Tokyo Trip - Day 2 : 26th Nov

Our tour guide reshuffled the itinery to start our 2nd day in Tokyo at Disneyland since she said that the crowd on a Thurs is typically lesser than Friday's. We started the day with 6am morning call, 7am breakfast buffet and 8am check-out from the hotel. This 6-7-8 timing was the schedule for the next few days so it was very tiring for us..

The bus trip from Narita to Disneyland took us abt an hour plus and we only reached Disneyland slightly 15 mins after the opening hour at 9am. It was freezing cold in the morning and when the wind blew, it became very chilly. I think it was abt 10-12 deg then. The queue to the entrance has already been formed and thank goodness our tour guide had already purchased the tickets beforehand and we entered into the theme park without having to spend time queuing.

But.. the horrifying thing once you entered into the theme park was that the queue for almost every ride station was very long and the average waiting time is at least 45min per ride. Even the fast pass timing was fast running out and the first fast pass ride that we got for Buzz lightyear ride was scheduled to be on 1145am-1245am.

The kind of crowd on a Thurs morning

As our tour guide instructed us to meet at the main gate at 3pm. we only manage to catch 2 day parades, 3 rides (it's a small world, buzz light year and kiddy roller coaster), 1 4-D scientific show plus many photos taken with less popular disney characters (these are the ones you don't need to spend too much time queuing to take pictures). Note Caden is carrying a 25 dollars popcorn bucket..

watching the 1st Day parade - with Xmas theme

Caden's fav disney character

2nd day parade

We had lunch at this curry rice place which serves very nice chicken japanese curry rice, and that restuarant provided a nice cosy place for us to rest our feet.. The afternoon temperature seem to rise higher as we no longer need the down jackets to keep us warm..

With the kind of crowd on a weekday, it's definitely not enough to do most rides in a day and watching the parades at the same time. Japanese families love to gather there and do picnics along the parade track to eat and watch at the same time. This is definitely a place where it's heaven to all kids and even the merchanise stores and popcorn (one bucket of popcorn plus the themed bucket cost SGD25!) stations are flooded with people!

Tokyo's nightfall started at 4pm, so by the time we gathered and pick up the minority grp at Disneysea theme park and proceed our journey to Onsen at foot of Mt Fuji for the night, the evening scene came dancing on us, Caden fell asleep during the bus ride as we made our way to our hotel for the night at Mt Fuji.

We had a traditional dinner at the onsen place and wore the kimono alike clothes into the dining hall.

Our tour guide strongly encourages us to try the hot spring but that means you have to strip naked into the pool with other ladies/men. When I went down to the hot spring bath place at 8plus pm, I saw 3 ladies from my tour group just finished their bath, blowing their hair at the changing room and another mummy with daughter from my grp too coming into the bath place. As I was too shy to soak with these ladies I excused myself and came down to the bath place at 10plus pm after Caden has slept for the night.. I didnt manage to soak too long cos it was quite late and I was all alone in the bath place so didnt think it was too safe... My ah lou had a good time doing his at the men's section at 8pm so it was quite a nice experience for him.

Our ryokan - we drank alot of green tea each night in our resting place.

Tokyo Trip - Day 1 : 25th Nov

Our flight has been scheduled at 820am, so we need to check in at the airport by 615am with our tour group. We had to pushed ourselves to wake up at 520am to settle the last min logistics and leave home before 6am to the airport. Ethan woke up at 530am together with us and followed us downstairs to catch a cab. He was crying when he realised that 3 of us got into the cab without him, but thereafter, we heard from mum that he was happily playing in the playground later in that morning.

The flight to Tokyo took abt 6 hours from SG and Caden was really restless throughout the whole journey. As 3 of us couldn't sit together, we took turns to keep Caden occupied throughout the flight before the plane touched down at Tokyo airport.

Our tour guide was a born Singaporean but based in Yokohama. She greeted us at the airport and our tour group was fairly small with 5 groups of family, biggest grp consists of 7 members. The first stop was to check into our hotel near Narita airport at Excel Tokyo Narita (very nice place) and we were all shocked to know that Japan sees their nightfall starting at 430pm! As Japan is 1 hour ahead of us, we did not have too much time on the first night but to have our dinner at Aeon (shopping mall near Narita hotels) and some time for brief shopping at Jusco (a big hypermart).

We should have done our titbits shopping at Jusco in day 1 if we had known that Central Tokyo (shinjuku and shibuya) did not have any hypermarts at all, not even Cold storage alike supermarkets in the shopping malls.

The food court at Aeon serves very nice ramen and we also had some time to relax and peoplewatch the locals taking their dinner at the same time. Aeon also have some nice small shops that sells fairly decent clothing but I didn't get any stuff cos I kept reserving my $ for my last 2 days of free and easy in Central tokyo.

Foodcourt in Aeon - really clean and they clear their plates after their meals, plus disposing the stuff into the right recycling bins

In Japan, they have many food vending machines like this for you to select the kind of food you want (e.g different types of ramen/udon or rice) and pay for them first using 1000 yen notes and then pass the dispensed coupons to the staff in the stalls who will then prepare your order

taking it really relaxed on the first night - Caden already got his first toy in Japan

We retired very early that night as we were dead beat after the long flight and super early hours.

Tokyo trip - countdown

Obviously I am getting more excited with this trip that I have been entering entries into here in the last few days. We got 2 vacuum bags from robinsons as ours broke while packing over the weekend. We were quite disappointed to see one of the wheels of our luggage broke out into pieces (probably Caden and Ethan were playing with it while we were away at work) so we hope that can last for the whole trip..


I think I will miss Ethan awfully when I am away.. and yes.. awfully. Cos this sweet cry baby loves to hug me when I am back home and made me feed him mouthfuls of rice when I am having my dinner. He will usually dragged my hand to get titbits for him, usually prawn crackers, honey stars, raisins or coco crunch.. and say goodnight to us before he hops into his sarong and sleep for the night... really sweet boy...

Tokyo trip - last min surf!

I have assigned the task of setting the itinery for our free and easy days in tokyo to my ah lou long back. To be honest, both him and myself do not know much abt tokyo, ie, where to head out or what to do best to fully utilise the 2 extra days, my ah lou simply selected shinjuku and shibuya to curb my shopping urge.. and he thinks its good enough to occupy us for the 2 days..


this weekend, I have finally started to surf the net and checking out various blogs to read people's experiences in tokyo. Only through this, I realised that there are actually more places to visit in tokyo and definitely I need to visit Harajuku to bring Caden to this mega Kiddy land so that he will be awfully amazed by the range of toys offered in Japan.


am still frantically checking out the various blogs to get better understanding.. anyways, I only have my job to blame for this last min rush.

Tokyo Trip - Packing time!

We decided to start packing up for our Tokyo trip on Sat in case there are still items amiss and we might have some time to get them before embarking on the trip with Caden.

Mummy has been feeling awfully guilty especially when the trip is drawing near towards Ethan since he will be left at home with my maid and Grandma. We had decided not to bring Ethan along since PaPa knew that Mummy has been shopping-deprived and had wanted to do a "shop till you really drop" in tokyo. Having Ethan around may not allow me to really shop and get my clothes / stuff in tokyo since PaPa may have a hard time juggling 2 boys and that will not be a holiday for him. So the most practical solution is to leave Ethan in the good hands of my mom-in-law as we go on our first proper overseas trip after 5 years! (since I got pregnant with Caden, we have stopped our travelling)

PaPa took out 2 luggage bags this morning and I was in charge of all stuff except for my ah lou's clothings, which is a lot of work for me since I had to make that list of items mentally in my head. I don't like to jot stuff on papers and check them off (yah, I may miss out stuff but I only process activities by working my mind hard!). Ethan and Caden got very excited with the mufflers, gloves, woolen hats that I have took out (in case the 7 deg got too cold for us) and start wearing them for fun. I sorta completed the packing within an hour and got quite satisfied with my efficiency, on the account that I have already started preparing all my toiletries and skincare essentials the week before (which can be time-consuming cos you need to wash all the small bottles and waiting for them to dry and transferring them from the original bottles).


We are now only left with getting 2 vacuum bags, some zip-lock bags and sweets to survive through the 7 hour flight for Caden... Ethan still doesn't know that we will be leaving for Tokyo trip starting Wed and he still happily help me to fold clothes throughout the whole packing period..


Haiz.... Guilty...

Happy Birthday PaPa

Today is PaPa's birthday (and my mom-in-law too!) but unfortunately PaPa is not able to take leave from work. Mummy has long blocked this day from her annual leave plan and decided to go ahead with it. I have told Caden that I'll bring him to watch the Astro Boy and today I will pick him up from his kindergarten for the first time!

It was heartwarming for me to do this again (picking my son from sch directly) since I last did this when he was in Brightkids on his last day. Astro boy was very heartwarming and I used up a few pieces of tissues but Caden kept asking me why I cried during the movie show.

We had a simple affair back at home as we didn't get to arrange a proper dinner on time. My ah lou is scheduled to get an iphone as his bday present from me, till his phone contract expires this Dec. Caden and myself got PaPa a bday card with lotsa scribbling from Caden's artwork. Anyway, he is still thinking which phone to get at this point (fickle-minded as usual)

Back home in the evening, we had a little cake from Bakerzin for both Mum-in-law and ah lou.. the kids were obviously happy cos they get to blow off the candle.

Dilbert - Management Jokes

I have been introduced to Dilbert comics by one of my colleagues last year and since love the jokes that Scott Adams has come up with because I can relate some of the characters to the people I met at work. I had a roller coaster year this year in work, with 3 changes in my direct line mgrs, an internal transfer which I have a fair bit of difficulty in seeking blessings from my respectable ex-boss and adapting to cultural changes in my current function. Having gone through the worst in this year from last 3 weeks, I am fairly settled in my current new role and had enjoyed the work surrounding it as it turn out to be really strategic and value-adding (rather than operational). And I think I have started to gain some respect within the dept as more and more co-colleagues have sought my opinions in their work, and even the most political powerful FC has become nicer to me these days..

Here are some of the interesting people that exist around in my organisation:

1) Hypo(crites) - As I am involved in a charity committee, anything to do with numbers got automatically dropped onto my lap, eventhough you seriously don't need a finance degree/trained person to carry out these task. So almost any events, any coordination work has got my name jotted down in their list. And the chairman was not ever sympathetic with the kind of workload evolving ard these tasks. Some comm members, who have only seemed to have led in a particular small event totally washed their hands in any other events that followed beyond. And as they get to understand the kind of work demands in my finance role (after getting to know me as a person), they openly and gracefully said," hey May, let N(chairman) know that your tasks are too heavy so you shd voice out during the meeting that you need help" "let us know when you need my help", etc. etc. Then when emails came flying around on questions in relation to fund raising rules, although they are copied in the email, no one replied. It took me 2 days to observe the non-response and I took on the responsibility to send my reply on behalf of the comm.. I call them Hypos

2) BD (Big Deals) - I happened to find out that some ex-mgrs in my ex-dept went around sharing the kind of achievements given to them. It goes something like this - "u know it is not easy to get a 1 rating from this boss but I got one from him" and understanding that this news will spread because it was shared with a whole bunch of team within the dept. As a sensible mgr, one shd not try to cause discomfort for other mgrs who may not be getting that kind of recognition from the same boss. Something which is not healthy for the dept as a whole, as ratings are deemed as judgement to a certain extent. I usually play down stuff that my ex-boss had done for me simply because I do not want to be seen as a threat to others and cause un-necessary unhappiness. That's how I deal with peers to have a peaceful life..

3) AAA (always attract attention) - needless to explain, this group of co-workers like to have everyone's attention focus on them for them to feel "really impt" in the workplace. I concluded that most of them seek to achieve the most out from their career path. And if such attention is not provided to them, you will be in their bad books.

4) ACB (always act bz) - some group of pple actually do not have much to keep them occupied at work (and I have seen many of such cases!) but they make it a point to look busy everyday and always turn up for meetings late each time to create the impression that they are in high demand! In some extreme cases, they gave many pple impressions that they have meetings scheduled back-to-back but I happened to bump into them at the coffee stalls as I shuttered between PBTP and battery road offices on some occasions.

5) Never make decisions - simply afraid to take responsibility and accountability of what is within their area of work - do I need to elaborate more?

The most absurd thing I heard this week is that a lady who has cumulated longer work experience than me is looking for a mentor (formally!) so that she can discuss with this mentor in any single problem that she encounters in work!! I know this lady is super kiasi in sharing her work opinions when needed and had to seek many pple's advice before executing a task. Wouldn't having a mentor made her more reliant? I cannot help but to advise her that what she needs to do to help herself is to start making decisions based on her own judgement and live with those decisions. Even if they do not turn out right (there's actually no right or wrong if you think abt it in the workplace), take it as a lesson learnt and move on with your life.

Many occasions, I have been toying with the idea of being a SAHM, but without meeting different kinds of people in the workplace, I may shortchange my children in future as I would like to be their good advisors when they encounter even more absurd work situations!