Travel Diary #2: Central Japan Day 5 (1/2)

2nd last day in Central Japan and we were at Osaka.

For the 5th day, we were staying in Osaka for the whole day. Half of it would be free and easy trip at either Universal Studios Japan (USJ) or Spa World. The choice of destination between those 2 had already been decided a month before the trip. There's no way we could change the destination as the fee had been paid to the travel agency. Hence, we decided to go to Spa World.

Before we headed to 2 different destinations, we had our breakfast at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel.

The view outside the hotel room.

Steamed rice, steamed vegetables, hash potatoes, mackerel, salad, miso soup and apple juice.

Omelette. Pick your favorite ingredients and pass it to the chef. A card will be given to you and once it is ready, pass the card back and you can eat your own omelette.

I have chosen ham, cheese and sauteed onions.

After breakfast, we packed our luggage inside the room and prepared to leave. As we entered the bus, there was something different as compared to the previous sightseeing bus we have boarded for the last 4 days.

A screen with a game controller inside the bus?!

I forgot to write about what happened to our sightseeing bus aka 6688. Last night when we arrived in Osaka, 6688 had to be sent for servicing (?). Therefore, another bus would be taking us around Osaka.

The bus first stopped at USJ for a while. In our tour group, 3 families went for USJ. The others would be going to Spa World. We went down the bus for a short while to go to the washroom and also take pictures of USJ.

Look at the crowd outside the entrance.

It was a Thursday morning and there were a lot of visitors queuing up to enter the theme park. Fortunately, we prevented another Disneysea's incident where we could have a hard time finding something to eat and ride there.

We boarded the bus and headed to Spa World.

Our new sightseeing bus aka 1865.

The entrance to Spa World.

Inside Spa World, the 2nd level will be paying the entrance fee and it is done through a machine.

Different passes are available from the machine.

As we entered, we were given a wristband. The wristband serves as a wallet, meaning that all purchases made inside Spa World would be using the wristband instead of cash. Before leaving Spa World, return the wristband inside the machine and pay whatever you have ordered or rented.

Wristband

Return the wristband here before leaving and pay for the food that you've ordered or clothes rental.

Before going to enjoy the spa, we must be barefooted. All shoes would be placed inside the locker and it costs 100 yen. Thought it would be a waste of money? Wrong! 100 yen would be returned to you as you open the locker regardless how many times you use. Apart from shoes locker, another locker where you place your clothes and other belongings at the 4th and 6th floors does the same thing. 4th and 6th floors are theme spas, namely European and Asian spas respectively.

Apart from theme spas, there's also amusement pool with slides and panoramic bath at the 8th floor. Men, women, boys and girls can enter the 8th floor but not the theme spas. Although the theme spas are separated into 2 zones, they are separated into men and boys, and women and girls. Depends on the management, the men and boys would be using the European spa while the women and girls would be using the Asian spa for a month before swopping those 2. For our case, my father, younger brother and I went to the 4th floor while my mother went to the 6th floor as we visited in June.

After changing our clothes to swimming costumes at respective floors, we went up to the 8th floor. Take the lift from the 4th floor or 6th floor will lead you to the 8th floor.

The amusement pool looks all right to me, nothing to wow about. However, the structure of the slides look rusty and has not been properly maintained for a long time. Furthermore, you need to pay to enjoy the slides. Might as well go to the nearby swimming pool and enjoy the slide for free.

3rd floor is where you can enjoy stone spas from different countries. In order to visit the 3rd floor, you have to go to the 2nd floor to rent the clothes. Rental costs 600 yen (or 800 yen) plus a refundable deposit of 3,000 yen.

After changing the clothes, we headed to the World Stone Spa to let our sweat run down. There are different rooms of different countries to choose from such as Korea, Russia, Turkey and also Egypt. We first entered the Korea room and it was above 50 degrees inside. It was a quiet room and all you could do was to lie down on the stones and sleep. It was a great experience as there were music playing while you sleep but it didn't last long as the room was closed for maintenance at 1.00pm JT (Japan Time).

Another room that I would recommend is to visit the Egypt room. Of all the rooms inside World Stone Spa, Egypt room has the highest temperature of above 60 degrees. Unlike other rooms, talking is allowed inside Egypt room and there's also television for you to watch shows. As I entered the room, the sweat ran down quickly after a few minutes.

We headed back to the 4th floor to have the onsen and went to the 3rd floor to have a light snack.

The Spa World experience ended after returning the wristband and paying the fees. We boarded the bus and headed back to USJ to pick up the rest of the members.

Part 2 of Central Japan Day 5 is next.

Travel Diary #2: Central Japan Day 4 (3/3)

From Nishiki Market in Kyoto, we headed towards Osaka in the evening. It took around an hour to arrive.

When we arrived in Osaka, we went to have dinner at a restaurant named Maido. The dinner for the evening was Pork Nabe (Not a coarse language here) and other dishes like pork belly, sashimi and tempura.

Small plate of sashimi

Pork Nabe with a slice of butter on top. Takes time to cook.

Pork belly

After 10 minutes of wait, the Pork Nabe is ready to be eaten.

Assorted tempura

The pork belly in a small bowl was tender and tasty. The pork slices inside the Nabe were also tasty. However, it would be nice if the pork slices are accompanied with rice because the thick gravy was too salty.

After a sumptuous dinner, we headed to the hotel we were staying for the night - Sheraton Miyako Hotel. Honestly speaking, I've never stayed at Sheraton or Hilton or whatever "-ton" before so I hoped it was a nice stay there.

The carpet says it all. I'm staying at Sheraton!

The twin room that my younger brother and I were staying for a night.

We went outside the hotel to walk around and saw a pachinko shop which is located opposite the hotel. We entered the shop but couldn't stay there long due to the cigarette smell.

Pachinko shop located opposite the hotel.

Inside the hotel room, we had supper. My mother bought a matcha cake from the market place near Fushimi Inari Shrine that afternoon and we finished eating it.

Matcha cake.

Overall, the cake was nice but the matcha seemed to be too sweet. The price? Not very cheap though, around 1,000 yen.

With that, we ended the night in Osaka.

To be continued for Day 5: Short stop at USJ and spa experience at Spa World.

Minions Movie Review

Here's the 2nd movie review after Stand by Me Doraemon.

Date: 23 June 2015
Showtime: 11.30am
Venue: Golden Village @ Jurong Point

Minions movie poster (Source: www.gv.com.sg)

I went to watch Minions at Jurong Point in the late morning.

It was a 91-minute spinoff showing the minions serving the most despicable masters but accidentally failed because of the clumsy acts that they have done to them such as the T. Rex, caveman, Egyptian pharaoh and Dracula.

Movie synopsis:

After destroying all the masters around the world, the minions isolated themselves and started a new life in Antarctica. They became depressed by the lack of the master hence a minion named Kevin came up with a plan to search for a new master. Stuart joined in by accident while Bob begged Kevin to join in as Kevin thought that he was too young. 3 minions arrived at New York 42 years B.G. (Before Gru) after a long journey. They got to know about Villain-Con, a villain convention where supervillains around the world gathered to search for a henchmen, was to be held in Orlando, Florida. Hence, they went to hitch a ride and got picked up by a family who were criminals also heading to Villain-Con.

At Villain-Con, the minions were impressed by some of the villains like a sumo wrestler and Frankie Fish Lips, an aquatic supervillain. In the end, they attempted to become the henchmen for Scarlet Overkill, the world's 1st female supervillain, and made it after Bob swapped Scarlet's ruby with his teddy bear. The minions went to London where Scarlet resided. The mission for the minions to accomplish was to steal the St. Edward's Crown for Scarlet but things didn't turn out well when the minions tried to steal the crown.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minions_%28film%29)

Movie review:

I first started watching Despicable Me 2 in 2013 and ended up loving the minions because they speak gibberish words (including a bit of English) that many people would never understand what they are talking about, their funny actions and reactions. As it is a spinoff, I definitely know how the story would end. The movie itself clearly shown it or else Minions would be talking about a different story.

Overall, the movie was great but I couldn't give full marks because of the trailers. The trailers first came out on July 10, 2014, a year before the U.S premiere. The trailer came out great and I laughed. However, another trailer came out showing more spoilers about what the minions had done in finding a new master and the final one showing how the minions destroyed their previous masters and more scenes about the minions serving Scarlet. As a result, when the full movie was shown, the jokes have almost been used up.

During the movie, I noticed that a scene was not shown. My guess for not showing that scene is because it is a disturbing scene particularly there are children watching this movie. Not very sure will that scene be shown in the U.S.
 

A scene shown in the final trailer of the Minions which was not shown in the Cinema. It was funny. (Source: Illumination's YouTube Channel)

What happened next turned out to be a cut. Sad! (Source: Illumination's YouTube Channel)

It was not a 5-star movie but there were some scenes that I liked and laughed like Bob shouting "King Bob!" to the crowd after becoming the king of the United Kingdom and Bob using his teddy bear to perform and making a not-so-scary mask to scare the interviewer as his evil talents.

Before the start of the movie, look out for the minions singing the Universal Pictures opening theme song.

Score: 9 (If they never put in a lot of spoilers in the trailers, maybe would have gotten a 10.)