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Tsum tsum at Disneystore in Odaiba Japan

8D Avia Japan Tour: Ocean Club Buffet at Odaiba

Ocean Club Buffet at Decks Tokyo Beach Odaiba

Desserts from Odaiba Club Buffet in Odaiba

Night view of Rainbow Bridge Odaiba Japan

The last day of 8D Avia Japan Tour ended in Tokyo with a visit to the ever-crowded Shibuya crossing and Odaiba, a reclamation land located a distance away from downtown Tokyo. I know that Shibuya has always been a popular meeting spot but I was so overwhelmed with the number of people lingering around in front of Shibuya station where Hachiko statue is located on a Sunday. There is street performance there too with a band playing out some music and the noise of the crowd is enough to mumble out the sound of their performance. If you play Persona 5 on Playstation 4, you will be amazed at the details of Shibuya in the game. Because they are exactly the same with probably exception of political speech because it’s not yet election season. Haha.

We spent probably around 15 - 20 minutes in Shibuya crossing because we wanted to capture a selfie of ourselves crossing the famous 6-way crossing. I suppose only tourist do that so some people (mostly foreigners) photo-bomb our shots. It was fun experience though. After we got tired of crossing the crossings, we made our way to the last stop of our tour that day, Odaiba. The reservartion for our dinner was made at 7PM so we had a bit of free time to explore Odaiba. However, we were advised not to run so far because of the risk getting lost and moreover, the tour guide did not inform us our dinner place so unfortunately, we did not dare to go see Gundam statue. Diver City is located at quite a walking distance from our drop-out point (Aqua City if I’m not mistaken) and it’s not feasible to make my Mum run back-and-forth from Diver City to Aqua City.

I did not really shop much at Aqua City except for a polo t-shirt for my bae from Adidas Originals and Sukiyaki Pringles from the souvenir store at basement level. There is Disney store too so you can get your Disney goodies at Aqua City. At our appointed meeting point, we met up with the tour guides and the rest of the tour participants and made our way to mall called Decks Tokyo Beach to go to Ocean Club Buffet, where our dinner is booked. Buffet in Japan is so interesting because you can see the replica of the food offered in the buffet in front of the restaurant. It seems that Ocean Club Buffet offers international selection of cuisine because I saw all kind of food including Singapore chicken rice. Can you believe that?

There are 2 types of plates being used in Ocean Club Buffet, one has 9 slots while the other has 6 slots. These plates are so cute and at the same time it makes you not to be greedy if you want to have 9 variety of dishes on your plate. Hahaha. I wonder if they purposely use these kind of plates to give the kitchen enough time to cook the dishes. Probably that’s the case since Ocean Club Buffet is mostly filled with group tours. Oh my.

Taste-wise, they are pretty good although some items taste so-so. I love the pasta and the pizza though I don’t know why. Italian-Japanese fusion works well for my tastebud I suppose. If you have your dinner here, make sure to take a quick walk to the balcony area of the restaurant to catch pretty view of Odaiba at night.

Singapore Food Log: Tendon from Tempura Ten Ten, Raffles City

Menu from Tempura Ten Ten at Raffles City

I am totally not a morning person so leaving house early is a rare occurence in my daily life. The problem is when there is something wrong with the MRT system in Singapore, my day is bound to start with a lot of hassle. Burned up more energy and wasted more time than usual to commute to office make me has to rush my work all the way to lunch time and oh gosh, it’s totally draining my energy (and probably my soul) to work like that.

So it’s very important to have a meaningful lunch with someone to rant your day with, so here we are having our tendon bowl at Tempura Ten Ten at Raffles City. Thankfully the morning train fault did not affect CBD area during lunch hour so we could still commute to City Hall to have lunch at Tempura Ten Ten. There were no queue yet when we reached the restaurant around 12pm but the restaurant is slowly getting packed after 12.15-ish.

Tempura Ten Ten does not have a wide variety of dishes in their menu because after all their main selling point is tempura. So either, you can have your tempura with rice or ramen. Alternatively, you can also go for their chashu ramen and even, unagi don but every unagi don in Singapore costs like a bomb. So I don’t really fancy having unagi-don here in Singapore. I opted for their Special Tendon because since we had made all the way to Tempura Ten Ten, we should try out its speciality. I don’t dare to order the spicy version because I remember the one from Kogane Yama can be pretty much spicy.

The Special Tendon (SGD 13.80) is packed with a lot of fried ingredients from mushroom, seaweed, kabocha (i.e. Japanese pumpkin), sweet potato, meatball and two pieces of shrimp tempura. The meatball tempura is the best item amongst them all because it’s flavourful + filled with melted cheese. Whoo~

It can get pretty filling for one lady to finish although I got very greedy after the meal and went ahead with my desire to order brown sugar bubble milk tea from Muyoo. I ended up disappointed with the bubble tea though. Thank goodness the tendon was good. If you are Favepay-user, you can use the app to get 10% cashback for your next dining here. Quite a good deal if you frequently visit a certain restaurant.

The shophouse in Kanazawa Old Town in Japan

Mysterious ice cream from Kanazawa Japan

Beautiful mochi from Kanazawa Old Town Japan

I was super excited when I found out that we were going to visit an old town in Kanazawa. Why is Japanese old town very exciting? This is your chance to do a lot of things at one go: wandering around in Japanese traditional setting, taking nice photography, checking traditional stores and shops, buying snacks and souvenirs, and eating beautiful food.

If you have been to Gion in Kyoto, you are probably familiar with the scene of Japanese old town. Houses made from wood, sliding door, stores selling all kind of goods from household items, tea bags, skin care, cosmetics, jewellery and pottery. My mum has been lost to the skin care shop which sell skin care products made from gold dust. She’s not alone though, the other aunties in the tour group has joined her in the same store, together with the tour guide. I suppose the tour guide would get some kind of commission if these ladies spent their Japanese yen there.

Since my mum seems to be in safe place with all the other participants, I used the chance to look around the surrounding, checking into every little photogenic details of the wooden house. After all, such shop house does not exist in Singapore. There are a lot of tea houses too but unfortunately, I did not have enough time to leisurely drinking my tea there. The old town is not that huge but there are so many alleys which have small shops so if you want to check them one by one, you probably need at least half a day here. Some stores do sell quirky item like mysterious ice cream which will never melt. Hmm, hontoni?

The food souvenir section is so so so interesting. Do you know that the Japanese are so good with the packaging? You will feel like buying all their food souvenir although the food is probably just normal mochi or candies. However, the fruit filled mochi taste seriously good. The orange one seems to big for me and I’m not really a fan of orange so I chose strawberry filled mochi instead. The mochi is soft, fluffy, and not too sweet, which is good because the sweetness will come from the strawberry. Oishi-desu-ne~~~

Oh right, eventually, I rendezvous with mum and she came out from the skin care store empty handed. Something about the expensive price I suppose. Haha.

Unagi omelette from Koh Grill Wisma Atria

Do you know why I love the concept of Japanese restaurants? It’s because they usually have counter seats which are the most suitable seats for introvert diner who happen to feel like eating alone. Yay. Good news for the introvert souls living in Singapore because there are many Japanese restaurants in the country. I suppose who can hate Japanese food after all. Hehehe.

I have actually visited Koh Grill before when the restaurant has just opened in Wisma Atria, one of the shopping malls in the bustling area of Orchard. We went to try out the famous Shiok Maki and the queue for seats was well...kinda long. But i suppose that’s because we came in a group back then.

Today I decided to check out the restaurant after my gym class ended at 8PM. I find this timing to work well because it should have past the peak dining hour on weekend although to be honest, sometimes it’s hard to fix peak hours at eateries in Orchard. The area is flocked by tourists and they are known not to follow dining rules. But thankfully the counter seats are available and I could quickly get my seat. Counter seat is really good because nobody care about what you are doing there. You can watch how the sushi chef cut the fresh sashimi, play with your phone, take picture of you cute companion, daydream or even dose off until the food arrive at your table.

I did not feel like eating Shiok Maki (which is basically a maki filled with either unagi or jumbo prawn tempura drenched in sauce depending on which version you choose) so I chose something different, unagi omelette. It’s grilled unagi served on top of egg omelette which is cooked on top of a hot plate. Hmm I wonder why is it so difficult to explain the dish so thankfully a picture speaks a thousand words. I did not know grilled unagi goes well with fluffy omelette but I wish the portion of the eel can be a bit bigger after all I’m greedy hehe. But then again, it feels like the right portion after I finish my bowl of Japanese rice. Ok, now I’m confused. The overall feeling that I get is warm comfy sensation in my stomach. Japanese rice is awesome and its awesomeness can enhance the dish that it’s served with.

Since Koh Grill is always bustling with customers, you won’t get peaceful quiet environment when you are enjoying your food. It’s okay, just imagine it like you are eating in an izakaya in Tokyo. They are loud too. Ok overall, good food, nobody care about you eating alone, counter seat, I guess I will give another visit to Koh Grill. Either alone or with Brown. Woots!

At this point of the tour, I feel that I somewhat join an Amazing Race competition instead of leisure tour. Why is that the case? Well, as you may have heard or aware, temples in Kyoto are popular amongst tourists, especially temples like Fushimi Inari and Kiyomise Dera. To be informed that we basically only have 45 minutes top to (1) make our way to the temple (2) take picture of cherry blossom (3) check out stores along the temple street is basically kinda crazy. Especially with this kind of crowd that we were dealing with.

8D Avia Japan Trip: Kiyomisu Dera Temple, Kyoto

But there’s nothing you can do other than quickly follow the tour leader in front to make your way to what I think it’s the entrance gate of Kiyomisu Dera Temple. Once we have reached this point, the tour leader quickly briefed us that we better off not wandering deeper to the temple ground because you have to calculate your way back via the same crowded street. At this point, my main motivation here is that yummy looking matcha soft serve which everyone seems to carry along the temple street. I have to get my hands on that baby.

But it would be a waste not to take picture of at least the main temple building and the cherry blossom since it’s not really easy to make your way to Kiyomisu Dera (I remember you have to take bus here cause there’s no train station nearby). The sakura flowers seem to be at the end of their bloom when we visited the temple but for us who don’t have the opportunity to see sakura at our own country, we enjoy seeing them at whichever stage I suppose. Except when all of them already on the ground I guess. Hahaha.

We finally found a good spot to take picture with the sakura tree. The side under the main temple will be a good photo spot for you to take picture with sakura tree. The good thing is, there are not many people here as well. By the way, I heard spooky history of Kiyomisu Dera before where people used to jump from the temple above to kill themselves. Well, at least it does not look so spooky during the day especially with a number of human spotted in the premise. XD

Cherry blossom at Kiyomisu Dera Temple Kyoto

Peach coca cola is currently the trending stuff in Japan but since they are available in Singapore, I did not grab any. After all, I cut back my coke consumption nowadays. But I am still unable to resist the temptation of bubble tea sometimes back in Singapore. The weather is just too crazy hot and humid there. Oh right, i did not realised that the packaging for the peach coke in Japan is somewhat different though since they have the limited sakura bottle for the peach coke. You may want to get it if you are collecting the bottle.

Peach coke at Kiyomisu Dera Temple Kyoto

The tour leader has warned us not to get matcha ice cream from the stall with long queue. Since my brother and I are pressed for time, we just went for the stall with not-so-long queue. Come on, there is no stall with no queue at all at this popular tourist spot, duh!

Ice cream and crepe kiosk at Kiyomisu Dera Kyoto

We took a glance at the crepe too but Kyoto is well-known for its matcha so we decided to focus on our main objective: buy and eat matcha ice cream. There are three varieties offered for the ice cream: (A) Deep matcha soft ice cream (300 JPY), (B) Deep matcha & vanilla (300 JPY), and (C) Vanilla soft ice cream (300 JPY). I stick to deep matcha soft ice cream while brother decided to mix it with vanilla. Both taste yummy and I love the fact where the spoon that we use to ice cream is actually a kind of snack.

Matcha soft serve from Kiyomisu Dera Kyoto

Mission accomplished although we reached the bus at the nick of time. I think I really did a good job here. Hahaha.

The trickiest part about joining a tour group is the food. While it’s reassuring to know that meal is provided 3x a day, you will not be able to be so choosy about the variety of the food that the tour is providing you. But then again, it’s part and parcel of a tour group so let’s hope that Avia does not feed us Chinese food in Japan. LOL.

Our first meal in Japan came after our visit to Osaka Castle. Avia brought us to a restaurant alley in busy district of Namba. I actually kinda wonder if the tour will manage to find a restaurant big enough to cater for 27 people (25 tour participants + 2 tour leaders). Turns out big restaurants exist in Japan. I feel so noob. Hahaha.

8D Avia Japan Trip: Kushikatsu Lunch at Namba, Osaka

You can’t really blame me for having such worry though. Because from outside, the restaurant that we visited does not look big at all. Turns out, it has three storeys and hence, able to cater so many people including tour groups. It is frequented by many office worker because of its affordable lunch menu. A lot of Japanese office worker spotted inside the restaurant with the chicken karage set (550 JPY) in front of them. Good economical choice which cannot go wrong (cause fried stuff won’t go wrong).

I was kinda expecting similar stuff served to the tour group. But oh boy, I was so shocked with the amount of food that they gave us for each person. The table has been prepared for all of us and in front of each person there lies a place of Japanese fried noodle (a.k.a. Yakisoba), a plate of three fried chicken (a.k.a. Karage), a bowl of rice and a bowl of miso soup. The chicken karage is served with a mushroom spring roll and do you know how the Japanese love to season their fried stuff with? Yupz, a dollop of mayonaisse (which happen to be my fave too although I like to add chili sauce with it thanks to my Indonesian spicy eating culture). Yakisoba is also one of my fave food in Japan mainly because it’s...fried. I’m fried food queen indeed hahaha. Fried noodle in Japan is leaning toward the sweet side though so you probably want to add some chili powder to it if you prefer savory kind of fried noodle.

While I thought these are all that we gonna get for lunch, the lovely lady owner of the restaurant came with pans of Japanese pancakes called okonomiyaki. We thought the okonomiyaki is for sharing for each family but then she informed our tour leader that the okonomiyaki meant to be one for each person. OMG. As you can see, Japanese pancake is by no means a light dish. It’s an egg pancake filled with ingredients (mostly veggies and sometimes meat) and then it’s heavily seasoned with brown sauce (which kinda similar to takoyaki’s sauce), a heavy dose of mayonaisse, furikake and onion leaves, with a portion of ginger aside. It’s yummy but I was already half full from the yakisoba and karage earlier.

That’s not the end of the meal though because the servers came again this time with what-I-feel-was the best dish of the day, Kushikatsu (Japanese dish of deep-fried skewered meat and vegetables). You can pick from chicken to squid to onion and all of them are fried beautifully. The sauce for kushikatsu is provided on every table in a tin box which are meant for sharing. So please take note that hygiene is very important here. You are only supposed to dip your skewer to the sauce once and that’s it. You can’t possibly dip it once, lick it and dip it again to the sauce container which are meant to be for sharing purpose. Cause that’d be simply eww. LOL.

The lady owner asked us which one is our favourite dish while distributing green tea (matcha) ice cream to us. She was somewhat surprised when I pointed to her that I love the kushikatsu so much. I wonder if she expect me to answer okonomiyaki instead? Oh well, kushikatsu is the winner of my heart that day. Hehehe.

Hello! It's finally Friday and while everyday is a weekend for me since I have not found a new job yet, it still feels good when Friday is finally here. Sometimes I wonder if it is really a wise decision to quit my last job without finding a new job yet but then again, I really hate being stressed up so much for work up to the point I could not sleep peacefully at night. So yeah, I suppose sometimes in life you just gotta do what you really need to do. Which in my case, taking a break from work.

One of the good thing when you are not working is you suddenly have all the time in the world to do what you want to do all along. While the thing that you want to do all along may have been something revolutionary or YOLO-ish like travelling around the world for some people, what I want to do all along is rather simple actually. I just want to try out those restaurants which I have not had the chance to go before. After all, a happy stomach leads to happy soul, no?

The decision making part is rather hard because apparently I have spent around 50 hours per week chained to my cubicle for the past I-dunno-how-many-years so I end up with many restaurants to select from. When you cannot make your own decision, it's time to use the helpline of phoning a friend and let the friend decide instead. The friend that I called, Lee Lee (shortformed to LL), has suggested Cafe & Meal Muji (i.e. Cafe Muji) because she wanted to try to eat healthier. Uhh, okay. Not really a fan of healthy meals but I suppose it won't kill to eat healthy once in a while. Hahaha.

We went to Cafe Muji which is situated inside Muji store at Level 2 of Raffles City, one of the shopping centres at City Hall. Cafe Muji's website states that Cafe Muji promotes simple food consists of natural ingredients for a nutritious well-balanced meal. Oh wow, the Japanese is known for its affinity for healthy eating and natural ingredients stuff so this kinda make me curious. The cafe offers pick and mix ordering system but you can also go for its ala-carte options if you want to. I chose the selection of 3 dishes (which Cafe Muji refers to as "deli") which comes with a bowl of grain rice at the price of SGD 12.90.

Singapore Eats: Cafe & Meal Muji, Raffles City

For the selection of 3 deli, you can choose 2 cold deli and 1 hot deli complete with a choice of bread or rice. I opted for grilled salmon, frittata (egg-tofu dish) and salad with half piece of daikon. I don't know why but the food served at Cafe Muji gives you the "homey" feeling in Japanese way (because I don't think my Mom will ever cook something like this at home) and I love the brown rice so much, it goes well with the other deli on my plate. My favourite deli item is surprisingly the frittata instead of the salmon.

Deli selection at Cafe Muji in Raffles City

LL ordered one of the ala-carte menus, butter curry chicken served with rice (SGD 14.90). I tried a piece of the chicken and it taste pretty good and the curry taste pretty clean without being too rich. The rice served together with the butter curry chicken is the same as the rice that I opted to go with the delis above.

Butter curry chicken at Cafe & Meal Muji

After we had finished our meal, LL made another move to the counter and oh-my-gawd, is she placing another order? Turns out her appetite that day is as huge as the mountain boar's (oops, she's surely gonna kill me if she read this). If you are still hungry after your meal (like this boar LL), you can check out the dessert range offered at Cafe Muji. There is a wide variety of desserts from cream puff, swiss roll, pudding to ice cream. LL is so into cakes with strawberry so she came back with not one but two swiss roll. The left one is green tea red bean swiss roll (matcha azuki swiss roll) while the right one is yuzu swiss roll. Both swiss rolls are priced at SGD 6.90. I prefer the yuzu swiss roll as there is the tangy flavor of yuzu which mix together with the sweetness of the sponge cake and cream. If you like your desserts to be light, you will like the yuzu swiss roll.

Matcha and cream roll cake from Cafe Muji

I would consider going back in future to try other deli items but since the price tag of SGD 12.90 is not exactly cheap in my wallet's dictionary, I would not come back to Cafe Muji that often I suppose. At least not until I have secured new lifeline in my cashflow life. Oh gosh, life's tough.

Cafe & Meal Muji's address:

252 North Bridge Road, #02-020/022

Raffles City

Nearest MRT: City Hall MRT

Opening hours:

Daily 10AM - 10PM

"Under the same sky, at different places."

It has been a great adventure at Kaohsiung but it is now time to say goodbye. We took our last journey with the awesome and comfortable High Speed Rail (HSR) from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Taipei Main Station. The journey from Kaohsiung to Taipei by HSR took us about 90 minutes but it was quite a fun ride because I love taking train trip. I like better than road trip to be honest with you.

10D9N Taiwan Trip: Fei Qian Wu, Zhongshan

Since we reached Taipei around lunch time, obviously the next to-do-thing in our itinerary is to EAT. There is one place that we felt like revisiting in Taipei. Four years ago, I did my research when I was staying in Taipei and brought my travelling buddy came to Fei Qian Wu in Zhongshan area to have a go at their famous unagi-don. Yes, it is a Japanese restaurant and it is very popular with both local and tourists (even Japanese tourists!). There is always a long queue in front of the restaurant but since we came slightly after peak lunch hours, the queue was not so bad. We managed to get in within 10 minutes. Yeay!

There is no English translation for the ordering chit but if you only want to order the unagi rice bowl, you just have to decide between the first two items on the list. The first one with the price of NTD 250 is small portion of unagi-don meanwhile the menu right below it with the price of NTD 480 is big portion of unagi-don. Easy-peasy, no?

Ordering chit at Fei Qian Wu Zhongshan Taipei

Well, that's basically all that we ordered at Fei Qian Wu because we wanted to keep space in our stomach for other stuff. After all, Taipei is a foodie heaven. The restaurant is not big but the restaurant staff ensure that orders are made fast and there are no diners who are allowed to linger for so long after they have finished their meal. Yep, Fei Qian Wu is not the place to linger for a long chat. You have been warned.

Here comes the small portion of unagi-don. The small portion is good enough for a lady I feel. The rice that they use is Japanese white rice which is my favourite. The unagi (grilled eel) is still as good as last time but I recalled that the size of the unagi used to be bigger back then. Hmm. Oh right, please note that Fei Qian Wu only accepts cash. No credit cards accepted here.

Anyway, the smaller unagi worked well for us as well because since we were at Zhongshan area, we wanted to visit the famous tea house, Chun Shui Tang. I have never eaten here before but they have rice and noodle dishes. The tea house was packed up to the point there were no seats at all in the tea house. We had no choice but to take away our drinks.

Chun Shui Tang at Zhongshan Shinkong Mitsukoshi

Chun Shui Tang is tourist-friendly and it displays English translation for its menu. Hahaha.

I came here for one and one thing only, their bubble tea. Do you know that Chun Shui Tang is the creator of bubble tea in Taiwan? I have to buy this bubble tea whenever I am in Taipei despite its higher price tag (if let's say compared to 50lan).

When we bought our bubble tea, we saw a group of Japanese tourists excitedly posed in front of Chun Shui Tang with their drinks. Hmm, since it's apparently a must do for tourists, let me take a shot of my Chun Shui Tang's cup with its restaurant logo. I'm not in the mood for selfie because I look kinda like a hobo after walking for so long. Hahahaha. #vanityissue

A cup of iced milk tea from Chun Shui Tang

Fei Qian Wu is located at:

1F., 13-2, Alley 121, Chungshan N. Rd., Sec. 1, Taipei

(台北市中山北路1段121巷13-2號1樓)

Opening hours:

Tuesday to Sunday: 11AM - 2PM, 5.30PM - 8PM

Closed on Mondays

Chun Shui Tang is located at:

Taipei Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store,

Number 66, Sec. 1, Zhong Xiao W. Rd, Taipei

(台北市中正區忠孝西路1段66號B2)

Opening hours:

Sunday to Thursday 11AM - 9.30PM

Friday to Saturday 11AM - 10PM

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Wandering Fel

8D Avia Japan Trip: Ocean Club Buffet at Odaiba

Singapore Food Log: Tempura Ten Ten, Raffles City

8D Avia Japan Trip: Pretty looking croquette from Villa de Croquette, Kanazawa

One Day at Kanazawa: the Old Town

I Eat Alone at Koh Grill, Wisma Atria

8D Avia Japan Tour: Express Visit to Kiyomisu Dera Temple, Kyoto

8D Avia Japan Trip: Kushikatsu Lunch from Namba, Osaka

Singapore Food Log: Cafe & Meal Muji, Raffles City

10D9N Taiwan Trip: Fei Qian Wu, Zhongshan