Tokyo 東京, Japan Trip (Day 1)

4th March 2017, Saturday

Finally planned to go for a short trip to Japan again and this time, i am traveling with two of my friends. Today is the day to fly off, away from work and study!!!

Woke up @ 5 am and got ready to go to the airport. My friends had arrived first at the airport and checked in their luggage when i was on the way (Purposely don't want to wait for me to check in together... :P). There were a lot of self-checking in kiosks and self-printing of luggage tags & boarding pass at the SQ counters. I went ahead to check in my luggage and we went in. While i looking for breakfast, the 2 of them were buying their makeup stuffs. We had our breakfast there after shopping. I had a doughnut and hot chocolate drink. After that, we walked towards to the gate and waited to board the plane. I got a different seat with my friends, so we were seating separately on the plane. And it's time to fly!!

Arrived @ Tokyo

Watched some movies during the flight and we landed in Tokyo at 3.15 pm (Jap time). It took a while for luggage collection, we tried to figure out the way to our hotel. We had to change 2 times on the train route to go to the hotel. We had to carry our luggage up the stairs when we cannot figure out where was the lift. My friends were having a bit of trouble to carry their luggage up as one of it was weighing 22 kg. By the time we reached the street level, we were panting....hohohoho.....By the time we finally arrived at the hotel, it was already almost 6 pm. Our rooms were on different levels too as i was taking the single room while my friends were taking double room. After check-in, we all went up to our own rooms.

My Room

The interior was quite the same as the one i stayed during my last trip in Tokyo. Didn't expect the single room to have a double bed too, when i went to check out the double room, my friends were also sharing the double bed and the size of the room was the same as the single room...and i got the whole bed to myself in my room....hahahaaa).

After settling down, we went to Akihabara for dinner. It was a stop away from our hotel and the sky had already turned dark, We went up to a building named Chomp Chomp to find some nice shabu shabu. But when we went up to the indicated level, there were two different restaurants, each on left and right side. We chose one restaurant (which was on the left side), named Akane No Niwa, and went in to try. The tables were placed inside separate small individual rooms and there was a strong cigarette smell too. We ordered a plate of gyoza as our starters and ordered a seafood hotpot. Thought we can order 2 different hotpots to try but was told by the staff it was required to order 2 of the same soup base.

Yummy!!

Seafood Hot Pot

The gyoza were yummy and there was a nice sweet sauce that came with it.The skin wasn't thick too.
It was so nice that we ordered 2 more plates of it. When the hotpot came, it was big and had quite a lot of seafood, including crabs. However, we don't find the hotpot was as yummy as the gyoza. It was quite disappointing though. After we finished our dinner, we had a bit problem to communicate to the staff to get us our bill. Cos we were trying to tell her "Bill", she kept thinking it as "Beer"......hahaha..
Finally, she got what we meant and got us our bill, which we paid at the counter.

Drinks from Gundam Cafe

After dinner, we walked around the anime streets and went to find the Gundam Cafe too. But we walked in the wrong direction and ended up walking in circle. Anyway, we managed to find it and queued to have some snacks. There were more characters designs for the drinks and we all ordered different drinks. I also ordered some fries as i was getting hungry again...hahaha....By the time we finished, it was almost to 10 pm and we took the train back to the hotel to rest.

It was soooo cold....

Hotel Stayed:
APA Hotel Kodenmacho-Ekimae