Recollections: Shin-Okubo, Tokyo

     Since I am currently on rest from the semestral break we're having, lemme try to write down all the experiences I can recall on my travels during my 1-year stay in Japan. For now, its on to Tokyo's Korea Town, Shin-Okubo!

      Being a fan of K-pop, I decided to visit Tokyo's Korea town, Shin-Okubo. It's a station north of Shinjuku when you ride JR's 山手線 (Yamanote line). Together with my friend who was also a fan of K-pop, as soon as we stepped out of the station we were already anxious of going around. Even inside the station you could already see posters of K-pop and K-drama artists on their advertisements. You will be greeted with stores selling K-pop merchandises, korean skin care products, Korean food, everything Korean! We were spazzing over the overflow of K-pop goods! 

Some pictures of Koreatown:

From CDs

To Calendars

And Posters

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Autographs of Artists are put along Store walls

     Since we were both ELFs (EverLasting Friends),  a name for fans of Super Junior, we were looking for the famous Super Junior Town somewhere in this area. After minutes of GPS searching and walking along the alleys, there it was! Hidden in an alley was our long-searched Super Junior Town! Even from its sight I was already dying to get in. We tried to keep our calm to avoid eyes at us. But as soon as we went inside, the fans inside us literally tore through our control. Everything, from the walls, music, decorations, accessories, even to the food, everything was filled with Super Junior goods! I think the waiters are accustomed to customers like us, since no one minded us losing our minds inside. We ordered the store's special: Super Junior Kimchi Cheese. While we waited and ate our food, We were entertained by the showing of SJ's Super Show 4 concert in Tokyo. Even other customers were enjoying everything. And we were giddy when our biases would show up on the screen. After eating, we chatted for a while, and even if it breaks our hearts, we left, but swore to come back often as much as possible.

Some pictures of Super Junior Town:

They even have an Ikemen bar. Wonder if they're as good looking as the real SJ

Name an album? They have all

Sapphire Blue Lights!

They even have their twitter account!

And they have each member's pic on the wall and customers can freely post their feels lol

Their Mr Simple posters

Enjoying SS4's Oppa Oppa Performance

SJ Kimchi Cheese! <3

SJ Posters from all albums!

Id wish for frequent rain if I'd use this!

Precious mementos!

     After lunch, we had to separate since we both had other appointments. As for me, I had to make use of the 1-day train pass, a pass that gives you unlimited rides around Tokyo for a day, that I bought. After Shin-Okubo, I walked around Hamamatsucho and Roppongi to stroll around the Pokemon Center and take a nice walk around Tokyo Tower. The tower looks beautiful when the sun sets. After that, I went to Shinjuku to stroll around and be amazed on its illuminations. 

     Here are some photos of the trip. Enjoy! :)

Tokyo Tower in a distance 

Amusement below the tower

From a lower perspective

Light up!

A starry night 

Music and City Lights

To The Pristine Waters of Moalboal

After brain-draining days and sleepless nights, finally, the semester is over! 

Since our finals ended last friday, I wanted a day to relax at the beach. A good beach is always a good place to relax and think on the things that happened to your life. And since I've only been to the beach twice since I came back from my exchange program in Japan, my tropical instincts are still craving for the waves (apparently you can't go the beach every time you wanted to in Japan haha). So I decided to go there within this two weeks of break.

But I never thought that I would be going to the beach the next day. It was just an impromptu decision. So on the next day I disturbed my friend by calling her at 6am in the morning to be able to go to the beach. Since this was an impromptu trip, we decided not to swim, just stay at the beach and have fun. So I brought my laptop, camera, money barely enough for the trip, lunch, and water, and left. We met at the bus terminal around 9, and left for Moalboal, one of Cebu's famous beaches. 

A bus trip to Moalboal takes around 3 hours. Basically, the farther you go from the city, the more beautiful the beach becomes. To make use of the time we watched Tokyo Sonata in my laptop. After watching the movie, we realised that we were already nearing the destination. We were enjoying the trip since the scenery, from the mountaintops to the seaside, were all beautiful. 

Arriving at Moalboal, we had to travel a tricycle to be able to get there, which takes around 10 minutes. Arriving at the place, we had to pay an entrance fee to get in the beach (maintenance fee or something). Since we literally have enough money for the trip (because it was impromptu), we weren't able to rent any cottage, so we just sat along the beach. We just arrived in time for lunch. As we were having lunch, we noticed that there were quite a number of foreigners present. It was quite crowded than usual since its the festival of the town, and people are celebrating along the beach. After lunch, we took a few pictures, talked, and just had fun. After that, we left around 2:30pm to be able to arrive back to the city before nightfall. 

Despite all the calamities that happened (the recent strong earthquake and storms), its calming to know that the beaches are still as beautiful and calm as they were before. Here's some pictures from our trip. :) 

out in the open

A sight of Negros island from the beach

Most of the times I wished I lived closer to the beach

Working leisurely? Only in the Philippines

It's indeed nice to take a walk here

Thank you Edilyth for coming with me! 

Selfie on the bus

A last selfie before setting back for home

めずらしいけいけん

This blog post was written last March. But I just decided to post this now after a bit of thinking. So here goes. Enjoy reading! :)

"From finals, directly to spring break vacation, this prevented me to have the time to update my blog. But let me catch up by writing this.

Travelling Half of Japan on a local train. Beat that.

This spring break, I travelled Kansai and Kyushu with my fellow foreign exchange friends. We went all around Kansai from March 8th to 18th. Our Kyushu trip was supposed to be from the 19th to the 28th, but in the middle of our Kyushu trip, an emergency went out and had to let me go home to Tokyo asap by March 23rd. Since Fukuoka (The place where we were staying for the duration of the trip) was nowhere near Tokyo (Fukuoka is on southern Japan, Tokyo is on central Japan), and I had no money to afford a bullet train, overnight bus, or plane, my friend sold me her used 5-day unlimited train rides all over Japan to me. 

So there I was, planning the rides and searching for train timetables. A day was not enough to go home. The total amount of travel time needed was approximately 23 hours. So I planned my route to stop at Nagoya, then continue in the next day for Tokyo. I took the first train from Chihaya station (4:55am) on the 22nd of March, and went on to my soon to be unforgettable adventure.

Since I was only limited to ride local trains, and bringing all my things (3 big bags, with my laptop, clothes, camera, and xbox), I was expecting this travel to be dead tiring. But it was the exact opposite. Even though I had no sleep, I was wide awake from being awed by the beauty of the sunrise, the rurals of Japan, and by the people around me. My mind was afloat the whole trip, thinking about anything that would pop out of my head. I was also able to rest from the trains' comfortable chairs. As I said awhile ago, I was supposed to stop to Nagoya and spend my night there (from 3 reasons: 1.) Nagoya was in my opinion, the middle of the trip, 2.) Nagoya was a bit crowded, so its safe to say you could find a place to stay for the night, and 3.) It was one of the places where Dream High, a Korean drama, was cast. And since me and my mom loved it, I wanted to look at those exact places.). But looking back on the things I'm bringing, and remembering the reason why I need to go home, I decided to try my best to reach home, even if I would ride the last train in Tokyo (which is one thing you DO NOT want to experience. Trust me.). Sadly, a day of travel from south to central Japan is not enough. Thus, the last train led me to Numazu, which was in the middle of Shizuoka Prefecture and Tokyo Prefecture, so the travel for the following day would not be that long anymore. I arrived at exactly 12:10am. The first train for home was still in 04:55 am. So I had to look for a place to wait for 4 hours 45 minutes. My places to stay were as limited as to everything. I literally only had 1,000¥ on my wallet. So inns and hotels were out of the option (an overnight stay costs 4,000¥). So it led me to my next option: manga cafes. Looking around, I saw one near the station, but was saddened looking at the prices. Apparently the cafe was a high-class one, so my budget did not fit. I only had 2 options: wait outside the train station or stay at a 24-hour place. I was relieved to see a 24-hour McDonalds across the station. I planned to buy a coffee to be able to stay there. But as soon as I bought my coffee, all seats were taken. And it looked like everyone was doing the same thing I was supposed to do. Without any options, I was left to staying outside the train station. It was really a good thing that spring has now come, so it was not that cold anymore. To add it, there were free wifi zones around me, so I surfed the net to distract me from looking at my watch. I thought about how i'm gonna survive this night at ease. But then that's where my thought backfired.

From that night I was able to look at Japan from another view. I saw drunk people shouting around and wandering around, women waiting for their rides, people with the same situation as me, waiting for the first train, policemen doing their rounds actively, and vomits from people who drank too much. Avoiding trouble, I sat at the closest bench outside the train station and police box, and surfed the net and watched Family Guy to get me distracted. On the middle of my watching, a policeman and policewoman went up to me and asked the usual stuff (age, what I was doing, name, etc). At first I was nervous because they were shocked that I was still 18 (and 18 year olds were not allowed to be out at this time), but I was really glad they were very friendly, so they were more like chatting with me rather than interrogating (yes, chatting. Since I am now able to converse in Japanese). After I told them my situation, letting them check my bags if I was really travelling, and showing them my residence card, they told me to take care (with smiles), and went off. After that, I went back to watching, and updating my twitter feed on Super Junior (March 23 and 24 is their first day of their Super Show 5 world tour). I was enjoying myself when suddenly a middle-aged man (around late 30s to 40s) was biking near me and paused in front of me. Thinking that it might be someone who wants to ask me something, I paused the video and looked up to him. But at that moment, as soon as I locked eyes with him, he suddenly winked at me. Not the prank wink, but the you-know-what wink. As I was registering the thing he did, he was also staring at me, waiting for a reply. Being too creeped out and scared as hell, I plugged back the earphones to my ears, and went back to the video. It was a good thing that I was beside the police box, so all he could do was wait for my reply and since I brushed him off, he want back to biking, maybe to look for another victim.

The bench at the left was where I sat, and where I had this experience.

From that moment, my eyes opened of how Japan is during the night. Generally Japan is a very safe place to live in. But given these circumstances, danger always lurks everywhere. Also, before I started my spring break, my friends also told me on recent killings which happened on the middle of the night. What i'm trying to say is, even if a place would be full of security cameras, policemen, and strict law enforcement, danger will always be present. It is our task to be always aware of the surroundings and the people around us. Especially when on a foreign place, be a traveller, not a tourist. We should not be ignorant of everything. This is just an experience I had to share. Always be alert, especially when travelling alone. And keep safe. :) "