Uh-oh! HUGE post, and very much picture heavy. (If you guys know how to do a "cut" in blogspot to hide the photoflood, pray tell me. I don't suppose the LJ one works for blogspot. XD)
WHERE: Tokyo, Japan; Higashi-Nakano to be exact
WHEN: December 25th 2010 to January 8th 2011
WHO: yours truly,
Rikkis,
Milla, Vili and Toni (I think Toni has a blog but I can't remember the address to save my life.)
WHY: Because us girls had been there in 2009 and had been wanting to go back since then, and because Vili had been there the year before, and because Toni wanted to go. Duh.
WHAT THEN: Rikkis called me one day when I was at work and said, "There are a few more tickets for 25th. Want me to buy you one?" and I was like, "HECK YES." and a few minutes later she texted, "K, done. Ordered you a gluten-free meal. You owe me 595 euros and 23 cents. ♥"
I'm not going to give a detailed report, so let's hope one picture can tell you more than a thousand words!
Higashi-Nakano, some 15 minutes from Shibuya and Harajuku
This is where we lived. ♥ It was small, cramped, freezing cold and there were no lights in the shower, but I miss it already. ;___;
Crepes at Harajuku! Passing a crepes stand is always so hard to me because they smell so delicious and have just about everything I can't eat. ;___;
@ Harajuku
We had no mirror larger than a A4 paper in our room, so every morning we had to take these pictures in front of the house to see how we looked. XDD
With so many geeks traveling together, spending a lot of time at various arcade halls was inevitable! I love playing but I suck at it, so I mostly left it to my more experienced buddies, excluding a few times of playing Butterfly together with Rikkis~
While the boys and Milla played, Rikkis and I usually ended up spending our coins on the purikura booths nearby... They had an uncanny tendency to wipe out my eyebrows. And after all the effort I put into drawing them all pretty in the mornings! How unfair is that? T_T
When not playing, a sure place to find us was Shibuya! It took several tries before we actually got to see the lowest floors of Shibuya 109, because we always started at the top and were dead tired by the time we reached floors three and two. Eventually we had to start from the lowest floors to check them properly...
... And when not shopping or playing games, we were eating. We ate a lot. And then some more. Seriously. XD This is from our favorite place, Sukiya. I miss their food almost more than anything else from Tokyo...
What? I'm food-oriented. XD
The nights, of course, were reserved for karaoke! It was my first time at a proper Japanese karaoke, and I loved every moment of it. *w* Too bad they don't have places like that here in Finland...
NO CARAMELLDANSEN! Que horror!
My worst joke ever: this explains the high suicide rates in Japan. There, there, you don't have to laugh, it was pretty bad...
The reason I love purikura so much is that it totally hides all your imperfectness (as well as your brows), from pimples to dimples, which I don't have but I'm tired and lousy puns amuse me. :_D Take this place for instance: if it so happened that you had a miserable hair day when it was time for some PURIKURA, you could always wear some fish and chips!
... And end up looking like this! Seriously, the day they come up with a way to airbrush your face irl, I'm buying. Awkward curls are awkward, though; not even purikura can change that.
OH MY GAWD! Homos on the wall! And in public places, too!
Oh, Hachiko. D: When I'm dead I hope people will pose in front of my statue, too, and be touched by how faithful (or stubborn) I was.
And then I hope they'll pose some more. ♥
I'm really satisfied with my outfit for that day, btw. AND the greatest thing about it was that in the morning, when we went to Starbucks for our morning lattes, I WAS MELTING. I took off the jacket and the cardigan under it and sat there in a tank top and (the most expensive) shorts (I've ever had the heart to purchase), sipping on ice latte and with the morning sun warming my back, and for a moment I could almost imagine that it was summer. ♥ o3o
Oh, look! If it isn't my favorite subject, FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD! No, really. On the 1st of January, our guesthouse organized a party to give us a chance to try traditional Japanese food. We were a little wary about going there, but I'm glad we did - the food was delicious (though a little weird!) and since the staff spoke English very well and explained things about them, even I could try them! Apparently the holey thing in front of me is some sort of root, and you're supposed to look through the holes to see your future. I tried and saw Vili, so I suppose we won't become mortal enemies anytime soon. Yay!
We also got to meet other guests of our guesthouse, among them a Finnish guy who totally freaked us out by asking in Finnish, "Where are you guys from?" just when we were about to say something really gross or stupid in Finnish, lol XDDDDDDDD And we had just gotten used to being able to discuss anything from porn to popcorn as loud as we cared and just about anywhere we wanted! Ouch...
Prettiful lightses in Shinjuku. ♥
Don't you just LOVE them? They make me think of snow. And cake, for some reason. I could EAT them, and I don't even eat cake. ♥
The day after New Year (spent partying at Shibuya Crossing, at Club Atom, and all over Shibuya with random Spanish and Australian dudes who gave us plastic flowers, and this tiny little Japanese guy who came over, could barely stand straight for being so drunk, and did a somersault to entertain us :DDD) was spent very creatively. In case you're wondering, it's an egg. And it took a leap of faith the next day when Milla opened the fridge, and ended its days on our kitchen floor...
Another thing we did on the International Hangover Day was sing Justin Bieber. "Baby, baby, baby, OWWWWWWWW!!!" going on at the moment - they sang with such feeling that my heart pretty much melted. ;____; My ears certainly did lol XDDDDD
On the lucky bag day... shopping happened. While poor Rikkis queued for a D.I.A bag we didn't get (;_____;), Milla and I went wild in the upstairs - along with a few thousand other girls. I swear I've never seen people go so crazy over a few bargains! The shop staff was screaming into megaphones, standing, dancing and jumping on tables, music was blaring, girls were pushing and pulling and trying to get their hands on everything, boys were running after their girlfriends dragging their purchases... I hear the whole thing was a lot more civilized in 109-2, the boys' department. In 109, the lines started in floor 1 and continued up the stairs until floor 5 - and from floor seven began another line that went down on the other side of the stairs until floor three or something. I probably looked like a fish for all the incredulous gaping I did, and sounded like a psycho for the random crazy fits of giggling all this caused.
I had originally had no intention to buy anything immediately, but the mass-hysteria was creepily catching, and I left Shibuya with a Twisty bag, a Golds bag, and half of a Ma*rs bag and a JSG bag - and I returned later for 100 euros of Liz Liza Doll. On top of those, our combined purchases included the other halves of my Ma*rs and JSG, another JSG, a Glad News, a Gilfy, a Cocolulu, and an Xfrm bag. Vili's face was priceless when he saw us. XD
This is what our room looked like, post-fukubukuro. :D The shiny thing in the middle is our heater, fondly rechristened Toaster and Cow's Breath for its looks and the warmth it provided us in the cold hours of the night. This is only mine and Rikkis' side of the room. Oh, and Vili's, I guess, but it got overrun by my stuff... a lot.
On the lucky back day there were several others on the move, as we saw in Harajuku.
And from the stands in front of the Asakusa Temple I finally found what I'd been wanting to try for YEARS: candy apples! They also had strawberries, like Vili's, and even mandarins covered in hard candy. *w* It was heavenly, but by the time I finished I had candy and apple all over my face from nose to chin...
Then, of course, as devoted Digimon fans, Rikkis and I had to get to Odaiba!! The photo is taken from the monorail, Yurikamome, that took us there and back again.
Odaiba is the Las Vegas of Japan - that is, it has everything from the Statue of Liberty to Colosseum to Venus Fort, a mall modeled after an ancient Greek forum - a place where the sun never sets on the Classical era!
It also has the Rainbow Bridge, which I saw by night for the first time. The view was breathtaking and incredibly beautiful and the poor quality of my photo doesn't do any justice to it.
I have no idea what this place is, but some guard dude came and told us to not photoshoot here. D: I bet it was someone's tomb - but it looked like the kind of elevator thing that in a video game would've taken us to the next level. I was so disappointed when it didn't move.
Freaks ahoy!
Japan! The Land of Rising Sun - the promised land of single-packaging, where tea flows and rice-balls roll! As seen from the Government Building in Shinjuku.
And a random dude having lunch, as seen through the zoom of my camera. Remember, kids, to always shut the curtains. You're never safe from creeps with good cameras. And mine isn't even that good...
Then, because we all know that my trip fell 1500 euros, an ambulance ride and a night at the hospital short of perfect, here's my patient wrist-band thingy. They excluded my family name - apparently it was way too confusing to them. I wanted to keep the band, but they took it away and gave me a plastic customer card instead, listing my birth year as 01, which confused me infinitely until I consulted my Japanese teacher today and was told that they sometimes count years from the day their current emperor took the throne. Isn't that confusing?
This is how I celebrated my having avoided the grave the next day, when they let me out and my brave comrades took me back to shopping. I had gone three days without shower, thrown up half of my dinner the day before, eaten nothing since the sesame sauce that almost killed me, and worn my extensions and make up over the night, so I looked just as horrible as I felt, and resorted to applying my falsies and tons of make up in some back alley of Harajuku because I didn't feel like showing my face anywhere like that. Ironically, I've never received as many compliments from strangers as I did that day. I felt tempted to tell them I'd just been allowed out of the hospital and that I'd almost died the night before, just to see their reactions. :D
Some more lights, this time in Akihabara.
Tired travelers. ♥
The last night was spent packing and trying on our outfits for the flight. Convinced that our bags weighed tons too much, we tried to pile as much as possible on us - which, in my case, meant several tights, jeans, three pairs of socks, two tops, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a hoodie, a jacket and a coat + two belts and two scarves. At least we weren't freezing on the way back! Unfortunately, most of this layering was in vain, because all of our bags were under 20 kilos... We started screaming and dancing when we saw the numbers. XD The girl on the other side of the counter looked pretty amused.
Bang bang bang! The last night was, of course, spent at the karaoke near our place, accompanied by Maria, a friend of Vili and Toni~ We sang until we could barely even speak anymore, danced to
Caramelldancen, partied all through
Vanilla,
Telephone and
Living on a Prayer, got a little misty-eyed at
Cassis, screamed
Zombie and
It's My Life at the top of our lungs, and finished with
Cartoon Heroes, and I swear I've never loved singing so much.
There! I hope you weren't too overwhelmed by the amount of photos, my spelling and grammar mistakes, my miserable jokes, or, well, anything at all. I'm proud of you if you actually read it all, I would've just watched the pictures... :D
I ♥ you (and Engrish), and now I'm outta here and going my way because I have things to do before bedtime~
//edit:
OH! On the first few days, a girl came to talk to me in Shibuya 109, saying she recognized me from some Tsukicon photos or whatever. She or one of her friends was from Peru... I think. I'm ashamed of how little I remember, but I was so seriously stunned that someone recognized me on the other side of the world (because you know, that kind of thing just doesn't happen to me!) that I was barely even listening, so I don't even remember if she said she followed my blog or if she'd seen me somewhere else. I saw her again some other day, but didn't get the chance to talk to her again ;___; Anyways, if you happen to read this, rat yourself out, girl! I didn't even ask your name!
