day 61! takadanobaba, ikebukuro, shibuya

So today, my appointment with Meg was set for slightly earlier, at 3pm. The reason being that Tuesdays are her days off, so she didn't have to wait until 8pm to get off work before we could meet up. According to what she'd told me yesterday, we were going to spend the day doing makeup and shopping for the outfit for the contest. Basically something like a girl's wet dream, right? :p I was a bit apprehensive though, cuz I'm not sure how I feel about spending a whole day doing that, and with other people. Also with Meg being Meg...I never really know what to expect.

Since today was going to be kind of long and boring, I told Edwin to go play somewhere, and that maybe when we finished (I figured it would only be a few hours), we could go hang out somewhere or something, I'd call and let him know.

Didn't do much in the morning, woke up leisurely (read: late), slowly showered and got ready, and then headed out.

Got a call from Meg saying that it would be closer to 3:30 (this is getting to be a bit of a pattern....). When I got there, she had a friend waiting with her. She'd mentioned that we'd go shopping with her friend, which made me a little hesitant cuz oftentimes the more girls you add to a party the loopier it gets. But! Her friend was super super sweet. Her name is Mari-chan, and she had a baby with her!!! I asked, the baby was 5 years old. And when I said she looked way too young to have a baby, she said "Oh, but I'm the same age as Meg, we're friends from high school. I'm 24." and I was like ehhhh!?!?!?!? 24!! So young, holy crap.

Anyway she used to work in the beauty industry as well, I believe at a hair salon, but since she had her baby, she's been off work. I asked if she wanted to go back and she said of course she misses it from time to time, but for now, with the baby, she probably won't be able to. So when Meg called her and asked for her help with this project, she was really excited. She was really sweet and young, but somehow very motherly as well. :) Wait what am I saying, she's younger than me................damnit. -_-;;

Anyway they spent quite some time discussing what to do, and slowly put foundation, and then white powder on my face. This took about an hour. I don't know how that could possibly take an hour, but it did. I think because they were bouncing the baby up and down, and feeding it, and taking their sweet time. Yes I was bored.

I took a pic of this pretty palette that they had though. :) When I saw all the glitter and sparklies, my ovaries swooned a bit. I figured you'd be excited about it too Janet, but somehow I'm betting that you've seen it before and know what company it's from already. Amirite? :D lol. Anyway it's that NYX brand that I know you've mentioned to me at some point. IT'S. SO. PRETTY. O_O I was hoping they'd dip their fingers into all the colors and take turns smearing it all over my face, and then I'd have an awesome rainbow sparkle face, but no. :( I barely got any. I KNEW I SHOULDN'T HAVE COME, WHAT'S EVEN THE POINT.

Well first, what they did was discuss back and forth what kind of makeup and what kind of look they were going for. And for that, they needed to know what sort of haircut they were going for. And for THAT, they needed Meg to have her shit together, and to have some plan of attack, but Meg was like "I have nooo ideeeaaaa" and so we were left with nothing. DX I'm starting to get a feel for Meg's personality; I don't quite know how to say it but she has a cute whiny personality. :) And I mean that in the best possible way. Every time I come, she kind of runs/shuffles up to me in a piteous way and makes an aggrieved face and says "I'm sorry!!! I'll be done in a second!! Hold on a second ok??" Like she makes faces like she's having a tough time and please pity her, but not in a pathetic way or anything, just as in she's usually all over the place, cuz she's a bit of a mess, and irresponsible to boot. So she has to ask others to take the slack for her and so she makes her sad apologetic grimaces, but it's a habit for her cuz she's always like that. I don't know, as much as it can be taxing to always be waiting on her, I don't find her unlikable. It's hard to explain. :)

Anyway, in this case we were once again both (me and Mari-chan) left hanging because Meg had no idea what she wanted to do, and how can you do makeup for a haircut/style/look that you don't even know? Cute, edgy, punk, goth??? So they randomly smeared a tube of white shit on my face (harharhar ok enough giggles) and made a mask over my eyes. Then they smeared sparkles under my eyes. I now look like a drag queen that has been dead for a week.

Tadaaaaa. Tolja.

That's Meg in the bottom corner. I caught her by surprise, she doesn't look great in that pic. :x But you see how even when caught off guard her face is kind of grimace-y????

That's Mari-chan to the right, with her baby sleeping and an awesome sling to support the baby's head. We seriously need to put those on airplane seats.

That girl in the middle is another person that works at the hair salon. I'd seen her the day before, while waiting for Meg to come fetch us, and I totally did a mental gasp cuz she is SO freaking pretty. D: Holy good god. It's hard to see from the picture, but she looks like a model. And she doesn't seem stuck up either, she seems very dignified and lady like. SHE'S SO PRETTY WTH AND IN THE MEANTIME I'M IN THE FRONT LOOKING LIKE A WARM GLUESTICK FUUUUU.

Oh and that is the white mask I was talking about. What a weirdass look. They kept saying that they needed to add a splash of color, somewhere, but I never got anything added. Just sat there for hours looking like....that. lol.

Well eventually they'd had enough, and decided that they couldn't move forward until the concept was more solidified. So they led me to the bathroom to wash 3 hours of makeup off me, and then Meg told me to go hang out somewhere for 1.5 hrs (guhhhhh -_-;;) while she did some research on what look to go for (do it yesterday damnit!).

I was starving at this point, so I called Edwin, and he'd conveniently gotten back from doing whatever he was doing, and was ready for food. While I was waiting for him to come meet me at the station, I went to Uniqlo (at the station) and shopped a bit. Got some shorts and some leggings (that look like skinny jeans). Uniqlo is amazing....the only store in the world I could find shorts and "skinny jeans" that don't make me look like an amputated elephant. ^^v

Met up with Edwin, and we went to a ramen place somewhat near the station for an early dinner. I went for soba, since I thought it might be a little healthier, but what I ordered was the only soba they had on the menu, "abura soba".

I realized when the food got here that abura soba means "oil soba". It's just soba noodles sitting in like sesame oil or something. lol! I mean don't get me wrong, it was freaking delicious but it was probably the only thing on the menu that was more unhealthy than ramen. XD

By the time we finished eating, it was time to meet up with Meg. I found her with a worried expression on her face near the station. It's comforting, really. My hair, in the hands of a worried butcher. <3 hehe. She said we needed to go to Ikebukuro to check some manicure-something-or-other. (I realized a few days later that manicure is their word for hair dye? Really, Japan??? -_-;;)

We got to Ikebukuro, walked a ways, Meg realized she doesn't remember exactly where the manicure thing is, and gets a bit lost. We wander around, ask for directions, then she picks up the scent and finds her way to the shop.

Just as it's closing. :p My disquiet has cemented and is now a small pebble in my stomach.

She asks the store owner if she can just peek inside, real quick, she just needs to take a look at some blue color, but they refused her. So we left the store, and both agreed that it was a little uncharitable of them to be so stingy. Then she asked if I was thirsty, said she wanted a drink, and we went to the convenient store, where we then got an ice cream for me and coffee for her. She said we could go enjoy them in a park somewhere and I was like ok....

I'm a little confused at this point wtf is going on. She'd said we were going shopping, and yet...I find myself eating vanilla ice cream in a park with no grass. Also she's like is it ok if I smoke? And I said "sure..." so she drags me over to the smokers area of the park, which is the most depressing place to be I swear. Just a bunch of silent people in suits, smoking silently next to giant garbage ashtray vents. D: Maybe people here just like to smoke solemnly, but to me it looked like they were all willing themselves to death by tobacco. *sniff*
But it's ok I have ice cream....

Meg said she has another friend that will meet us for shopping at 8. That's another half an hour from now so I thought we had half an hour to kill, and I ate my ice cream really slowly so we wouldn't just sit awkwardly. We had a very strained, illiterate conversation, and at one point she asked me "Are you able to finish that? Don't worry if you can't, we can just throw it away" and I was like "Oh it's ok I can finish it". I thought she was just being polite but....as soon as I finished it she hopped up and was like Ok let's go! I was like...but it's not 8 yet....

/)_(\

Actually she had another pit stop in mind, and I think she was waiting for me to finish before going to it. I, on the other hand, had no fucking clue what was happening, so I was trying to eat as slooooowly as possible to match what I THOUGHT was our 8 o'clock deadline. gdi.

The pit stop was for eyelashes. :) As we walked she said "can I go look at some eyelashes?" and I thought she meant eyelashes for herself. I kind of rolled my eyes in my head cuz so far today we hadn't gotten anything done, and it was kind of a waste of a day. But when we got to the Shu Uemura eyelash bar inside the Seibu department store makeup area, I realized she meant for the competition.

There were sooo many crazy eyelashes at this place. They were all really awesome but I don't know how normal people would ever have a chance to wear them, on a day to day basis.

Still they were kind of fun to look at. But Meg debated and deliberated for ages, since, not having a clear image of her desired final product, it was difficult to decide what sort of eyelashes would match. In the end she picked these black feathery eyelashes. Like, the eyelashes were actually tiny tiny down feathers. Wild. Also, 2300yen = $25 ish. Yowza.

By then she'd already contacted her friend saying she'd be like an hour late (oh, Meg). We went to Shibuya instead of Harajuku, as planned, because it was almost 9 o'clock and Shibuya stores stay open later. We ended up in the Forever21 store in Shibuya, which I'd vowed not to go into (principles!!!), but which made sense in this case cuz they have a variety of cheap but fashionable looking clothing. Walking around, though, I have to admit that they had a lot of nice stuff there, and I made a mental note to come back and check a few things out. :x SH. Don't tell the principles.

Meg's friend arrived, and I'm sorry to say that I don't remember her name. She's Meg's kouhai from the salon -- kouhai is the opposite of senpai. I shall name her Ann.

Ann seemed a lot more put together than Meg, and she was a really good sport to help out even though it didn't seem like Meg pointed her any direction at all as to what to look for. Meg cycled through all the colors ("green is really nice! but blue is really cool too... nah, I guess we should go with green. but isn't red more 'competition-like'? black might be good..."), and what we ended up taking to the fitting room was mostly black. Unfortunately they didn't like either of the two outfits they picked out. They did make me take off my tights and walk around in ridiculously tall shiny patent high heels though, and it kind of terrified me that they were like "ohhh yah her legs look way better that way!" I might be weird in that way but, baring of midriff is ok, even baring of arms I think I could live with but...bare legs? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I will fight to the death to not have to go out bare-legged. :(

Welp. The time is now 9:50. They are running back and forth across the store frantically trying to piece something together. Meg says that I won't have a chance to try it on, we'll just have to buy it, and I am even more petrified. You...want me to go out in front of hundreds of people in some outfit that I don't get to try on? I am grateful that you believe I am one of those people that can just, wear whatever they want and it looks fine, but sadly I am NOT, and most things that I try on do not suit my body type! O_O And they definitely don't know my body type so I had 0 confidence that they would pick something appropriate.

And they didn't, because they went with a red miniskirt (mistake) and this strange black see-through backwards-vest. Like, it's a vest, but it opens in the back? And there was no mention of what I wear inside so I assumed that Meg would forget to decide that part and I would just have to go bare-chested. Good.

Then they spent the last 10 minutes running around looking for gold jewelry (mistake) while the F21 people got increasingly less and less polite about telling us that we had to finish and check out. In the end the outfit cost about $80, the shoes being the most expensive part, and I didn't get to try on any of it. Oh, but of course Meg was the one that paid for it since it's her contest....but we'd never explicitly gone over that sensitive detail so I'd kind of wondered.

Well, and that was that. I got back home at around 11pm, feeling a little like I'd wasted my day due to Meg's inefficiency and unpreparedness. Sigh. At least when I tried on the makeshift outfit, I could look at myself without cringing.

I'll be damned if I have to wear a miniskirt without tights though.