Kat's Notebook

One of the must do things in my Japan trip was to wear a kimono. When I was younger I watched anime and Japanese shows and I loved those characters wearing kimono and I yearned to wear one too. So when we came to Kyoto, my sisters and I rented a kimono and walked around [...]

Here are some of the snacks I tried in Japan. I’m sort of an adventurous eater especially when it comes to sweets like sticky rice cake, mochi…or mochi. If I only had a bigger appetite, I would have indulged myself more. Uirou from Nagoya. One of the specialty snacks of Nagoya is the uirou. Fortunately [...]

They said that it’s rare to get a glimpse of Mt. Fuji because most of the time clouds will obscure its peak. I haven’t thought of adding a Hakone trip in my itinerary to view Mt. Fuji. Hakone is usually where tourists go to see Mt. Fuji with a side trip to the famous lakes [...]

Shopping in Japan can be so expensive. VERY expensive. I love to go shopping especially for Asian clothes. I love Hongkong and Taiwan’s shopping because I can find unique items that had reasonable prices. With Japan, everything was expensive. Food souvenirs/ingredients, clothes, anime stuffs, and crafts. It’s a bit disappointing really because I’m not the [...]

Part 1 tackled the west side of the JR Yamanote Loop. Now I would go over the East side. From Shibuya, we took the JR train and hopped off Tokyo Station. Tokyo Station is where most of the trains are connected – the Shinkansen and Narita Express goes through here. Marunouchi Area. From Tokyo Station [...]

Disneyland or Disneysea? My sister and I decided on DisneySea Tokyo because we’ve both been to Disneyland (Anaheim and Hongkong) whereas DisneySea is only found in Tokyo. So DisneySea it is. The time we went, they were celebrating their tenth year anniversary and the Disney characters have their own “Be Magical” costumes. They also had [...]

During our trip, we planned to eat only Japanese cuisine and gathering information from a lot of food blogs before the trip, I was so excited to taste all the good food of Japan. I was so excited for sushi, mochi, Mos burger and a lot of sweet snacks. I set aside a good budget [...]

Japan has many temples littered around the country. Walking along the street I would suddenly see a compound with a shrine in it. It was really amazing how these shrines/temples thrive in the city. The basic facts are shrine is for Shinto while temple is for Buddhism. Shinto shrine has torii gates while Buddhist temple [...]

  The most popular transportation fare for foreigners travelling inside Japan is the Japan Rail Pass. This pass is only available to foreigners and is bought outside the country. The pass allows the carrier to ride the Japan Railways transit (any JR transportation except Shinkansen Nozomi and Mizuho) for a certain number of days (7, [...]