Day 3: Hello Kitty's Town

Day 3: After a looong train ride with transfers, we reach Tama Center.. (its funny if you read in chinese.) We're greeted by this right out of the train station. Definately in the correct place.


After some walking, following signs like this one...

You will see a giant Kitty...

The final stretch, i start walking very fast here.

The ticket booth 4400 yen for a 'passport'- all shows, rides..
Tickets in hand, we enter puro village.

Picture with cinnamon! I think the little girl looks way better than ehm older people in this pic, so i used her pic instead. So kawaii!

Kero-keroppi? The poor green frog was quite neglected actually. People queued to take pictures with Mocha and Cinnamon, little twin stars etc, but no one queued to take picture with him (i tink he's male) The little girls looks kind of scared...

Onward to Kitty's castle

Boat ride, i skipped this one though.

School excursion. Kids in red caps.

Cute clock tower

Performance below the Wisdom tree. Melody looks weird with legs..A bit naked?

Very pretty performers. They are like Hi5.. All the kids dance and sing happily. And they all get a Sanrio cape.

School excursion group 2 on yellow caps. Notice the same thing in the Hakone Museum too. I wonder what happens if 2 schools wear the same colour? Do they coordinate the colour beforehand?

Hello Kitty Theatre

The story is about Hello Kitty in the land of Oz. Hello Kitty reads a book and then spins and spins and finds herself in the land of Oz wearing red boots..

Its gets really crazy after this. Even Elvis makes an appearance. The musical is in Japanese and i don't understand a thing. I dozed off after some time.

Pretty dancers..

Morph into Kitties!

Daniel?

I left the Marchen Theatre 40min later clueless..

Cute vending machines

Lucky dip at 500yen a try

Taking a pic with the giant kitty

We've all turned into kitties...

More performances below the Wisdom tree.

Watched a short 3D show. Its quite cute. One of the characters farted flowers.. yes.. the screen was filled with a burst of bright yellow flowers and the theatre was filled with a sweet scent.

Hello Kitty's house. This is a key attraction (long queue). I think i queued for half an hour or more.. and its on a monday

Finally we make it into Kitty's abode.

Kitty is definately a narcissist. Everything from chairs to bathtubs are in the shape of its head.

Another queue... Inside Hello Kitty's house. I think i queued 15 min here.. to take a picture with Hello Kitty.. While queuing a Britney video was playing. Kitty likes Britney? So weird...

That's all for Kitty's house.

My Melody shrine? You see happiness bells, pray-for-good-luck places quite a lot..

You can purchase a make-a-wish slip of paper, write your wishes and hang it here.

The gift shop.. You can go crazy here. It took all my willpower to not grab a fluffy Melody!

Ended off the day with dessert at the Cinnamon Roll cafe. You get to keep the cups.

Night shot of Sanrio Puroland. Another loong train ride back to Shinjuku. We decided to call it a day early since we have to wake up super early tomorrow.

Day 2: 6 Dec - Meiji-Jingu shrine/ Harajuku/ Shibuya/ Shinjuku

Day 2, rise and shine! It was a good weather day. We made our way to the Meiji-Jingumae station bright and early and grabbed breakfast from starbucks.

We got the Christmas drinks. one is a caramel something latte and the other is a berry something latte, plus a strawberry scone. The drinks taste kind of similar to me though.. Auntie me did check in Sg, the packaging is the same but the drinks are indeed unique to each country.

Essentially i'm a sucker for anything labelled with dong1 ji4 xian4 ding. I ate winter edition calbee chips, drank some winter edition sparkling juice thing .. the list goes on.. Heng i stay right smack on the equator, else i'll be going around eating seasonal 'limited edition' junk food all year round.

Entrance to the Shrine, look at the crowds.. Guess its a hot spot for both locals and tourists.

Its quite a long walk into the main shrine area but the greenery and the cool weather makes it a breeze. Most of the time you'll be walking on little pebbles so wear sensible shoes.

Changing leaves..

The little pebbles that line the path.

Eventually you'll reach the main shrine area which is quite a large compound. Its 'fenced' by structures like this.

There were 2 traditional wedding ceremonies going on. Everything looked almost the same. cos of the identical attire and make-up. Only the relatives changed.. must be a standard package thing..

You can purchase a small wooden board and write your wishes on it. Spotted quite a number of very singaporean sounding wishes...
So cute!

After the traditional experience, we went in search of the famous Harajuku cosplay. Unforunately we didn't really catch any except for a few 'drifting' through the Sunday harajuku shopping crowd. We walked as far as Yoyogi park but also didn't catch much action except some lacklustre street performances.

Check out the oversized Heidi queuing for lunch.

A very cute and hardworking salesgirl. We walked up and down the alley twice and she was still going on chirpily.

Crepes..they are everywhere.. I had a banana choc and vanilla ice cream crepe too.

We decided to just explore the area on foot. Spotted some really quaint buildings and shops along the way.

The one on the right is a tiny teppanyaki shop. You walk down a little flight of stairs to the basement.
This one only sells chopsticks. Those in the discount section outside starts at about $8.

Many garages look like this. Save space.

More people queuing up for snacks. In fact you don't really see much finger food around. Harajuku is an exception.
Eventually we found ourselves at Omotesando station. We took the subway to Shibuya in search of dinner.

This is one of my favorite pics.. like the overexposed feel.

Walking Coronas...

Taste test: Mos Milk tea. 270 yen. I prefer the Sg version. After some 'investigation', i concluded the difference is largely due the sweetener used. Gum sugar gives it a different taste.Eventually we settled dinner at another coupon machine shop. and had krispy kreme for dessert. Yes .. 'winter edition' doughnuts. But the doughnuts were a let-down. They're not even warm. not fluffy either.

We continued to explore Shibuya...

Pachinko.. I saw a lady feed a 10,000 yen note into the machine.. just like that. That's almost 160 sgd... faint..

They have boxes of little ball bearings like this all over the shop. Imagine what would happen if you tripped over one...

We decided to visit one more place before calling it a night. Took the subway to Shinjuku with the sole purpose of exploring the red light district. It was a complete let-down. It was so discreet there was hardly any action except a few pimps trying to hand leftlets to my friend. There were some free magazines with advertisements for various services. They even use cute comic characters to illustrate their services.. Quirky..

Kabuki-cho. The crowd is very diverse here. Students seem to have class gatherings here too..

This is all the porn you get... in comic form. And this wraps up day 2.