8D7N Tokyo Trip (11-18 Oct 2017): Day 1 to 3

Day 1: Arrival + Shinjuku

We arrived at Narita Airport, took the Keisei Skyliner to Nippori and transferred to Shin-Okubo station via the JR Yamanote Line. We took some time to settle down at our AirBNB apartment before heading out for our first dinner at AFURI. We also went up to the observation deck at the Metropolitan Government Building for a view of the city lights of Tokyo. 

This is the waffle store that we love so so much! We had it for 3 nights and we tried earl grey, almond, choco chips, and cinnamon flavoured waffles. 

AFURI

B2F LUMINE1, 1-1-5 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

MR. Waffle

Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo Shinjuku 3-38-2 

LUMINE Shinjuku 2-1F 

2 way Keisei Skyliner and 48 hours metro pass package: 5,100¥

Metropolitan Government Building: Free!

Day 2: DisneySea

Btw, am I the only one that has the tendency to type DisneySEA instead of DisneySea? Even in my itinerary I stated it as DisneySEA. I blame one of the most commonly used acronym - South East Asia (SEA) hahaha.

Before our trip, we read an amazing guide here so as to make use of the FASTPASS system to maximise the number of rides we are able to take. Unlike USS, DisneyLand/Sea does not have the option where people can top up money to be entitled for the express queue. However, they have another crowd control technique, and people can get their allocated timeslot for the ride via a FASTPASS ticket, enjoy other areas of the park, return back to the attraction when the time has come! I think this method is great since it is on a first come first serve basis and it does not incur any additional cost! 

Basically, before you enter DisneySea, if you want to conquer all rides, you need to come up with a strategy on the rides as only a few of the attractions are labelled as a FASTPASS attraction. 

We managed to get 4 FASTPASS tickets in sequence:

• Toy Story Mania - digital shooting to get as many points as possible
• Indiana Jones - indoor roller coaster, similar to Revenge of the Mummy in USS
• Raging Spirits - a 360 degree turn on the rollercoaster
• Nemo & Friends SeaRider - 4D boat ride

We got to the park 30 minutes after it opened and the timeslot allocated for us for Toy Story is already 1620-1720h. This is why it is important to know which are the most popular rides and to get your hands on the tickets before they run out. AND ALSO NOT TO ARRIVE LATE. We did not manage to get the FASTPASS ticket for Tower of Terror as it had run out at about 1pm and we had to wait for almost 100 minutes 😣

Also, for the month of October, all are welcome to dress up as a Disney character in conjunction with Halloween! We caught 3 Cruella de Vils in a row!

DisneySea ticket from Klook: SGD 84.85 

Express bus to/fro DisneySea: 1,000¥ per trip

Day 3: Asakusa + Tokyo Skytree

Day 3 saw us stopping by a random bakery in Shinjuku station for breakfast. Oh man the pastries here are delicious and we are so glad we stopped by this bakery. If you haven't realised most of the dishes are served cold (eg sushi and even sandwiches - see next post) and it is so nice to have a 'hot' breakfast in the cold weather.

After the delightful breakfast we went to Asakusa for the Sensoji Temple. We did not pass the Kaminarimon gate before reaching the temple as we went via another route. As you can see there are more pictures of the other gate rather than the Kaminarimon's. Oops! But we managed to find the gate on the way back to the station.

This is the street in between the Kaminarimon Gate and the Sensoji Temple. It is very crowded but it sells lots of finger food and souvenirs!

We bought rice crackers and anpan (bread) to snack on. This is the shop that sells the melon anpan but we bought the plain one :)

Oh yes, for those visiting Asakusa, please take note that you should avoid eating and walking at the same time. I once read online on the Japanese culture and they don't like people walking and eating at the same time. I asked a colleague who goes to Japan yearly if it is true and she said yes especially in Asakusa. We saw a signage that we should not eat and walk simultaneously as well during our trip too.

We then ventured out of the main street of Asakusa (behind Sensoji temple) and went to Suzukien. It's an icecream shop that sells 7 intensity levels of matcha icecream. We tried the one in level 5 and it is quite bitter already.

We chanced upon an owl cafe and went for it. Initially we wanted to visit the one at Ikebukuro but we decided to just go for this since it is cheaper and we had time to spare. Owls are one of my favourite animals and they are so so pretty! Before entering the area, the shop owner taught us how to pet the owls but not all owls can be touched.

We took the subway to Oshiage station to go to the Tokyo Skytree. The weather was pretty bad at that point of time - it was raining and it was super cloudy. We were warned that the view would not be good if we were to head up to level 350/450 of the Skytree as it was too cloudy. Nevertheless, we headed up to level 350 of the Skytree since we were already there. The view was really bad :( There was no point in going to level 450 so we didn't.

A complimentary photo taken by the staff. An awkward picture because I almost knocked down the Skytree sculpture while I was sitting down.

We walked around the food hall at the basement of Tokyo Solamachi and snacked on dumplings, yakitori and all sorts of nonsense. Then we settled for dinner at the food court. I bought this bowl of ramen but it turned out to be dry ramen (the soup was in a separate bowl) and it was a disappointment.

Owl no Mori (Jungle cafe)

1 Chome-22-3 Asakusa, Taito, Tokyo 111-0032 (second floor)

Suzukien

Asakusa 3-4-3, Taito-ku, Tokyo

Sensoji Temple: Free!

Owl no Mori: 890¥, comes with a free drink

Tokyo Skytree (level 350): 2,060¥

I will be sharing the rest of my Tokyo trip in a separate post, so stay tuned for that!

My Braces Journey (Putting on Braces!)

This post is way overdue, but finally the day arrived for me to put on braces!!!

03 Aug 2016 -  $800 downpayment +$37 dental kit. Putting on braces for the upper set of teeth!

I overslept and was late for the appointment for almost half an hour, and the dentist said she will postpone the scaling and polishing to the next session and will put on braces for my upper set of teeth. 

First, she examined my teeth once more before gluing the brackets onto my teeth. Then she opened all of the sliding doors on the brackets and inserted the wire and closed the doors to secure it. The excess wire that was protruding out was cut away. All this took about 30 minutes. 

As soon as I was done with the upper braces, the dentist asked if I felt uncomfortable in any way. I answered no and was hurriedly "chased" out of the room. I recalled that the dentist told me she was putting on the upper set for me first, and I thought that's like a pre-empt for me and she would carry on with the lower set immediately after the upper set. Apparently, it wasn't and I had to leave the room immediately. I had no time to ask why the lower set wasn't done on the same day. (I assumed the condition of the upper set of teeth is more serious than the lower)

I'm not sure if it was due to the reason that I was late and it affected the entire line of patients, but I felt like the session ended very abruptly. I did not know that my lower set of teeth would not be done today as I was not told about it during the previous consultation.

The receptionist handed me a tablet and told me to watch this short video on how to take care of my teeth now that I have braces. After the video, she gave me a set of oral care products and it included mouth wash, toothbrush, interdental brush, wax and some brochures.

This is me with the upper set of braces!!!

Dental kit = $37 excluding GST 

*I only used the mouthwash for about a week as I realised it attracted ants even though I capped the lid tight. Sometimes I will find a drowned ant in my mouthwash too.

Also, the interdental brush is not really portable so I left it at home to dig out scraps of food stuck in between teeth and underneath the wire. I bought a pack of mini interdental brushes (cost about 4$ from Watsons) so I can clean my teeth after meals.

01 Sep 2016 - $220 + $90 scaling and polishing. Putting on the lower set of braces!

The dentist seemed to be happier as compared to my previous visit. I asked her the reason why the upper and lower braces are done on separate days. She told me that some people have a lower pain tolerance for the lower set of teeth, and why she did it separately is to allow the patient to adapt to the upper braces, before putting on the lower set a month later. Initially, I thought that my upper teeth are more crooked (ie more serious) than my bottom teeth. But I was also told that my bottom teeth are more crooked!

We proceeded on with doing the scaling and polishing that we skipped the previous session and then to putting on the lower braces.

Tadah!!

As you can see, my upper set of teeth, esp the bunny teeth is so much better already!!!

Today is day 2 of me with full braces on, the lower braces are making my bottom front teeth sore!!!! I don't think I feel as sore as compared to the upper braces the previous month. I can hardly bite anything (even with my back teeth) and brushing my teeth hurts. My inner lips feel swollen and I hope I don't have ulcers!!! The dentist told me to apply lots of wax but we shall see.

It looks like I got to wait for a few more days before I can go back to my normal diet. For now, yoghurt every damn day hahaha.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the placement of braces, the remainng sessions are more or less the same, where you go back to the dentist to have your wires changed.

13 Oct 2016 - $220. Changing the upper wire

26 Nov 2016 - $220. Changing the bottom wire

11 Jan 2017 - $220. Changing the upper wire

23 Feb 2017 - $220. Changing the bottom wire

06 Apr  2017 - $220. Did a second X-Ray. Did a re-alignment of two brackets on the upper teeth, and a change of the upper wire.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Changing of the wires took a relatively short time (less than 5 minutes) so it is all good. Except there was once whereby the dentist had to re-align two of my brackets after an x-ray. I'm not sure if it was mis-aligned in the first place or the dentist had to shift them to improve the movement of the teeth. But oh wells I can only trust my dentist right?

Anyways, I have switched over to another outlet (but still attached to the same dentist) as it is located near my office and I can go there during lunchtime. I will update about my braces in another post. So till then!

My First: GV Gold Class Experience

On a very fine day Jack and I decided to try out watching a movie in another sort of cinema, or rather the same setting but with another level of service/comfort aspect. After researching what the 3 main cinemas have to offer, we decided to try out the Golden Village Gold Class! 

We went to the Vivo City branch, the seats are in pairs with a small table in between the chairs. There is a button which you can press to call for the waiter. Also, you can order food/drinks with their lighted menu!! They serve alcohol too and I could see a few people ordered wine there.

There is also a blanket and the leg and back rest of the chair can be adjusted to your preference, which makes the whole cinema a very nice and cosy experience. But one thing about the chair is that I can't seem to adjust the angle of the leg rest to a nice position. It seems like it is either down, or 90 degrees up, so my legs were a bit aching as they were lifted so high up! Jack had the same issue too.

Anyways the price of a ticket is $29, but with DBS/POSB card, we purchased a ticket for $26. 

However, the booking fee is $2.50 per transaction (the normal booking fee is $1.50). In order to save the cost of the booking fee, you can go to any of the Golden Village Gold Class branches to get the tickets. Remember, only at the Gold Class lounge areas which are at Vivo City, Suntec City, Great World City and at Katong. If you arrive early, you can hang around at the lounge area as well (no entertainment there though).

It was a good experience so far and one should try this at least once!!!! Be sure to watch a long movie so as to make the price more worthy :>