Trip to Ikebukuro

it´s been around 9 months since I updated here, wow...

The explanation would take ages, so I will shortly summarize :

I experienced a mental breakdown in November that I couldn´t get over until I finally got my summer vacation, because I never got a long enough brake to acctually deal with it until summer came around.

Another sad cricumstance: my phone had a stupid accident, so I lost all the pictures I took in Japan after the end of October... so yeah... it will be pretty hard to show the things I did there... 

However! I plan on making two more updates about my trip. 

It will be this one, which is about the trip I took to Ikebukuro,

and I will make a little entry about the trip we made to the local Shinto Shrine and Buddhist Temple in the area I lived in, in Japan :-) 

Just so everyone knows, I am back in Norway now, and I have been since February started! 

I decided to make the explanation about all of this as short as possible, because I don´t like writing apology after apology every time I update this blog.  If you wonder about any details, please don´t hesitate to ask, but know that this is a sensitive subject to me, so I might not be able to answer completely to your satisfaction...

I am chronically ill, so my updating will always be irradic, and after almost 9 years of living with it, I guess it´s time I realize that I can´t promise anything. I have to live day by day and see how it goes...

BUT NOW! 

It´s been a long time, So I might now remember everything completely correctly,
but I will shortly talk about what I did in Ikebukuro
back in the 9th of September 2015:

I don´t know if I have told any of you, but I do have a japanese friend called Ayuko!
She is a year older than me and I met her when she was an exhange student in Norway a year before I went to Japan! So it´s sort of funny: we´ve both been able to show eachother around our own country hehe. Because actually, it was entirely Ayukos doing that we went to Ikebukuro in the first place!
I just wanted to meet up with her, since it was so long since we´d met, but I left it up to her to decide where, since she knows more about the city she lives in than I do. 

The day I headed out to meet Ayuko, there was a thyphoon in Tokyo, which basically means that the sky decideds to turn into a literal waterfall, and it rained more than I´ve ever experienced in my life, without there being an actual storm. 

I however, didn´t have boots or anything, and I figured since there was no wind I could just as well wear a simple, cute outfit, wearing my canvas slip-on shoes... oh boy did I get drenched that day!

Before that though, we managed to do a lot of interesting things!
After meeting me at the Ikebukuro subway, Ayuko showed me the Sanrio gift store!
Those stores are dangerous when you´re a poor student with a weakness towards kawaii hehe ^^"

She surprised me by then taking me to a really cute café with a galaxy theme!
It was called
The Milkyway Café

In Japan they have amazingly life-like plastic replicas of the food they serve outside of many different restaurants and cafés!

They had SO many cute cakes, parfaits and other cute dishes, also even savoury ones that still looked cute! I think Ayuko had a curry dish with star shaped fried cutlets and rice + greens, but I could not resist the temptation to try out something cute, since I tried to think that I probably wouldn´t have the chance to go there again (which I was correct in!) 

I went with the "Taurus"-parfait in their "Constallation desert" series!

(Fun fact: my star-sign isn´t even Taurus, I just liked the design hehe)

It had vanilla icecream with matcha cream, dango, sweet cookies and even a dorayaki and extra red bean paste with a caramel-sauce drizzle on top! Basically the prettiest desert I´ve probably ever had in my life, and I only managed to eat about half haha xD

After this, Ayuko showed me the famous "Animedia"-shop, which is a chain-store that sells manga and anime goods. The special thing was that their main-shop happend to be located in Ikebukuro! Basically a shop that had 9 floors only dealing with anime and manga, and I was completely awed to say the least... Also forgot about taking pictures in my excitement >_>"""

Lastly, we visited Sunshine-city, which was good, because by then my feet were so wet and cold that I could have needed some sunshine by then. The rain was furiously pouring down harsher by the hour, so by the time we had got around to go in there, which was one of our last stops of the day, the rain-water was litterary splashing up from the streets!  

For those of you who doesn´t know, Sunshine-city is a big shopping mall with loads of different shops and many floors. In there we stopped by a lovely Studio Ghibli Shop, and even though my  phone was almost dying, I just HAD to get a last couple of pictures.

I even managed to get one of my outfit for the day!

Please don´t mind my hair being totally killed by the humidity, and also overlook the fact that my clothes are so plain, I was struggling a lot with self-confidence at the time and didn´t want to attract to much attention. Oh, and if not exactly wet, most of my clothes were atleast moist at the time from the weather, so I.... I really don´t know why I even bothered posting this image in the first place haha XD 

And a selfie with the lovely Ayuko! <3 

She is such a beauty <3 ah, just writing this makes me miss her >_<

We had been looking around ALL day from around noon until 7 pm, so after a quick little warm drink and a bite to eat, we decided to part ways. A day with Ayuko is always fun, and I still remember our first outing in Tokyo with loads of happy memories. Typically I forgot about taking pictures since we were so busy all day, and most of the ones I took was sadly not of a quality that I would be comfortable posting ^^"

Anyway, that was the end of my Ikebukuro adventure! ^^

I hope you enjoyed this long-overdue little update about some of my adventures as a exchange-student in Japan! I am really impressed that you guys are still sticking around even though I can´t update as much as I probably should... thank you all for being so patient and lovely, and thanks for all the nice comments you send me, they really warm my heart and keep me encouraged to keep up the work with this blog! <3 

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! ^^