This is what I drew on the window of our hotel room. Aud & Tim under the umbrella of love wtf.

After three days in Disney, we moved over to the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

Imperial Hotel!!!

When Wombeh first told me where we would be staying, I thought “what Imperial hotel don’t tell me got pictures of the Emperor and chrysantemums plastered around the place”  wtf cos that’s what comes to mind when I think of Japan and imperialism wtf.

Let me quote Wikipedia:

Tokyo‘s Imperial Hotel was the best-known of Frank Lloyd Wright‘s buildings in Japan. The original Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was built in 1890. To replace the original wooden structure, the owners commissioned a design by Wright, which was completed in 1923.

(er don’t look at me)

I was standing there in the lobby reading a plaque that said the hotel was built by Frank Lloyd Wright and I was wondering to myself how come that name is so familiar.

Then I realized that I had seen his name in Meiji Mura!  And the Imperial Hotel itself in Meiji Mura!

When we were all studying in Kyoto, we went to visit the Meiji Mura.

Meiji Mura (博物館明治村, Hakubutsukan Meiji-mura^?, lit: “Meiji village” museum) is an open-air architectural museum/theme park in Inuyama, near Nagoya in Aichi prefecture, Japan. It was opened on March 18, 1965. The museum preserves historic buildings from Japan’s Meiji (1867-1912), Taisho (1912-1926), and early Shōwa (1926-1989) periods. Over 60 historical buildings have been moved and reconstructed onto 1 square kilometre (250 acres) of rolling hills alongside Lake Iruka. The most noteworthy building there is the reconstructed main entrance and lobby of Frank Lloyd Wright‘s landmark Imperial Hotel, which originally stood in Tokyo from 1923 to 1967, when the main structure was demolished to make way for a new, larger version of the hotel.^[1]

Which was where we stayed!  So cool right!

Here’s David with the old entrance of the Imperial at Meiji Mura.

Fml no picture of me cos by that time I was very sien and tired already and still suffering from remnants of lau sai.  (Got lau sai but die die still wanted to go on this trip because everything paid for already)

Anyway the revised Imperial Hotel is beautiful!  This is the view from the door of our room.

Oh and that’s a statue of Wombeh at the corner.

Bathroom!

Ofuro! (which is Wombeh’s favorite thing in Japan besides drink vending machines)

So like everyone knows, you shower (on the right) clean clean first before you step into the bath and soak.  Normal temperature usually about 40 to 42C unless you’re a devil for adventure and wanna fry your organs.

I used to not really like the ofuro because in a Japanese household everyone usually soaks in the same water and the most important or respected person in the house goes first (ie father)

My host family always asked me to use the ofuro first so the water for me would be totally clean but I was too grossed out by the thought of people’s skin flakes and dandruff in the water that I never used it T_____T

Then one day they found out I never used the ofuro despite them letting me bathe first and I don’t think they were too happy wtf.

But one day I decided to try it and it is fucking fabulous lor!  Step inside all shivery and freezing from your shower and just lie there in the hot water and warm up.

When you get out you’ll be all warm and comfy all over and ready to run the marathon nekkid!

Then I got bored of taking photos of the room and started taking photos of funny commercials on TV. It’s Up!

Some ads are really weird.

This is the view from our room.

This is a restaurant we went to in Ginza for lunch.

It’s one of those small underground restaurants where you have to climb down flights of stairs to get to.  Very cosy!

This is the backside of the obaasan of the restaurant wtf.

Our utensils.

This is what we had.  Kamameshi!  Also known as Kettle rice which is the Japanese version of claypot rice.

Kamameshi (釜飯) literally translates to “kettle rice” and is a traditional Japanese rice dish cooked in an iron pot. Similar to takikomi gohan, kamameshi is a type of Japanese pilaf cooked with various types of meat, seafood, and vegetables. By cooking it in an iron pot, the rice gets slightly burned at the bottom which adds a desirable flavor to the rice.

I am on a Wiki spree today!

I haven’t gotten photos of our kamameshi from Wombeh yet so here’s a photo stolen from um Robert J. Steiner wtf.

Wombeh!

Then we went down to Akihabara.  That’s Tim’s big love in the background wtf.

Comic books (and what looks like soft porno wtf) in a store.

Tokyo Takarazuka!  Not sure whether this is the building or theatre for it but Takarazuka is an all-female musical theatre troupe and the actresses are super famous (at least among the middle aged women wtf) and they play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals, and sometimes stories adapted from shōjo manga and Japanese folktales.

This building was near our hotel and sometimes when we walked past, there’d be crowds of women sitting outside the building I think they were waiting for their Takarazuka idols!

Ever since I heard about Takarazuka I was dying to go watch them so last time a bunch of us went to Osaka to watch them perform!

Before the show started. (photo from 2 years back)

With Angie and Christine!

And by god it was the most boring show in the world T_________T

Maybe cos I didn’t understand also cos they spoke in quite chim old-style Japanese aih oh well experience is experience.

Then for dinner it was teppanyaki!

The restaurant (also in Ginza)

Just realized that I don’t have any of Tim’s photos from Akihabara day! 🙁

I also wanted to take him to a maid cafe in Akiba but everyone else wasn’t interested when they heard we had to pay 500 yen each an hour besides ordering food and drinks wtf.

Day 1 was quite chillz cos we woke up at 12pm and also I’m horrible at remembering to take photos 🙁

Ok that’s all (unless I get pickchas from him)