Valentine’s 2011… let’s see. It’s very special this year, it happened to be Valentine’s day as well… and it’s a white Valentine’s for me.
This year, I spent Valentine’s alone (excluding Viktor.. haha) and… it was quite wonderful although it could be better, why?
First of all, I finally fulfilled one of my childhood dream à travel to Japan.. or more precisely Tokyo Japan. Technically speaking, I’m here for business trip to support users but then it counts as well I guess. I’m physically here and I’m very very thankful for this opportunity.
I’m nervous as usual as I’m travelling alone (not something that I do a lot) and I was asking questions here and there, e.g. how to get here, what train to catch, how, where, when, how much, you name it. thankfully, my wonderful friends/colleagues gave me nice instructions (special thanks to Ruslan for the excellent turn by turn photos that showed the way from Train station all the way to Tsunoi-san’s cube! I was floored at how detailed it was and thanks Pei Nee for showing me the place in Google’s street view. :) )
Today was the first day I went to work, took train there, around 10 mins to reach, only 1 station apart from Shinagawa to Kawasaki. Lots of ppl at train station and it was very crowded. Train moved at faster speed than the one in Malaysia, perhaps more than 100km/h. ^^
Reached office area and met up with IT colleagues, Finance colleagues, finally able to meet up with the person you worked with and along side. :) nervous and excited at the same time, I thought time flew by in Penang but this was blasting off like a rocket… I didn’t even have time to go to the washroom.. hahahha… :)
After work, went to Lazona mall nearby to catch dinner… was looking for place to have sushi as Viktor would wanted to try them and boy oh boy, it’s amazingly hard to find a sushi restaurant so far! Gasp… finally we found one, but had to put down our name in the waiting list and waited outside, after 15mins it was our turn.
Ordered some nice sushi, fresh, tasty, even the fish tasted crunchy! And we’re facing trouble with the menu as not a whole lot of them are written in English. Luckily, I managed to snagged up free wifi which is also extremely rare in Japan (double gasp!) and fired up Google Translator FTW!
Communicated well.. sort of 1 way as I can only type and show the translation in Japanese but have no way to ask the other party to translate back in English (it does have the option to speak though but then the environment is not that suitable though not very noisy). It kinda gets the job done in a way, :)
Nice nice food, sushi, green tea, chawamushi, miso soup with crab (at first I thought it was pre-prepared crab meat sticks that we have but it was actually the whole crab cut in half and its meat shredded and mixed into the soup!) nice big bowl… almost like a whole bowl of instant noodle that I have back home! Nice!
I was very very full, translated my thanks for the nice food, requested for a photo of the sifu who prepared our food and bid him good night and good bye… :) wonderful wonderful experience…
When we’re walking back, it was already late as it was 10:30pm… and guess what? It was snowing! Man, like … huge heavy snow! Almost comparable if not heavier than the snow I’ve experienced in Dalian not long ago! Wow…. Very very nice, I’m still amazed at how nice (and cold) snow can be… as I walked, I kinda pay special attention to the floor as I tripped and fell down once in Dalian… *shy and hope not to repeat it again here… and which I’m happy to report I did not fall down at all.. (touch wood, at least so far).
Took the train back to Shinagawa, bid Viktor good bye and walked the moderate (15mins) journey back to hotel. It was snowing heavily still, I had my umbrella opened to shield snow for the first time! Wow, many first time in this trip. Walking back the lonely white snowy path, I’m still concentrating my footings but my mind wanders… it’s nice, as this is a very strange and wonderful feeling.
Picture this, walking at a foreign country, in snow, alone, at night, on a lonely walkway, listening to my fav. Artist’s à Taylor Swift’s songs. Peaceful, calming and just…nice. It could be better, like walking alongside with a partner sharing an umbrella under the snow flakes. Something I never thought of all these while (I only thought about walking in the rain sharing the same umbrella.. hahahaha, I guess this overwrites that as a much more romantic scene, :p) and yeah, today’s Valentine’s so, can’t help myself but having this kinda thoughts, hahahah. Well, this is just another dream that I hope to achieve in the near future J something to look forward to…
Reached hotel, bought a cup of coffee from the convenience store, grabbed my free 500Yen voucher for participating in Greener room service campaign by the hotel whereby for every 1 day of skipping room service, I receive a voucher to be used inside the hotel’s store. The catch is, continuously you may skip up to 2 days but for hygienic purposes, they will clean the room on 3rd day. J 1st day, more to go...
I just knew that for Japanese's culture, it's girls who are buying chocolate as gifts for guys.. wow, so wonderful to be a Japanese guy :p and they sell tonnes of nice looking chocolates as well...
Well, intended to be a shorter post than this, guess i just have more to say for this entire day itself. I have more shots of the place and sushi in my camera but was too tired to process them this round, will have it either here or in my facebook account next time.
Lastly, wishing all the love birds out there A very Happy Valentine's day :)
Cheers and good night!
