The nameless passerby

A pretty spontaneous decision to travel to the Kansai area of Japan obviously meant another visit to Universal Studios. As with my last visit, I visited around the middle of the week (Thursday this time), to avoid the crowds. Admission fees were slightly higher than before due to the recent tax increase, but still manageable given it wasn't the scheduled "peak" period. I paid ¥7,600 for the basic studio pass. The express passes were much more expensive than my last visit - I forked out ¥6,300 for the 3-ride express pass, which included Space Fantasy, The Flying Dinosaur and one of either Jaws, Backdraft or Jurassic Park. (In comparison, I paid ¥6,800 for the 4-ride express pass in May 2018). I got to the park a bit earlier than last year, and it did seem to make a bit of a difference because I only waited about 15 minutes for my first ride versus almost 30 minutes last year. For the rest of the day, I managed to complete a good number of rides and even shows that I s...

My first visit to Universal Studios Japan was way back in March 2007. It was a short visit, because my family and I were on a packaged tour, meaning that we did not spend the entire day at the park given the other parts of the itinerary. Coupled with the notoriously long lines at all the rides, and the fact that it was probably some kind of school holiday then, I only managed to cover a measly 4 rides that day. USJ in 2007 was very different from the park as it is 11 years later, without most of the attractions that are now drawing most of the crowds. The movie Despicable Me did not even exist yet, and the Wizarding World was probably in the infant stages of planning. With so much more to see and do now, I knew that I had to come back some day. Before going into detailed comments about all the rides and attractions, here are some general tips: Regular Admission Tickets As all other blogs and articles would suggest, it is definitely a good idea to purchase your entrance tickets i...

Another major highlight from my Japan trip this May was our visit to Nagashima Spa Land in Nagoya. My friends and I were all big fans of theme parks and roller coasters, and I was particularly excited about this because I had read about some of the rides here. While it isn't as popular as Fuji-Q Highland, which boasts some of the craziest rides outside the US, this park didn't disappoint either. In fact, while we did not include Fuji Q in our original itinerary, we eventually decided to check it out since we had rented a car for our travels around the Fuji/Hakone area. To our utter dismay, the day we chose to visit happened to be smack in the middle of the Golden Week holidays, and the crowds were just too insane to ignore. What's helpful for Fuji Q is the presence of waiting time boards outside the park, giving potential visitors a rough sense of the expected waits for the popular roller coasters. On the day we were there, the queue times for all the major roller coast...

My virgin experience having hitsumabushi was undeniably satisfying (perhaps even life-changing). It was by far one of the best meals that I had during my recent trip to Japan in May this year. Hitsumabushi was a dish introduced to me by my friend who was accompanying me on the trip. I had never heard of this dish before, and have never been a big eater of unagi. However, I knew I could trust my friend's recommendation wholeheartedly because he has exquisite taste and he is also an avid foodie like me. Nagoya was the last city that we were visiting on our trip and my friend raved about how this was a must-try dish in the city. The restaurant that we eventually decided on, Atsuta Houraiken, has several branches, but we went to the one located in the Matsuzakaya department store in the Sakae area. Despite arriving fairly early for dinner (shortly after 5pm), there was already a snaking line outside the restaurant. Fortunately the line moved fairly quickly and there were plenty ...

I visited the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur from 17 to 19 March with a bunch of friends, and got to sample a handful of really good local food places over the course of the short 3 days, which I will share in chronological order below. Overall, there were a few misses but most of the restaurants we visited were great, partly thanks to the recommendations of one of my friends who was a local. Our first day was mostly spent indoors. By the time we checked in at our hotel, it was already close to lunch time, so we headed to Wild Honey at the Pavilion shopping complex for lunch. The food wasn't that cheap - my share came up to about RM60+, i.e. it's only a tad cheaper than Singapore. I've never tried Wild Honey in Singapore but my experience at the KL branch wouldn't warrant a repeat visit - typical hipster cafe food just isn't my thing. We then headed to Sunway Pyramid for ice-skating, and had dinner at Fong Lye Taiwan Restaurant inside the mall. Aside fr...

I took a trip to Hong Kong Disneyland on 9 Jan 2017. The park was not too crowded, probably because it was a Monday. I managed to get tickets online for a discounted price of HK$539 (U.P. HK$589), and it even came with a meal voucher, which I will talk about later. The opening hours on the day (10.30am - 7pm) were slightly shorter than usual, but given that Hong Kong Disneyland is not that big anyway, it was more than sufficient to cover all (major) attractions in the park. I arrived at the ticketing gates slightly earlier. Upon entry, Main Street USA was already open, but I ended up waiting alongside many other eager park-goers for them to open the other "lands" at 10.30am sharp. Specifically, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland and Adventureland were set to open but the other slightly newer ones like Grizzly Gulch had a staggered opening time of 11am. Adventureland Iron Man Experience , a 3D motion simulator ride, had its official opening date set for 11 January, just two days...

I was initially hesitant to visit DisneySea (or Disneyland for that matter) while in Tokyo because I knew that the rides there weren't going to be very thrilling and the admission fee was quite expensive (going for   ‎¥7400). Due to the packed itinerary of previous days, Saturday was the only free day for us to visit, and after reading some reviews online, I was very wary of the long waiting times reported for many popular rides on weekends. I am certainly not one to wait 2 hours for every ride. However, I had already covered most of the places of interest that I wanted to visit in the city, so I decided to tag along with my friends. We set off extremely early in the morning, because we had not booked our tickets in advance. Things were already looking bleak when we exited the train station to head for the monorail. Crowds on a Saturday were absolutely insane. Thousands of people were already queuing up at the park gates before the 8am opening time. Looks like this website (link...

Melbourne, the food capital of Australia, has a plethora of amazing dining options in the heart of the CBD. Here are just a few of my most memorable dining experiences during my 2016 solo trip to the city. Cumulus Inc. is a casual eatery that's open throughout the day, serving breakfast all the way to dinner. There is also a wine bar upstairs called Cumulus Up for wine-lovers that opens in the evenings. I decided to have dinner here on the last weekend of August. One of the plus points about dining here was the option to have half serves in order to try more dishes, and was especially suitable for solo diners like myself. Even so, I was still really full and satisfied after the meal. Most of the dishes I selected were based on what the waiters recommended and I wasn't disappointed at all, with consistently high quality of food. Speaking of which, they really knew the menu well and were attentive to diners' needs, so points again for good service. Since I was din...

In this post, I'll share my experiences at two amazing restaurants in Melbourne - Pastuso and Tipo 00 . Pastuso serves Peruvian food while Tipo 00 is an Italian diner. My first time trying Peruvian food was an amazing experience. While this restaurant didn't come up in my initial research for good restaurants, I happened to notice it while checking Google Maps for directions to some other nearby restaurants, since this is actually located next to several popular upscale joints, just off Flinders Lane at the Eastern corner of Melbourne's CBD. I really enjoyed the food here; my server gave really good recommendations and all of them turned out great. Perhaps I should have asked for advice regarding the dessert too, because the one dish that I chose for myself without recommendations turned out to be quite disappointing. While they offer Chef Menus here at $59, it isn't suitable for solo diners, so I went for 2 mains, a side dish and a dessert. One of the mains I ...