day 53! shinjuku, takadanobaba

Kurt's flight was scheduled for 6pm in the evening, so just to be safe, we planned to start walking the suitcases to the station at 1pm. We spent the morning packing and getting things ready. It's really crazy how much your belongings spread out over just 1 week! Although to be fair it was mostly retrieving his few things out from under my piles of junk. ><

The walk back to the station with the bags wasn't as bad as when we first walked to the apartment, since we only had to carry half as much as we did back then. We made it to Takadanobaba, and then to Shinjuku in good time. The trains were even relatively empty, due to it being the afternoon on a weekend, which was nice cuz it's a lot more stressful trying to drag your bags through irritable Japanese people.

There was a spot of confusion when we got to the Narita Express platform, since there didn't seem to be anywhere to get tickets. Apparently you reserve them in advance, at the Midori no Madoguchi (The Green Windows), but since we hadn't and since there was a bit of a line, we missed the train that Kurt was going to take, and got scheduled for the next one. :( Fortunately we'd planned for that possibility and it would still leave him with enough time to make the flight. Hung around the platform for half an hour, and then loaded up the train....

Byebye Kurt-kun! :( Putting on a brave face even though it is sad to leave Japan. Ittekimasu!

I was a bit lost after that, wasn't sure what to do. I decided to exit Shinjuku station and walk around for a bit. Coffee and the rest of The Three Musketeers sounded nice. :) In the end I couldn't find any coffee places and went back to Takadanobaba station to have coffee there, but not before wandering through some ginormous department store and feeling very insecure and confused next to all the well-dressed people and fancy brands for sale.

sdf Takadanobaba station is definitely a lot more comfortable. :) Got my new favorite honey latte from Excelsior, Kindle, rented cell phone to keep track of time, and my new snazzy sunglasses that we picked up yesterday (on a whim) from H&M.

So I had to keep track of time because, if you remember, back when I got my haircut, I made an appointment with the stylist to come back and get some additional stuff done. My appointment was set for today at 5, so at around 4 I packed up and ran home for a quick shower and then ran back to the station for the appointment.

From what I had discussed with him, he'd said that the bottom of my haircut was a bit too "flouncy", since it hit right about at shoulder length, and kind of deflected off my shoulders funnily. To fix that, he recommended curling the bottom slightly, and since he'd done such a bang up job with the cut, I said sure why not! I stupidly did not ask how much this would cost, as I was led to believe by one of their flyers that it would be relatively inexpensive.

Most of you have already heard how this ultimately turned out, as I've cried, bitched, and bemoaned the outcome to anyone and everyone with two willing ears. :) The perm process took about 3 hours, and they washed my hair literally 3 times. At one point I looked like I had a fro, there were soooo many things sticking out of my hair! It was actually really hilarious and I'm sad that I didn't have the foresight to bring my camera to my seat to take a picture. They painted my hair with a solution (to relax the protein bonds of your hair, I think), then curled it up with like old school 60s curlers, then plugged wires into each of the curlers. The wires were hooked up to a heating machine, that when turned on, would cause the curler to disseminate heat throughout the curled up hair. Each curler got covered with insulating material so as not to burn my scalp, and then they willy nilly stuck in these corn on the cob looking plastic things, also to keep from burning me accidentally.

It was hilarious, my hair was HUGE.

Anyway that was the extent of my fun for the evening though, the rest was super tedious. Lots of hair drying and sitting around and hair washing.

It's kind of cool to see the interactions around the salon, though. Like every other job in Japan, there is a strict pecking order within every salon, with seniority determined by length of time working at that salon. As I watched, I could begin to pick out who had worked there longer, and who the newbies were that had to run chores for everyone else. My charming stylist was apparently one of the more senior members, since even though he was nice enough to me, he sort of barked orders at the others, who handed him curlers, rubber bands, and whatever else he needed. Mostly it was done in silence though, and they had to anticipate what he wanted next. If they guessed wrong, he'd sigh or click his tongue at them. It did seem a little harsh but such is the nature of Japanese work relationships. :/ Particularly in the beauty industry, I've heard that "bullying" is particularly severe. I don't think they mean wrong by it though, it's more that they feel like the newbies won't learn unless they're treated strictly. Kind of like hazing.

Anyway throughout the course of the next 3 hours, my hair was touched by almost every single person in the salon. It was kind of like a reverse petting zoo.

I did start getting worried, wondering how much this was gonna cost me. :( If only I had checked before I started the process, I certainly never would have gone through with it. At the end when I went to pay, I was completely floored by the price. I should have known. Perms are expensive, and it should have been more suspicious to me that the prices on the flyers were so cheap. Anyway I paid but I swear that my lesson has been learned, as I still am feeling very very guilty about it. :(

I slunk out of the building and went to drown my sorrows in salmon, next door. :) I guess the solution to guilt over spent money isn't usually to spend more money, but all things considered sushi is pretty cheap here, not too unhealthy, and one of the only things it's considered "normal" to eat, alone. It was quite nice though, reading my book, eating sushi, with a brand new look. I don't know. I will try to be positive about it. ^^v

I tried to take a picture as soon as I got home, for reference. Actually I took a whole bunch but I just hate how I look in pictures. This is sadly one of the better ones.

I asked for a very subtle perm, since I told him I preferred most of my hair straight. I actually didn't know that he intended to make it "curly" at all, I thought he was just going to curl in the bottoms, towards my face. So imagine my surprise when he washed the solution out and I looked like one of Mary's little lambs. :) He also added a bit of a curl to my bangs, which I'm undecided about.

Anyway I keep going back and forth on the perm. On one hand, I have to agree the bottom looks better. But on the other hand, curls and frilliness just aren't me, and I don't have the personality or wardrobe for that girly look. Plus I am intrinsically biased against that girly thing. I do feel like the way it was before the perm fit "me" a lot better. This person barely looks like me. :)

Still, they did a great job. And now I'll know how I would look as a lamb.

Maaaaaa.

day 52! shimokitazawa, odaiba

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Omg I've been falling so far behind with this thing. Sorry, it's just that they take so damn long, and while they're enjoyable to write while I'm in the process of writing them, before I actually get STARTED it feels like that essay that you put off doing all semester.


But thank you for all of those who have taken the time to read or check out my travel blog. :) I have to admit that the fact that people (or person) are reading this is the only thing that has kept me motivated to keep going -- and I know I will be really glad of it some day. So thank you! And I will try to do more weird things to keep you entertained.
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So today was Kurt's last full day in Japan, and I told him that the day was his and I would basically go wherever he felt like going and we could eat what he wanted to eat, etc. We had talked about going to a little part of Tokyo called Shimokitazawa, that apparently has interesting eclectic little shops, and that I had never been to before. Since we hadn't managed to go there yet, we decided to start there.

The station is a BIT farther than we'd managed to explore in Tokyo, so far. Not very far by Tokyo standards, but we did have to transfer to a different, non JR line to get there. JR, Japan Railways, is one of the largest railway companies in Japan, though there are many other big ones, and even more tiny ones.

Didn't take very much walking from the station to already start seeing interesting stores. We didn't go into this one, but look at all that cloth!! I would love to dig through and find cute patterns, it might even inspire me to finally learn to sew. :p Japan is pretty well known for its craftiness though, so it's kind of nice to imagine what cute little bags and plushies and clothes these fabrics could turn into. :)

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This one, we DID go into, as it is more relevant to my skills. :) Unfortunately it was all rather expensive, or at least comparable to home. But I did pick up a set of needles since the ones I brought with me to knit buns with, I managed to lose 1 of.

We were pretty hungry so the plan was eat first, shop later! Though of course I couldn't resist peeking into a few shops first. It was hard to decide what to eat, but when we saw this charmingly decorated burger place, we had to try it.

I mean who could say no to these pictures. We were also about ready to (literally) eat those pictures.

The area is full of kind of vintage-y, thrift stores, so there was a lot of this sort of decoration around. This particular restaurant was a Hawaiian vintage themed burger restaurant.

Complete with handwritten and illustrated cowboy menu.

We started with drinks, I got a really yummy latte. Kurt's cold drink came with a little container of syrup, which they usually give you to sweeten your cold drinks. It's really convenient because it's easier to mix in than tubes of sugar (for cold drinks).

We agonized over burgers for a while but in the end we ordered exactly what the pair of girls next to us ordered. Kurt got this sort of Japanese themed one....

...and I got the fat obesity-themed chili burger. (warning: do not view this pic on an empty stomach!) It was about as delicious as it looked. :) We both sort of laughed at how we spent the last two days eating American foods (Tex Mex, burgers) after having avoided them so far this whole trip.

And then, let the shopping begin! Here's Kurt shopping at this cute beach themed store, they had really nice clothes there.

One of the larger thrift stores that we went to, I easily found two affordable skirts to take home. I think I might go back....the clothes are just so affordable (and oftentimes more interesting) when they're secondhand. I love thrift shops. :)

Went to a little donut shop Kurt had read about called Hard Donuts, that had lots of interesting flavors like a ginger donut. Here is Kurt eating a tomato donut. O_o According to him it was very very light flavored though, and very much "a Japanese donut" (they are super different from American donuts, more like bread).

This hair salon has a random Spiderman sitting in front of it. Don't know why. It's not called Marvel hair salon or anything. Apparently you can't climb on it but you are free to take pictures of it.

So we spent maybe 4 hours here or so, in the end didn't buy much, but we both agreed that it was a nice little neighborhood. It seemed very quiet and livable, while at the same time having its own little vibe and urban feel, even within Tokyo. Found a shop where I might end up getting a suitcase (I need to buy a rolling one at some point here), and a cat cafe that we almost went to (but they had no space). The cat cafe was surprisingly expensive, like 300yen for 15 minutes I believe? Yikes. Would have tried it just for the experience but at least we got to see the inside of it.

Also, the window opened. I'll just leave that cryptic message there.

After leaving Shimokitazawa, Kurt decided that he wanted to go to Odaiba, which is another place I never managed to go to! It's rather interesting, it's a port/tourist/almost like a park area that's entirely on constructed land. They compacted garbage and sunk it into the ocean and created a whole new area. O_O Crazy! But also inventive and kind of clever. It's a comparatively newer area in Tokyo though, and a very popular date spot.

To get to Odaiba, we had to transfer at Nishi Nippori station, which is where Kurt used to work when he did his study abroad/internship program way back when, and also the reason why he had been to Odaiba many times.

Took a pic of this machine, which is a pretty typical ticketing machine at a railway station. :) Not for any particular reason, just to show you guys I guess. At any given station there'll be a row of maybe 5 of these right before the ticketing gates, so you can purchase a ticket to use at the gates.


Kurt and I both have various "railway cards" that you can add money to, and swipe at the gates (thus bypassing the need to always buy paper tickets). It's way more convenient, and with the incredible amount of traffic that the railway systems get, it would be impossible to ever get anywhere without most people using these railway cards.

The line that brings you to Odaiba has some really awesome views of the sea, and various ports and boats along the way. Something about the vastness of the sea, and seeing THAT much water will never fail to impress me. Especially living in a first world country in the very globalized world of today, to me the ocean seems like one of the last frontiers that we may never be able to fully explore. How about that? We know about galaxies millions of lightyears away from us, but we don't even know the bottom of our ocean. Fascinating.

On a more shallow note, we ended up going shopping in that big building/mall shown in the picture above. They had a huge Forever 21 and H&M there (surprise surprise), but in Japan, these are some of the most affordable stores with recent fashion that you can find. :) And I'm willing to bet that they don't stock the EXACT same things as the American versions of these stores, but maybe a slightly Japanese take on the same styles. At the very least, Japanese sizes of the same styles.

All of the stores in this mall were super trendy and designer-looking. If they weren't name brand (Coach, Marc by Marc Jacobs), then they were like this crazy hat shop, with a cute shiny Beetle in it.

We're pretty blase about high fashion shopping, so we breezed past most of it, but this stylish Japanese-themed crafts store caught our eye. Wabi Sabi.

I absolutely loved (among many, many things in this shop), these little things. Can you guess what they are? They're....(pause for dramatic effect)...ONIGIRI BAGS. You can tell more easily by looking at the ones all the way to the right of the picture but, they're little triangle shaped bags. SO CUTE. The ones underneath those have an additional compartment that you can unzip, that has a little Tupperware container. Just in case, you know TWO WHOLE onigiri aren't enough to satisfy you for a whole meal (I do know how people here get so skinny now, though).


In the end I didn't buy them because the small bag was $10+ and the larger one was $20+ which just seemed exorbitant, no matter how cute the idea. I have earmarked it in my head as one of the first ideas I want to plagiarize when I learn how to sew though! I think these would totally sell in some niche market, or maybe more widely if they were rectangle shaped to hold sandwiches. Although I really really think that the triangleness of the bag is it's unique selling point. Maybe if I included instructions for how to make onigiri, as well as health benefits, then it might become more acceptable in America...

The shopping actually took quite some time and I was feeling pretty tired by the end. Odaiba is a very popular destination, and it was a weekend, so the place was swarming with people. I wanted to go to a cafe and rest, and we'd noticed on a directory that there was a "Gundam Cafe" that I was very keen on visiting. (Gundam is a very popular anime...series? that has been going on for ages. It is maybe somewhat like the Star Trek of Japan.)

We headed in that direction, and it pointed us to outdoors. So we exited the mall and we saw........

This crazy monstrosity.

This picture does a much better job of illustrating how large this thing was. 


We stumbled upon it at a very opportune moment, as there was some show going on. They projected some scenes from Gundam onto a huuuuge screen behind this model, and this machine was programmed to turn on and off, make (very small) movements, and a few other interesting effects, in accordance with what was happening on the screen. It lit up, and at some points, had steam billowing out of it. Really cool, and if you imagine experiencing this with a very excited Japanese audience that loves robots, anime, and mecha, and are very uninhibited in displaying their amazement, you would probably smile and think it was cool too. :) Many many cries of "sugoi!" resounded.

When the brief show ended, we climbed up to the Gundam cafe only to be slightly disappointed that it is not a sit down cafe, but more of a Gundam gift shop that happens to also sell coffee. They did have a lot of interesting Gundam trinkets though, including these Gundam ningyouyaki (those little cake things that we saw that guy making in Asakusa). If it hadn't been so packed with fans, and I hadn't been so tired already, I probably would have browsed around more.

Might even have bought myself a "beam churro". :p lol.

We were hoping to get some food at this point (it was maybe 7 or 8pm) but as it turns out the mall only had 7 or 8 actual restaurants, and when we got to the restaurant floor, EVERY SINGLE ONE had a crazy long line pouring out of it. I was starving, but definitely not ready to wait in some ridiculous line to be overcharged for mediocre food. So we went to Yoshinoya, which had no line to be correctly charged for cheap food.

Oh hehe, the mall has a "smoking room", where smokers can go and shut themselves in in order to bathe themselves in their own sauna of cigarette smoke stench. :| Kind of an apt punishment I guess?? But also kind of pitiable, that people need a cigarette so badly that they shut themselves in a prison just to smoke.

Then we wandered around Odaiba a bit, even though it was pretty late. Unfortunately we didn't manage to see much else but I was sort of all Odaiba'ed out. I did like it there and thought some things were really cool, but all in all I'm not a fan of very manufactured, fancy attraction parks. And even moreso recently, I've been rather bemoaning the signs of modernization, globalization, commercialism and loss of culture that I've been seeing more and more, not just in Japan but all around. Home, and on the internet, for example.

We sat on some benches near this kinda cool installation to rest and talk for a bit. The lights in these doorways change color, and steam or a cold mist periodically wafts up from the floor. It was fun to watch people interact with it, the little shrieks of surprise and "tsumeta~i" (cold). I thought it was really telling that girls would run through once to see, be surprised by the cold, and not go back through, but kids would run back and forth over and over again. When do we get to be so jaded? And when does our natural delight and curiosity in the world leave us? Never completely but it's never the same as running back and forth through sprinklers for hours on end. How sad.

And with that, I'll call it a day. :) It was a memorable day.

day 51! takadanobaba, ikebukuro, nakameguro, shibuya

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So I was gonna keep my haircut a "secret" til I got home, but I'm realizing how hard that's gonna be, since it would mean not posting any pics of me, ever haha. :p Also since you are so eager to see, Janet. Here are pics:

I GOT BANGSSSSSS. So. Posting a purikura first because as we all know they are the most flattering and I am self-conscious. Also, I really liked how this pic turned out!

Also a less flattering pic of normal me. :) It's a very blunt haircut.

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We got up early the next day, and decided to go get lunch at this place we'd seen a few times while walking to the station. It was kind of confusing, the place was a big building, that said there was ice skating, bowling, and parking. But then there was a big sign in a window saying "lunch!", and the whole place was called Citizen's Plaza. Very curious. Anyway we went to check it out.


Turns out we barely made it to the tail end of lunch, but they let us check out the food (it's buffet style) and it looked fine to us so we said sure.

They had miso soup, rice and curry....

and many other random small dishes, most of which SEEMED to be pickled. O_o

Anyway there was plenty of stuff, and it's kind of nice to be able to try a little of everything. :)

The obaa-san running the floor was pretty nice too, although she kept trying to get Kurt to eat white-people foods lol. Like she handed him a mini bowl of pasta. And then forced him to take some bread (that was coated in sugar). O_o

They had these little cakes of like bean paste for dessert, I liked those a lot. :) It was a pretty good lunch, I'm curious to see how it is when it's busier and they probably have more varieties of things.

After lunch we went to Ikebukuro, which is another big station on the Yamanote Line (the line that is in the center of Tokyo). Kurt did have to do work at some point, but we looked around some shops real quick.

This was an all Hello Kitty store.

Gloomy bear tshirts!

An arcade with a GIANT rilakkuma!

This little girl was playing a Kinect arcade dancing game, where you copy the dance moves of the character on screen. The moves are super Japanese-y though so I'm guessing this game was for Asia only.

The drinks were quite cute, but expensive. This is just their fake foods window display, but you can see how elaborate some of the desserts get.

We found a second floor cafe with a pretty nice view, so we walked through the first floor entrance, to be seated. They asked "smoking or non-smoking?" and then brought us to a table on the first floor. I was like "can we get seats on the second floor...?", the guy looked at me for a sec, then brought me outside and showed me the staircase and smiled sheepishly and was like "there's the second floor...." It was an entirely different store, it just kind of looked from the outside that they were the same because the 1st floor is a cafe, and we saw people drinking coffee on the second floor. Oops! I felt silly.

The upstairs was a very girl-oriented cafe. Everything had stars and whipped cream, and it was almost all girls in there.

I got a coffee drink, and Kurt had a very tiny tart/cake. Well he ate some of it, pronounced it "too sweet", and then ignored it for the next two hours while I whittled away at it.

A people watching video clip! From our 2nd floor viewpoint. 



We stayed there working/reading for a couple of hours, and then we went to Sunshine City, a big mall/collection of stores in Ikebukuro. As luck would have it, they were having a fashion show that day!! Well, not high fashion, but a fashion show for stores in the mall. It's kind of nice cuz it's relatively cheap for them to produce, but is a bit of publicity for them, as well as a marketing for their tenants (the stores).


It didn't start just yet so we looked around briefly and I bought *gasp* yet ANOTHER pair of shoes. This one was actually out of necessity though, I bought a pair of boots since I'd thrown my old pair away, and had been wearing nothing but sandals and wedges since, and my poor feet were getting trashed from all the walking and hiking I'd been doing in them.

Fashion show! I took a *lot* of pics, and most of them look shitty cuz I couldn't get that close, and the models kept moving too fast, but I will only post a few here.

The little girl was cute! I'm pretty sure all of the models were just volunteers, with no modeling background. Still all of them performed admirably and seemed to enjoy the limelight. No tripping and falling. :) Japanese people are the masters of heels.

And seriously the kids were really talented. They just seemed the most natural and not-affected.

Oh and there was one store with swimsuits and all I have to say is DAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

aaaaaaaaaaannnngggggg. O_O You're welcome for the butt shot.

Then some random people in tropical outfits came out to talk about something, Okinawa something or other. I was remarking to Kurt how they all seemed to have really great stage presence.

Ok and this little girl looked a LOT like what my sister looked like when she was a kid. :o Uncanny.

And then there was a set of little girls that were way too young to be wearing what they were wearing. T_T

Then the three girls from before came out and revealed to us that they were actually a girl band!

They had a surprise mini-concert for us, with two songs + dancing. One of the girls was just a voice though, she didn't participate in the dancing and sat in a chair the whole time. Kurt and I wondered what was wrong with that one.

Then the fashion show continued. We stayed a while, but left eventually cuz it didn't seem to be ending at all. We watched maybe 1 hour of it I'm guessing?

They have a cute Ghibli store in the mall as well.

Cute!! flower pot white Totoros.

We had dinner plans to meet up with Kurt's friend/old coworker, from when he spent a while working in Japan for Microsoft. We met him in Nakameguro, one of the stops on my old route to school. To get there, we took the line that I used to take. :') It was very very sentimental. I can't explain it but, public transportation is such a staple of every day life here in Japan, so to see my old line, and hear them announce all the old stations I used to hear every day, it just brought me back more than, well, almost anything here.

Kurt's friend's name is David, and he was a tall skinny white dude that vaguely resembles Kurt, and went to CMU. He's been living in Japan almost 10 years now. :o He brought us to a Mexican restaurant which is pretty hard to come by, in Japan. Actually in Asia in general. It's called Junkadelic.

The interior deco was very eccentric. Apparently it's a very well known and popular restaurants, particularly among foreigners (who miss Mexican food), this restaurant being one of the only decent authentic options.

Actually it was pretty funny, while waiting for David, I didn't know what he looked like so every time I saw a white person I'd be like "is it that guy??" It wasn't, but the funny thing is that literally EVERY single one of those white people, later on throughout the course of our dinner, ended up showing up at that restaurant. That's how well-known it is I guess. :)

Frozen margaritas! Kurt got a tamarind one, and I got ...oh man, I forgot the name. :( Some strange fruit I hadn't heard of before though. They were good!

The rest of dinner was alright. The food was AMAZING. I mean, it was expensive for what it was, but not overly so. And I've been craving Mexican food for a while which made it that much better. It's not exactly like food we'd get at home, it has maybe a bit of a Japanese accent to it, but that just made it yummier. :o

David was really quiet at first which made me sorta anxious cuz there was nothing to say. But he seemed to open more and relax as dinner went on (and we had drinks...). Turns out I do like him (I was meh at first), he's just a bit of a quirky introvert I guess. :)

Taiga had called me right before dinner to ask if I wanted to hang out. I said that we had dinner plans but could meet him afterwards (he lived closeby). We finished dinner around 10 and then made plans to play pool in Shibuya, and David said he'd tag along.

Requirement of one drink per person, so I got a yuzu umeshuu. Yuzu is a citrus fruit here, kind of a cross between an orange and a lemon. I've never actually seen one sold to be eaten, but it's a relatively common flavor. It was really good. :) I wonder if they sell it at Marukai!

We played a couple of games of 9 ball, and then a 2v2 game of 8 ball. Then it was time for David to catch his train so we headed out.

I really wanted to take purikura, so we went to a purikura studio -- a building with JUST purikura. Here is Taiga and me decorating our pics~

I really liked how this on turned out :D

The little speech bubbles around Kurt are SO COOL. I thought it was such a sharp idea. Basically you can choose an icon (I chose speech bubbles), and then you "stamp" it onto the picture, and it basically copies the area that you stamped and pastes it into the icon. Then when you stamp again, it actually stamps the whole thing onto your picture. Cute idea!!! So cute.

This one turned out really nice too. :) There's options at the end of the process, to send a few photos to your cell phone. Kurt and I hadn't been able to do it so far since neither of us have Japanese cell phones capable of receiving data on us. But since Taiga was here, we got these two. :D Yay!

You can also visit their website to retrieve the rest of the pics, but to do that you have to pay extra. Actually it's usually ~$3/month, and then they let you access the digital files of all your purikura.

Yay I heart purikura. After taking those though, it was time to go home. It was really nice to see Taiga again, and I thought it was very sweet of him to actually contact me and try to hang out. :) I gave everyone my info and told everyone I'd be free most of the time but so far, haven't heard from anyone (which I rather expected) so it was a pleasant surprise to see him. ^^