Sunday, November 30, 2008

Our great photo at Tokyo Tower

Sugoi desu ne?
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Sunday, 30th November

Chrissy: Today we finally got to go to Harajuku and Shibuya! We took the train to Omote-Sando and walked down Omotesando street. We went into the Spiral builidng which is full of pretty yet expensive shops. It was beautifully decorated with lights and chandeliers and red carpet! Unfortunately, no photos were allowed.
Next we went to Kiddyland on Omotesando. It is 5 or 6 floors of toys! I mainly wanted to look at the Licca-Chan and Blythe dolls, but there was enough to keep me occupied for about an hour. I really like Blythe dolls.

Charles: They had some nice remote controlled helicopters and cute little robots! Perhaps I'll buy one later in our trip. One whole floor was Snoopy and on the other floors the space was neatly divided into areas corresponding to each franchise. Totoro, Disney, Hello Kitty and many others we didn't know.


Chrissy: We kept on walking and found Takeshi-dori, which is parallel to Omotesando. It's pedestrian only, and was jam-packed full of hip kids (some dragging their long-suffering parents) and fashion shops. The clothes in these shops were gorgeous! I saw a shop that had a really pretty little dress on the mannequin, and Iasked if they had any more. The lady took the dress off the mannequin and PUT ME IN IT. It was way too big, so she adjusted straps and things and then another assistant came and attacked it from the back with a big stretchy clasp to pull it in. They assured me that I looked "kawaii", but then I found out that it was 19,000 yen. Chucky and I skillfully extracted ourselves.

I looked at some Gothic and Lolita shops that were on a little guide I found on the internet. They were mostly punkish, which I found pretty surprising. It's probably more fashionable to be punk-gothic-lolita right now that just Lolita.

I found a shop called Body Line that sold really cheap Lolita clothes. I could get a whole outfit (skirt, shirt and bolero) for 10,000 yen. That's about 4 or 5 times cheaper than the famous shops like Baby, The Stars Shine Bright and Angelic Pretty! I thought it was a really good deal! I wasn't allowed to try on the clothes at the shop, so I was a bit worried that it wouldn't fit well. There were so many beautiful outfits I could have bought, but in the end I got an outfit the same as one on a mannequin: see below! I didn't get a petticoat because I thought the prices were exorbitant, and I think I can make one easily at home. So my skirt is not as full as it should be. I also need to figure out some shoes and socks!

We went to the Cosplay Bridge and saw a couple of kids posing for the cameras. It wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it would be! Then we walked to the Meiji shrine in Harajuku park. It was a really beautiful park, thick with huge trees. At the shrine, we were lucky enough to see a wedding procession! At first I didn't know what was going on, so I just took photos like all the other foreigners around. The bride was so beautiful!


It was so crazy to go from Takeshi-dori, with its super-modern cosplay boys and girls, to the Meiji shrine, which is peaceful and beautiful despite being full of people. Those two places are over the road from each other. Those cosplay kids may have a traditional wedding like the one I saw at the shrine!

We tried to find Metamorphose, which is a Gothic and Lolita shop I really wanted to see. It totally wasn't there! I used the address that was on their website from about 3 weeks ago. Bizarre.

We went to the Laforet building, which is a shopping plaza with about 6 floors of fashions. We went all the way up to the top floor and worked our way down, to find that the Lolita fashions were in the BASEMENT. Gosh we were tired by the time we got there. They had an Angelic Pretty store there, which sold some really cute clothes. I'm not into dresses with cakes and stuff on them, I like flowers and things more. The price for a dress was 26000 yen, and shirts were around 18000, as far as I can remember. There was also a small Metamorphose shop there! As expected, their clothes were amazingly beautiful and amazingly too expensive for me.

We went to Tokyo Tower next. It was quite a long trip on the train, as we had to stop over somewhere. We were SO tired and it was a long walk to the tower. It was worth it! Tokyo Tower is beautiful at night, it shines bright orange. Out the front there was a Christmas illumination complete with a miniature Tokyo Tower.


At the hotel I finally got to try on my clothes. Hooray!

Charles: Note dainty teacup and Winter edition of the Gothic Lolita Bible.
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Saturday, November 29, 2008

Saturday, 29th November

Chrissy: Today we went to Yokohama. It took us a while to get there on the train. We looked around in Marui for ages. I thought there was only one kind of cool, or two at most. It turns out that there's about 8 floors of cool at Marui in Yokohama. It's the most amazing department store I've ever seen! Everything was really expensive, so I didn't buy anything. But I really wanted to! Each floor had different stuff, and was made of lots of tiny shops. Some shops were SO PRETTY and had clothes that I could wear exclusively. Then the cheapest thing in the shop is 9800 yen.

We met Emi's friend Ayano and went to have lunch at a curry restaurant. I had teriyaki chicken and curry. It was great! Then we walked to the Red Brick shop building. It was really nice there, but extremely busy. I bought some boots there, made of fake suade and fake leather. They were cheaper than the real suede and leather ones in Marui. They look cool, but are a little uncomfortable. At least now I can stop obsessing over everyone's amazing shoes here.

Chucky and I were tired so we went outside to look at the bay. There was a circle of bubble machines in the open, with children and adult running around having fun, so we took photos of us looking grumpy there.

We went to the shopping centre near the big ferris wheel for a while. Chucky and I had fun playing with one of those photo booths that are made for 15-year-old girls. We took the photos and came out, but couldn't find any photos! We looked all around but couldn't find them. We had to ask a guy where the photos were by saying "Doko de shashin?", or "WHERE IS PHOTO?". He showed us that there's another little booth for you to touch up the photos with effects and draw on them with a stylus. So we did. Then they printed.

We went on the ferris wheel when it got dark, because Emi is a bit afraid of heights and thought it might be less scary at night. It was certainly pretty at night. We could see lights for miles around. Many photos were taken.

We took the train back home at around 7pm. We were totally wrecked, so we just got some takeaway from the bento shop around the corner and watched T.V.




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Friday, 28th November

Charles: Today we decided to visit Akihabara and Asakusa. We took the Ginza line to Ueno and changed to the Hibaya line which took us to Akihabara then we had to walk to the electronics district which is called Electric Town. On the way we noticed a Muji shop in a mall so we stopped to have a look. There wasn't anybody else in the shop so we had a relaxed time looking at everything. I was particularly taken with their clocks, bags and jackets, Chrissy liked the wooden toys and gloves and Emi liked some snacks so much that she bought them.

Then we walked into Electric Town and browsed through some shops selling appliances and anime merchandise. There were many cool things like the Tokyo train sign watch and the USB humping dog. I spotted an amazing market of electronics parts and devices and spent several minutes wandering around before being retrieved by the girls. Then we went into a big discount and duty free shop called Don Quixote and had a great time looking at food, toys, costumes, clothes, clocks and many other strange things.

Chrissy: I got a phone dangly which has Hello Kitty in Lolita costume on it. It is the best.

Charles: Our next destination was Asakusa to see the famous Senso-ji temple. We got a bit lost in the station but a nice salaryman helped us find the right way. When we arrived as Asakusa our first priority was to find a nice place to eat. We ducked into a small alley and Emi pointed to a nondescript door and said that it was a restaurant. On closer inspection there was a menu outside and it was a Monja-yaki and Okonomi-yaki restaurant. In this kind of restaurant, every table has a hotplate and you cook the food yourself. Okonomi-yaki is a kind of thick pancake with cabbage and strips of meat which is finished with layers of sauce and seasoning. Monja-yaki starts out with a similar kind of batter but it doesn't form a pancake, instead you seperate a bit on the hotplate and let it cook for a second by itself and then scoop it onto your plate and into your mouth. It was delicious and a great experience.

When we left the restaurant we went for a walk up the tourist street towards the temple where we went in nice fabric shop, ate some dango and saw the world famous Doll & Chocolate Shop. The Senso-ji was a very impressive building and it was a mysterious experience to see everybody performing small ceromonies with special incense, special sticks, special water and many other special objects.

Chrissy: I felt a bit weird about gawking at and taking photos of someone else's religious place. At the place where people were burning incense, Emi said that her grandmother told her to put the smoke on your head, because it will make you smarter. So I got Chucky to do it.

Charles: Our final destination was the Japan Percussion Centre. We got to walk a few blocks through the temple gardens and past some other interesting parts of Asakusa to get to the shop. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as good as we had hoped. The showrooms were small so they had good ranges of snare drums, triangles, tambourines and woodblocks but not much else.

Chrissy: I liked a Grover triangle that looked like the metal had been twisted. It sounded amazing.

Charles: Prices were not great either and the exchange rate meant that it was much more expensive than equivalent shops in Australia. So we left and got on the metro to return to the hotel in Akasaka. For dinner we had takeaway bento from Hokka Hokka Tei. This is another place we wouldn't know about without Emi. Emi had a combination, I had Katsu-bento and Chrissy had O-Yako-don. Now we're relaxing and watching TV, Chrissy and Emi are enjoying a countdown-esque show with j-pop artists.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Senso-Ji, Asakusa

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Thursday, 27th November

Chrissy: Today was awesome.

We went to the Ghibli museum today! It was quite a long trip. First we had to take the train to Shinjuku, then transfer to another line to get to Mitaka. It was really cold and wet! I was not wearing enough clothes. We walked for about 20 minutes to get to the Museum. It was a beautiful place with lots of trees and lovely houses. Our entry ticket to the museum was a still from a Miyazaki movie. I got Kiki on her broomstick! The museum was really busy but enjoyable. I thought it was lovely because there were all sorts of people there. There were two German punks and lots of little Japanese kids and some other foreigners and older Japanese. We watched a great short film about an adventure that happened to Mei after the Totoro film. All the museum exhibitions were great, except for one called Mini Louvre, which was full of copies of Renaissance painings. They were mostly nudes and were a bit weird. The gift shop was RIDICULOUSLY crowded. I could hardly move around at all.

We had lunch at a nearby bakery. The buns were really cute. One was shaped like a frog, which had sweet custard in it.

We went back to the hotel to rug up some more, then went out to Ginza again. Chucky wanted to see the Sony Building and the Apple store. We also went to UNIQLO, a big clothing shop. All I found there was some purple tights. And they weren't even a very bright purple. I bought an ARASHI single and CD. YAY!

Around 6pm, took train to Roppongi. Ate dinner in some fast food place, wasn't very good. I didn't eat enough because it wasn't great. After dinner we walked far enough along the road so that we could see Tokyo Tower in all its orangeness. It's huge! We were really tired from our long day, so we didn't get all the way up to it. We took some photos and started to walk back, stopping in some shops on the way. I bought a cute live green skivvy with little flowers on it, and some socks for Emi and me. They were 3 pairs for 1000 yen, how could I resist?

It turns out that it's a really long way from Tokyo Tower to our hotel. We found this out after we got back to our hotel. It was a fun walk though, because there were lots of interesting places to look at and also some art and illuminations.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Wednesday - 26th November

Charles: Today was our first full day in Japan. Our plan for today was to meet out friend Steve so he can take us to visit a class at Toho Gakuen which is a music academy where Keiko Abe teaches. The first thing we had to do was figure out how to meet him at Sengawa station. After scrutinising the Tokyo railways map we figured out that we needed to go to Shinjuku to get the Keio line to Sengawa. Emi was going to meet a friend today so she organised to meet at Shinjuku as well.

We caught the train to Shinjuku and found where we had to go and then walked around for a while. We walked outside which was pretty and walked in a big department store called O-dakyu. It was amazingly busy but we saw a great food market all kinds of japanese food being cooked and on display.

Eventually we got on our way to Sengawa and had a fun train ride looking out at the Tokyo suburbs.

Chrissy: At Senagawa there were lots of cool little shops. I went to a 100 yen shop and a bookshop which had Fruits magazine and a Gothic Lolita Bible.

Charles: When we met Steve we had coffee together and happened to meet some of the students at the academy. They told us that the teacher for the class would be Keiko Abe herself! When we went to the academy, Steve had to go to work so he left us there by ourselves. We met all the students and were able to speak to them a bit in Japanese. When the class started we met Abe-sensei who spoke to us in english very kindly rearranged the class so that we could see some cool pieces. The class was a percussion ensemble rehearsal and we got to see the class playing Ionisation (perfect performance, no conductor) and Prism Rhapsody II which featured two marimba soloists who played in perfect sync, again no conductor. Amazing!

Chrissy: There was one girl who was totally weird towards me. She stared straight at me for about 1 minute without blinking and later gave me some rubbish. I didn't know what to do. Then she played a solo part in Prism Rhapsody II which totally blew my mind.

Charles: We left at about 5:30 and made our way back to Shinjuku to meet Emi and her friend Masoto. Masoto was also a student at ANU but is now looking for a job and apartment in Tokyo. We wandered around looking at Christmas lights and bought dinner downstairs in Odakyu. After dinner we said goodbye to Masoto who was going to take an 8 hour bus trip to Osaka overnight (!). We decided to go to Ginza to have a look around.

Chrissy: There were millions of bright lights. It is what everyone thinks Tokyo should look like! We went to a little bookshop and I bought a craft book on tiny cakes made of clay. Everything else was closed. We got back to the hotel around 11pm!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Tuesday 25th November

Chrissy: Today we took the 9:30am plane to Narita airport from Sydney International Airport. I was really nervous about the plane because I had never been on a long flight before. But it was all fine, and we had hardly any turbulance. I saw a cool movie on the plane called Train Man, which was about a nerdy guy who falls in love with a pretty girl. It was lovely!
We took the Skyliner shuttle train to Tokyo, then the regular train to Akasaka. I was so tired when we arrived, and it was annoying to walk around with luggage. The hotel is really nice. Went to dinner at the station, had ramen and katsudon. It was huge! I couldn't finish!