Day 1 - 27 Oct 04 (Wed)

And so I set off in the wee hours of the morning, at around 4+am, towards Changi International Airport. I had decided not to sleep the entire night before the flight, since it seemed highly likely that if I drifted off into dreamland, I would oversleep and miss the flight :) I ended up watching the last few episodes of [白い巨塔] that night~~~which might explain why images of 財前五郎kept haunting me during the flight O_o; (Sidenote: It is a really good series, based on a well-known work by 山崎豊子. The bond and inter-dependency between 財前五郎and 里見脩二were especially touching; how two people with very different values could still develop such deep respect for each other. It reminded me somewhat of 秦王and 殘劍in [英雄], when it dawned on the former that the person who understood him the most was actually his assassin.)

Anyway, I landed safely at Narita Airport, proceeded to obtain my JRPass and reserved Shinkansen seat tickets, and took the next Narita Express to Shinagawa. I remember this sense of anticipation hitting me as I walked out of Shinagawa station.

How can I put into words what it is about Japan that makes me want to go back time and again? It's not the perfect country of course, far from it~ But.. I guess it boils down to the word 'affinity'. Some places, some things, some people will somehow rejuvenate you more than others, and I suppose a few critical things about Japan have done just that for me.



Pic: Toyoko-inn Shinagawa-eki Takanawa-guchi - single room. In reality, the same room format is used for the double room as well, so be prepared to squeeze a little in a double room. There's another category of double rooms with a bit more space (cos the room extends into the balcony area) but such rooms are limited - only 2 per floor.


After checking in and taking a short rest, I made my way to Ikebukuro. First stop was DiscWave, where I wanted to pick up some old mucc CDs that I didn't have. They were playing mucc when I entered! ([大嫌い]live vers!) :) :) :) So yep, I gave them face too and bought more than S$400 worth of stuff from them.. many of the items I had been resisting from buying online for almost a year now, so I did not really feel the pinch...well, not until the credit card bill comes! :_)

I left DiscWave feeling very satisfied and excited..heehe..decided to pop by TokyuHands to get some stationery and stuff. Ended up spending more time there than I thought I would because the 2005 diaries were out and many of them were quite nice. Also I was quite enraptured by the rubber stamps section ~ wanted to get the hiragana rubber stamp set but decided against it in the end. Think I'll go get it next time.. it's hard to find such a large range of stationery in Singapore!

Onward ho to Shinjuku! Wanted to pop by Shinjuku's DiscWave but..sigh..i think i missed the entrance (it's so unnoticeable!) and seeing that time was running out, I decided to just pop by Like An Edison's 2nd floor to grab some of the old magazines. Finally managed to buy the old [79] magazines, yeah! :) :) :) & the funny thing is, as I was waiting at the cashier's for the girl to print out the receipt, I glanced to my left and suddenly realized that they had put up a half-mannequin wearing the mucc cym4 sweater. The exact same sweater that I was wearing so I felt like a walking advertisement! XD

So that was the first day.. went back to the hotel to pack up some stuff into the smaller bag (bag-in-a-bag, woot!) so that I didn't have to lug all of my luggage to Osaka & Kyoto. Knew I would be able to wake up on time the next day even though it was an early train because...because the adrenaline will do its job :)