By Chris
November 21, 2019 • 3 min read
November 18-25
Last week we spent some wonderful time in Kyoto again and were visited by Hiromi, a friend I made while she was studying in Houston (10 years ago wow time flies). We had a great time visiting Fushimi Inari again, eating good food, and catching up with her. Then we took another Shinkansen to Tokyo.
Steps are so tiring!
Hiromi, Hello Kitty, and Chris
Pro tip: After doing some research, I discovered it's possible to buy discounted tickets on a slower Shinkansen between Kansai (Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto) area, and Tokyo, on the "Platt Kodama", which takes about 1.5 more hours than the fast Nozomi, but is also $50 cheaper. We trekked all the way to downtown Tokyo just to buy these cheaper tickets in advance, and I think it will end up saving us $300 due to multiple trips.
This time in Tokyo, we are staying at a studio apartment airbnb on the western side of Tokyo. It's about a 20 minute train ride into central Tokyo, but it also feels more relaxed, and is right by a station and lots of conbinis. However, my motion sickness started to kick in with all the long train rides, despite dramamine, so after going out and about for two days, we're going to take it easy this weekend.
One thing we are enjoying are the "depachikas", the basement floor of department stores that have dozens of food stalls, ranging from fancy desserts to tasty bentos to take home and eat. We made the mistake in the past of trying to eat at the depachika, but quickly discovered this is not done, and there aren't really places to sit.
Brandon's favorite: yakitori!
This time we tried shopping for a couple days' worth of food and took home some tempura, fancy cake, bento, chicken, vegetables, sushi, and mikan. They also often have a grocery store that's connected to it, also on the basement floor. They are so huge they can sometimes be overwhelming. This one was the depachika at "Takashimaya". We also got cool flavors of Kit Kats there!
Kit Kats at Takashimaya depachika
The next day we had afternoon tea at the Mandarin Oriental in downtown Tokyo. It was on the 38th floor and had a great view, delectable finger food, and tasty milk tea. The scones, in particular, were fluffy and light, and the lemon macaron was amazing. Apparently that thing in the middle tier that looks like noodles is a "mont blanc", and the noodles are made of almond stuffs. It seems to be popular here in Japan. We hadn't known of it before this trip and at first we thought they were actual ramen type noodles lol.
The view and the tea stuffs at the Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo
Brandon and I at the Mandarin Oriental
The bathroom at the Mandarin Oriental is kinda stunning...which is weird to say about a bathroom but hey, can't beat that view.
At Tokyo station where we got the Platt Kodama tickets, there was also "Character Street" on the basement floor. It had a Rilakkuma store, Kiiroitori store (the bird from Rilakkuma got its own store lol), Miffy, Ultraman, Hello Kitty, and more. I was in character giddiness. It even had a "Koupen-chan" store, one of my favorite penguins in a manga.
Brandon and I in character street under Tokyo station
Mini Rilakkuma, Kiiroitori, and Korilakkuma, dressed up in outfits. You can buy different ones and put them on. Kawaii!!!! I may have to go back and get them more outfits...
And to top it all off, I even found this adorable Korilakkuma bun at Lawson's conbini. It made my day :)
January 25th to February 20th After our brief stay in Singapore, we more or less spent the next month (from January 25th to February 20th) on various Thai islands. It was a blast and a really unique experience. Looking back on it I'm probably struck the most by how different the experience was on each of the islands. We also had some interesting experiences getting to and from the different…