Just a short wee one for now. Tired and blank.

Sister’s picture compilation.

After our [mis]adventures in Asakusa, we headed over to the second ‘A’ – Akihabara.

Two nights before, I went online to email [and to check for other emails] Ahdai requesting the normal price of a DS lite in Sg. Kikuchi was telling us that one costs about 12 000 yen in Nihon. That translated to about only SGD157! So cheap! Whee! I also remembered NaiveGuy wanting a HD from Akihabara but before I could email him asking him more about it, the computer hung. -__-” Sorry, NG!

Sister was very amused because I refused to call Akihabara by its full name. Instead, I kept referring it as ‘the other A’, reason being… I couldn’t remember the name and thus couldn’t pronounce it. Ahem.

Repeat the tongue-twister over and over again as fast as you can – akihabara akihabara akihabara [the pronunciation of 'R' is more likely to that of 'L'].

Beautiful leather clothes for Ixus [in Nihon, they are called Ixy] cameras!

Everything in Nihon was about packaging packaging packaging. We went to the camera section floor as sister was looking for a camera case to replace her literally-disintegrating-falling-apart one and we ended up wanting to buy a camera [sister], a camera case [me] and other camera accessories [both of us].

See. Nihon and its evil places.

Let’s play Naruto! Kage bunshin no jutsu!

We left the place without getting my DS. 20 minutes was spent trying to communicate with the salesman about the DS and whether it can be used in Sg [charging system, language, games, etc] but he was curt with me. It was probably due to the language barrier; we were like chicken and duck communicating. O, bother.

The queues were this long and crowded all. the. time.

We headed over to Shinjuku next to meet up with sister’s floorball friend, Keiko, and her mystery boyfriend [also from the Japan Men's floorball team]. Shinjuku station has like, 38472 exits and I was surprised when sister managed to catch Keiko at one of the exits.

Keiko and her boyfriend, Tomoaki, thoughtfully pre-booked a place at a hotel restaurant for dinner – Asian Kitchen, but we had trouble locating it, even with Tomoaki’s GPS. So we ended up walking a looooooong way around Shinjuku first. Argh, my legs! Keiko informed us that a japanese variety show is filmed in Studio Alta [above picture] every week.

Pretty pretty lights! This ‘Love’ was made famous when it was featured in one of the Japanese dramas [which I can't remember the name at the moment].

Dinner! Sister’s picture compilation.

Seriously. That was the biggest parfait I have even seen and eaten. Look how it reached my chin! The 4 of us finished about 3/4 of the entire thing before we gave up. Tomoaki gave up first. Hiak hiak. Asian Kitchen apparently gives away free parfaits to people who visit the place for a meal the same month as their birthday months. None of us were December babies, but Keiko introduced sister and I [to the waiter who served us] as friends from Singapore and they presented us with the free parfait after dinner! Wow!

Sister’s picture compilation.

Miserable story of our Nihon lives. It was raining steadily when we finished dinner, adding to the winter cold. We awkwardly splashed our way to Tokyo Tower, weighed down by the rain [has anyone ran in a soaking wet wool coat before? it's heavy yah!]. Halfway to the tower, Tomoaki ran ahead of us to a convenience store and got us umbrellas and cans of hot drinks. So sweet and thoughtful!

After a group picture at the train station, the 4 of us headed back to our respective homes, cold, wet and wiped out.

Other Nihon Reads:

The Amazing Race [Nihon Version]

Meet The Katenas

Let’s Become Lost Children Together

Disneysea Part I

Disneysea Part II

Tokyo Misadventures