21st December
Ise-Toba-Ise-Osaka
In the morning I went to bathe again. This time I washed my upper body and face. So technically I did get a full shower. Was still very very cold :/ Breakfast was also at the ryokan, had last night's fish and some other stuff. We then walked to Ujiyamada station to catch the tourist 'Can' bus to Toba, which brought us to all the attractions in Ise, the next town and Toba. We got off at one of the shrine stops, Geku Shrine I think. It was more like a park and was really big. It was across a river and this huge bridge had been built over it (lol, lower course of the river). It turned out that this shrine was very impotant and once a year the Emperor of Japan goes to pray there during this really massive festival. There was this forest of old trees there too with huge trunks, with tops that couldn't be seen because they were so tall.
Our next stop was Toba because we didn't really have enough time to see all the attractions along the way :/ At Toba we headed straight for the Mikimoto Pearl Island, which is an island privately owned by the Mikimoto Corporation. It's a museam, depicting the cultivation of pearls which I found really interesting. There was also this show which the Ama, women pearl divers, put up for us. They're divers who basically harvest pearls and they do it in all sorts of weather. The water temperature was about 12 degrees on that day and the wind was blowing, so cold! Yet they still dived into the water to 'harvest' pearls.
The museam and really interesting and they also taught us how to distinguish artifical pearls from real ones (when rubbed together, real pearls feel gritty while artificial ones are smooth). Unfortunately we had to leave early because we had to catch the bus back to Ise :(
We had a quick lunch at this eatery nearby run by those two excitable old women, again it was the point to order routine. I had some preserved fish over rice, which I really enjoyed (: The price was a little steep though, for the simple fare I ate. My parents had seafood and soba instead. After lunch we ended up running all the way back to the bus station to catch the bus -.- Then while on the bus, we realised that it actually ran in a loop, meaning to say it went to another stop, then returned to the place where we had just boarded the bus about 5 minutes later -.-
Anyway we went back to the ryokan, took some pictures and checked out and went to catch the Kintetsu Ltd. Express train to Uehommachi Station in Osaka(WEE-ho-ma-chi), we didn't know how to pronounce it then, so my dad just kept pointing at the map. On the train I started to do the 100 yen sodoku book I had bought in Nara. At Uehommachi station, we met my mother's family who had booked the room for us at the Miyako Osaka Hotel, which turned out to be right above the station and owned by Kintetsu Co.
The first room we had was too small for an extra bed, so we ended up changing rooms. Afterwards we went to Namba with my Aunt's family to eat dinner and look at the shopping district. I went to some food theme park place with my dad and my aunt's friend to look around after dinner. Then we did a little shopping then returned back to the hotel.
22nd December
Osaka
We woke up pretty early, around 7am to go to this market, the direct translation was "Black Market" (I baulked when my aunt said the directs trans to!) and was located 1 train stop away from Uehommachi, however we decided to walk there instead.
By the time we walked there, we were really hungry and the market itself was half opened, with no eateries in sight, so we left the market area and ate at yet another machine food place. After that my dad got impatient waiting for my mother + we were going to be late for the desginated meeting time with her sister, so he left. Then I took the subway back with my mother and we met up with my aunt's family. Together we all took the subway to Osaka Castle, afterwards my dad and I went to see Peace Osaka, which I really liked.
Peace Osaka essentially is on WWII with some other later wars, an education centre of sorts. The stand of Peace Osaka is that they accept the blame for triggering the war in the pacific and seek to educate the future generations. I really enjoyed it there and wished I could have spend more time there :/ I felt myself tearing a little while looking at the many exhibits. I wanted to go to Liberty Osaka too, but it was closed for the day.
Afterwards, since my mother wanted to shop, we took a subway to this factory outlet called 'Blossom' which was on the outskirts of the city. I bought a bag there and this blouse, both for 1000 Yen each ($13.40). Then it was onto Umeda for dinner and more shopping. We ended up eating at some simple stand-up-to-eat noodle store because my uncle didn't want to spend a lot of money on food. I had this simple Udon and Beancurd dish. Umeda was really packed and filled with people. All throughout I tried hard to look out for a store that sold magazines to buy Ianthe's requested HAIR BOOK, but to no avail! Like when I went into the Lawsons and the convenience stores, I couldn't find it at all. At the Umeda shopping centre, I couldn't find any bookshops either! After a while I got fed up and bought her something else instead, while still looking out for any bookstores.
It wasn't till we had taken the subway back to the hotel that I saw this bookshop! WOOO. Anyway I went inside with my parents and we tried to look out for it, (I asked them to look out for anything that said "HAPPY HAIR BOOK" like the one I saw in kino before) but we couldn't find anything. So I went to ask the shop assistant if she knew how to speak English, all the while prepared to point manically at my head and make a flipping motion like a book. To my relief, she did and while she looked a little puzzled when I asked her where the 'hair magazines' were (I almost said hair book), she brought me to a corner of the store and pulled out a few magazines, so I happily bought one. Mission accomplished!
Then later in the hotel we packed up out stuff in preperation for our departure the next day. I also ate two buns that we had bought while out earlier.
23rd December
Osaka-Kansai Airport-Bangkok (transit)-Singapore
I woke up really early, around 6:45am with my dad so we could go out and eat a proper breakfast rather then bread. Almost everywhere was closed and we ended up at this small eatery, which we though was a machine type place, but instead turned out to be a proper eatry. Ohhh, DIE. My dad asked the girl there if she spoke English and to our surprise she asked us if we spoke Mandarin. Woooo, hooray, saved!
So in the end we did our ordering in Chinese, hahaha. She turned out to be a Chinese woman, like one other waitress we met in Namba, Osaka. I had a beef udon and shared a grilled salmon with my dad. All in all, we had pretty simple meals in Japan, almost all under 1000 Yen. Then we returned back to the hotel and bought tickets for the shuttle to Kansai Airport.
At the airport, the security check was a nightmare, the lines were so long :( My mother and I wandered around the duty free stores and she decided to buy a shawl there, of all the places to buy a shawl -.- Halfway while reading my overdue devotions in the airport, I suddenly remembered I had forgot to buy my maid a christmas present, plus she requested something from Japan O.O So I ended up running around and bought this Geisha keychain which said 'Nagoya', which is of course really ironic on so many levels. On the plane ride back, they were showing Step Up -.- and The Illusionist, I decided to sleep during Step Up and watched The Illusionist, which was so-so.
At Bangkok Airport our departure and arrival gates were in the same wing, so we didn't have to make the great trek across the vast materialism of the duty free wing. Instead we ended up looking at random stuff in the duty free stores. People who buy stuff from duty free and think they're cheap (well minus alcohol, possibly make-up) are the stupidest people to ever walk the world. Like they deserve to be darwinised the moment they pay for their purchases.
Anyway when we checked in at the gate, the first sign that I had of home was Singaporeans cutting the queue at the security check. $U*(#@). As if I wasn't in a bad mood enough, induced by my wonderful fellow countrymen, the toilet was completely disgusting with water all over the damn floor, flicked there by more really great people. It's like after I got back from Japan I couldn't stand such rubbish like that anymore because everyone in Japan seemed so well behaved, not to mention they really public facilites well, unlike Singaporeans. The airplane ride back too was rubbish with people making a lot of noise, complete with lots of singlish, lah. The airplane ride to Bangkok was 60% filled with non-Japanese, yet they were so much more better behaved than the rowdy Singaporeans. Times like these, I really understand why Stephanie hates Singapore so much.
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One thing I noticed in Japan was the crazy lack of dustbins! Like seriously, dustbins were a rare commodity there. What's amazing however was that it was so clean! There was literally no litter on the streets at all, even when there's a glaring lack of dustbins.
There were also some people who thought we were Japanese. There was this old man at the Kyoto Karasuma-Oike Station who tried to ask me for help, but all I could reply was a broken message of "Wakaranai Nihongo", since I was flustered and said the first rubbish that came to mind.
Also I noticed a lot of students walking the streets, taking transport, at ALL TIMES OF THE DAY! It was so weird, like they didn't have school at all and decided to randomly put on their uniforms.
Anyway I really enjoyed my trip - I want to go back!
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