Tokyo - a City without Trash Bin

Can You belive that this is 5:00am in the morning?

Everybody know what is Japan or Nippon the home of the raising sun, indeed it is the home of the raising sun – The Sun that very eager to show up by himself long before it should be.

My God! ……………. Doesn’t U have any graciousness to let visitors like me have a longer sleep?

How could it already appear high on the sky on 5.30 in the morning? I just have less than 4 hour sleep last night. ………….


Well, that’s the fact – night is very short in this country. Anyway, in my opinion, Tokyo is quite similar with Singapore especially the MRT system, except they have up to 24 lines – multi operator, except the weather, and the more important thing is ………..

I Hardly Couldn’t find Trash Bin along the road ………………….

The only Trash Bins you can find is besides the soft-drink vending machines, where you can buy your free-selected soft-drink in machine, drink it at once, and put the empty bottle or can to the trash bin right besides it, otherwise you may carry your bottle every where you go.

Variouse Scene in Tokyo City

It is a City without Trash Bins, no wonder the city is much-much cleaner, since everybody not able to leave trashes unless they carry their trashes back home!!!

I was there almost the whole week partly for official duties, and the rest is more to what we called “getting to know more about Tokyo”, and I want to share a bit about the “non official” parts.

Far beyond my imagination, Tokyo is much-much “green” compared to Jakarta, you can find lot of Public Park & Trees along the road, even up to the main business district like nipponbashi or major shopping Area such as Shinjuku or Ginza Street. You may find “Ginkgo” and cherry trees along the road, nicely organize to provide shades for the pedestrian trail in the both sides of the road. It is very nice City after all.

Morning eve at several places

The major difference is, there is not too many parking area even though lot of apartments scatter all over the City. Here, parking lot is one of main issue to have private owned car. Unlike Singapore, Car is relatively cheap, you may have the latest Porsche convertible just for 4.8 million Yen, but then you may have serious headache to find your car since it is very-very expensive to pay a parking lot for it. The cost is about 100-300 Yen per 30 minutes! Or 60K-100K Yen/month, Can you imagine that?

Similar to other Major cities, Space is always problem, may be when they re-build this city after WW2, they may build lot of residential apartment but not for Car Park, since it was designed when Car has not become major requirement for common people.

Living space is also very expensive, I heard from locals that you have to pay about 75K-100K Yen / month just to rent 9m sq living space, which is only single tiny studio room, with 1m sq Shower room and tiny kitchen. It is a tough live isn’t it?

Tokyo Shinoji Temple & Tokyo Tower

I Do not have much pleasure time to explore the city, I just have short visit to Shinjuku, Harajuku, Meguro neighborhood (since we were stay at Sheraton Miyako Hotel nearby) and off course Akhiabhara Electronic City, and also 2 (Two) visitors object, Tokyo Tower and Shinoji Temple).


To be continue .........................

The Pinewood Resorts & SPA

It’s about a month that I’ve been absent in my own blog. What a pity, but lot of work to do in office keep me away from my blog.

This time I would like to write about very nice place, not to far away from Jakarta since it’s on Puncak neighborhood, but it is very deep hiding inside far away from main road, just next beside Gunung mas tea plantation. It is a perfect place to have some little escape from daily routine.

The Pinewood Hotel Main Building

This resorts is probably designed to provide maximum privacy with retreat-like environment so that you may have nothing to do and just killing time by relaxing your self between SPA and your cabin beneath the large tress, facing a nice valley just in front of your eyes.

I was staying in their Chinese Cottage that situated just bellow their SPA, and facing the valley so that we may watch a nice view such as we may sit on a tree house. It is a real tree inside of our cottage intentionally left to provide natural touch in the cabin.

Inside the Cabin - Chinese Cottage"

Very nice wooden family room in each cottage, fully equip with Dining table, set of sofa bed, even a kitchen,

There also a large bathroom with both shower and ………….. Whirlpool!!! Wow!

Morning @ Pinewood

There’s a friendly open space restaurant that facing a large family room with one vintage gramophone that may turn-on freely, an also lot of magazines and books in their main family rooms even though there are an old magz but still may give you ‘home-like’ environment.

Breakfast time .................

The main building it self is design like European style bricks house, with artificial firewood in the main living room, and have lot of colorful flowers everywhere.

The surroundings

Seems that one night stay is definitely not enough for our short escape few weeks ago.

If you come up from Jakarta from Jalan Raya Puncak, Once you reach last Gas station few hundreads meter away from KFC outlets -just after hotel Pardede, you may find "Drugs dependency Rehabilitations facility" on your left side, you have to take a small road on the opposite that has "Wisma Departemen Perhubungan", just go straight ahead until the end of the road and you may find this very nice place.

Jl. Gandamanah, Desa Tugu Selatan-Cisarua-Puncak
Telp (+62 251)256 432 - 256 776
Fax (+62251) 256 433
Website:www.pinewoodhotelspa.com
Email:sales@pinewoodhotelspa.com

Desa Bumbu

One of our favorite places to “escape” is one restaurant called “Desa bumbu”; we’ve been here so many times so that one of the receptionists recognizes my wife straight away once she appears in the front desk. As usual, before we arrive on that place my wife give them a call to reserve a gazebo to secure our “booking place”.

Departed a bit late from Jakarta, and have very heavy traffic jam after “Bumi Rancamaya Gate” up to Tapos Junction caused by “heavy road damage” made us arrive a bit late, but just nice since we came down after lunch time so that the place is not to crowded.

We got very nice gazebo, just at the edge of the yard corner, facing the small wood that has bunch of large tree and small padi field at the other end, just on top of the fish pond that may used to have fun fishing. But unfortunately, we may not get the fishing rot; everything is use-up since the morning.

Well, we may not get a change to fishing, but still lot of other activity can do, so here we are. Lay our back and do the best for relax in the gazebo while watching our kids play running around from Forrest to the Rice-padi field, trying to catch some grass hopers.

As usual, we order their specialty of “Ikan Bakar” that you will never found in other place, very unique, “pepes peda”, “tumis bunga papaya” this is a new stuff, we never found this menu before, “Ayam bakar” – standard for Nathan and several “sundanese dish” plus traditional “pisang goring” and the unique “pisang goring saus nenas” – this one is very delicious.

It is a nice place for take a short relax, except you should have to pass the ‘tapos junction’ that has heavy traffic jam, but you may have another alternative road trough “Batu Tulis” Bogor, off course you will facing another traffic jam once you get-out from Bogor Tol Gate along Pajajaran Road.

The Choice is yours. ………………………..

Meal Fiesta!

Between Jl. Binamarga Bogor to Bumi Aki Puncak

Curiosity! I think that’s the right word for me since I was inspire with pak Bondan Wisata Kuliner show about Ny. Yenny’s Place. So here we are! After spending a nice weekend in Seruni Hotel – Cisarua, we intended to drop by to this place, specially for what pak Bondan Say about their reported dish!

The Old Fashioned Style Chicken Steak

Tumis Daun Raja, the primary target, since we were very curious about the dish, and what it would like compared with “Daun Ginseng”? Finally we may have a chance to taste it. It’s very similar with “Daun Ginseng” even our kids are may recoqnise it as “Daun Ginseng” once it was appear in our dine table. It’s very nice indeed, crunchy, fresh and “mak nyusss ……..” indeed!

The second dish, “Udang Gulung Sagobang” as referred! It is more like what we called “Kekian” rolled in thin egg omelet like Rollade; “Kekian” is an old fashioned Indo-Chinese dish made mainly from egg, minced pork-lard, prawn sometimes mixed with minced chicken chilled before it went to final cook stage – boiled then fry!

Udang Gulung Sagobang & Tumis Daun Raja

The Third one, It’s Chicken Steak – or Chinese style chicken steak, the most interesting of this dish is the sauce, very special – it’s like the old days when my grandma still able to cook during her Chinese New Year eve family gathering.

In summary, yes …. This is an old fashioned Chinese Style restaurant and worth to visit, especially if you are looking nice restaurant in Bogor.

Jala-jala Seafood Front Yard

Not to far away from Ny. Yenny Place, there is “Jala Jala Seafood” restaurant. It is a large seafood place for Bogor size City. But then, I think they have “miss” decoration that may mislead people to make them came over to their place.

They decorate their place with “Sudanese” style bamboo instead of putting their “Fresh Seafood Market” and Seafood BBQ in front of their place like the others did.

We were almost decided to leave that place if we are not to late to went out for dinner, so that we afraid that we won’t get other “proper” place to eat – since we were carrying our kids along.

But actually, their dish is not bad at all, it is an old style “Chinese or more like Singaporean Seafood”. We order BBQ Stingray, Fresh Blue Prawn in butter sauce, fried soft skin shell crab mixed with some stir vegetables.

Large Blue Prawn with Butter Sauce

But I think, they way they serve Blue prawn is a bit miss, since they split the head into two pieces instead of let the head like it has to be. This is actually the art of having the “Blue Prawn”, you have to uncover their head carefully to get the whole head in single piece – then suck their juicy inner head, very tasteful ………… it’s like … .oh my!

Anyway, this is a bit fancy restaurant, so do not expect you will have cheap seafood over there!

Bumi Aki Assorted Juices


The Fascinating Pencok Kacang & Sop Kambing

Next spot, Bumi Aki – one of our favorite. I wrote about this restaurant previously, but can’t help my self to re-write this report.

This time we went there in very ‘cold-wind’ and not dare enough to stay put on their “lesehan” place outside the restaurant. So we stay put in one of the indoor table. This time, besides our regular ordinary favorite dish, I order “Nasi Goreng Kambing” as recommended by one of “JSers” member. Mean while we were order 3 cups of “Skoteng” just to make our body warm before the main dish came in.

As usual, the dish came in few minutes, so here they are, the exotic “Pencok Kacang” made from fresh “green bean” & “Basil leave” in traditional sour sauce, our Favorite “Sate Jeroan Kambing”, “Sop Kambing”, Orange Juice and Strawberry Juice.

Nothing more than like pak Bondan say “Mak Nyuussss ………….”