Tsukiji - land of fish and swords

It was grey but very bright at 4.30am when I woke up.

The plan was to head to Tsukiji market, load up on the freshest sushi ever before continuing on the next leg of my solo adventure to Honke Bankkyu. That was the plan.


But it was raining – the cold drizzly rain that drips down your neck and makes you utterly miserable – and it was soooo tempting to just snuggle back under the covers. Plus unlike other hotels, the Villa Fontaine actually offered a decent Japanese breakfast buffet!


I alternated between the mental tug-of-war and actual sleep before I jumped up at 5am, deciding it was time to haul my lazy protesting butt out of bed and get some seafood. I’ve been to Japan twice before and never had the chance to visit Tsukiji. Third time, I was determined, had to be the charm.

The Princess was supposed to come with me but repeated calls to her room went unanswered. So off I went. I was pretty happy to go alone – liked the sense of liberty.

The Villa Fontaine is very well-placed for a visit to Tsukiji – arguably the largest and the most famous fish market in the world. It was either a 15-minute walk or a 3-minute ride via the subway from Shiodome. Had the weather been more obliging, I would have chosen to walk since I could see more stuff above ground than in a train. I would also have loved to cover the Hama Rikyu garden. But it was wet and chilly, so subway it would be!

I got an umbrella from the front desk, hopped down the escalator and voila – the subway was just there. That early in the morning, there were less than five people on the platform of the Shiodome station on the Ginza line. I was the only woman. In any other subway, in any other major city in the world, I would have thought twice about this. But this was Tokyo. About the only other place in the world as safe as this would be Singapore.

Once out of the train, you know immediately where you are from the unmistakeable smell of – fish!

I followed the stream of people to the entrance of the market. A notice on the walls clearly state the new rules: limited numbers of visitors to the tuna auction, no visitors in the market until after 9am. I was already too late for the tuna auction so that was okay, but the other new rule – meh! I chose to ignore it but decided to make a mental note to keep out of the way and to look unobtrusive. Here’s where looking Asian helped – I think!

First impressions – lots of lorries, refrigerator vans, motorised carts, puddles. The place was like an airplane hanger – huge. And that was just the entrance!

I made my way to the outer market – trial and error, skipping puddles and dodging vans and trucks. The outer market is a made up rows of shops back to back. Here were the food stalls and sundry stalls that sold everything and anything that had to do with Japanese food – seaweed, condiments, wasabi roots, pickles, rice, utensils, right down to some really cool t-shirts!

But all that could wait. I had to see the inner market first before all the action died down.

Let me say two things right up front – the inner market is well worth a visit even if you can’t make it to the tuna auction because all of God’s weird and wondrous undersea creations are here – you just have to guess what they are if you don’t know Japanese. Second, wear grungy shoes. The place is riddled with puddles and slippery cobblestones. The motorised cart derby guys do their best to avoid making you roadkill in the market but dodging them may mean jumping into the nearest icky puddle – unless you are very nimble. So you have been warned.


Clams as big as my face, abalone as thick as my fist, wriggly streams of eels, bulbous puffers, all sea creatures great and small, spiny and smooth, they are all there and – apparently – all edible and waiting to be served on someone’s dinner table! The stars of course, were the gigantic tuna and the men who cut, sawed, hacked and filleted them to precise requirements.

The kids would have loved the dangerous-looking metre-long swords, the industrial saws, the axes, wicked-looking hooks and all manner of iron that served to reduce the blood-red meat to more manageable proportions.

The tuna auctions long over, I saw the silver, frost-coated torpedoes lined up on floors, covered by sackcloth. These giant fish looked heavy but the workers just hooked them and flipped them over with ease.

All around, people were looking busy, talking on handphones, writing orders etc. I presume these are the smaller restauranteurs and retailers checking out the day's best buys. Some did look at me curiously but no one said anything about the fact that I should not be in the market before 9am. There were other tourists also wandering about so I was not alone in flouting this rule.



After seeing all that fish, I went back to the outer market in search of my sushi brekkie. You can't get sushi fresher than this, straight from the world's largest fish market!

I saw the line outside Sushi-Daiwa, one of the well-known sushi restaurants in Tsukiji. They had queue poles outside which already told me that the place is used to queues. Plus the line was stretching right around the block! People were queuing in the rain for goodness sake. Look, I love sushi, but I don't love it that much!

There were faded small mom-and-pop shops which sold noodles too and you can tell these were authentic with workers still in their wellies at the counter slurping away. But I was looking for sushi and finally found a warmly-lit welcoming tiny place. It wasn't until I sat down at the teensy sushi bar that I realised that the place was full of gaijin! Wrong place to be since this is likely to be less than authentic and catered more to gaijin tastes! But since I was in already, I sat down. The chef could speak English and he sang while he worked - all in the name of showmanship I guess!

I ordered the largest set which cost 3600yen. Came with all the usual suspects including my favourites - including those glistening vermillion spheres of ikura, a long, generous slice of anago, the lushly succulent pale pink otoro and the orange morsel of uni (sea urchin). The set also included miso soup with large prawns.


Next to me was an Irish girl and her British boyfriend. They were sushi virgins. The girl ordered by telling the chef that she'll have what I have! When her set came, she didn't know what to do with it so I told her about the different types of fishes on her platter, how to eat it etc. But it didn't do much good - they tore apart each piece of sushi to 'share' and all the best cuts were left either uneaten , nibbled at or worse, spat out - very gross! I don't know about the chef but I thought that was an appalling waste of food. They were not the only ones. As I left, I noticed other platters left with many pieces of sushi/fish left uneaten. What a waste of good fish!


I know travel is an experience and an experience in a sushi joint in Tsukiji would have counted as an 'experience' to be savoured too. But to me, travel also means preparing oneself for the experience and if sushi was really new to these guys, they would have been better off trying out the stuff at a kaitan-sushi joint first. Culturally, they would also have gotten more out of the experience had they read up a bit and tried out a bit of the baseline sushi (eg maguro, shake etc) before coming to Tsukiji and trying out all the more adventurous cuts. Call me a sushi snob, but I think the fish deserve better.

Brekkie over, I indulged in some retail therapy and ended up paying too much for two t-shirts at 4500yen a piece. The prints were really nice though, and I did not see them sold anywhere else. I know, I know - I am trying to console myself!

From Tsukiji, I headed back to the hotel to pack. I had a long and slightly complicated journey ahead of me to the Honke Bankyu ryokan in the remote area of Yunishigawa, up at Tochigi prefecture. More on that in the next post!

At large with a Princess in Tokyo

It was raining the night I left Disney for the bright neon of Ginza. A stuffed backpack on my back, a bulging Monsters Inc. briefcase in one hand and a Disney plastic lunchbox swinging crazily by its neon-green strap where I had haphazardly tied it to my pack, I must have looked quite a sight.

The Princess I was travelling with, on the other hand, looked spiffy in her colour-coordinated pink ruffled dress and coat and boots, pulling along not one, but TWO suitcases. We may be friends but we’re as different as chalk and cheese. We were teased earlier about how different we both were in spite of our friendship. She is the posh publisher who wears only colour-coordinated dresses and accessories, travelling with suitcases packed with glam stuff and accessories including curlers! I was the diametrically opposite independent traveler who is happy to live in scruffy jeans and tees out of a backpack.

That said backpack was now a deadweight thanks to the mad spree I went on in Disney.

Why oh why did I succumb to temptation and buy so many Disney souvenirs? With no KH there to stop me, I went on a Disney binge in the resort’s shops – buying boxes of Mickey crackers, Tinkerbell souvenir plates (porcelain for heaven’s sake!), lunch boxes, bags, key chains and all nature of paraphernalia. Thank God I stopped short of buying the blue Monsters Inc. helmet – though I was sorely tempted – because now, lugging all this behind me in a rainy net to make two train changes and one long commute to Shiodome was just not fun anymore. After struggling less than 200m into Ikspiari, the mall leading to the JR Maihama station, I sat for a rest.

The Princess surveyed me with amusement. This is why, she said loftily, I would never travel with a backpack. You have too much stuff. Go into the Disney store and buy a spare bag, she advised. The large one with Mickey and Minnie on it, she directed. It was canvas and looked like the tacky large ones that hold all manner of sundry, usually seen on rural trains in China. But apparently the Princess was not above one of these. It was on sale anyway, so buy it I did. But to my immediate dismay the bag was so large and unwieldy that it was practically dragging on the floor! Glumly I folded it back and added it to my already groaning bags. One more for the road.

We plodded through the rest of Iskpiari and I resolutely walked past the cute bakery that tempted me earlier, with the milk roll and oh-so-kawaii cow-print bag it came with. I ignored the colourful scarves on a cart nearby. I could NOT add to my already stuffed bags anymore. Wisely the Princess also decided not to stop and shop.

We made it to JR Maihaima. And here’s where I slipped into familiarity and navigated the ticket machine like a native. The Princess, being a Princess, left the ticket-buying to me. Once in, I had to scout around for a lift to take the Princess and her bags to the platform level. My turn to feel loftily smug. This, I told her, is why I would never travel with suitcases! It would not be the last time I would rub it in as our slow journey through the train stations to our hotel would be punctuated with attempts to look for lifts.

Once in the train to Tokyo, we chatted – about life, loves, present and past, children, travel, just catching up on the 20-odd years that had elapsed since we last met. Back then she was a sales executive and I was a fresh reporter working for the same magazine. Today she is a publisher of well-known travel magazines and I am a mother of five. She asked, not cruelly, “What happened to you? I always thought you were ambitious.”

What can I say? Life happens in ways you never expect.

It's not as if there were no doors open. But like the game shows, you walk through the door of your choice. Had I walked through those, my five children would not have happened and my life would have been very different. I chose a different door. Still, one man's booby prize is another man's lottery win. I think it’s where you are in the present that counts and right now, my life is in a pretty good place. I have no money, no status, no designer togs and my resume now reads as simply ‘mother of five’. But being where I was that night – sitting in a train on a rainy night in Japan, my kids waiting back home, I felt so thankful already, like life had already taken me further than I had ever expected. It was not grand, but it was fine.

In Tokyo station, after navigating streams of black-suited penguins again on the long walk from the Keiyo line and always pointing the Princess to the lifts, we found ourselves in front of glass-fronted station cafes, suddenly starving. She plumped for kare raisu (curry rice) and I opted for that tempting bowl of rice with a dollop of mentaiko next door.

It was not until I sat at the counter, salarymen tucking into steaming bowls of udon on either side that it hit me – I was really and truly in Tokyo. Back in Japan! It was hard to hold back the squeal of excitement so I just ended up choking a bit on the mentaiko.

The Princess later told me that was the best kare raisu she’d had. And this was just a mere faceless hole-in the-wall shop in the bowels of Tokyo station!

At Shinbashi station, the Princess met her waterloo – no lifts! She motioned me to go ahead on the escalators. I said drily that I would feel safer being BEHIND her! Nonetheless I went ahead and waited at ground level to see what she would do.

And of all things? The old damsel in distress trick. She batted her eyelashes and smiled winningly at a passing salary man who happened to speak a bit of English and he helped navigate her bags down the escalator, whereupon she thanked him sweetly.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle but the Princess had had enough. We’ll take a cab, she decided briskly. And so in less than 3 minutes, we had arrived at the Villa Fontaine Shiodome. The ride had cost us 710yen. Sometimes, there are perks travelling with a princess.

Minutes later, we had checked in easily. The Princess was miffed to be given a room on the second floor and tried to no avail to get her room changed. I, on the other hand, was given what I think is the best room – on the highest floor, in a corner where the view peeked directly out onto Hama Rikyu garden and Tokyo Bay! No way was I going to swop rooms with the Princess! It didn’t matter even when my room reeked of stale smoke because – check out the view! And never mind that the view was one of raindrops silhouetted against a black night, I was here in Tokyo and all on my own.

Now that was what mattered!

Solo travel

I've been wanting to blog about this for the longest time but life was going on around me too much for me to sit down and reflect and write.

I want to write about my trip to Japan a month ago - feels like a lifetime ago already. But I've still got some commercial stuff to sort out so specific trip reports will take a bit longer to post.

For now though, I'd just like to put some thoughts down on my solo travel adventure.

The very first trip I took on my own was when I was 21, on a flight to Melbourne. I stayed there for a month with my aunt who became like a second mother to me. So does that count as solo travel? Not quite right?

Since then, every trip I've taken has been with my KH - best pal and other half - who has taken very good care of me on all our trips. When I consider that he's the guy who writes up the packing list, packs our backpacks and does our laundry, I wonder if I should just pack him in my luggage with me. But then again, he's also the same guy with whom I've had some memorable rip-roaring fights on those trips too. Never a dull moment!

But now, it looked like I would be on my own in Japan. For two days after the Disney junket, I would be alone. It was only two days. Big deal right? But to me, it was a big scary deal. I had not done this alone before. I had not gone on a business trip, let alone a solo trip. No one to talk to, no one to remind me of the essentials (like my meds, as KH always faithfully does) and no one to share my mistakes and wrong turns.

You'll be okay, KH reassured me. You know Japan. You know your way around.

He kept telling me that until 5am that rainy morning when I left the house for the airport. I left with a big stone in my chest - one loaded half with fear and half with exhilaration.

Luckily, I travelled with a nice bunch of reporters and I had a long-lost friend to catch up with. Helped me feel more grounded and a lot safer. The Disney portion helped ease me into solo travel.

For once, I had a whole room to myself. I could soak in the tub for as long as I liked after a day of walking in the parks and I did not have to contend with kids chasing me out for their own soaking! I could surf the internet past midnight and not have KH nag. I could have a decent complete meal with adult conversation without having to cut up meat for a little one or referee a fight.

Did I miss the children? Yes, in that I wished I could share my experience, let them see what I am seeing as well. Hence my videos at Tsukiji and Honke Bankyu. (To add, when Gillian saw the videos, she said my narration made it seem as if I was narrating to them there and then - as indeed was the case. I wanted to show them exactly what I was seeing) But at the same time, I relished my freedom from the mummy role. Does that make me a bad mummy? Or am I sending myself on another self-imposed guilt trip? Maybe there is a time and space for life to happen and maybe now at this point in my life, this is where I would like to be. Could there be room for all my roles? I would like to think so.

When I left Disney to venture into Tokyo and further, all I felt was a sense of confidence and familiarity - I knew how to navigate the train ticket machines with ease, I could find my way to the hotel and check in with no problems. The fear, the trepidation, apprehension - all vanished. Even a drunk lurching towards me at the hotel reception did not faze me - the savvy staff of the Villa Fontaine caught him a quick second before he could sway onto me.

Yes, I wished I had someone to talk to at times, or marvel at the scenery together, or soak in the ambience at the Honke Bankyu, a setting so ripe for romance. And certainly, when my shoulders ached and the backpack felt too heavy, how I wished KH was there.

And of course, there was the dilemma of photo-taking. No one to take photos of me. Or I of them. In Disney, with a princess for company, I took many pictures. Of her. But on my own, there was nobody. I resorted to putting on a smile, sign language and asking strangers to take my picture - with the train, next to a town mascot, in a bus. They always did. Bemused that I was travelling alone but gamely obliging. I always returned the favor though and volunteered to take pictures for them. And when there was no one around, I did the loony thing and took my own self-portraits.

All that aside, I don't think I was ever homesick or oppressively lonely and longing for company. How could I, when there were the long train rides where I wrote in my journal, listened to music, ate onigiri, drank Coke and looked out the window and just day-dreamed?

Perhaps being alone, after being surrounded by noise and movement and activity in my large family day after day, was like manna to one who had not known she was hungry? I said before that I think Japan is a place well-suited for solitude, as if there was a sense of deep loneliness that I found familiar, that appealed to me. And so it was. Being alone did not feel alien or frightening. Instead, I enjoyed it greatly, navigating my way around and making my own decisions. At times I felt so free as if I could just soar, and perhaps, never come back.

I feel like I came into my own skin back in Japan. Its another part of me I never thought I'd be brave enough to find. Included now, with my other identities as mother and wife and worker drone, is now a sense of newfound independence as a traveler. And rather like an addict, trapped in the rush of sensations of a trip, so have I too been caught up in the seductiveness of solo travel. Like a really bad itch, I long to do this again. And now, back in the humdrum of everyday life, I miss it greatly.

Hanami and the beach

Last night, minutes before 4300 Krisflyer points were about to expire forever, KH and I booked our business class tickets to Osaka for April 2011. In celebration of our 20th wedding anniversary together, I think the theme for Japan in 2011 will be flowers and romance. Nice? I shall have to plan an itinerary centred around that. And for once, for me at least, we will travel in style - frog in a well that I am, I have never sat in Business class so I am excited about that.

We booked only the first leg of the journey leaving our options for the return trip wide open for now. We could go deeper into central Honshu to explore Kamikochi, Takayama, the Japanese alps and the Kiso Valley. Or explore the backroads of Shikoku and the islands of the Seto-Naikai National Park by car. Or wend our way up the northern coast towards Niigata, and the Tohoku region, ending in a loop back at Tokyo. We are also toying with the possibility of flying from Japan to Beijing and then returning from there.

So that will be something to look forward to. I am already gleefully anticipating the planning!

But for now, in the immediate future, there will be good old Malaysia for us in a couple of weeks from now. This time we are headed for Tioman where we will join Rita and her brood at the Paya Beach Resort. The kids are very excited to vaca with the Tans again after having a blast in Tokyo Disney with them a couple of years ago. We will be driving the usual Malacca-KL-Kuantan route, looping down to Tioman and then home.

Can't wait.

Back to Japan... sooner than I thought!

Heading back to Japan sooner than I thought. I feel very thrilled and privileged to be invited by JNTO to be part of their media trip to Tokyo Disney Resort. We will get a go at the brand new Monsters Inc. ride in Disneyland. When I went last November, the queue for Monsters Inc stretched to 4 hours, to our dismay and disappointment! We had to skip this - who could queue 4 hours? So I am glad to be able to try the ride out now. KH is green with envy because he thinks I won't even have to queue - yes the perks of being part of a media group!

Also in the itinerary, a look at the beautifully themed (and very upmarket)Miracosta Hotel at Disney Sea) and a backroom look at the new Cirque du Soleil show in Tokyo Disney Resort.

I plan to extend my stay in Japan for a couple of days because no visit to Japan is complete without a dip in an onsen, preferably in a ryokan far from the madding crowd.

It took me a while to find the perfect spot. And this is in the remote valleys of Tochigi prefecture, 3 hours away from Tokyo and one and a half hours away from Nikko. It will take me at least 2 changes of train and bus to get there. What place, KH asked, would be worth the hassle of so many transport connections, just to stay for a night and then repeat the journey the next day in all haste to make the flight home?

I will not say more for now except that it is a very special, unique place among onsen ryokans in Japan. I have tried to search for this in the conventional travel books and come up empty. It promises a very interesting travel accommodation experience. And for me, travel is really all about the experience. So hassle or not, I'd go far to find these experiences.

Japan - some final thoughts

You all know KH has got this thing about the Italian curse - believing that the second time you visit a place would not be as good as the first, and in fact, the trip might be so bad, it would mar all your original memories of the place. Happened to us when we visited Italy for the second time. First time we went, the weather was great, we had surprise experiences that we treasured (like a mass in St Peter's conducted by the late Pope John Paull II), awesome places like Venice, the Cinque Terra etc, great accomodation and food and so on. Second time we went, hoping to re-capture the magic, it all flopped. The weather sucked, the accomodation choices lost their zing. Even places that captured our hearts the first time round, like Siena, seemed to have lost the mojo for us.

So understandably, he was worried about the Italian curse manifesting as the Japanese curse.

I am happy to say that it did not happen that way. In fact, I think this second trip was even better than the first.

1) We covered a great deal more ground, saw more of Japan than we did the first time round. There is a great deal more to Japan than the usual Tokyo-Kyoto circuit. I would really urge travellers to go further afield even though there is plenty to keep one occupied for weeks in these great places alone. I liked that we had time in the great metropolis of Tokyo and Osaka as well as contemplative, quiet time in Koyasan. While we enjoyed the rides in Disney resort, we also enjoyed the rituals we performed at the temples and shrines.

2) Accomodation choices really shone this time. We had such good accomodation, in top-notch places, with prices that did not bust our budget. In many places, we lived really really well. Kokuya, Auberge Watanabe, Hotel Villa Fontaine etc all provided different, unique experiences in their own way. I am glad that we experienced the full range of accomodation choices that Japan had to offer - from hostels to family-run inns, elegant ryokans to business hotels.

3) We visited lots of 5-star sights - Himeji, Itsukushima shrine, the Peace Park in Hiroshima, Okunoin on Koyasan, Kenrokoen in Kanazawa etc.

4) Great unforgettable experiences - onsen and kaiseki in Kokuya, snow in Zenkoji, shojin ryori and our own personal hanare in Koyasan, henro and omikuji in the temples and shrines etc.

5) The weather for the most part, co-operated, except for unpredictable Kyoto weather and the one day it poured in Disneysea. I think, even on hindsight, the wet nasty evening in Kyoto which was the lowest point for me, was an interesting experience. At least, it would be something I would not forget in a hurry! But this is travel isn't it? You take the good with the bad and it all adds up to what makes your trip so unique and interesting.

6) We familiarised ourselves with the train system and the timetables, enough to understand it well enough to optimise our time. By the end of the trip, we'd become savvy enough to hop on and off the shinkansen like it was the Toa Payoh feeder bus.

7) We were lucky enough to grab a very good MAS deal. At S$398 per person, this is still hard to beat. Right now, looking at fares coming out of NATAS, the cheapest is S$559 and even that is far off from the MAS deal.

When we arrived home and did our sums, and wept at our credit card bills, we realised that we had spent the better part of $17,000. But if you think about it - 15 days, a wide range of experiences, great accomodation, train travel, all food and incidental expenses in - for a family of seven! It could not be considered expensive. Especially when I just came from the NATAS fair and saw tour packages of about 6D5N to central Japan going for more than S$2200 per person! Had we taken a conventional tour package, extrapolating from the cost of one of these, it would have easily cost us about S$50,000 and that does not include ALL food/incidental costs either.

So I am very happy to say that we had a great trip, many unforgettable moments, we ate well, slept in lovely places and did not have to take out a second mortgage on my little yellow house for it.

Would I go back to Japan? Yes. Maybe not immediately, but I do want to return. Maybe next time I'd visit the places I didn't get to visit this time - Kamikochi in the Japanese alps, Takayama, Iya valley in Shikoku, Kinosaki Onsen on the Sea of Japan coast, Kusatsu Onsen and so on. I think the next time I go, it will be in spring. Autumn is very beautiful and the red leaves can be dramatic and showy but next time, it will be cherry blossom season and hanami!

The crowds are all heading to Hokkaido and the place is really being promoted at the travel fair. People I meet who say they are going to Japan, all say they are heading for Hokkaido! Don't know about you, but I just dislike heading to a place where the odds of me bumping into another Singaporean are higher than spotting the brown bears of the island. Nope, I'll stick to Honshu or Shikoku or Kyushu for now. I'll leave the pastures of Hokkaido for when the Singaporean crowd dwindles.

But whenever that will be, you can be sure I'll be back!

Day 15 Tokyo and home!

Last day in Japan!

Woke up to another great blue-sky day, which made me feel even more regretful that its my last in Japan. The buffet brekkie in the Villa Fontaine was really good value. It was packed with travelling business people. But at a table near ours, I thought I detected a familiar accent!

We wanted to take a quick walk to Hama Rikyu koen, just at the back of the hotel, across the road. We in fact made it as far as out of the hotel, right down to the cross junction with Hama Rikyu beckoning tantalisingly close across the road, before we decided we just didn't have enough time. But note to self - next visit to Tokyo, the Villa Fontaine will be my accomodation of choice again and this time, I will visit Hama Rikyu and also the famed Tsukiji Fish Market, 15 minutes away on foot.

From Villa Fontaine, we checked out and were soon walking back towards Shinbashi JR station. It was a weekend so the place was deserted - very similar to the ghost town that Shenton Way and our CBD turns into over the weekends. The black-suited penguins that hibernate in their glass cubes in the sky were nowhere to be seen. Shiodome felt abandoned and a bit depressing Or maybe that's just how I felt walking away, slowing leaving Japan by inches.

Getting back to Tokyo station and taking the Narita Express was easy. We used our JR Pass for the last time. I sat looking out as the train zoomed past, as if in a visual rewind, the ferro-concrete grey blocks of buildings, the unlit neon signs, then fields where kids were playing baseball, rivers and bridges, then bamboo groves, rice fields, red-bibbed Jizo on the road shoulder and all too soon, Narita airport.

Yes, can you tell? I was SAD. Only cheered up at the duty-free when I bought a box of mentaiko which was carefully packed in dry ice and insulation! Note: I have eaten half the mentaiko and every bite is bliss. The other half, I am slo-owly savouring knowing that, as with this trip report, once its over, its really over.

The plane ride was greeted with less boisterous excitement than before - perhaps everyone was feeling a bit down at going back home. The holiday was over. As usual, once on board, the kids were glued to the in-flight entertainment system so it was not difficult to keep them occupied.

We transited in KLIA for three hours which allowed us to grab some dinner. Too bad the food was overpriced and subpar (and I think I am being kind in describing it thus). We could not stomach paying RM16 for a plate of wonton mee which we could easily have gotten in the heart of KL for RM3 and at far better standards too!! What a rip-off. Settled for fast food but even that was like sawdust and cardboard. Either our tastebuds were spoiled after 15 days in Japan, or KLIA food was really an overpriced excuse for crappy food. Combination of both, probably.

Arrived in Singapore late, past midnight and took separate cabs home. The night was warm, so different from the crisp coolness that Japan had. Tigerlily greeted us with a meow. Home smells... familiar and comfortable! It always feels good to be home.

But how I wish home was somewhere in Japan!