Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Japan - Part 1

Kiyomizu Temple
I finally managed to recuperate from my holiday to start blogging again. I was dead tired, arriving back home at about 11pm on Saturday. I slept from 1 a.m. Sunday till 2.30pm! I crawled out of bed and made myself go out of the house to look for dinner. A few of you have been asking me when will I be posting and I told myself I'm going to do it today. My living room is still filled with the stuff I bought and the clothing I have yet to send for laundry! Ha ha....

Well, Japan was good and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Arriving on the first day with just about a good 2 hour sleep, we were all whisked off to Osaka Castle. The sights were wonderful and the air cool and breezy. I had actually brought a little journal book to record my daily activities there but I lost it on the 2nd day when I left it behind upon checking out into the next hotel. Or who knows, maybe when I'm through unpacking, I will probably find it tucked in some corner hopefully. So much for my attempt, thank goodness it was just a new pad, not one filled with my life stories!

We had Sam from our previous tour leading us again together with the local guide, George Lim, affectionately known as Joji. Joji's Singaporean but speaks fluent Japanese (decided to put it to good use by being a tour guide in Japan!). Sam of course is ever so wonderfully entertaining with his rendition of Thai, Chinese, Malay, Hindi, English and Japanese songs! They made us feel at home though we were in a foreign land. It my entire 8 years of Premier Club trips, they were the best team I have had come across. When filling out the survery forms, all of us had nothing but good words for them. I will be posting more on my trip to Japan in the next few days. I took quite a fair bit of photos (about 150 plus) or that's what I thought till I spoke to Karen E. She took about 400 plus!!!!!

I bought my fair share of Grape sweets, snack food and souvenirs. Their packaging is so lovely that it entices you to just buy them. Of course, what stops me (sometimes) is the lack of luggage space! Ha ha ....Just look at them! Oh! What about those plastic food displays that they have that are realistic enough to make one salivate? As usual, food was the highlight of the trip. Well, apart from the cutesy and high tech stuff, that is. We went round taking pics of those display too!

It was a pity Mrs Pitt arrived in Tokyo on the day I left for Narita or else we could have met up for awhile. I do like Japan and will definitely have fond memories of my trip there. I don't mind making another visit in the future. Life as a tourist is always good!


This photo is courtesy of Karen E.

No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one.
~ Elbert Hubbard

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