Happy Birthday, Mommy

Mom's birthday is today but sis bought her a cake yesterday afternoon when we chanced upon Awfully Chocolate next to the vet clinic (after we sent Bob there for his vaccination).

Mom was of course happy to have all of us at home to enjoy the cake together. Mom and I could even enjoy a few seeds of durian. Hee.

Dad later went to bought back some chilli crab, veggies and chicken for dinner. I felt happy yesterday. There are times we were unhappy due to some issues but yesterday was a reminder that as a family, we can share our joy and face challenges together. They are the people I can count on for help and advice and I will be there for them too.

Nutritious soup

Mom never fails to surprise me with her creativity and every now and time she will make a new dish. She has made this melon/gourd soup before. It's used to make mock shark fin soup. She made this soup and put in meat balls and crab stick. Hardly a vegetarian dish but it's nice and colourful.

Mom's tao suan

It's yummy with bits of peanuts and sweet potato :)

We are all alone

Sis found me another lovely song by Angela Aki. It sounds familiar. An old English song.

Goodbye, Rambo

I received a call from the cattery before lunch today that Rambo has passed away. Mom and I visited him late last month as usual to feed him 2 small cans of wet food and clean him a bit, stroked him. He had lost quite a lot of weight but still ate a lot. We did discuss whether to put him down but he still seemed to recognise us and we hope the monthly jab for his gingivitis would help him.

But we still lost him. At least he is no longer suffering.

Angela Aki's Tegami

Cousin recommended this song and I like it. I have been listening it for a number of times and tried to sing along to the lyrics found here. But I have to skip a number of chinese characters. Hee.

Chasoba - my style

I like to cook my chasoba using the dashi fish stock with veggies I find in the fridge, egg, etc. I managed to find some broccoli and also added 2 scallop I got from Tokyo. The taste was surprisingly good :)

Belated birthday gift :)

2 weeks ago, I went out with my 3 secondary school girl friends to give them a treat. It's a practice we have for many years. We will take turns to treat as the birthday girl and the others will get her the gift she chooses after dinner. I treated them to Seasons Reasons @ Raffles City's basement. The food was not bad. I won't mind going there again.

After browsing at the bookshop, stationery shop, I decided to just get my presents from the supermarket. I chose organic milk, some flour mix for making biscuit/cake and organic apples. The girls also wanted to get me a cake, so I chose the swiss roll. I like edible gifts. Hee.

Porridge and dishes

Mom and Dad didn't cook their usual fried rice one Mon evening and they saved me porridge, squid, steamed pork, veggies, and mini anchovies.

Leftover shepherd pie and pickled veggies

These 2 went well together. My shepherd pie also seemed more flavorful after keeping it overnight in the fridge and heating up the next day.

Mom's fried instant noodle

Yummy with prawns and lots of veggies.

Bob and Angel

Bob and Angel are still living apart under one roof. Anyway, life still goes on.

Bob the chubby cat likes to just lounge in the living room instead of stretching his legs :)


Angel likes to hide under the rug in Sis' bedroom. Sis managed to capture some cute shots of him in action :)

Last day (8 May) in Tokyo

A good way to start a day is always with good food. That morning @ 5+am, I had some of the Aunt Stella's cookies - blueberry nut swirl and lemon cookies and some raisin bread. Yummy.


@ around 7.15am, we boarded the airport limousine bus to Narita Airport. @ the airport, we had ample time to browse around the shops as our flight was at 11.30am. I bought 2 tees and socks from Uniqlo and a cat terrycloth hanky from another shop. Sis bought a nice umbrella and some cute cat biscuits for Mom.


Gluttony me felt like eating again and I was glad I bought a nut loaf from thia Maison Kayser bakery recommended by Cousin and Cousin-in-law. I was enjoying every bite of it while Sis ate her choc chip cookie (from Aunt Stella).


Again, our flight had some 30 mins delay due to some computer glitch but it wasn't as long as our earlier flight. The plane wasn't packed too. The meal on the flight was surprisingly good. We chose the Japanese lunch set - cold soba, some seafood salad (of unknown looking slimey stuff), beef curry with rice and chocolate orange cake. There was so much food (and probably I had a big bun earlier) that I didn't finish the rice and the dry plain roll.

With time to kill, I watched 2 movies - Bolt and K20. I cried while watching both shows. Bolt the dog and Mitten the stray cat are adorable characters. I find Rhino the hamster funny and weird. It's a good movie, showing the devotion of the girl to her pet and vice versa. It's a feel good movie.

K20, a Japanese movie has Takeshi Kaneshiro as the lead character, Heikichi Endo being framed by K20, a thief who stealed from the rich. I like the part of how Heikichi trained to gain the skills of a thief in escaping and disguising himself.

Back @ Changi Airport, Sis and I had kaya toast and tea @ Yakun before Dad (so sweet) came to fetch us home. After doing some packing, I couldn't help but try a bit of Mom's banana cake and fungus dessert.

It was good to home :)

Day 5 (7 May) in Tokyo

My breakfast was the raspberry chai muffin and a glass of warm milo. I also was taking a tablespoon of Pipagao almost every day since I was just recovering from cough. I didn,t touch the cough mixture which spilled in my luggage. It causes drowsiness and I no longer needed to drink it but brought it along just in case.

We met Cousin at the Ginza station and she showed us around. We shopped at Uniqlo again where I bought another pair of jeans, a belt and some underwear. The staff put a "raincoat" over my Uniqlo paper bag as it was raining.

Lunch was at Mos Burger cafe where the cutlery is not disposable. I had the bun and soup set which made a hearty meal.

We continued shopping at H&M where I bought a skirt and scarf. After Ginza, we took the train to Asakusa to visit the Nakamise Dori Street and Sensoji Temple. I find the place quite touristy. We had some soft ice cream and when the shop lady asked us to go out by the back door, we just went through there and walked back to the main street. She actually walked to us and told us that we were not supposed to walk while eating and asked us to stay at the back of the shop to eat. Then we understood. But strangely, the other people who bought the ice cream were at the back alley. The shop lady must have only managed to "nab" us. Hee.

At Sensoji Temple, sis and I decide to put in 100 Yen each to shake some heavy metal rectangular container to get some stick with a number on it and open a drawer with the matching number to get a piece of paper about our fortune. Sis got a good one that said everything was good in terms of marriage, life and work. Mine was opposite. It said something along the line of "Marriage and work of any kind are bad". I just rolled the paper and tied it to some rack where the others had done so to the bad fortune they had received. Sis kept her. I'm not going to believe in that. I believe in taking charge of my own fate but it was fun to try that for fun :)

Next was Ueno where Cousin showed us the streets where stalls were selling mainly seafood. We went to another one where there were 2 shops selling Japanese snacks. I bought about $100 worth of them - they were good to give to friends, relatives and colleagues and also for our family.

We went back to Ginza to meet Cousin-in-Law at Midori Japanese Restaurant. We had
sashimi (front and back views) ,
salad ,
california roll , broiled fish sushi. They were delicious. Even Sis who doesn't really dare eat sashimi tried the tuna bits and liked them.

Look at the spread of food :)

Day 4 (6 May) in Tokyo

This was one of the highlights of our trip - the Ghibli Museum. It was the day Sis and I explored Tokyo on our own without our Cousin accompanying us. It was very nice of her to bring us around Tokyo and Cousin-in-law also had dinner and a lunch with us. We talked about work, life in Japan, etc. Sis and I may have missed out some interesting places in Harajuku, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, Ueno and also the nice makan places, without them.

To get to Mitaka, we had to change to the JR Chuo line at Shinjuku. We took the Express train instead of the Rapid one and ended up paying about $10 when the conductor checked our tickets. Hee. Express train goes directly to Mitaka without stopping at the other stations between Shinjuku and Mitaka. Once outside of Mitaka Station, we managed to find the bus stop no. 9 easily, buy the bus tickets and board the bus.

We were excited when we reached Ghibli Museum. Both of us like the animes by Hayao Miyazaki such as Spirited away, Howl's Moving castle. Visitors are prohibited from taking photos inside the museum. When I visited it the first time, it was crowded but this second time, we were early and it wasn't packed yet. We leisurely admired the "exhibits". We watched the clay models spin at high speed and yet seem to be moving in slow motion due to strobe lights. There are 2 rooms showing sketches, pencil drawings, coloured pieces, storyboard of the various animes, a mock up of how Miyazaki created the animes from scratch, I think. Kids will probably feel inspired seeing all these and the coloured pencils and drawing stuff.

We then proceeded to the theatrette to watch a short anime clip. The little girl character, the cats (who don't look like normal cats since they are called Neko Basu, Cat Bus) and Totoro all look so adorable. I bought the CD for its soundtrack and also a medium size Neko Busu :) Sis got a small Neko Busu, a big Dustball and a little ghostly keychain.



After the visit to Ghibli Museum, our plan was to visit Kichijoji, a place I read that has interesting zakka shops. But when we went out of the train station, we don't know where to go. We went back inside and bought some cookies from Aunt Stella. We then decided to visit Shimo-kitazawa again and try to look for the interesting cafe, Deli & Baking Co. we read about.

It was still raining when we reached Shimo-kitazawa. We studied the map at the station and Sis kept a lookout at the unit number of the shops. We managed to find the area "29" where the cafe is located and after walking around, we found it. We were so happy. The cafe looked inviting. The waitresses were friendly and the cake display looked so good.


Cosy environment too.



I had a soy latte while sis a caffe latte. The stirrer is an ice cream stick.


The server understands some English, so we didn't have much problem ordering our food. I just asked whether they have "Sakana" or fish for one of their main dishes and she pointed to the Japanese characters on the menu. Sis order a Loco Moco Hamburger rice dish and I got the fish one. Mine may not look as interesting as Sis' but it was wholesome. I like the multigrain rice and the fish tasted fresh. I helped sis with some of her veggies too.


The meal was quite substantial that we didn't have any space for desserts. We agreed that we would be back at the cafe again before leaving Shimo-kitazawa to buy some cakes back.

We visited the interesting shops like T-Four and Communication Mania and discovered a few more interesting ones. We went back to Deli & Baking Co and got a muffin each. At Shibuya, we bought some sandwiches from the Andersan bakery at one of the department stores. On the way back to our hotel, we popped into Tokyo Hands, a departmental store and found a pet shop called Pets Living right on the upper floor. I remember in Odaiba there is a shop called Cats Living selling cat food and accessories and also has a space for visitors to mingle with their cats at a price. It is the same for the Pets Living too but Sis and I were more interested in the bags and cute stuff with cat designs. Hee.

Back in the hotel room, we had our dinner of sandwiches. Sis ate her Oreo cream cheese muffin. I tried a bit and it tasted quite nice. I was saving my Raspberry Chai muffin for breakfast the next day.

Day 3 (5 May) in Tokyo

Our plan that day was to cover Shinjuku and Shibuya.

We girls managed to buy some clothes from the sales racks at Takashimaya, Shinjuku. I enjoy eating or yummy food, so I always look forward to my meals in Singapore. In Tokyo, it was the same feeling too. Lunch was set lunch at Harbs Cafe at Lumine Shinjuku. It comes with salad, pasta (about 4 types to choose from), a slice of cake (the waiter will let you know which types of cakes come under the set lunch promotion; more than 5 to choose from) and tea/coffee.

I remember taking photo of our pasta but not sure why it wasn't captured in the camera. Anyway, I had a tomato based one with prawns - slight spicy. Sis had a cream based one with bacon (I recall correctly).

I had a green tea cake and Cousin-in-law ordered a mille feuille crepe for us to share.
Layered between the crepes were seasonal fruits (such as strawberries). Yummy but the pasta was quite filling, so I couldn't eat much of the cake.

There were a few interesting small shops at Shinjuku. I also bought tops and a pair of jeans from Uniqlo. (The jeans is a steal as it was $38 after discount. When I bought another similar pair 2 days later in Ginza, it cost me $60. But it was still a good buy.)

Cousin brought us to Shibuya 109, a popular hangout by the Japanese fashionistas. Somehow, we couldn't really appreciate some of the clothes. The complex was crowded. We didn't get anything at all. But it was a good place to see some of the quirky fashion and also to do people watching.

Dinner was at this restaurant called MoMo Paradise at some building in Shibuya. We had shabu shabu and beef/pork sukiyaki. It was a hearty meal with us eating many thin slices of beef and vegetables.