Last August, we bought air tickets to Japan, Nagoya online from Zuji. Only to have Zuji declare their ceasing of operations in January. Thank God, our bookings already went through.

We left our son with the mother-in-law and took our flight in the wee hours at 1:20 am on SQ, reaching around 8+am. We bought our SIM cards first…

We got the unlimited data plan for 7 days, then proceeded to buy some hot drinks from the convenience store. Spot the ninjas!

We bought the airport limousine bus tickets (1200 yen ea) and realized we just missed the bus and had to wait another 30+ minutes for the next one, lol. It was super cold when we arrived but there’s a waiting room with heater next to the bus ticketing counter.

We reached the bus stop near Hilton hotel after an hour or so.

After walking 2-3 streets, we arrived at Richmond hotel!

There’s a cute little cafe at the lobby area.

We were too early for the check-in time (2pm) but the staff were able to let us in 2 hours later at 1230pm, so we deposited our luggages at the hotel lobby and walked to the nearest mall for a meal.

Terrasse Nabayashi is a 3-storeys mall literally less than 5 mins walk away behind Richmond hotel.

There’s some restaurants on the first floor and a small food court on the second.

I had some beef udon for 640 yen~

There’s also a supermarket on the same floor~ The strawberries looked so enticing! We kinda regretted not buying it earlier cos 2 days after when we went back, the 430 yen ones were already sold out~ 😦

There’s a huge lifestyle/household living store on the third floor.

A cafe too! The mall is fairly quiet with the sparse number of customers.

Just opposite the road, the cherry blossoms were starting to bloom…

It was about 15 degrees out, but it’s been a while since K & I had the time all to ourselves thus we relaxed and basked in the freedom.

Flowers watching…

Back to our hotel! This was our room~

And the bathroom…

It’s a very decent hotel with comfortable bed so we were really satisfied with it! As it’s an early flight, we nua-ed for quite a bit before heading to Oasis 21 for an early dinner.

That’s the Nagoya TV Tower in the background!

It’s Jan 12th thus the Christmas decorations were still around~

The shops at the basement…

Just browsing…

Kawaii photo-taking booths…

K went into the Jump shop & I beelined for the groceries shop (the one with the yellow signboard). I bought a konbu tea!

We found our dinner place! It’s Nigiri no Tokube~

As it’s a very popular sushi place, there’s a pretty long queue and we took a number and sat down at the waiting corner. Though they were calling out the numbers in Japanese and we didn’t understand a thing, lol~ We just figured things will work out anyway.

And it did! After waiting for about half an hour, the staff called out a number and K figured it’s us cos he still remembered a few numbers in Japanese, lol~

One of my favourite fish- Flounder!

I highly recommend this place cos the fish are very fresh, and there’s soooooo many varieties I didn’t even know what half of them were. The meal cost us 3000 yen and we were satisfyingly filled.

We continued walking around the area and I discovered some really interesting food!

I’ve never seen these before and was really curious how they taste like. But these probably have to be bought and consumed on the same day and we already had dinner.

Night fell and there’s a Japanese girl group performing at the main stage.

Dressed in schoolgirl attires, the performers were singing high-pitch and uniformly dancing to some deliriously fast paced electro-dance music, the melody and choreography a reminiscent of the 90s J-pop I thought had died decades ago.

I had no idea who they were but they seemed to have some hardcore uncle fans shouting support chants and dancing along with them. I was highly amused but also gained some kind of respect for them after watching for a while- They were singing live and each of their movements were executed perfectly. The music was still headache-inducing, the choreography terribly dated, and the girls were no divas. But still, it’s strangely addictive.

The night was still young, only 6 pm when we took our last picture and headed back to the hotel. But we were tired and there’s more to look forward to the next morning!