contemplating if i should write anything from my recent trip to Japan. i haven’t written anything proper in ages and certainly have not written on tumblr in maybe a year. things have been going very well for me recently and i’ve been enjoying it. i know it sounds very cliche but hey, who’s stopping me? anyway, i might want to do it tomorrow if i have the time. so... stay tuned? if anyone is even out there reading this!
it’s been 6 months since i’ve written anything on this platform. the reason for this is because i’ve fallen out from using tumblr and have since switched myself to using a microblogging platform instead. i don’t plan to delete my page since there were plenty of memories made and i might come back once in a while if i ever felt like sharing photographs that i’ve taken throughout my travel journeys. tumblr is and will be one of my favourite places to share photos.
when we first planned this trip, we had so much on our itinerary and a lot of it included plenty of places to eat. there were so many things that we wanted to try and places that we wanted to go but there was only so little time for us to do everything. our itinerary did not go as planned all the time because we were always too damn knackered from walking all day long. so when it was time for meals, we would settle for anything in the end! but there were, of course, some places that we made sure to visit no matter what and Gwangjang Market was definitely in the list. it was a hole for both tourists and locals and it was definitely one of our best decisions made.
all the scent and sounds, it was such a robust place. so busy and people were just bustling by from stalls to stalls.
and i love the concept of sharing tables with many strangers, all that bumping of elbows and awkward smiles.
it took us one round of walking around to decide where to make our pit stop.
if there was one thing that you needed to try, it was definitely the mung bean pancake. the batter was made by mung bean which was grounded into a paste.
we also found out that there were fresh and good raw beef at the market too! i remember that it was tea time then but what a shame, there were only two of us. after much contemplation, we could only settle for a plate of raw beef and mung bean pancake.
it was the best choice of my life and i’m glad that i managed to convince my friend about having the raw beef. #noregrets
if i had an extra stomach, these soondaes would’ve ended up in my tummy.
i’m about to state the obvious but here’s a tip for all- go there with an empty stomach.
now on how to get there:
we got there by foot because we were (sort of) around the Dongdaemun area plus we didn’t mind some exercise. use the Naver map and it’ll get you there! the only downside is that the Naver map is all in korean, both of us can do a bitttt of basic korean so we managed to get by after fiddling around the app.
hi guys, i’m not sure if i should blog about my recent trip to Seoul because i’m feeling a tad lazy. i haven’t done this in a longggg time for obvious reasons; 1) work 2) it’s the only trip i’ve been ever since i started working 3) where do i even find the energy lol but since i’m on a break now, i figured that i should do some things that i used to enjoy! i may or may not write about it. i left my japan post hanging because i got tired of updating it heh + my attention span is very (VERY) short. i’ll decide soon! hope everyone’s well. and i’m not sure who still reads here, i’ve been inactive for ages too.
we set out for Tsukiji market for brunch and we were expecting a crowd since it was Golden Week and a lot of them were on holiday. it was definitely worth the queue despite the crowd when we know there is a feast of fresh seafood waiting ahead of us.
our first stop - grilled shellfishes. fresh shellfishes are so expensive back at home and even then, they’re not of the freshest. this particular store had quite a bit queue but it didn’t take very long until our turn and since we had no idea where to start from, we decided to just go for it simply just because.
we purchased our orders through the vending machine and patiently waited for our numbers to be called.
3 grilled oysters for ¥500
2 giant palm-sized scallops for ¥500
1 giant palm-sized scallops topped with uni for ¥600
thats ¥1600 in total and to be honest, i was quite surprised at how reasonably priced it was! considering the amount and quality of seafood that we had, this was worth every yen.
succulent and lightly grilled oysters.
we left shortly after cleaning out plates (no surprise there) and continued our adventure around this market. there was no specific plan on what to eat so all we did was walking around aimlessly and stopping by whenever we felt like it.
while walking around, we came across yet another long queue. at this point, we had no idea what people were queuing for...
....until we saw people squeezing through the crowd holding what looked like a perfectly cooked tamago.
it was literally golden and perfect with the right amount of sweetness and the texture was so fluffy. exactly how every omelette should tastes like.
this is a block of dried cuttlefish. it’s a shame that we couldn’t bring any back since we were about to have a long day and it would be a hassle to carry these home but i know my mum would LOVE it.
what is a trip to a fish market when you don’t look out for that very stall that sells fresh tuna! we rejoiced when our aimless plan somehow brought us to this popular stall that brings in fresh tuna that was auctioned in the morning so you can never doubt on the freshness.
we’re not exactly very small eaters so obviously our food adventure does not stop here.
this was definitely one of the best icing to our many cakes. i’ve never had such a happy bowl of sashimi don.
¥5000 for this happy meal. every bowl came with thick and generous amount of fish. i had expectations but i wasn’t expecting this. if only you could see the glee on my face when they set our bowls on the table.
what an experience it was at the market. i heard that it’s about to be relocated soon but it was postponed. i don’t know if the new space would be a better place for the vendors but i sure hope that the essence of the market will be retained!
so here’s the thing. i have a very short attention span and i admit that. right now, i’m planning to write about my recent trip to Tokyo (it was a 5 days trip) and i’m not sure if i’ll ever finish writing about it (lol i mean, i left my grad trip hanging.. ) but i’ll try! if i don’t, i might just post the remaining photos individually. i’m not sure who reads this anyway but it’s nice to have something to read back (provided that i actually finish writing about it) but here it goes!
this was a rather impromptu trip. my sister randomly suggested travelling far but i thought it was impossible with such short leaves that she had. we looked up on the flight tickets anyway. felt like it wasn’t going to happen bc it was so last minute and most flight tickets were expensive… until 4 weeks ago when we gave it another go and found cheap tickets! so tickets we booked (so nervous and excited) and then the rest of the days were spent on intense research for accommodation and planning our itinerary. it was A LOT of work for such a short period of time but i guess everything was well worth it and our efforts paid off.
we took a midnight flight and arrived early in the morning. we weren’t allowed early check-in as we booked an apartment through AirBnb so we had to look for places to keep our luggages. let’s just say it wasn’t an easy job looking for big lockers to keep luggages around Tokyo, most lockers are small and they are meant for regular shopping bags but we got lucky and found two in a mall near our accommodation! Tokyo is such a tech-savvy place, even the coin lockers aren’t exactly the manual lockers where you throw coins in and pull a key out of it to keep. it wasn’t difficult to use since english language was available. you’ll have to excuse me as i keep being amazed with everything in this country.
(i’m sorry the first part of the post is so wordy)
we headed out to the streets for the first time. all excited and nervous, just in case we don’t know where to go or what to do but we needed lunch. after screening through shops, we decided on a ramen shop with an english menu just to keep things less complicated for us lol.
there’s quite some language barrier in this country but it was all cool anyway because they are very patient when it comes to helping you out even if it means using minimal english + sign language. they helped us out with the menu and our orders which should be made by using their vending machine. we checked in after walking around the town for a little bit and called it an early night since our tour next day starts at 9am.
i’m so glad that the tour agency managed to slot 3 of us in last minute bc most tours to visit Mt. Fuji and Hakone were fully booked. the weather was SO good and it wasn’t cloudy. i was so positive that we’d get to see the tip of Mt. Fuji since the weather was on our side and we did!
it’s probably one of the best things i’ve seen in my life (the Northern Lights still comes first since it’s rarer) lol i almost wanted to cry, it was so beautiful and it didn’t feel real but it was. we travelled up to the 5th station of Mt. Fuji to get an up close of the volcanic mountain, every corner was extremely scenic.
other side of the mountains where all the lakes are situated. still in awe tbh.
we stopped by a bit for more photos. didn’t manage to do souvenir shopping since time was limited.
Mt. Fuji right up my nose, a dream came true.
already starving before lunch time but we weren’t getting lunch until 12:30pm.
our lunch which was quite decent but could really be improved if only it was warmer. nobody likes their food cold when it’s supposed to be hot. we arrived at the hotel at 1pm and my bet was that the food was probably done by 12:30pm. Hence, it was already cold by the time we got there.
i didn’t even realise that the hotel faces the mountain! it was a pleasant surprise after lunch.
we headed towards Hakone for the cable car ride up to Mount Komagatake from Lake Ashi.
it was a very nice 15 mins cruise ride on the lake.
it’s a lot like Lake District except i kinda find this a little bit nicer.
we went up to the highest deck and it was extremely windy. bad choice for wearing a skirt made from light material, i couldn’t focus on what i was snapping bc i was trying to hold on to my skirt + snapping photos at the same time lmao. went back to the 2nd deck bc the wind was too much for us to handle.
we were told that there is an old shrine on top of the mountain. i was reluctant to climb because it was quite a hike up but since my sisters insisted, i had to tag along. as expected, it wasn’t an easy, i was already complaining/regretting midway but i took my words back completely when we made it to the top. killer views.
the old shrine which isn’t used anymore. or at least, i think it wasn’t being used. maybe it’s closed for the day. i don’t know.
we spent 10 minutes on top of the mountain before making our way down to catch the next cable car back to the foot of the mountain. Mount Komagatake was the last stop on our itinerary and we headed back to Tokyo by 5:30pm.
it was a great tour and the day was well spent especially when the weather and good traffic were both on our side. it was Golden Week then and even our tour guide + bus driver were expecting some traffic on the road because everyone else would be travelling on the road but i guess that wasn’t case on that day. so glad that everything went smoothly and we managed to arrive Shinjuku at 7:30pm.
we decided to just have dinner at Shinjuku because it would be too late to travel back to Shibuya. we walked around aimlessly to see if there’s anything good to eat bc we didn’t do a thorough research on Shinjuku for some reasons (not sure why either lol) little did we know that our aimless walking would lead us to the yokocho alley in Shinjuku which we wanted to visit! killed two birds with one stone.
yakiniku for dinner. probably one of our best choices. it was sooooooo good after a long day out. we just needed some meat and booze to unwind.
eating in Tokyo wasn’t as expensive as we had thought it would be. maybe because dining out in KL is expensive and we didn’t really feel the difference. a regular Japanese meal in KL would’ve costed even more for the amount of food we had in Tokyo. that’s one more reason for me to always go back to this place.
anywayyyyyyyy, this post is getting so lengthy but i have a lot more to share. i’ll leave that for another post.
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