Hello guys! I'm back here as promised to blog about my November Japan trip in 2017 (nevermind the fact that I never actually finished blogging about my trip in 2015 but oh well doesn't matter). So for those of you who didn't know, I purchased tickets for Japan for Vincent and I at the start of last year from Jetstar as they were "free returns" deal. It was sort of a belated graduation trip I suppose and it was such a good deal it ended up saving us a significant amount of money. I hadn't gotten my annual leave approved yet (joys of full time life) but I went ahead and bought the tickets but also purchased a "flexi" package including:

- 20kg luggage both ways

-meals both ways 

-seat selection

-ability to change travel dates and passenger names

I think it ended up costing us like $461.40 per person (keeping in mind this was including the package) so we were quite happy. Anyhow, it gave me something to do for the year - planning our trip to japan to see the autumn foliage. 

Generally I think the best times to see autumn foliage in Japan are between September-December, depending on which areas you are planning to hit up. Cities in the Northern region of japan including Hokkaido tend to reach peak autumn season a bit earlier whereas down south, the best time is usually around November. 

Anyhow, I thought it might be nice to change up my blogging style a little - well to be just a bit more informational rather than blabbering on about random personal things I want to write. What do you guys think? :) With that out of the way though, lets move on to the actual trip itself.... Vincent and I departed for Japan on the 12th of November and our first stop was Tokyo! 

We were made to wear animal ears and make cute cat sounds in Japanese every time our dishes came out, much to our amused embarrassment.


He's just a little bit cute. Sometimes. Not always, just sometimes. 

We spotted the Pablo cheesecake store as we were wandering about and tried a couple of their tarts which are supposedly quite popular with tourists/locals alike. 

I'm a sucker for limited edition stuff so I went for the purple sweet potato flavour. Vincent & I ended up liking this one better than the original though hahaha. It was sooo creamy, smooth & well-balanced flavours of sweet and savoury - the latter of which came from the cheese of course. 

 To be honest there isn't as much foliage areas to see in Tokyo city itself (well compared with Kyoto) so we spent most of the time doing the more "gimmicky" stuff like eating our way through all the raved about food stores. Not that we got through everything on our list but that leaves more exploration for next time! 

We checked out a random cat cafe in harajuku called Cat cafe MoCHA since it looked quite nice interior wise - we were charged based on time but the fee included free continuous drinks (non-alcoholic of course). 

You additionally purchase cat snacks for feeding. It was kind of cool watching all the cats gather onto the mat to lick the "lollipop". 

 I am in love. 

Extra points to this place for having cushions, bean bags & a sizeable collection of manga books as well as novels. It was a combination of all my favourite things - tea, books, cats and warm cosy areas to curl up in!! 

We stumbled upon this dessert store by accident last time we were in japan and it was so delicious we decided to re-visit again at the harajuku store! Croquantchou Zakuzaku is most famous for its crunchy choux cream pastries that are filled with hokkaido-sourced custard fillings. They also sell some really delicious creamy vanilla soft serves! 

Of course a trip to Tokyo wouldn't be complete without driving a mario kart all over the city! It's becoming an increasingly popular thing to do now, following a feature by a video on facebook. We booked online by contacting Maricar on their facebook with no problems. They spoke perfect english, replied prompty and allowed us to change our scheduled drive because the weather was shoddy on the initial date we booked it.