Second part of the Osaka post, this time focusing on sightseeing, things to do and some shopping! Osaka is a huge city so it’s going to be pretty different from what you get from Kyoto, but nevertheless there’s tons of things to see!
japan
Japan: Osaka food in 3 days
Famously nicknamed Japan’s kitchen, Osaka is a haven for the food lovers. In fact, we didn’t quite have enough days to cover all the food we wanted and had to cramp some of them into one meal’s worth most of the time haha. And because there’s so much good food in this post, I’m putting things to do in Osaka as a separate post. 😀
Japan: Day Trip to Kobe
Naturally the first association that comes to mind for Kobe would be Kobe beef, or the basketball player, and I’d have to say it’s a worthy association indeed. Continue reading
Japan: Day Trip to Nara
Nara is easily defined by the super huge and famous deer park, where you are free to roam with deers, take photos of them and feed them. There’s a lot of trust between the visitors and the deers who are almost domesticated due to the frequency of interaction with humans.
Japan: Kyoto in 2 days
Hi everyone! After my very unenthusiastic end to Europe’s posts, I’m making a comeback with a country I’m pretty much in love with. The BF and I spent a week in Japan recently while I was on my two-week break before starting my new job, and he took leave to accompany me at it. Yay!
Tokyo Themed Bar: The Lockup @ Shibuya
Tokyo is well known for its themed cafes such as the cat cafe or owl cafe, as well as themed restaurants like the maid and butler cafes. No less, the nightlife has plenty of themed places to check out, such as host clubs for both male and female, and themed bars. In my short stay in Tokyo I was looking up all these places and decided the best place to check out that’s both affordable and doable with my brother + friends was one of the themed bars of Japan, specifically The Lockup at Shibuya. The name alone should give you an idea on what it’s about. It’s a prison concept with a haunted theme and the bar/restaurant did a wonderful job living up to its theme!!
We went together with a couple of bro’s friends who visited from Singapore. Initially I had read that it was a prison concept and found it really fascinating which was why i coaxed my brother to make a reservation hahaha, but i didn’t actually expect it to be a haunted prison concept… which became kinda hilarious because later on because his friends were even less aware.
leading to the place
Once we actually went in it was pitch dark so i couldn’t take photos, plus the short pathway to the bare was like a mini haunted house with a scare or two 
We found the entrance and was greeted with a policewoman who noted our reservations. We were told we can take photos of the place but not of the staff. She led us in and we were greeted by an English-speaking policewomen, who then said she needed to arrest someone for some crime. So we just asked them to arrest my brother for being a fashion terrorist because he was wearing a salmon colored top that day lol. She handcuffed my brother and told us she will now lead us to our cell. And it was convincingly a cell lol.
Our cell!
Very poorly lit place lol
Waiters and waitresses in cell outfits came in to give us the menu.
She also came in to serve our welcome drinks but we felt really cheated because they charged us for the drinks later on -_-
welcome drinks
They’ve got funky menu items
They also have challenge items!
They had challenge items on the menu in which the waitresses/waiters would administer the stated game for you. The crackers challenge for example, was a challenge to eat finish the amount of crackers in 30 seconds and you get a prize if you win and a forfeit if you lose. My bro’s friend Jasmine tried it and she lost. The drink was basically a really sour drink, but no one stayed around to make sure she finished it la haha.
After taking our orders, the waitress told us she actually can’t serve our food yet because it’s time for the monsters to be out and about. LOL. At least we were given warnings beforehand lol. We waited for a bit and not long later, the whole place turned dark and lights started flashing. Lots of sounds can be heard and a couple of screams from customers, and then it was a lot of scary music and sounds of monsters roaming about. We could hear from the screams where the monsters are HAHA, and so we could predict them coming for us.
Eventually a monster came in to scare us and it was REALLY FUNNY BECAUSE HE WASN’T SCARY, BUT HE CAME IN AND SPRAYED THIS MIST/FOG/AIR/WTV THING AT US. It’s like a huge airspray I’m sorry i really don’t know what it’s called, but it’s those things that spray mist at you in haunted houses and theme parks. Just that he had a portable one and it was REALLY STRONG. The funniest part was when he sprayed and we all FLEW BACK IN OUR CHAIRS i kid you not like i just fell against my brother and his friends fell on me and we were all flattened against the wall and i started laughing really hysterically because here we were flattened against the wall and on the other end of the table his friends were screaming and hiding under the table. It’s like 100x more entertaining than a haunted house any day.
After that was over my bro’s friend Yu De who had filmed the entire thing showed us the clip, and during the part he was blasted with air the video went all wacky. crey
Soon after our drinks and food were finally served LOL.
i ordered this coffee cocktail that tasted like Baileys, and the thing with the gun was Yu De’s drink. I’m still not sure what the gun is though, but the drink was like milk and beer.
The drinks lit up during the monster prowling-scaring time~
This was tasty!! Cereal in vanilla ice cream and chocolate fudge w brownies
Making payment~
OTW out we found that for two-seaters you can sit on these booths
We spent approximately $15 per person (plus the welcome drink that cost like almost $7 ugh so cheated). It’s honestly not a lot considering how fun the trip was. The cocktails were priced at normal prices that you find in Singapore. A lot of blogs said the food wasn’t nice and yeah i think they weren’t fabulous, but honestly i wouldn’t expect much from food in a themed bar like this, and also generally I went for the theme more than the food or drinks, so it was all good for me ^^
How to get to The Lockup @ Shibuya:
Address – 33-1 Udagawacho | B2, Shibuya, Tokyo Prefecture 150-0042, Japan
Tokyo D9: Ichiran; aka the anti-social ramen place
Time for another food post, and this time it’s about one of the most famous ramen places in Tokyo called Ichiran.
I also call it the anti-social ramen place, but i say it with a lot of endearment because this was easily the best ramen I tasted in my short stay in Japan~
Before going on to the food pictures, just a recap of the day for my own benefit. It started off as a mostly lazy day going to Tokyo Station while my brother gets souvenirs for his friends, and I sit there at Starbucks as usual doing what i do best. Idk why but Tokyo city often makes me want to just sit down and chill (in a good way), and it’s strange considering that there’s literally no good cafe to sit down & chill besides Starbucks. Initially the plan was to visit the Imperial Palace since it was nearby, but after half an hour of both of us sitting down, him reading a book and me settling my bidding and blogging, we were both like… #nah. Lol. We both know that we’re not that interested in that kind of Japan history and culture, and it was obligation more than anything else.
So we chilled around for a long time before finally heading back to our hotel at Mystays Ikebukuro (we moved out of Sakura, sadly, the day before). I hurried to do laundry because they have a laundry room luckily, and we rushed back out to meet his friends to eat Ichiran.
Store front of Ichiran!
The queue wounded all the way up and to the lobby area!
Once you enter, you’re greeted with a vending machine as usual, and you choose the ramen you want. The normal one cost 790 yen which is about $9~, very affordable considering it’s a famous place.
Vending machine to make your orders
I read from other sources that they recommend ordering a boiled egg to cleanse your palette. We each ordered one egg but eventually i put mine into the soup instead of eating it pre-ramen hahaha.
We moved into the restaurant and I felt cheated cuz there was another queue LOL. It hasn’t ended yet D:
As you can see in the picture, people wait in a straight line until they are let into the curtained rooms. Meanwhile a waitress goes down to pass us papers to customize our ramens.
Even though they recommended like half spicy level, no!!!! I ordered 5 times and it was perfect for me, not too spicy and it didn’t overwhelm the taste of the ramen itself. It’s really really really delicious with the red sauce so I would really recommend trying about 3 times if you’re not that good at chili, and if you really can’t take chili, at least regular or double.
I had friends who went Ichiran but didn’t order the red sauce or ordered just a bit because it seems a bit misleading… like it appears that regular or half is safest for them, and they weren’t as impressed with Ichiran as I was. I really thought the chili made a lot of difference to our differing opinions haha, and if it wasn’t for my brother, I wouldn’t have known it was perfectly manageable to try up to 5x spicy level. My bro’s friends tried like 10x and they loved it so much. My brother’s 7 was a little too much for me, the chili taste was too strong, but my bowl of ramen was perfect with its firm noodles, light richness, 1/2 clove of garlic and 5x red sauce~
After we’ve customized our ramens, we were brought into the individual rooms and this is the anti-social part haha.
Everyone sat in their own individual ‘booths’ with wooden barriers in between. You can fold the barriers in if you’re with friends but I kept it there to really experience the concept haha. My brother told me they have this cool technology in which they can sense when you get up and that’s how they know the seat is vacant and things like that.
We passed our paper through the hole in front of us and as soon as it was received, they drew the wooden curtain shut. o.o
/anti-social/
my little booth at the corner, with the wooden curtain drawn shut
It took less than 5 minutes before my ramen was served!!!
Looking really really realy really tasty omg ❤ that chili
I cannot emphasize this enough but it was positively the best ramen i’ve tasted!! Superb pork broth taste that wasn’t too strong or oily because i picked light, a lovely mix of garlic taste from my 1/2 clove, deliciously firm noodles, soft pork that melts in the mouth…. omg i’m typing this in my dorm in Seoul and i’m like DDDD: i will never taste this again?! Sigh.
As you can see, my level 5 chili didn’t really change the soup color that much and it wasn’t that potent!
Ichiran tells a lot about the culture of dining in Japan tbh. They make it so that you don’t have to open your mouth and speak with any single person, or make eye contact at all. From the moment you step in, you order from the vending machine, you customize on paper. Perhaps the only words you have to exchange with the waitresses is how many people there are. You go in, escorted to your booth, and you just slip the paper to the chefs in the kitchen. There’s water dispenser right in front of you, utensils all ready, and if you want to order extra, you just have to take the pen and write on the ‘add-on’ paper they provided for you. Then you press the bell and pass the paper through the hole once more.
I found it so fascinating. In Tokyo it’s not surprising to see people eating alone, mostly office men after work, and most of the time the restaurants in Japan arrange their seats to be counter-style catered to individuals, instead of tables for four or two, because it’s a more efficient use of space given most customers come in alone. Ichiran however did take it to the extreme. In their website they stated that it’s to help you focus on the ramen, but I’m pretty sure part of its concept and why it’s so popular is how considerate the restaurant is towards people who eat alone, giving them the absolute maximum privacy and alone time they wish to have while eating.
It’s like good and bad at the same time. I have a torn opinion about these kinds of places. I eat alone sometimes too and i know that if i live in Japan, I would love Ichiran because it allows me to be comfortable eating alone and not be hyper conscious about others’ impressions of me. At the same time, I feel like having a place like Ichiran around will just make me withdraw into my comfort zone even more, thus making me anti-social for real lol.
Hm.
Regardless of the concept though, the ramen is absolutely the best ramen i’ve ever tasted! The first recommendation I’d make to anyone visiting Tokyo 😀
How to get to Ichiran @ Ikebukuro:
Tokyo D7: Pablo Cheese Tart & Mutekiya Ramen
Food post!! Haha. We tried two rather famous things on D7 after the garden tour and a look at the famous Shibuya crossing.
Pablo Cheese Tart
We stumbled upon this more by chance. Earlier on the subway Karin was showing us this and asking if my brother knows where it is. He didn’t but he said we could try to find it later on.
After walking around a bit at Shibuya and forgetting totally about it, we came across it by pure chance. Before talking about it though, I must add that there are TONS of places like these in Tokyo that draw really long queues and are apparently popular locally, but tbh i’ve never quite understood the rave for many of those places. Pablo was good, but there are some that aren’t really worth the queue in my opinion. So I guess, proceed with discretion when queueing for famous-looking places?
Medium was soft enough for us, and we thought rare might be too messsy
I liked looking at this part of the process a lot though!! They stamp on the tart before layering it with (?) idk what they layered it with but yeah..
We bought the medium one because we realized that we had to kinda eat it immediately since the trio live in a different place from me and my bro. So scooting over to an alley, we stood around like suspicious people taking photos of a tart and trying to cut it. Lol.
Look at how soft it was!!!
I really really really liked it, but some part of me felt that it would’ve tasted about 3x more heavenly if it was chilled :O If you can bring it home, I’d suggest chilling it a bit haha. My own opinion though. Ours was fresh from the oven and warm!
Getting to Pablo @ Shibuya:
Mutekiya Ramen
We can’t forget Ramen in Tokyo eh. I’ve eaten plenty in the past days but never really wrote about any of them. Some were too salty for my liking
But this one! It was highly raved about everywhere online and also by the trio who also planned to go another time. I was caught in between following the trio to walk Shibuya and following my brother to meet his friends to eat Mutekiya. Mainly because the friends he was planning to meet that day were Japanese and i always think thrice when that happens, since i know it’ll end up in mostly Japanese conversations and me stoning off at one corner feeling that i would never again take for granted Korea’s connectivity and availability of wifi everywhere, after being in Tokyo for a few days.
In the end, i went off with him cuz I was craving ramen more than the things the trio wanted to eat.
Very long queue, as expected
We waited for about 20 min or so before we could finally go in. Upon entering, I realized why the queue was so long. The place was small and could contain maybe a maximum of 20 customers at one go.
there were many types of ramen but a little steep on prices, over 1000yen for a bowl of ramen with plenty of pork. (then again in Singapore ramen is like $15 but i’m more stingy when travling haha) So I chose the normal one which cost about 700 yen, since i don’t eat pork that much either. The eggs in my ramen picture weren’t from the menu, it was from some coupon one of my brother’s friends had haha. A ramen with eggs would cost more, maybe about 850 yen if my memory doesn’t fail me.
Yummy!
making this picture small because it doesn’t look fantastic from this view, but it’s actually a garlic crusher. They have cloves of garlic in containers that you can crush yourself and put into the ramen~ it was super tasty with the garlic!
I’m a garlic person so inevitably i crushed like two cloves of garlic and the ramen broth tasted more garlic-y than anything else HAHAHA. Regardless, it was delicious and pretty worth the wait 🙂
Getting to Mutekiya @ Ikebukuro:
Tokyo D7: Shinjuku Gyoen & Shibuya Crossing
The day began with Lineatte asking if they can come along to join me and my bro because they didn’t want to follow Liz etc to Hakone. Our plan was to first to Shinjuku Gyoen, which is one of the most famous gardens in Tokyo.
Shinjuku Gyoen
The Shinjuku Gyoen garden contains some variety of themed gardens. I’m not an expert at gardens so uh just look at the pretty pictures hahaha.
Saw this pretty blue flower!
Nice and peaceful
Walked a bit and found the greenhouse. This was my favorite part actually. But we barely made t before it closed (it closes at about 4pm if i’m not wrong, should check again)
spotted the greenhouses!
super nice!
Favorite picture~
The french garden
Pretty ❤
wearing clothes to match the garden! black hair roots growing out bleh
Shibuya Crossing
I’ve heard about this famous Shibuya Crossing and was very curious to see it especially after seeing the famous ‘scramble walk’ elsewhere in Tokyo. The concept is an all-ways crossing in a cross junction, so instead of taking turns for cars from each opposing sides to stop and let pedestrians cross, they all stop together to let pedestrians cross whichever way they want. To us pedestrians it’s obviously much more effecient so we don’t have to wait longer to cross to the diagonal-opposite side, but i’m just thinking it’s pretty inefficient for the cars hahaha. Then again, Tokyo’s traffic is more human than vehicles so perhaps that’s why the concept was born.
Shibuya Crossing! Pedestrians waiting
Pedestrians crossing
For those who want a view from above, you can go to the Starbucks across the station (viewable in the first picture), otherwise you can go to the second floor of the train station like we did.
Since we were at Shibuya too, we naturally went to search for the famous Hachiko Statue. Haha. Here we go:
Well it’s nothing that much, but there’s a beautiful, beautiful story behind it. Lots of people were posing with the statue so it was hard to get a photo without people in it haha. It’s just next to the station.
Okay will be back to update this post again. Bye!
Tokyo D6: Shinjuku Golden Gai & Red Light District (Kabukicho)
Golden Gai: Shinjuku’s 1950s Street
After moving to Sakura Hotel we eventually did nothing until night time… well my brother ran off to Book Off again while i fell asleep lol. Nevertheless, we decided to stick to plan and met up with his friends again to visit Golden Gai, a street that’s famous for its old architecture and tiny restaurants and bars piled together, reminiscence of olden Tokyo days.
Narrow alleyways~
Small spaces inside restaurants and bars
We walked for a bit and tried to find one of the restaurants to eat in, but the place was simply packed. The good places are packed full of people and the stores were turning away customers (possibly no space to queue or…?). So giving up, we turned back and ate somewhere else in Shinjuku.
My purpose was to take a look at the street so i didn’t really mind that we didn’t get to eat. Atmosphere aside, the food would probably be similar to the restaurants outside the street.
Ate dinner and walked on to find Shinjuku’s red light district.
Kabukicho: Shinjuku’s Red Light District
I’ve been wanting to visit this place and well, i’m not sure what i had actually expected LOL, but it turned out to be much milder than i thought.
Walking in, you could only tell the difference between this street and other streets when you look closely at advertisements (of course if you can understand it makes a whole lot of difference). There are also lots of men in suit and we were asking our Japanese friend and she said they’re possibly scouting for both customers and potential employees for their clubs.
When I say club though, i don’t mean Zouk kind. I meant like host clubs. Like Ouran High School Host Club kind of club, except at night and stuff. It surprised me that female hosts weren’t on advertisements as much, theirs are usually more discreet and much much smaller. On the other hand, advertisements for male hosts were spread everywhere on lighted boards.
Male host clubs advertisements
I guess it sounds ‘dirty’ when i say host club in a night setting at a red light district, but from my knowledge at least, it’s mostly just companionship? I’ve watched documentaries that covered Japan’s night life including host clubs. But I’m pretty sure there’s a good variety of extremes.
I heard also from our Japanese friends that there are all sorts of ‘fetishes’ when it comes to these hosts. I don’t mean physical ones, but rather personality wise. Like there’s an entire term for guys who play hard to get. And a term for girls who are shy and timid. And a term for fetishes for very young girls although i’m pretty sure that should translate to pedophile. There’s also an unusual term to describe homosexual guys who have a fetish for ‘old men who are about to die’.
Well.
I don’t know all of those terms sorry, i doubt my brother remembers them either and i don’t want to bug him in the middle of the night to ask his friends haha. But there are words for both physical fetishes as well as personality fetishes. It doesn’t apply to only hosts. Things like Butler / Maid Cafes as well are relevant – when you’re picking the person to serve you, you can choose via personality too.
While inside Kabukicho, we dropped by a baseball batting cage to try our hands at baseball. There are plenty of these in Korea but somehow I haven’t done it yet, so it was my first shot!
I suck at baseball, end of story.
i love this picture, machiam like one pro photographer liddat
That is all for Shinjuku! There are plenty of things to see at Shinjuku, but for us who wanted a slower pace of travel, we only traveled to the things we found most interesting and more representative of Japan and its sub-cultures~
darmawanders 