"Tokyo" Tokyo by y_lyn

I had really enjoyed my F&E Japan trip with the company of my 2 friends - Ivy & Lynn. I almost gave up this trip because of the high air ticket price. For your information, I had booked my air ticket through singaporeair.com When I first logged into the website, the ticket price was $1347. At that time, I still hadn't decide whether to join my friends for the trip so I didn't book immediately. The next day evening, I went to the website again and was shocked that the price went up to $1747. I called one of the local agencies to check whether they can get cheaper tickets and guess what... they told me that the ticket cost around $3000!!! On the very night, I checked up the price again and it showed $1547. Am I in a stock market? The price kept fluctuating.... after a few tries, I finally booked my ticket at $1347. The next day, for curious sake, I checked the website again and it show $3247!!

The trip was actually very "last minute" and quite unplanned. We only booked our accomodation for the first 3 nights and we started our trip. Original plan was to go Toyko, Mount Fuji, Osaka and Kyoto. In the end, we sacrificed Osaka as we didn't expect there's so much to explore in Kyoto. Also, we were unable to find hostel/ hotel to stay on our second night in Kyoto so we ended up taking an 8 hours overnight train back to Tokyo. Despite some hiccups here and there, we really enjoyed ourselves in Japan.

Our itinerary was as follow:

Day 1: Fly from Singapore to Narita Airport (Transit in Bangkok)
Day 2: Visit Sensoji Temple which is near our hostel in Asakusa area. Shopping along Ameyoko, a busy market street in Ueno before proceeding to Ginza, the famous shopping district.
Day 3: Disney Sea
Day 4: Tsukiji Fish Market for sushi. Odaiba for some sight-seeing. Shopping at Harajuku.
Day 5: Mount Fuji - Sight-seeing and experience Hot Spring!!
Day 6: Take a 2-hr bus and 2-hr bullet train to Kyoto. 4pm: Check in at hostel. Explore neighbourhood area, visited a shrine and shop around. Venture into their "red-light" district at Gion. Saw a geisha there.
Day 7: Nijio Castle. 1 hour bus ride to Arashiyama area, visited Tenryuji Temple and strolled through the bamboo groves. Stayed here till night as there was some light festival going on.
Day 8: Overnight bus back to Tokyo. Dropped our luggage at our hostel in the morning. Proceed to Karamachu area where you can find a great statue of Buddha, many temples and shrines. At night, we went to explore night life in Roppongi.
Day 9: Akihabara. Ikebukuro.
Day 10: Back to Singapore *sigh*. (Almost missed our flight back!!)

For more photos of my Tokyo Trip, you can refer here: Lyn's Photos and feel free to give your comments :)