day 50! takadanobaba, shibuya

And the verdict for Willer Express 5 star bus iisssss: good, not great. :D Well I guess they did pretty great. We got a blanket, and seats reclined waaay far back. My main complaint was that I wasn't super tired, but at around midnight they shut off the main lights, and none of the individual lights worked. :( I guess they didn't want the lights to bother anyone but bus and airplane lights are designed to be directed and not scatter as ambient light too much. :( I wanted to read damnit! I tried using my little book light but then I could feel myself going blind so I stopped.

Oh well I did manage to get a bit of sleep, in between the rest stops. :) Same deal, dumped off at Shinjuku station at around 7am, NO backwards pants this time, and headed back to Takadanobaba station. Ended up doing work/blogging after getting back for a couple of hours but of course the drowsiness caught up to me and required resting for a few hours. Or most of the day. Whatever. :x

I'd been whining and complaining to Kurt every day about how much I was hating my hair, so he was kind and accommodating and accompanied to go get a haircut. :) I remembered seeing this one hair salon near our station that was part of a chain salon that I had been to before. For some reason, even though salon chains at home (read: Supercuts) carry the reputation of avoid-at-all-costs, I think I feel safer going to a chain here. There are. SO. many salons in Japan!! IT IS REDONK. But if you take a look at ladies/girls around here, it is not that redonk. Everyone here has their hair cut, styled, and permed. EVERYONE. And to support all the people of Tokyo, well, that requires a lot of salons. But all salons here look pretty stylish, they all range from affordable to expensive prices...so you can't even use price as a distinguishing gauge for quality. On the other hand, chains have a certain reputation to maintain, otherwise they would have gone the way of Supercuts, and would have no way to compete with the thousands of other salons. SO. I trust chain salons here is my point.

They took me without an appointment, and even had one stylist that spoke pretty good English. I didn't give them much instruction, just said I didn't care what they did as long as they made it cute. Then at the last minute I asked, do you think it would be possible to do bangs?? I'm always told that bangs are not an option because my forehead is too small (truth). But he said Oh, no problem.

...

Fast forward an hour or so, and I'm doooone~

Kurt had been coding in the waiting area so got to see the whole finished thing all at once. :o Actually I'd kept my eyes shut most of the time so I didn't even really see it til the end. But. I think I liked it. :) HE DID A GREAT JOB. It looks super super different from how I've looked for the past....well, forever actually. It did take some adjusting. But I think I like it. :) It's a lot more styled than before, thanks to the blunt bangs. The haircut kind of reminds me of those old Japanese dolls:

Anyway I was really pleased, and it was only like $30, $40? That's cheaper than what I get at home. And my stylist was really cool. :o Like really stylish and cool.

He did say that he wanted to do some more stuff to it, like, he thought it would be good to add a perm to the bottom, so it didn't flounce out around my shoulders, but it was completely up to me. I'd trusted his judgment til now and it was a good choice, so I said sure, and made an appointment. So I guess I will be going back in a few days! :)

By that time we were pretty famished. I'd been craving sushi, so Kurt had looked up sushi places around our station. Turns out, the one we had decided on was RIGHT next door to the hair salon. Yaaaay.

This kaitenzushi place is SO AWESOME though!! :D It's so modern, in a very Japan way. For starters, they have a screen in front of every seat, that you can use to order sushi. Usually at kaitenzushi places, you can always order something that's on the menu that you don't see on the conveyor belt, but usually you just "sumimaseeen" the chef and order it from them. Which I am sort of loathe to do since I'm shy. :3 I remember with my sister, when we went for kaitenzushi, we had to brace ourselves every time we ordered unagi (which we love!).

So seeing this, I cried tears of joy. Joy and unagi sauce.

More and more "modern" Japanese places have remotes or other ways to order electronically. I've been to one or two izakayas where you can just use your table's ordering gadget and hit "Go", and 10 minutes later a smiling server brings it to your table. :)

It's so interesting cuz it's so Japanese!! They love automating things, substituting electronics or robotics for human interaction. Why is that I wonder? It's a large part of the culture but I don't see why. I wonder if they are so inclined to introversion, or maybe so enjoy convenience, that they prefer it that way. A machine that is there as soon as you need it, doesn't interrupt your meal, and doesn't make mistakes. It's certainly true that at Japanese restaurants, servers only come when they are called (vs. in the US where they stop by to ask how you're doing, how are things), which I've always assumed was because otherwise it's an unwanted and unwarranted interruption to your meal. I don't know! But I don't enjoy small talk or little interactions with people either, so I fuckin' love the remote food orderers. :D

Also because remotes don't judge. T^T
IF I WANT 50 ORDERS OF UNAGI I WILL ORDER IT WITHOUT BEING JUDGED DAMN IT.

Part 2 of the awesomeness, we saw while we were waiting for two seats to clear.

Normally in a kaitenzushi place, the sushi chef stands in the empty aisle between the counters and makes sushi from there. As you can see from this setup though, there's no chef! Instead, there is a kitchen at the far end of room, like, behind where the counter juts out from. The conveyor belt at this place circles back into that area, and the chefs add it to the belt from there. It's another example of the dehumanization of the service industry. Isn't that so odd though? The Japanese dominate the service industry. :o Like they completely crush it. I wonder why they want to get rid of it?? It's to interesting.

Back to the point. With no chef, how does the person who electronically placed their order get their sushi? Byyyy using a sushi boat delivery thing! The chefs fill the order, put it on the belt, then send it to the appropriate seat. When the order has been retrieved, the customer presses a red button to send the boat back. SO COOL!

We had to try it.
(We ordered maguro, which is tuna, and anago, which is freshwater eel.)

Insta-sushi! :D

Other delicious things ordered...

This is tuna...

Mmm salmon. :3

Not sushi, but various appetizers.

We didn't get this, but this poor pineapple circled the belt the whole time we were eating. :( Who knows how long he's been there...

Gochisousama deshita~ (what you say after eating)

After dinner we had to drop by the apartment real quick, so Kurt could send some email. But before long we were back out, headed for Shibuya.

We stopped by a milk tea place that we always see while walking to the station. Milk tea was super hard to come by 4 years ago. I knew of one place in Shibuya but it was like $4 for a tiny cup, and it tasted terrible. With great trepidation, I decided to risk another $2.50, but it turns out it sort of paid off. :) Wasn't bad. 

The great Shibuya crossing!

We went to Adores, my favorite arcade in Shibuya. Well not favorite, but I have won a lot of stuff here. /modest. X3

This one took a few too many tries, but nyan, we got him!! Scared kitty. :3 I love emote faces...so cute. I hella want the fishy in the mouth one. :(

After taking a ...BUNCH... of purikura, we checked out the other floors. The 2nd floor is sort of a gambling haven. They have these awesome, HUGE huge themed machines though, like this one.

The 3rd floor was...horse racing. Lol?? So weird. What's cute though, is that every player sees their horse (that they're rooting for) on their screen. And when the big screen is loading, or they're waiting, the screen makes motions for you to stroke your horse. Like. Up and down arrows. So these guys just sitting there rubbing the screen up and down. O_o lol

4th floor is arcade games. This Gundam game is really popular, it's been around since when I was here. It's an online multiplayer battle game, kind of like Counterstrike or HON I guess. You control your Gundam, maneuver and employ your various weaponry to kill other people. I'm guessing there's a small RPG aspect to it, such as you getting points or some form of currency that you can use to upgrade your suit.

Kurt tried out Jubeat. This is really popular here and in Taiwan too. It's essentially DDR for your hands, and it's pretty well designed and just looks cool. They also have 'leveling' up you can do, where you get points and can unlock songs and special addons. If you buy a certain card, that you swipe at the machine before you start playing, you can save your state. I have a feeling I will be playing this when I have time to myself...............

Did some more wandering, went to a music store and sat at the 2nd floor Starbucks that oversees Shibuya crossing. Happened to check the time while people watching and were like OH SHIT it's past 12. Not sure exactly when the last train is, but past 12 is starting to push it. We high tailed it outta there and got back home.

More blogging/coding, and I made "dessert". :3 I used to eat this all the time. It's just this packet of stuff, and when you mix some milk with it it kind of turns into this yogurt dessert-y thing, except better cuz it's not sour like yogurt. :D

Kurt loves bananas.

Not the most eventful day but I felt a lot...better after it. :) Going to Asia always makes me feel self-image self-conscious, somewhat. That's why my hair always gets so short here, cuz I keep cutting it out of anxiety lol. But anyway I liked the haircut from today so we'll see how long it lasts me. Maybe when I go back home in a month I'll be bald. :D That'll show em!