripped the sides of my seat tightly. There were approximately three or four rows of people and I was just glad we were not right in front. The ride is really one of its kind, I can safely say we will not experience this in any other part of the world. In a nutshell, its like a giant drop ride that went up and down at great speed, but the most clever part of this setup was the front of the cabin opening up when we reach the highest part of the tower, showing us the beautiful view of the whole Disneysea theme park.. and intense feeling of suspense in our hearts before dropping down. I would not say it terrified me to the extreme like other roller coaster rides, but many of our companions were really screaming and shouting throughout. P really enjoyed this ride too, and we really regretted this is our first and last real ride in Disneysea. We went out of the tower laughing, before slowly making our way to the entrance of the park to exit. 

 It's shopping time as all the rides and sights had closed. We bought some Disney souvenirs for our friends and family at home. We saw cute Duffy, popular at Tokyo Disney, and we simply have to get one home. We saw so many people dressed in their favourite Disney character tee and bought Mickey/Minnie to wear them to Disneyland the next day.

We were really sad to go at the end of the day, but the feeling of elation and happiness still lingered in our hearts. It was a really good feeling. The best thing about DisneySea was the fact that they do not chase anyone out of the place even long past its closing time, everyone was still polite and friendly. We just slowly made our way out when we are really ready and done for the day.

As I was leaving, I promised myself that I will be back someday to enjoy everything all over again and experience the rides I didnt get to take. :)

Tokyo Trip Day 4 (Harajuku Part 2, Akihabara)

This day should be considered the rest day of our trip, or rather rest day for me while P is on his toys and shoes hunt.

The original plan was to visit Tokyo DisneySea, which should be the highlight of our trip. However, something cropped up after we woke up and we only left the hotel at 2.30pm. As the planner of the trip, I felt stressed and was really unwilling to have a change of plans, but considering the fact we will only reach DisneySea at almost 5pm, I decided that the trip will not be really worthwhile and decided that we should postpone our trip to Disney. We had a pact to leave the hotel really early the next day to make up for it.

After our previous trip to Harajuku, we realised that we need to make a trip back again as the omotesendo areas actually had some quaint little shops that we missed out. We went back and found those shops selling shoes and other cool stuff. I wondered why we walked a big round around Harajuku but ended up missing that area the previous time. While looking for shoes, we saw this old man with a pram full of fluffy cats. Why do they have all these cute little cats in Japan when we only see the non-furry ones in SG? There were other people who stopped to pet the cats or took some photographs.









I saw this huge Barbie shop in one of the small streets selling cutesy stuff, but I guess it will be quite costly, thus didnt stop to take a look.

And we found Eggs' n Things! I saw from other blogs that there's always a long queue outside this shop, but once again, we were there on a weekday afternoon, thus no queue at all! I thought that this is a good opportunity to try out the food there, since we happened to chance upon it when there's no queue. Further more, I had been looking for crepes ever since we stepped into Harajuku area. I really am a big fan of desserts!

We ordered the pancakes which was quite popular there, I saw everyone having those pancakes with heaps of whipped cream. I thought we would never finish those whipped cream but they went along quite well with the pancakes and the banana. These pancakes turned out to be quite filling and we only managed to finish two each. They provided three types of syrup for the pancakes: coconut, strawberry and maple syrup. We mostly used the traditional maple syrup with the pancakes as it tasted the best.








This was just meant to be tea break, and I could not decide if I should order the Eggs Benedict since the pancakes already looked like a huge pile. I saw good reviews and really wanted to try, so we had two big plates of pancakes+eggs benedict to finish up for our teabreak. I would say that the pancakes were not so bad, but nothing to shout about, and not worth a queue of more than 30min, the Eggs Benedict were also not as good as those I had tasted in US. I guess american breakfast is not common in Japan (or even SG), therefore the locals would queue up for hours for those.

The next stop is Akihabara, the electric town of Tokyo. I've heard so much about it from blogs, travel videos that I had to pay a visit even though I'm not interested in gadgets and games.

Sadly the place did not turn up to be as happening as we expected as most of the shops closed quite early unlike Shinjuku area. We were there around 8pm and could only witness the shops keeping their stores and pulling down their shutters. It was not a fruitful visit but we did see a lot of girls dressed up as maids and trying to get patrons into the maids cafe. Most of the passer-bys turned them down and usually the girls will appear impatient or grumpy if they were here in SG. However, in Japan, the standard of service was so good that the girls were still polite, sweet and friendly even though it must be tiring for them to stand on the streets till so late.

We returned to the hotel to rest early for our Disney trip the following day, still feeling full from our teabreak earlier, thus we skipped dinner.

Tokyo Trip Day 3 (Odaiba)

Whenever we make our way to the Shinjuku JR station, we'll see this fast food place that sell pasta, therefore we decided to try having our brunch there before making our way to Odaiba. This fast food outlet is First Kitchen and it has a very prominent storefront, a giant clock sitting at the junction of the South exit of Shinjuku.

For a busy place like Shinjuku, the server lacking in command of English made it quite difficult for us to order our food but the young lad was definitely very polite and trying his best. I ordered a pasta with olive oil as base but it turned out to be too salty, P's choice of carbonara with egg seemed to taste better. It's awfully quiet in the fast restaurant even though its crowded, everyone was looking at their phones or doing their stuff quietly, nobody is talking even though its a fast food place. We felt obliged to keep our voices down, the Japanese culture is all about civic-mindedness and they dont cause disturbance or inconvenience to others. After the meal, everyone cleared their trays and we also did the same.

I've read several reviews that there's a lot of see in Odaiba and we need one whole day for that. It's a place like Sentosa in SG, but it's more filled with shopping malls than attractions. We took the longer way when we went, changing from JR train to the Yurikamome (I don't know what the name means, but it sounded really cute) at Shimbashi. It's a longer way but we enjoyed the scenic view of the harbor and across the rainbow bridge.

The Yurikamome was just like a monorail or LRT and it made a big round across the sea to Odaiba. We stopped at the Daiba station which is just next to the park and there was a mini statue of liberty there. The weather is nice with a cool breeze blowing on our faces, so we stopped for some selfies and photographs. This is also one of the few places when we met tourists from all over the world (other than our hotel), but there was only a small number of them as it was a weekday. When we were taking pictures of the mini statue of liberty, the rainbow bridge was the backdrop so it was really awesome.

Even though the park is just next to Aqua City, P was more excited to see the giant Gundam figure outside Diver City, so we walked to Diver City first to take more photographs. On our way, we passed the Fuji TV building, it was said that the view is really nice from the observation deck but I also read that it's closed on Mondays, therefore we did not attempt to go up at all. There were also some locals and tourists gathered around this giant Gumdam figure taking photographs. Although I do not really know what Gumdam is all about, I was still in awe when I saw the sheer size of this giant figurine. After taking photographs, we made our way into Diver City to look around. Some tourists really love shopping there, as the mall had some big brands like Burberry blue labels, Daiso etc. We were not really interested in shopping so we merely walked around. I was craving for crepe after our previous day out at Harajuku, so we stopped for some crepes at Baskin Robbins. I think crepe eating is really quite addictive!


Once again, I was too excited at tasting the crepe, therefore did not manage to take a picture of it.

At Baskin Robbins, I saw this self-service machine at the side but I did not know what it was meant for since the instructions were all in Japanese. Some locals came along and one of them pressed the blue button. Guess what? A piece of warm wet tissue dropped out, cool! The Japanese really have an eye for details and they even provide warm wet tissues at such places for people to refresh themselves. Of course I was delighted to solve the mystery and tried using the machine on my own.

I liked the futuristic design of this Fuji TV building, especially the sphere in the middle. 

After the crepe, we walked back to Aqua City to explore. There was not much to see at this mall, except the nice restaurants lining the side nearer to the park, I guess with a such nice view of the sea and the park, it will be a popular spot for dinner in the evening. This place reminded me a little of Asiatique in Bangkok. We happened to go to the basement of Aqua City and saw this mega pet shop with dogs and cats, they even had a cafe meant for pets. P was immediately attracted to this cat area where people paid to play with cats. Even though I'm not a cat lover, the fluffy cats also bought me over, so we spent half an hour at this cat haven.

Cats, cats and more cats! 

After the nice experience playing with cats there, I made a mental note to visit the cats cafe in SG someday. 

When we walked out from Aqua City, the sun was setting and we stopped outside to take some pictures of the nice sunset. 

After we were done with Aqua City, we walked to the Decks next door, where things got more interesting. They had a Madame Tussauds Museum and Trick Eye museum there, but we did not explore those. We went to this street which was decorated with stuff of the Japanese in the older days (Edo period?) and the Takoyaki museum with rows of stalls selling Takoyaki. This stretch was said to be quite crowded on weekends but we went on a Monday, thus it was quite deserted.

It was the first and only time I bought food tickets at the vending machine! They are selling it in mostly 8s, 12s or even more, but we just wanted to try it as snacks so found one stall which sell it in 6s. 

Personally, I felt that the takoyaki tasted normal, like those we buy from the stalls here in SG. 

We were walking around the Decks, still feeling quite full from the Takoyaki, and our stomachs were not ready for dinner yet. We walked past the Joypolis theme park a few times and P suggested that we should go into Joypolis to try some of the rides. Moreover, it was almost 8pm and we can get the late night entry tickets that only cost 2100Y for tourists. We are both not very into theme parks so I was reluctant at first as I only wanted to try one ride and see if we like it. However, I was coaxed into it as there was not much left to do at Odaiba except to explore Palette Town and the day had been quite uneventful so far.

The first thing we tried was the Sadoko tour. Other than feeling spooked, I was amused as the whole setup was in Japanese, therefore we did not even understand the storyline. We were given cameras to take 'ghostly evidence', and everyone just ran and crowd around in groups getting spooked. It was quite fun actually, I guessed we will be really freaked out if we could understand the story. 

I read from reviews that all these rides have hours of queue on weekends but we just walked straight in as its Monday evening, just a few minutes of wait for all the rides. After the Sadako tour, we went to 'Wild Jungle' ride which was a simulation ride that throw us around on the car. 

This is quite similar to 'Wild Jungle' but instead of a jungle setting, we were thrown around a river on a simulator. 

These are actually quite fun, rooms that can accommodate two people and we went on a shooting spree. The chair could turn 180 degree so that we can 'shoot down' people who are behind us. We would have go for more rounds but the previous two rides already made us queasy. 

We could have went on many rounds as there was no queues for the 2 hours we were in Joypolis, but P really regretted the decision to go there as he was really feeling unwell after the two consecutive simulator rides. We did not go on any rides after that and only walked around the place, we saw this cute aquarium thing which can capture our pictures and turn us into funny dugongs.

To get some fresh air, we walked all the way to Diver City and sat down near the giant gundam which was all lighted up at night. I thought that there will be some light shows but after awhile, I searched online and found out that the last show was at 8pm. We decided to head back Shinjuku area for dinner as we were still feeling too queasy to eat anything. 

We found the Tokyo Teleport Station near Diver City and took the direct Rinkai line back to Shinjuku, its a much faster way compared to the Yurikamome route we took earlier. We walked around a little around the area near our hotel and found this place, P loves steak so much that we were having steaks every single day when we were in Tokyo. 

This steakhouse turned out so good (in his opinion) that we visited three more times after this. Well, I must admit that its cheap and good, but I was protesting as we should not be ONLY having steaks in Tokyo! Anyway, the steak is medium rare by default which is how I liked it to be and this steak+burger steak upsize combo was only 1580Y with unlimited rice and soup. They did not mind that we ordered only one set and allowed us to eat as much rice as we liked, the good service was what bought us over.