Japan 8 (281210)

Entrance of Takeshita-dori, Harajuku.

Last night, Sam came down with food poisoning after eating some raw yakitori at dinner. So today, he and mum stayed at the hotel. On the other hand, my uncle and his family, and my grandma and I caught the train to Harajuku.

My uncle and his family went to Kiddyland, while I wanted to stay and explore Takeshita-dori and Omotesando. My poor grandmother came with me because she was worried for my safety (on the other hand, I was worried for her safety lol).

So, walking through Takeshita-dori I looked at all the stalls and stuff. There were lots of jewelry stalls selling visual kei-inspired stuff. And Dir en grey t-shirts :D I bought a punk-lolita hoodie, complete with rabbit ears.

I had a look in the Bodyline shop too! But I wasn't allowed to take photos... The interior was really pretty though! Red velvet drapes everywhere...and chandeliers! And the shop assistants were so very polite and well-dressed. Lots of tourists though.

When we reached the end of the street, I was a little disappointed that I hadn't come away with much. However, I remembered that Laforet was on Omotesando, so I led my poor, slow grandmother through the herds of lolitas and cosplayers down the road to it.

It was like a dream to enter the shopping mall I'd wanted to go to since I was a little wee jrock fangirl. Of course, I headed straight for the basement levels (after all, I'd been looking at floor guides online for years) and went for a browse around h.Naoto, Black Peace Now, Alice and the Pirates, Angelic Pretty, Metamorphose and Putumayo.

Terribly blurry photos of the h.Naoto store (above) and BPN (below)

I guess it goes without saying that I couldn't actually afford any of the clothes. However I managed to purchase the necklace from Putumayo that I've been wanting all year.

We also went to Like an Edison, where I bought D's Akaki Hitsuji single. Actually, I've never seen so many visual kei CDs in one place before...so it took me a good forty minutes or so to decide on what to buy.

While I was there I also picked up a copy of Shoxx magazine (contains a poster of topless Saga (alicenine) splashing around in a pool of 'blood' *A*).

After my fantasy shopping spree, we met up with my uncle & co., and stopped by a SoftBank store on the way to the train station. They were advertising a new product of theirs, Disney phones. One of their TV ads starred a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Song Joong Ki.

We returned to Shinjuku, and browsed Bic Camera for a while. I bought Sam a couple of Fate Stay Night Nendoroid Petites (Claire and I took ages to decide on which boxes to purchase - we even shook the box to try to determine which figure was inside).

We had dinner at a restaurant called Tengu. There, we had various things - pizza, yakitori, yellowtail sashimi, and a first for me - horse meat sashimi.

Somewhat chewy, but otherwise rather nice. :3

All in all a good day, minus all the worrying about Sam. Mum and I stayed in his room that night, and watched Sungkyunkwan Scandal until 2am. Lol...

Goodies from Nakano and Ikebukuro

So, a run-down of stuff I got from this day out...

Converses. Claire and I bought matching ones. :3

Togainu no Chi Rin and Shiki coasters. Hahah. Probably the most useful items I got, really. I also got a Shiki figure that I didn't photograph.

D's Ouka Saki Some ni Keri single. 8D

Various Kuroshitsuji goodies: two clearfile folders, one came with a poster; Yuya Matsushita's Hallucination single from the musical; a set of badges. I also photographed Max's Ciel figure.

Various Hakuouki things: a tin of candy; a phone strap; phone stickers; some sort of food...red bean soup? I have no idea, but mum wanted it so I bought it...

My new iPhone 4 (got for Christmas) after I Hakuoukified it:

Japan 7 (271210)

Today, we spent the afternoon in Nakano, just a couple of stops from Shinjuku. My aunt was all excited, telling my brother and I that we'd find Nakano very fun. She took us through Nakano Broadway, which is opposite the train station, and sure enough, Sam and I weren't disappointed.

Nakano broadway is a shopping complex, whose second and third floors are dedicated to manga and anime merchandise.

Entrance of Nakano Broadway.

Figures and models that I didn't buy TnT

I bought a whole swag of goodies that I'll detail in another post.

Ciel and Alois' rings!!!! And Ciel Nendo box in the background.

This time, Sam and I took Max and we went exploring the second and third floors. Usually Max hates shopping, but he made an exception. His eyes would light up whenever we stopped at a Gundam model kit section. He also got interested in Kuroshitsuji (lololololol) and bought himself a Ciel one-coin figure... Sam and I also educated him about Nendoroids (Max calls them 'Neno-droids haha).

Togainu no Chi vinyl!

Gaaaaaaames! (Starry Sky!)

After an entire afternoon of shopping, we went to Ikebukuro for yet more shopping. This time, I was determined to find the Animate flagship store there.

Finding the damn store was a real mission. It wasn't in any obvious place - tucked away all unassuming and stuff. I don't even have pictures of it (no pictures allowed :/). However, we managed to spend a good one and a half hours there scouring the 7 floors of anime stuff. Finished up around 8 or 9pm (I love Asian shopping hours!).

The ground floor (or first floor if you're Asian) contained magazines (like Shonen Jump, GFantasy) and food.

Second, third and fourth floors were dedicated to manga and art supplies - there was a dedicated section for BL and other girly manga (like Hakuouki...there was an almost life-size cardboard cut-out of Hijikata Toshizo *A*).

Fifth and sixth floors contained merchandise - the second I got to the top of the stairs, I was greeted by the otome anime/BL merchandise section. More than half of it was Hakuouki. My mother took a liking to Saitou, so she bought heaps of Hakuouki stuff... There was also Starry Sky, Togainu no Chi (and other Nitroplus stuff) and of course, Kuroshitsuji.

Seventh floor was all CDs and DVDs. But since I'd seen my share of them at Nakano Broadway, I didn't look there much. To be honest, I was stuck on the merchandise floor most of the time.

Japan 6 (261210)

So, when we got to Tokyo, night was falling. We caught the airport limousine bus to the Hilton Tokyo situated in East Shinjuku.

With my aunty and uncle's frequent visits, they earned free admission into the executive lounge. :3

Japan 5 (201210 - 261210)

The view from our apartment balcony.

We caught a bus to Niseko around 9am.

There wasn't much to say about this week, seeing as I had no interest in skiing or snow in general. What I enjoyed most was probably the apartment we stayed in - a 4 bedroom penthouse suite several times the size of my house in Wellington.

One of the four bathrooms D:

Mine and Claire's room.

The 4th bedroom was a mirror image of this one.

(Part of) the master bedroom.

While the rest of the family went skiing or snowboarding, mum and I explored the souvenir shops and picked up a few local treats.

I didn't buy those cookies just because they're called Ciel...

Danpa :D

I also downloaded the Sungkyunkwan Scandal drama using the free wifi :D Claire watched it with us when she could, and thus began her quest to marry me off to Song Joong Ki. Alas, I don't think he goes better with anyone but Yoo Ah In...

During our time there, we seldom cooked our own food despite the presence of a kitchen. Most nights we ate at restaurants around the ski village, or pigged out on snacks from the combini.

To be honest, I didn't really like the atmosphere there - it was much too touristy. Nobody there was actually Japanese (everyone was Singaporean D:) and everything was twice the usual price because the foreigners didn't know any better.

I was super excited when we finally left for Tokyo.

Japan 4 (191210)

We finally went on our long-awaited day trip to Otaru. We got up and got ready, and left the hotel around 11am to catch the train.

Otaru is a small town an hour away from Sapporo. It's home to a shopping street with music box (orgel) makers, bakeries and glass-blowers.

I got a little music box that plays the chorus of Kiseki by Greeeen, and I also got some little trinkets to decorate the box with. :D Here are some photos taken from the music box museum (unfortunately mine is not as pretty as these:

Spot the odd one out :D

Then we went into various bakeries and confectionery shops to try all the free samples :D

Once that was over, we split into two groups - the shopping group and the playing-with-snow/eating group. The former consisted of my mother, Sam, my aunty and myself (and then my grandmother after she got ditched by the other group while using the toilet lol).

We had a look in various shops, selling chopsticks and crafts made from traditional brocade (still don't remember what it's called fail). There was a pair of chopsticks going for 8400 yen (roughly NZD$135).

Since 2011 is the year of the rabbit, everything was rabbit-y

Sam and I looking at all the little glass ornaments 8D

Glass-blower at work

There were also a lot of little stalls selling snacks, like gyoza, rice crackers and 'bakudan-yaki'; a cross between tako-yaki and okonomi-yaki. So basically a gigantic tako-yaki containing okonomi-yaki ingredients.

Gyozaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Rice cracker stall

Crabs that were bigger than my face D:

Bakudan-yaki!

We spent pretty much the whole day there, even going without dinner (though we did have snacks from a combini) and got home after the sun had gone down. All in all a rather fun day.