Le Petite Prince

Will be watching Le Petite Prince encore screening held at Alliance France as part of the 5th french animation film festival. It's been a month since I went back to my french language school. I managed to complete my beginner A1 course and decided to take a break before continuing with beginner A2. The show is in English, much to my surprise. It was a good show, makes me remind of the backyard that I used to have when I lived in Monterrey. The theme of the show was to remind ourselves not to forget and lose ourselves in this world full of bullshit and nonsense. 

After the show, we pop by at Balmoral Plaza to try Smiths fish and chips. 

Chose the cod small portion of fish and chips. It comes wrapped in a white paper and smell heavenly. They made the fries themselves and it taste good with vinegar and salt. Strangely, i dun see any tatare sauce at all....The fish was fresh and had a firm texture. Overall, good fish n chips, way better than the fish served at fish and Co.

Angry bird day

Today is Angry Bird day! Dinner was angry bird red burger.

So red....taste like chicken mcrispy with a spicy sauce and top with an egg.

Followed by watching the angry bird movie at seletar mall. Haha...it's super funny...😂 

Menya Takeichi at Suntec

Tried the miso ramen and dinosaur chicken for brunch. It's super rich in collagen as the soup was thick and creamy. This is definitely one of the nicest ramen I ate in Singapore as the soup was thick and flavorful and the chicken was tender and delicious. V creative way of eating chicken also...haha...

Lunch at Siam Secret

Happened to see this pamphlet laying around the workplace today and decided to try it out. It's about 5-10 mins wall from my workplace and located at along a stretch of two storey shop houses along kampong bahru road. 

My colleague ordered the basil chicken with rice plus a free drink set. The choices of drink are: ice lemon tea, Thai milk tea and lemongrass drink. If u top up an extra $1, u get a bowl of tom yum soup as shown above.

I ordered the phat Thai fried noodles with Tom yum soup and Thai milk tea. There is an extra 10% discount when u show the pamphlet. In total, the entire set is only $8.90 per person. Cheap n good, I'll definitely wana come back again. 

Lunch at Dancing Crab Vivo

Had lunch with hubby at Vivo for lunch today. We decided to try the set lunch as it seemed v worthwhile and good. Both of us ordered set lunch A, which comes with 5 pieces of prawns with corn, a hotdog and a potato cooked in their signature dancing crab sauce. For me, I chose spicy but think it's too spicy for me. Should have go for mild instead.

Conclusion: think it's too much for me. I am already full just from eating the prawns, corn and potato etc.... total cost after service charge and GST is about $18...really value for money.

Wisteria, Azealeas and blue nemophilia

Signed up for a 1 day flower viewing tour by Yokoso to see some flowers. First stop, Tsujigaoka Park to see some Azealeas. 

Azealeas looked like short trees or bushes with brightly coloured flowers.

Sadly, most of the Azealeas seemed to have past their peak and most of them are wilted looking or turning dull and brown in colour. 

The weather on that day was scorching hot...maybe that's why the flowers are all dying....

Next stop: Ashikaga Flower Park to see some wisteria.

I even managed to see some nice looking Azealeas here.

The wisteria looked like lavender coloured bunch of grapes hanging on trees to me. I was awestruck by how beautiful they are and by the nice fragrance coming out from them. It's truly an amazing sight to behold. They were so many wisteria there...that it feel like I'm in wisteria heaven except for the tons of people jostling and squeezing around me.

This is the hundred over years old tree with wisteria flowers spanning over a v wide area, all the purple flowers in the picture above actually comes from 1 tree....amazing! 

A bridge with pinkish white hanging wisteria above your head.

White hanging wisteria over your head....

I can smell the fragrance of the wisteria as they sway in the wind....but omg...there were just too many people that I can't enjoy myself in it at all....

Purple hanging wisteria....

We got tired of jostling with all these people and decide to call it a day by ending it with ice cream and some souvenir shopping. It took about 30mins of queuing under the hot sun just to buy these 2 wisteria flavoured ice cream.

Next stop: Ota Hachijioyama Park. Sadly, most of the pink moss and baby blue nemophilia were gone by then but we managed to see some white and purple variety of nemophilia. I feel more relaxed and enjoyable here as there were v few ppl around.

Managed to see a few patches of baby blue nemophilia.

We were surprised to see a big patch of poppy flower field  as we wandered around the park. But by then,we dun have much time left and need to go back to the bus....

There seem to be some kind of festival going on in the park also. 

Managed to get a parting shot with myself in the picture before rushing off to board the bus back to Ueno.

Shirakawago and Tateyama Alpine Route

Signed up for a 2D1N yokoso tour to Shirakawago and Tateyama Alpine Route trip.

On the first day, we depart from Shinjuku to Takayama first. It was also known as Little Kyoto. But then, I find it to be a far cry from the sennenzaka and ninenzaka of Kyoto. Maybe becoz it's the golden week, most of the shops were closed. By the time we reached Shirakawago, it's 4pm and we only have an hr to explore the place before it closed at 5pm.

Shirakawago feels kinda boring to me...just a bunch of old houses with thatched roof. Maybe I juz can't appreciate it's beauty.

After that, we checked into Toyama Manten Hotel which was booked by the tour. It was a decent clean hotel within walking distance to Toyama Station. 

For dinner, it's free and easy time. Hubby suggested trying out Ramen Iroha located at CiC which is about 10-15 mins walk to from the Hotel. Actually, CiC was just opp from Toyama Station. The ramen was delicious and to my surprise, there was a Diaso beside it. Think that was the highlight of the day for me....haha

After browsing Diaso and managing buying a few tops from the departmental stores, that's the end of Day 1.

Day 2: Woke up really early and had a simple breakfast provided by the hotel.

We started at Tateyama Station first and end the route at Ogizawa.

From tateyama station, we took the cable car to bijodaira. I felt like squashed sardines while they keep packing ppl into this tiny cable car. Is it even allowed? Maybe Japanese ppl are used to being packed like sardines everyday... 

 

The bus journey from Bijodaira to Murodo was windy and uncomfortable as we were seated in the center from a pull out seat attached to the chair on the right. Another japanese innovative idea to squeeze more ppl into the bus.

Finally arrived at our destination, the iconic ice wall! 

It's about -4 degree here.....cold.....

Can't resist plucking out a chuck of ice to play with. Actually it dropped off when I tried to climb on some ice.

View on top of Mt Tateyama...awesome....

Riding the ropeway down the mountain from Daikanbo to Kurobeko. As usual, it was a squeeze and I couldnt see any view at all....

The Kurobe dam...which sadly did not have any water flowing out as the dam only start operating in summer. 

Nevertheless, the scenery was nice and tranquil....but too cold for me as it started raining.

Finally, we ended the tour at around 3pm and board the bus back to Shinjuku. Ordered a bento to eat as dinner on the bus.

It looked so nice that I can't bear to start eating it! This concludes the end of my 2D1N yokoso tour. As an after thought, I just wana share the fact the Japanese ppl are v punctual ppl. Most of the ppl on my tour were japanese elderly folks. When the guide told us to take a 15 mins toilet break at a highway stop station, most ppl will be back on the bus by 10mins even though they can walk around the stores selling all sorts of foodstuff and souvenirs. That's why I feel like I'm constantly in a rush. Also, Japanese ppl bag their own trash and carry it around with them. Our tour guide actually told us to bring back our lunch bento box after we finished eating at Murodo, which means they expect me to carry the rubbish all thru the alpine route and pass it back to them at the end of the trip?! Of course I din not coz my hands were tied and I just dump it into an appropriate trashcan at a resting area in Murodo. Btw, Japanese ppl separate their rubbish into pet bottle, cans, glass and combustibles. Also, no liquids are supposed to be inside the pet bottles when u disposed them....which I dun understand why either.....

Anyway, after I finished eating my beautiful dinner bento, we separate the trash we had into the 4 different categories and proudly show it to our guide when she came to collect our empty bento boxes. But she gave us a stunned look and kinda gave a forced smile as she took our big bag of combustibles. It was later on that I realised that she only want to collect the empty bento boxes and not the rest of the rubbish along with it. It's because she passed us the bento boxes so she will collect back the bento boxes, whereas the other combustibles like milk packet etc...were stuffs we bought ourselves along the trip so we were EXPECTED to throw our own rubbish by ourselves....

To me, rubbish is just rubbish. In Singapore, we dun separate our rubbish the way the Japanese do. I simply have to salute them for taking the effort to do that.