Travel Bucket List --Japan (Day 1 : Yokohama)

BOY oh BOY, I finally set foot in the land of the rising sun on May 29th. Thankful to be able to squeeze in this trip before the Tokyo Summer Olympics next year which would likely mean soaring prices then. Kinda a last-minute trip (domo arigatou to Yin Peng and Kristy for being such awesome guides and 'babysitters') which encompasses just a lot of eating and binging in Tokyo. Seriously practically nil sight seeing. :P

My first ANA flight - I must say apart from the demure and ever so polite Japanese flight attendants, the onboard meals were kinda mediocre in quality. Not to mention, I wished there were more English movies (with English subtitles) available for their in-flight entertainment.

Kids Meal

Check out the adult breakfast portion. I probably should not have ordered the meal with rice. The food definitely was served hot but the rice was too soft and mushy. I like the little bottled sauce meant for the soba noodles.

With endless entertainment onboard, there's just no way this kid's gonna nap during the flight.      -_-

Upon arrival at Narita airport, we started off our vacay with 2 nights in Yokohama which was only about an hour+ away. Here we stayed in Rose Hotel which was right in the heart of Chinatown. So glad they gave us semi double beds in a room spacious enough for the kids to move about....when they are not glued to the TV.

Their kinda hard mattresses were very quickly compensated with delightful L'occitane toiletries in the bathroom!

During non-peak super-savings season, this room goes for as low as RM 350/night. Eeek, what a steal!

Have I mentioned I loved the location of our hotel as it was right smack in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the colorful streets of Yokohama Chinatown, the largest of 3 Chinatowns in Japan. 

As we arrived at Yokohama in the late evening, we decided to head to a random local restaurant. That's when we bumped into this "yakiniku" (grilled meat) place near our hotel.

It's always a relief when you see other locals dining in the same restaurant. Next is to order the same dishes as them. LOL.

Thank God for a menu written in Chinese and hallelujah we had YP who could read it!

Gawking at all the photos of mouth-watering beef pics, our mental arithmetic was put to the test as subconsciously, we started converting everything into MYR. The simplest of conversions being 100 YEN = MYR 4. Now you do the math.  

From here on, it's just pictures of beef, pork, beef, beef and beef.

I didn't care the different types of beef we ordered as every single piece was made in heaven!

Being extremely careful not to overcook those precious beef pieces.

We were also proud to be the owners of this A5 marbling Wagyu - 3680 Yen (RM 140)

There's a euphoric sense of freedom as the meat disintegrates inside my mouth. How I miss this feeling!

Damages - 10,497 yen (RM 400). I reckon an astounding and truly satisfying meal!

After dinner, we wandered shortly around our hotel and found this dumpling shop.

It's something like a giant Xiao Long Bao with meat and hot soup in it. So the right way to eat this was to nibble a tiny hole in the dumpling to suck out all its soup, then devour the rest of the bun. Really good too!

It was a short but fruitful first day as this was only the beginning of my eating frenzy in Tokyo!><