Tokyo Trip 2009

Stayed in Tokyo for 6 nights. Visited 3 theme parks (Hello Kitty, Disney Tokyo and Disney Sea Tokyo), shopped at the Shibuya and Roppongi areas / Tsukiji Fish Market / Sensoji Temple and tried as many new food outlets as possible (especially the local dishes). Most of the places mentioned are my first visit except the Disney, Tsukiji Fish Market and Sensoji Temple.

As compare to 7 years ago, not much major changes in Disney Tokyo. Food served in the theme park is still very expensive and not that tasty. However, I think Disney Tokyo has added more parades and live performance in the programme. It's good for me as I enjoyed these parades and live performance very much because it is entertaining, colourful and creative. The theme seemed to serve more different flavour pop corn (black pepper, honey, strawberry, curry etc) now with nice colourful containers. Really know how to make money from the visitors. It costed S$22 to S$25 per container. S$8 to refill. The strawberry pop corn tastes and smells very nice :-)




Tsukiji Fish Market gives me more local context and content. No aircon, a lot of traffic and pretty messy as it is a wholesales fish market. We went for the sushi and fresh raw fish for breakfast. While the food is fine, what is most enjoyable is to appreciate the culture and ambience of eating in the outlet. Chef prepares your order right in front of u and good customer service. Long queue and needed to have some patience.




Sensoji Temple enjoys the same status as the local Kuan Yin Temple along the Waterloo Street but with more historical years. While both temples are comparable, the standard of the stalls along the road sides is like comparing one from a third world and one from a world class. The stalls that lead to teh Sensoji Temple are organized, presentable, clean and sells more interesting stuff /food. The only funny and restrictive thing is that you can only consume food within or nearby the stall itself. It's a cultural stuff ? Maybe.





I will go to these three places again when I visit Tokyo next time. It is an enjoyable experience to be in these three places. :-)

Started annual vocation

Have been on leave for a week since my last event on 13 Dec 09. This year, I have a full month annual leave so as to clear my last year leave. I dun have much time to cleat it earlier as there is pretty much to do in office in the past few months. I am planning to leave for good, with or without a new job. Anyway, many more upcoming and since I am on leave, I wun want to think about it until I am back to office later :-)

Writing this entry in the Shinjuku Washington Hotel now. Free broadband access in the room. Reached Tokyo today and the weather here is very cold. I am happy that my daughter din make much noise along the way, 6 hours of flight and 1.5 hours of bus ride. She did express her impatient but manage to engage her. The day is shorter than night now in Tokyo and it was pretty dark when the bus left for Tokyo city from the airport though it was only 5pm local time (ie 4pm in Singapore). I dun quite like it.



It is, indeed, very cold. My daughter is more excited over her new attire. Couldn't wait to put it on the moment we touched down. Ha...ha...ha... It's a tiring day and din explore much today. Will begin tmr :-)

Finally bought a replacement

After much research and reviews, I bought a replacement for the old portable DVD player. There are, indeed, a few options. Basically, which option is likely to give the best possible value.

I bought the Asus Eee 1005HA model netbook in the Sitex 2009 with 2GB RAM running on Atom N280 chip. 10.1" screen size with 160GB hard disk and at least 6 hours of effective battery hours. Pretty good review. Would like to go for the Windows 7 Starter edition but was told that it was only available on that Saturday onwards and I did not want to walk through a sea of people again. Hence, settle down with the Windows XP edition. S$660 in total.

The replacement means that I will have the access to internet in the hotel room when i travel (there are more and more free internet access available in hotel rooms). It is also mean the need to copy more of my daughter's DVD titles onto the hard disk as well as on the portable too so that she can enjoy it while in the plane and in the hotel room.

Was very keen to go for the touch screen model from Acer but the making was not that nice (around S$850). The available of Windows 7 also mean that more touch screen models would be made mainstream pretty soon. In fact, there are more notebook models using the SSD as the storage ie 128GB or 256GB in size, from Dell and Sony. I was very impressed with the Sony edition weighing only 650g with 11" screen. Very, very light and slim but it was just too pricey, around s$2,500

I shall have it one day pretty soon because as technology advances, prices will drop and it can drop pretty fast as well. Ha...ha...ha...