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 

♥ My Scotland adventure ♥ Part 5

On Saturday, my sister and I were gonna spend the day together again. I was quite tired after the day before, so I didn´t really bother wearing anything fancy :P 

Since it was Saturday, and the weather was lovely, the first thing we set out for was the local farmers market! ^^ The first time I visited my sister in Scotland, we also went to the farmers market and I remember it being so much fun! We looked around on all the lovely stands that were placed around. They were selling everything from home made soap that smelled like heaven (my sister bought one that smelled like lemon and thyme <3), to meat, pies, fish, jam, baked goods and even chocolate! We each got ourself a cup of hot chocolate from the stand that represented "the chocolate tree" (a rather well-known chocolate café/place in Edinburgh). I got mine with both whipped cream and mini-marshmellows, and my sister only got hers plain since she isn´t so into sweet things xP hehe... I am happy I got mine with the extras though, because the chocolate itself was very rich and dark, and it would have been to bitter for me without the sweet cream and marshmellows ^^". We walked around some more, and tried some samples of Scotish tablet, and looked at all the delicious looking food. One stand had all kinds of flavoured jam, with the strangest combinations! I believe I saw one with mango or apricot or something like that. I wound up getting a sugarcoated donut from one of the bakery stands, and I must say, it is probably one of the best donuts I have tasted in my entire life ;v; omg so goooood >0< 

As we left it, my sister went to get some flower bulbs at a flower shop, and then we went back up into Grassmarket, since it is located quite close to where farmers market usually is.

 We decided to do a "last round" visiting some shops we´d seen before and just wander where our feet took us! We went back to the little side-street down by the royal mile (where I found the shop "Pie in the sky") and visited the one that had all the fantastic looking chocolates! ^^ I decided to get one for myself, and one for Peachie, to give to her the next time we met. I remember her saying that she loved some kind of tiny easter eggs, so I made sure to purchase the one that had them on it. For myself, I got one with rainbowcoloured skittles, and white chocolate base, because I love white chocolate the most =v= Have not tasted it yet, but it looks really good ;v; 

 We realized we hadn´t really looked into all the shops along this street before, so we decided to make a more thorough look! As we walked up along it, poking at the windows, I felt like taking a picture!

 I like the shape of this picture! ^^

 I was inspired by my friend Rosalynn to do some jumping pictures, because she always does them when she travels, so I tried my best XD haha

 

This is what I call good lighting! ^^ I feel proud that I was able to make a nice smile 

WITH my teeth showing! O.O

We came passed a tiiiiny little shops that sold all kinds of cute fairy-themed things! ^^ It was so fantasy like and wonderful, I was bewitched by just looking at it!

Inside, it was completely jammed full of these statues, and a heavy smell of incense struck us as we entered. It was like walking into a little fairytale world of its own! I didn´t dare to touch anything, because it was so delicate and everything was placed quite close by other things. Looking at it was quite enough for me ^^ It was the sort of store I imagine my godmother would enjoy, since she likes fairies quite a bit....

We wandered down until we came to the mall where they had the Claire´s shop, because I´d seen that they had a big "Accessories" shop there also that I wanted to look into! ^^ I found an adorable necklace with a mix of shimmery pink and pastel pink pearls on it, with a big heart filled with sparkly pink lipgloss at the end of it x3 I will never use that lipgloss though, because it will ruin the look of the necklace ^^"hehe... I bought it because it perfectly resembled the shape of one of the earring–pairs I got from Peachie the day before! I was determined to wear it when we met again, so I could show her x3

The time was approaching 2 pm, and we started to get a bit hungry, so we went to a little café that my sister really likes. It´s called "Spoon". It was located on the second floor over a little shop in a street near by, so we found it rather quickly. Oh, what a charming place! All of the tables and chairs were different from eachother. And they had stuck 60´s magazine cut-outs on the walls xD We got placed by a big round table next to a big window. Our table had a map over scotland on it ^^ I got a scone, and my sister got a burger, and we both got each our tiny pot of tea. I think mine was rooibos and hers regular english breakfast tea... 

We decided to go to the national museum afterwards, because I wanted to see a real t-rex skeleton... somthing I have never seen before ovo We also went because they currently have a huuuuge statue entirely made out of balloons!  We spotted it at once when we came into the huge "entrance" hall.

It was hanging from the ceiling, and as you can tell, it was MASSIVE o.o We had no idea what it 

was surposed to resemble, but we guessed it might be some kind of sea–creature :)

Afterwards I found myself squeeling and running towards a tiiiny little tank on by the left side wall of the hall. Can you guess what I saw? >w< 

JELLYFISH *V* <3333 

omg omg omg omg ommmmggggggggg x333 <333 

They were soooo tiiiiny! Seriously! the little one in the first picture was perhaps the size of my thumb! ;v; whaaaaaaah <33333 I was all blushu blushu over their cuteness <333 

It said that they were glowing in the dark on the sign next to the tank, but as it was light outside still, we couldn´t possibly tell ;u;

As we walked on, we saw an amazing gigantic deer

It might not look like it, but this thing was HUGE! It looked like it could have been in Princess Mononoke ;u; because I am sure it would be sturdy enough to ride!

Right after spotting that, we entered the room where they had all the skeletons!
And there I saw the T-rex O.o Gosh, it felt really surreal acctually seeing one of those!

There was so many other skeletons in there also! I was really intrigued!

There was a whole row of sculls!

And I saw a saber-tooth tiger! 

We looked around a lot of the other creatures and specimens they had there, and even tried out some of the interactive activities, like making a stone glow in the area they kept all the precious minerals and such x3 haha

Since we didn´t really have much else to do this day, we just headed home. We passed a tiny candy shop with huuuge fake candy in the window display (I would love to have those for decorations in my bedroom ;A;) and because they advertized with having "Wonka" bars, I just had to pop in real quickly and get one ;v; I got some more sweets for Ruth also x3 Couldn´t wait to give it to her! I had found so many lovely things to give to her again, to show her some gratitude for being so kind to me ;A; 

Nothing would be enough though! >A<

Well home again, my sister had to study for a bit, and I watched a movie on their tiny little tv ;v;

We had decided to go out for nachos this night, because that was the last thing on my list over things I wanted to taste while I was there! ^^ Once more we called up my sisters boyfriend, because he loves nachos, so he really wanted to come also x3 I have never ever had nachos before, 

so I was pretty excited!

We had to walk for a looong while to get to right place. It was so un-lolita as you could possibly get it, a heavy metal bar! XD ahahaha. It was nice though, because they didn´t play the music very loudly, the lighting was good and there was quite few guests (probably because of easter.) The place was known for having the best nachos in the area, and the biggest portions ever, so we only had to order one for all of us three to eat from xD haha

We had to wait for 45 min for it to be prepared, because there was only one, poor fellow working at the kitchen that night ;u; I felt really sorry for him. I got cranberry juice (I don´t drink),

 and my sister and her boyfriend bought a glass of beer each.

It was indeed a huge portion O_O

You probably can´t tell, but try looking at my sisters hand in this picture compared to that o.O

It had tons of jalapenos, taco-flavoured meat and sour-cream. It should have had more cheese, but I think we all agreed it was good ^^ It was extremly hot though, so I´m happy I had my drink XD 

Heading home again, we were super duper over-tired so we were chatting about all sorts of odd stuff :P Somehow talked about pokémon the most of the way, before we parted with her boyfriend and headed to the flat once more. So lovely to sleep after such a nice day ^^ 

I couldn´t wait for meeting Peachie again the next day! ^0^

Thank you for reading!