First time in Harajuku

 

Ready for another update about Japan? ^^

I want to take this opportunity to tell you about my first trip to Harajuku! 

It was the day after I went to Shibuya and Shinjuku, so it´s quite a while ago by now ^^" (6.09.2015)
Anyway, I felt like it was a very special time so I wanted to share it with you all!

After all, the first time one goes to Harajuku would be special for any japanese-fashion-lover, right?

I was super duper excited! I even decided on a special outfit to wear for the day, to honour the Harajuku-spirit hehe :-D Once again, I went with the same friend I went to Shibuya with, since she knows Tokyo a lot better than me. We had also planned to meet up with a friend of hers that´s also a Norwegian, but she goes to another university so she lives in Tokyo! ^^

And once again we took the train. I felt so excited the whole time, but the train ride went really fast for some reason! Only when we came to the Yamanote line, it felt like the longest train-ride in the whole world, even though that one is only 30 min! 

Then, upon arrival!

 

 Since it was a sunday, ofcourse it was super crowded! 

 

 

 

We wandered around for a little while, looking into a few shops, but honestly it was so crowded that it was hard to get around and enjoy ourselfs.

 

 These icecreams looked really amazing!

 After looking into Etude House, we waited for my classmates friend to arrive. It was a rather grey day, but we made sure to bring an umbrella, so when the rain started we were ok.

Once all of us were gathered, we decided to try some of the famous Harajuku crepes!
There was so many different stands and little shops everywhere that sold crepes, so it was hard to choose just one place to visit hehe

 

Finally we found a place that had a crepe that I just had to try!

It was a special matcha combo with strawberries!

it was super delicious! <3 If you are ever in Harajuku, definitely try out some crepes! ;-)

Afterwards we decided to head over to 6%DokidDoki to visit my australian friend Manon (Strawberryskies) because she happens to work there! I was super nervous because I had never met her before, only chatted over the internet. As we climbed the stairs to the shop, I felt my heart racing.
Manon was super sweet though, and very nice even though we had never spoken before!
I even got a picture with her, and decided to buy a cute little bracelet that resembled pastelcoloured marbles ^^

To think it´s only a month since we first met!

 

After chatting for a while, we said our good-byes and then we went to the Laforét building, because I really wanted to see the Lolita shops they have there. While we were there we also visited the Swimmer and Nile Perch shops... uuuuh, I really wish I was rich, because I just wanted to buy so many things TT v TT 

I took a sneak-photo of the Angelic Pretty shop huhu >v< The displays were amazing! I felt a bit ouf of place not wearing lolita at the time though ^^"

I did end up buying a nice strawberry-printed kitchen-towel from Swimmer, they had so many adorable items! :-) 

By this time, another classmate had decided to join us!
We went to the famous Kiddy-land toy shop to look around ^^
It was SO NICE! <3



Once again this day we just browsed around mostly, and didn´t really shop. We are poor students after all, so it´s a good idea to plan out what to get and such!
I really enjoyed browsing different shops though, because it gives a good idea about what kind of things are available, and I like planning ahead before deciding if I am going to buy something!
I had begun feeling really ill as the day proceeded, and I definitely was developing a fever :-/ We held our heads up high though, and decided to finish up with the things we had planned to do!

 It was getting rather late, so we decided to head over to take some Purikura before it would be time to head back home! ^^
I had never taken purikura before, so it was my first time, and I was really excited! 

Decorating the pictures was a lot of fun!

This was the result! ^^

Haha, we look so silly xD!



Ahh, after that we pretty much just headed home again... it was quite late and we were still kind of out of it from Jet-lag.
I had also become quite ill by that time, having a fever and feeling really cold. After all, not being able to sleep for 4-5 days kind of kills your immune system ^^"
We got home safely though, eventually :-)

Besides feeling icky and sick-ish about half the day, I had a really nice time!
I hope you enjoyed this little entry! ^^

+ First trip to Tokyo: Shibuya & Shinjuku!

I am back with more updates about my stay in Japan! ^^

I am sorry it´s late again >.< Since school started properly over here, time has been limited!

Anyway, I wanted to take you back to the time when I first arrived, just a bit under a month ago.

The very second day we stayed here (around the 5th of September?), I and a classmate decided to head into Tokyo to explore a bit! Now, she is a "Japan-veteran" (as in, she has been to Japan on several occations, and even studied here for a longer period of time also!), she took on the job of showing me around a bit (something I am very greatful for ^^).

Ofcourse, we were both pretty jet-lagged after the long journey, so I acctually requested that we´d visit Shibuya and Shinjuku on the first day (satuday) because I wanted to be a bit more sprightly for such an endeavour as going to Harajuku. 

So yeah, we somehow managed to find the way to the local train-station, and figured out how to read the map of train-routes that was exclusively written in kanji (ehehe ^^"), and soon we were on our way, with the 12 o´clock train!

It takes about 1 hour and 45 min to go the entire way to Shibuya from where we started off, so we had to change trains a few times, and spent a lot of time people-viewing while we did so! ^^

When we finally came there, we had gone by the Yamanote-line from Tokyo-mainstation, so we arrived just by the Hachiko-exit in Shibuya! This meant we came right out into the famous Shibuya-square as soon as we left the train-station.

(We were quite surprised to see a cat lying on the famous Hachiko statue haha ^^)

Our main goal in Shibuya was to explore "Maru-kyu" (or Shibuya 109 as the building says), so we headed there first.

I was so baffled by the fact that this shopping-mall has 8 floors exclusively for clothing and cute accessories, so I took quite a few pictures!

 

 The brand "Ruby-Rose" was sooo cuuute ;V; 

 

 

 

 Little Twin-stars stuff at the Hello-Kitty shop TT 0 TT

 

 We laughed a bit by the name of this store haha ^^

 

Liz-Lisa <3

I am not sure how much time we spent just walking around and looking, but it surely was well over an hour, perhaps two haha... Since we are both students and since we both had just arrived, none of us bought anything. We decided to spend the day browsing and just enjoying the views ^^

After leaving "Maru-kyu", we walked around some more, visited the local Forever 21 and a huuuge CD and DVD shop that had 9 floors, that also had a floor exclusively for manga! It was my first meeting with a so-called typical Japanese manga-shop and the share amount of manga kind of blew my mind!

After this we decided to head over to Shinjuku for a while! By then, it was already starting to get a bit late acctually.

The Yamanote-line is a circle line that goes around all the "famous" places in Tokyo, and the trains are marked with their green colour, so they are pretty easy to find ^^ We took it onwards a few stops to get to Shinjuku!

We had originally planned to visit the makeup store "E-tude-house" in Shinjuku, since my friend knew about a shop nearby the trainstation, but it happend to have moved, so we were a bit bummed by that, especially since we spent some time searching...

after a while though, we decided to get some dinner, and since I was "the new one there" I was able to choose! ^^ We tried out this thing called "Okonomiyaki"! 

Basically, the resturant you enter has tables with a hot-plate in the middle. You order some base ingredients from a menu, and you can order an extra with it. 

I went with a vegetable mix with an extra egg, and my friend did a chicken and cheese mix (but we split both)

 As you can see, it´s then up to you to fry the "pancake-omelette" by yourself (calling it that because that sort of is how it seems? haha)

 

Afterwards, you add some toppings (my friend tought me how to do it properly) and then it´s ready! ^^ It was a really fun experience to make it and personally I think it´s a really nice idea! 

When we had finished, we decided that perhaps it was time to head back home again. We both wanted to stop by Starbucks first though, so we headed out into the street to search for one close by.

While we did so, we happend to stumble upon a game arcade!

 

We didn´t play any crane-games, but we did try out a drumming game that was really fun ^^ I didn´t take any pictures of that though, I was too distracted by the amazingly cute korohamus *v*
One day....

Finally, we found a Starbucks-place, and I knew exactly what I wanted to try.

What can you find only in the Japan - Starbucks?

Matcha-Frappuchinos ♡ 7 ♡!
(they drew a cute little frog for me ahhh ; v; hihi)

So, with both a frappuchino each (my friend got vanilla-flavoured), we decided it was time to head home.
It had been a looong day, and we were both quite tired still from jet-lag.
We also had quite a schedule the next day (planning to go to Harajuku and everything) so we decided it was a good idea to try and get some sleep. 

I´ll let you in on a secret though, I was SO jet-lagged I could hardly sleep for 4-5 days @_@...

Yeah,

well, that was my first experience with Tokyo! ^^ SO many first-time-achievements were done that day! I visited Shibuya and Shinjuku for the first time, I saw a lot of well known brand-stores for the first time, I visited my first manga-shop, I tasted "Okonomiyaki" for the first time (haven´t since acctually), I visited and played a game at a game-arcade and I even tried a Matcha-Frappuchino! I truly felt like I could cross of loads of things from my mental-checklist haha ^^

I hope you enjoyed this entry!
Please comment below if you have any questions
or just want to say something!