Japan Part Ichi (Osaka)

It's been close to two months since I came back from the Japan trip with the family.

I've been procrastinating about lots of things for the longest time, and posting an entry about the trip has been on the list as well!

It's a mish mash of pictures consolidated from various cameras within the family, but hey! its good memories that's most important!

We flew to Japan from Hongkong, because I was in China for work prior to the vacation, and therefore the brother and mom flew over to join the Dad and I.

I was exhausted from the start, and generally felt alittle better at the end of it all.
I ate ALOT during the trip and I came back to Singapore a Fatty Bom bom!
I put on about 2-3 kg during the 15 days I was away.
How is that even possible?
It used to be impossible, but reaching a certain milestone in age, everything is possible now.
Hello FATTY DAPHNE!
Okay,

We landed at Osaka, and rested for the night.

Snapped the hotel while waiting to be checked in.

The fam raided the convenience store the minute we chucked out luggages into our respective rooms. In a hurry, I totally forgot to take a picture of my room, and after that I was just too busy being a glutton to bother.

The Convenience stores in Japan stocks up on Muji products. How awesome is that?

Brother and I were greedy, we were eyeing at EVERYTHING in the store literally.

This would be our choice of icecreams for the night after surveying all available flavours.

Look at that tank behind me.. The dad selected everything possibly available in there.
Tsktsk!
and going back to the icecream,

The center of my icecream is filled with a layer of oozy mochi, and the layer of caramel crust on the outside, makes it an awesome pairing.

That is some serious love.

The brother's choice of cheesecake is awesome as well.

Raving about flavour, is nothing like raving about a layer of oozy mochi in the core of the icecream.

Yums! Mochi icecream wins!

We took a tub of instant noodles each, along with shrimp roe onigiri, some braised quails egg, onsen eggs, instant soups, fried stuff like chicken, fishballs etc, and in the round of the instant noodle selection, the brother's one turned out to be yummier!

Look at how milky the soup base is!

His pork based milky soup noodles won this round.

We shared some braised quails egg, and it's mad yummy.
I cant even..

The dad was crazier, he bought those on-sen styled eggs EVERYDAY

Looks something like this, after you take a bite.

After supper, the Bro changed into the kimono.
Look at how pleased he is.
dude is crazy about anything Japanese.

I insisted that he google on the right way to don on the traditional garbs.

Hahaha. I remembered the way the kimono overlaps represented something but it was way too long ago for me to remember.

I told him it's something to do with Female and male or something like that.

Turns out that it was the difference between how it's worn for the dead or the alive.

Hahahaha.
He guffawed and gamely posed and posted this on his FB as display picture.

Look! He's alive!

Subsequently, every toilet in the hotels all look the same.

One picture shall represent all Japanese hotel toilets for this trip.

Oh, how I miss their warm toilet seats!

Breakfast time!

I'm a glutton. I ate the traditional and western ones provided.

These went with plain congee really well,

While the westernised ones were on their own.

I also made it a point to taste a bowl of miso soup every day.
Every hotel served pretty much the same stuff, and had a different type of miso flavour.

The miso soup paired with mushroom ones were the best, but I gave up snapping pictures of my breakfast subsequently.

Nuggets tasted like they were made with lots of love.
Naturally, I went for seconds.
*grins*

Mommy and I on the bus!

Father sat with the bro, and Mommy sat with me, because everyone on the bus spoke in Cantonese (we flew off from Hongkong remember?)   but the 2 of us. 

Rwar! 

So to prevent the brother and I from being completely alienated, the parents decided to be our translator.

So much for translating, because the bro and I spent every bus moment sleeping.

The minute the coach moves, we pretty much faint into deep sleep.

Hahahaha

The first grounds we visited, was the Osaka Castle.

In sleepy stupor, when I climbed down the bus, I spotted some cute birds perched on a railing. 

I declared that I wanted a picture of them, and the mommy wanted one too. 

:D

Architecturally, it was nothing significant to me, because I was still sleepy, but I love reading up on historical places, and so, I found some joys in the place anyway.

The mother's mandatory picture with everything she sees...

Gotta love how stumpy I look in winter gear.

I look like a blob.

Wehhh....

WE SPOTTED something really cute!

It waz a doggles!

A cute shivery fella.

Couldn't resist taking a picture with her because she's soooooooooo cute.

She must have liked me, because she turned and gave me a warm but dry lick on my cheek before the picture. 

Awwww 

That fuzzy girl stole a corner of my heart.

That's her owner seated on the bench. I asked for permission to take pictures with her.

Dont you think his dog resembles him?!

The brother took his turn with the doggles, and she snuggled right up to him and shivered.

Weather is cold in January, and her purple sweater is doing little justice in keeping her warm.

Ahhh, back to sight seeing..

It's amazing how those large rocks can be piled on and create a curve for the structure..

tsk. Impressive architecture, and mission impossible for lazy creatures like me.

This would be the moat around the castle. 

During spring, it'll be filled with Sakura blossoms. 

Meh..i'm too early for the flowers! :(

My attention was stolen away by the icecreams that I spotted!

This one's more exciting for the glutton in me.

Icecream!!!

I tried their specialty flavour. Millet, and its yummy.
What the heck is a millet? I dont know. Some sort of rice that hasn't made sense to me yet.

Look at how pleased the brother is with his Hokkaido vanilla.

Made him pose and he did this. -_-"

That's us with the spectacular vending machine. 

Glorious stuff they have in their machines!

After this picture, we bought some "beauty" tea as instigated by the daddy, and it tasted like icky. Tasteless and bland.

I didnt feel very beautiful after tasting it.

Euck!

On our way out, I told the brother about the cute birdie railing, and he was extremely unimpressed until he saw it and said to me, I want a picture with the birds too. 

Ahhahahaha. 

#Tourist!

We headed over to Doutonboris Street for some shopping, and had lunch!

CRABS.

CRABS again.

That's me being idiotic.

On the streets...

Osaka Banner on the streets, and more crabs peeking out.

Shopping land!

Then it was Lunch. 

Chicken Kaminabe I think. With my favourite Golden mushroom swimming about in my soup.

Side dish of Tamago, and potato croquet and not forgetting my staple rice.

Then we did some temple visit.

There's alot of hand and mouth washing whenever a temple exist.

Kinda cold to be dipping your hands and mouth wet, but I did it out of respect anyway.

Self taken "emo" shot

Taking pictures of the fam taking their pictures.

Hahaha.

Caught sight of my favourite kitty at a sourvenir shop nearby.

Kitty purse galore!

X bought one for me when he stopped over at Narita airport on his trip to the States last year.

Now I haz many in the peektures! 

:D

Dinner time!

Too lazy to rotate the picture, but It's ramen and gyoza and fried rice.

Yummy!!!!

The insane amount of Carbs that I load up every meal to fight the cold, it's really little wonders about the weight gain after the trip. 

Sigh..

Intricate snacks display that I LOVE to stare and stare and stare at.

I swear I'd still be a Visual Merchandiser, if I reside in Japan.

Sponge cake family is so cute, but looks so dry to eat. 

Our room for the second night.

Managed to catch pictures of the room before we ran out again to raid convenience stores again.

That's the brother helping me with my purple luggages in his purple shoes.
The both of us are quite the purple creatures, especially so for meeeeeee!

Courtyard of the hotel..is such a pretty sight!

We went to a nearby Arcade building+supermarket and I bought myself a choco banana crepe. barely an hour after that gyoza,fried rice, ramen dinner.

Gosh!

I must add that this has got to be the softest and yummiest crepe I've tasted for a really long while!

We headed over to the arcade building, and the fam spent like an hour gazing at a complicating looking Pachingo inspired machine at the arcade, before we finally went back to rest.

That machine is super mesmerising. 

We were all racking our brains, figuring out how it works and plays, while watching the whirring balls and coins drop all over with some dancing stuff going on in the gaming screen. 

The player was practically multitasking in my opinion. 

In summary, The arcades in Japan puts the ones we have in Singapore to shame. It's like first world country VS third world country arcade.

The thing I love about Japan, is how much pride they take in everything.

Even free toiletries is made up of good stuff. 

For the first time, I chucked my own toiletries aside to try the ones provided by the hotel.

I finally tried the highly raved about DHC, and they're okay.

This marks the end of my Osaka adventures in Japan.

Beach bunny

Been a long while since I last stepped into the sun!

The weather hasn't been cooperative since late last year til now.
Today marks the beach bunny's first trip to sentosa. :D
I guess we can openly declare that it's summer time in Singapore!

*breaks out in sweat*

Post birthday pictures

I spent my birthday a little quieter, as I get older (me thinks).

Indeed! Used to celebrate for a week long, and this time round, birthday celebrations was cut short, flying off to SZ again. 

Weh...

So anyway, here are some of the celebration pictures that I love dearly.

My sweeties bought me cakes, balloons (It's been nearly a month and the balloon is still floating strong in the room! Yay!) and presents..not forgetting all the lovely wishes that I received. Blessed I am.

And I hung out with the infamous small whites!
Ok they're not so small in reality. But they're still Claud's precious(s) hahaha.

I shall not be biased, and therefore post a picture of my smelly sweetheart to end off this entry. 

Look at her silly face when I stuck the velcro ribbon on her. 

Anyway, that's the look of the past.

she's back to short fur and looking extremely skinny, because i'm dying from the heat - therefore i'm not sure how the doggles is surviving with heaps of fur. 

Off with them fur!

No pictures of Trixie until further notice. :D

Birdlet

I picked up a chick today!
On the streets, right next to the hotel.
Was making my way over to Bugis to exchange a defective top that I bought, when something caught my eye.

Sigh.
Not a pretty sight though.
It was a heap of grey feathers I spotted by the bushes.
Poor fella was lying on its sides like a mermaid and posing with both wings on one side awkwardly

That heap of feather was moving with a bobbing head.
That's when I knew for sure that the bird was still alive, and not a crazy gory sight.

I didn't know what to do with the bird with broken wings.
Leaving it to die wasn't an option, so I called my SOS hotlines and both gave me the contact of the same place.

Okay Lo.
Had to think of a way to transport the birdie, so I bought newspaper from the convenience store, took lots of serviettes from a cafe and tried to place birdie in it.

I'm not very brave in handling injured or dead animals. Call it phobia.

I contempated scooping the bird with the newspaper..anway,

I must have looked damn pathetic squatting by the roadside staring at the birdie, because 2 aunties about the age of my mommy stopped to help pick up the birdie from the ground, into the newly laid out newspaper nest plastic bag.


Then cabbed over to the vet's at yishun.
Was super upset when I spoke to the receptionist on the phone.
Apparently the clinic closes at about 7.40pm daily and when I climbed into the cab, it was already past 7.
All I asked for, was for the clinic to wait for me, as I'm already making my way over.
You know, lest I make a wasted trip over with the bird.
the response was disgusting, I dont even.....

He said to me: Anything after 7.30pm, extra charges will be incurred.
Seriously?!

Knocking off 10-15 mins later and compassion obviously mattered very differently in his world and my world.
How CAN there be such people working in an animal clinic?!

I had a good mind to change location, but birds is definitely not my specialty.
So had to shaddup and hope that I'll make it over in time.
Thankfully I did.

And thankfully the vet had a better heart than his botak receptionist.
Was relating to Claud that when I reached the clinic, I shot dagger eyes at everyone working at the clinic, and listened to the way they talk, just so i'd be able to find out who's that uncompassionate evil neh neh that picked up the phone.
She told me she had an unfriendly encounter with the same Botak.

This is birdlet in a tank.
He's not a baby, not yet a bird (cues Britney Spear's i'm not a girl, not yet a woman song..), so he's a birdlet!
-_-"

He's quite a strong character. 

Not sure how to explain that. Just a good feeling during our short aquaintance.

Anyway, I already figured out half his life story, while on the cab, and the vet completed the other half.

Looking at his feathers, I figured out that he fell while attempting to fly, just because he still had baby feathers sticking out all over. Prolly fell and hurt his wings, and therefore couldnt fly. Okay like I said, I was half right.

Birdlet is about 3-5weeks old.

Extremely malnourished. He did fall while attempting to fly, but his wings are perfectly fine not broken apparently

He was just lying slanted like a mermaid because he hurt his spine...or something like that.

Mr Vet arranged to take care of birdlet (which is a damn good thing), until he's strong enough to fly on his own. Otherwise, he'll arrange for the bird to live in a bird resort shelter or something should he be unable to fly. 

Keeping the bird at home is not a good option:

First: there's Trixie

Second: the last time I saved and took care of a bird it perished.

Third. This fella comes packaged with about 2 flies. Mommy's gonna kill me, if I bring the flies home as pets.

Anyway, I hope the bird's gonna grow up strong and healthy.

Spread his wings and fly freely, and enjoy the breeze and joys of living.

Oh Birdlet is a pigeon.

-- The end---

Was hunting around for stuff in my mac, and I found useless stuff instead.

Added filter to create sunshine ethereal feel to it.

Masking my funny face, and concentrate on my twirly dress please.

Sha lalala

Oh and I wonder where that feathery headgear thingie went to.

 Need to hunt for it, now that it's summer time again. 

Absolutely great to go bohemian again.