Tokyo ’14, Day 9 – Shopping Day

This post has not been proofread yet, sorry for the inconvenience.
Wednesday arrived, which meant we had only two full days in Tokyo left. My mom and I really wanted to go to Disney together, so we had been keeping an eye on the weather forecast all week. It soon became clear that the Wednesday would be a gloomy, rainy day, while Thursday would be much better. That made the choice very easy of course!
So we decided to make the Wednesday our final shopping day! During our trip we either took pictures or wrote the things down we wanted to buy later, so after going through our pictures and notes, we made a bit of a ‘shopping route’. In the morning we would go to Shinjuku, Shibuya in the afternoon, early dinner and then end in Harajuku. We had also decided to try and pack our suitcases as much as we could in the evening, since we knew we would be very tired from Disney.
We got our things together and went on our way~! My mom was feeling loads better luckily, that was quite a relieve. ^^

Our outfits of the day: matching checked dresses. ^^
The bag I was carrying was a simple pink Claire’s bag, but I completely pimped it up by covering it in cute buttons. To make sure I would not lose them, I had even sewn them on! I quite liked the result. :3
Our first destination of the day was Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, which is a chain of giant bookstores, to finally buy Misako Aoki’s new book. The store wasn’t far away from our hotel, so we put up our umbrellas and after getting some money, we crossed the street and walked up the stairs in the direction of Tokyu Hands.
Despite the heavy rain, I wasn’t feeling cold at all. Somehow the rain and grey sky created a nice, different atmosphere from our previous days, as if the weather felt it was okay to be bad since this was a ‘catching up with our shopping-day’.
While we walked, we past many people with umbrellas and raincoats. A mother with her young son walked in the opposite direction and my mom and I almost squealed in cuteness: the little boy was wearing a bright yellow rain suit and a green Mike Wazowski umbrella. It was just too adorable!
We reached the Tokyu Hands building and went right, after which we arrived at Kinokuniya. We quickly discovered almost every shops and shopping mall had a special umbrella ‘stand’, where you could push your umbrella into a hole and had it wrapped into a plastic wrapper within seconds so the water wouldn’t leak onto the floors inside! There were two holes in each machine: one for normal umbrellas and one for foldable umbrellas. How smart!
We entered the Kinokuniya and the search for Misako’s book began. At first I tried to look for it myself on one of the special computers, but it didn’t understand my search request. So eventually, I walked up to the helpdesk and asked. The kind man behind the counter looked for it in the computer and called up to the right floor to get a confirmation, after which he explained to me where to go. It helped a lot, otherwise I would have been looking for quite
a while!
I walked back to my mom to tell her we’d found her, when she showed me she had found some magazines with articles about BBC’s Sherlock, my favourite tv series! Together we chose one to take with us. It was just too amazing to leave behind.

Amazing to see Sherlock-related articles in Japanese magazines!
We went up the escalators to the right floor, passing several very intriguing movie- and book posters. We arrived at what was apparently the English books floor, since we immediately walked into a poster and the book version of ‘The Fault in our Stars’. I was so excited to see this book in a Japanese store! The idea that a book I love very dearly is for sale on the other side of the world as well is just crazy! ^o^
I asked a shop lady for help and she walked me to a fashion books display, where Misako’s book was located!

Finally, Misako’s Lolita fashion book!
I went back to my mom and went to the check out. After I had paid, we went on our way to our next destination: Takashimaya Times Square, the big building next door, where the Disney Store was located.
We left Kinokuniya, walked through the rain and soon arrived at the huge Takashimaya building. We crossed the jewelry floor, where they had amazing QPot jewelry! That brand really makes the cutest (but expensive) things!
We took the elevator up to the right floor and made our way to the Disney Store, which is in the back of the building. It was clearly the children’s floor, since all the clothing stores we passed sold the cutest children’s outfits. It was strange to see an expensive label like Ralph Lauren sell colourful kid’s clothes.
We arrived at the Disney Store and browsed the goods for a bit. I found the most a-do-ra-ble tiny plushies of all kinds of Disney figures, but they were all 'cube-shaped'. They really were too sweet!
My mom and I bought two Disney tickets for the next day and then it was time to continue our shopping journey.
Our next destination was MyLord. My mom really wanted to stock up on some beautiful glass beads from the DIY shop Grain Plaire. We followed the exit signs and suddenly found ourselves outside of Takashimaya, at a roofed terrace-like place with benches! We hadn’t seen benches anywhere before, so this was quite a unique thing!
We took an escalator down and walked underneath the highway. We passed someone handing out tissues again, so we both took one. My mom was feeling lots better, but tissues always come in handy. In the distance I spotted something very familiar, but very unTokyo-like: a Parisian street sign saying ‘Rue le Dome’. Very interesting.

The rainy streets of Shinjuku.
We walked through rainy streets and reached the escalator in front of Tower Records. We decided to walk through the Lumina stores instead of through the rain, which made us discover some more adorable shops I can’t quite remember, but among them was a shop that sold candy-shaped candles (I swear, they looked so edible) and a Ladurée.
We reached MyLord and went straight for the DIY shop, when suddenly we passed the Franche Lippée. During our very first day, while we were browsing MyLord for a bit, we had discovered an amazingly beautiful turquoise dress in this shop with a Secret Garden print on it. I had completely forgotten about the dress, but the memory smacked back into my brain. My mom insisted I tried the dress on. The kind shop girls assisted me and I took off my shoes to try it on. Well it fit like a glove and I was instantly in love! My mom and the shop girls agreed, which resulted into me buying a ‘normal’ dress!
The shop girls offered me a cute extra if I bought something more (hihi ^^), which I politely declined. They wrapped the dress in an adorable bag, which they then wrapped into a very special plastic see through bag so it wouldn’t get wet. It was genius and incredibly service!
The shop girls walked us out of the store and thanked us. They were so sweet! ♥

Me with my perfectly wrapped purchase!
We walked on to Grain Plaire, where my mom started her journey to find the right strings of glass beads for her collection. I looked around the store to see if I could find the cute decoden items they had sold last time, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Eventually, I tried to ask some staff members, but it took a while until they found someone who could actually understand me. XD Unfortunately, they didn’t sell their line of decoden items anymore. What a shame, but oh well. Eventually, I decided to get some beads as well and some other adorable things I could use for decoden anyway. When both my mom and I had found what we wanted we went to pay. ^^

My mom, happy with her purchases. :3
We decided to go back to the hotel, to leave our purchases there. We briefly stopped by the Hokuo bakery to get something to eat and then walked on to the hotel. In our room, we rested for a very short while and then went on our way again~!
We went to Shinjuku station and took the metro to Shibuya. We didn’t have a particular shop we needed to visit there, but my mom really wanted to see the Spain Slope again.
We arrived in Shibuya, where we took some pictures of the huge commercial posters in the station. The pictures were just so cute and/or beautiful!
We left the station and walked up to the statue of Hachiko. It’s such a strange idea that this stature, just like the real dog used to, stands there in every kind of weather!
Of course we wanted to take pictures with Hachi again! There were a lot less people hanging around the statue this time…

Hachi and us in the rain!
We followed my map in the direction of the Spain Slope. I went to check something briefly in a bookstore and when I got outside again, my mom pointed at something. Apparently the day before, while Emilie and I had been talking to the strange man, my mom had taking pictures of herself in a reflecting ball-like art thing and now she wanted to do it again. I didn’t mind at all of course and it resulted into an interesting selfie.

Our beautiful and artsy selfie!
We walked into the direction of the Bershka, which has a very notable neon green front window and soon walked into the Spain Slope.
We passed a cute shop that we had entered during our previous trip as well that sold lots of socks and cute jewelry. Some socks or tights had a little cut out picture of a model or a shop staff member wearing a specific pair hanging in front of them, promoting that pair of socks or tights. It was quite cute!
We walked around for a while and I was tempted to buy an awesome pair of rose tights, but ended up not getting them since this kind of tights required a very short skirt and I never wear very short skirts.

They had so many adorable transparent socks! ♥
We left the shop again and walked on until we reached the cutest shop! It was called ‘Romantic Standard’ and it was very small, with small stairs and lots of clothes. I spotted adorable daisy-printed clothing, a teddy bear dress and animal bags too cute to be true! Next to the shop was a set of stairs and on the outside of the shop itself was a special little shop window displaying some super cute items!

The Romantic Standard shop.
My momand I went inside and after some looking around at all the cuteness, my mom spotted a beautiful peach coloured dress. She suggested I’d tried it on and after the wonderful experience at Franche Lippée, I asked the shop girl. The dress was indeed adorable, but unfortunately the designer did not leave a lot of room for a body with boobs I’m afraid. It was quite a shame, the dress was so cute!
We went on our way and climbed the stairs, when we suddenly got blinded by an incredibly colourful shop! It was the ACDC Rag and I couldn’t resist taking a look inside!

This shop was one big rainbow!
We decided it was time to go back, so we walked the way we came in opposite direction. Suddenly, out of the blue, I remembered the necklace my mom wanted to buy at Studio Alta in Shinjuku. When I reminded her of it, she said: ‘Oh, well, never mind. I don’t want it that much!’ But this time I was the one who insisted on a purchase. She had liked it so much during our first day, why not return for it now? My mom eventually agreed and we went back to Shibuya station.

Shibuya looks quite pretty in the rain, don’t you think?
We took the metro back to Shinjuku and took the north exit. We arrived at the square in front of Studio Alta and went inside, passing Liz Lisa. Despite not having planned it at all, I decided I wanted to try something from them after all. During our entire trip I admired various girls wearing Liz Lisa-style clothes and every time we passed a shop I went inside just to take a look. Their dresses are quite small and short, but I found a super cute pink dress with elastic and a sailor colour. It had a beautiful print: it had shells, and mermaids, and roses!
I had to wait for a while until the fitting room was free and then I went inside. Unfortunately, the dress wasn’t right for me. It was super cute, but I just didn’t feel comfortable in it. Oh well, at least I tried. Someday I will have my Liz Lisa dress! *o*
My mom and I took the escalators upstairs and soon found the shop. We went to check the jewelry racks, but the sparkly necklace was gone! Luckily, one of the mannequins was wearing it together with another pearl necklace. I asked the nice shop lady if we could see it, but when she took the necklace off the doll it turned out that the two necklaces were actually one long necklace! For a moment my mom hesitated, because she thought it was a bit too long, but I explained to her that it was actually perfect for her! You can make it as short or as long as you want! My mom finally agreed with me and bought it, thankfully. ♥

My mom with her giant purchase, haha! XD
We decided to take our purchases up to our room again and leave them there. While we were walking, we were discussing about what to do for dinner. Suddenly, when we were very close to our hotel, we looked into a small restaurant and my mom and I almost squealed at the same time. It turned out to be a kaiten-zushi restaurant, or ‘conveyor belt sushi’! I had been wanting to go to a place like this for years and now there turned out to be one 2 minutes from our hotel! The night before my dad had offered us to go out for a sushi dinner on his costs in the restaurant I had been with him during our first trip, so we kept this little restaurant in mind as our second option.
We took our stuff to our room and then went to look for the sushi restaurant, but after checking all the restaurant floors in MyLord and the Lumines, we just couldn’t find it! I was convinced the restaurant was easy to find back then, so the only solution to our problem was that the restaurant was gone! =(
Eventually, my mom and I decided to give up the search and go to the small kaiten-zushi place, which made us equally excited anyway. :3 We went back to the restaurant, went inside and sat down on the chairs the waitress pointed us to. And then the adventure began…

It was sooo cool to see the sushi just passing on the belt!
I had always wanted to try a restaurant like this!
We had absolutely no idea how the system worked. We understood that we could take sushi that passed us by off the belt, but how much did everything cost? We didn’t want to accidentally end up with a huge bill. And did we have to ask for certain sushi we wanted? The waitress wasn’t exactly a big help, because she spoke no English at all. The menu she had given us didn’t clarify much either. We tried to match the pictures to the sushi that passed by, but we weren’t very good at it. We had absolutely no idea what to do! This was a whole new experience for us and we had dived in without knowing how to swim properly yet! XD
Finally, after some time, I figured it out! Every plate that passed us had its own colour and close to us, there was a little paper showing how much every ‘plate’ cost. For example: red with flowers was 125 yen, yellow was 160 yen and cappuccino-coloured was 500 yen. So you could make it as expensive as you wanted! It was so clear, but we just needed to time to figure it out! I was quite proud of myself for finally understanding though. :3 Finally, we could begin enjoying our meal!

Finally, the first sushi of our trip!
Not only was the whole experience unique and lots of fun, the sushi was absolutely delicious as well! My mom and I enjoyed the food so much! We ate quite a lot, we were so hungry! But I was quite glad I found out on time that the tabs on our table gave hot water instead of cold. Apparently it was for green tea or something! >_<
When we were done, we went to pay and whoa, what a surprise! Even though we had eaten quite a lot, we paid under 2000 yen for everything! The food was so good and so cheap! We were so happy! ♥ We left the restaurant and went on our way to Harajuku, for the very
last time.
We arrived at the station just a little before 5:30 pm. We walked up to the Takeshita dori entrance, walked underneath it and went right, into the Le Ponte area. My mom wanted to have one last look around there, since there were so many awesome shops. She had also seen a really cool shirt saying with the ‘Toy Story’ logo, only then it said ‘Tokyo Story’. She wanted to buy it as a gift for my dad. ^^
After some browsing, I bought two buttons. One with ‘I ♥ Harajuku’ (in Kanji) and one with ‘I ♥ Japan’. My mom bought a cute, chocolate bar-shaped mirror.

We took a lot of ‘holding new purchases in bag’-pictures on this day. ^^
Since we were right next to the purikura hall, my mom agreed to do some purikura together, yay! We decided on the ‘My Girl II’ machine Emilie and I had liked so much. Together we decided on the wallpapers and lay outs and then we were ready to take pictures. We I had a lot of fun posing and then decorating and since it was a calm evening, we had plenty of time to do so!

Two of the pictures we took! My mom’s eyes were even larger than mine!
we left the Le Ponte area again and continued to Paris Kid’s. There, I went through the entire store to find the last things I wanted. I always get a little panicky when I realise I cannot go back somewhere, making it my last chance to buy the things I want. So I went to check all the racks extra! ^^
I found some last cute things and I bought two presents for friends.

Paris Kid’s really has too much cute stuff! *o*
We bought a drink from a vending machine and continued our way. We tried to really only enter the stores we might buy something in. The next store we passed was Daiso, where I bought three pairs of cute eyelashes. We walked on and arrived at Bodyline. I really wanted to buy a pink blouse there and another pair of shoes, so we entered the store. It didn’t take long before I decided on one with a detachable bow. I had already seen it on the site and it looked super cute in real life! For the shoes I chose a pink pair with bows on them as well. When I was staying at Emilie’s place I had tried hers on, so I already knew I would love them.
I took my choices to the check out and the shop girl went to get a wrapped blouse from behind. She showed me the shoes’ sizes and after I confirmed, she put everything together in a bag. ^^ I thanked her and then my mom and I left Bodyline again.
We continued our way (sorry, we pretty much just walked from store to store ^^’) and I asked my mom whether she was okay with visiting Closet Child one more time. If she had said no I would have been okay with it, but she said yes! So we climbed the stairs and entered the Closet Child store.
I looked at the dresses, but nothing caught my attention. Instead, my mom and I browsed the cutsews and cardigans and after comparing some things, I ended up with two adorable Angelic Pretty cutsews around the same price. One was pink with white dots, the other completely pink with an elegant lace part. After some pondering, I went with the more ‘classic’ one. ^^
We followed Takeshita dori and ended up at the small store where my mom had seen super cute sailor-like dresses earlier during our trip. They were cute and t-shirt like and came in three colours: white, navy and turquoise. My mom and I decided to both get one. After my mom tried one of the dresses on to see whether it fit, I bought the turquoise one and she the navy one. Matching dresses, woohoo! =D
We walked to the end of Takeshita dori, went right and walked up to Laforet, where we immediately headed for Swimmer. Swimmer really is our guilty pleasure, hihi. ^^
We looked around a bit and at first I chose around seven things to buy, but then I remembered I wanted to buy the amazing heart-shaped ‘Toutes les filles sont des princesses’ bag, so I put some things back. After my mom was done, I went to pay and the two shop girls took my things from my hands. The shop girl who wasn’t scanning my items, suddenly pulled out a second bag out of the one I had picked. It turned out to be the actual bag was put into the show model! I was so surprised, haha! XD
I can’t remember whether we explored the rest of the floor, but our shopping was officially done. We had visited every shop we had planned on, so it was time to head back for the hotel and start packing!
We climbed the stairs and then left Laforet.

My mom holding all of our shopping bags. ^^
We started walking to the station and it really dawned on me that this was our last time in Harajuku. I had been in Japan three times now and although during my first trip I had somehow favoured Shinjuku, Harajuku really became one of my most favourite places in the world. I was very happy to be there for the last time in what will probably be a long while with my mom. To be able to share such an amazing shopping experience with her was absolutely fantastic! ♥

After shopping selfie~!
We entered the station and didn’t have to wait long until the metro came. We soon arrived in Shinjuku and returned to the hotel. When we passed a row of vending machines, we decided to spend some of our change on drinks. I really wanted a peach drink, but with my tired head I managed to mess up the numbers and got a coffee! We really had the worst luck with all of our coffee mistakes! Luckily my mom didn’t mind and we got a peach drink after all!
We entered the hotel and went up to our room. There, our packing adventure began.
We put everything we needed to take back with us on the beds and then we just started helping each other out. I had brought some vacuum bags which helped a lot with our clothes and newly bought dresses and skirts (although I discovered I had brought two wrong bags, stupid me).

Packing is the hardest part of any holiday…
My mom and I were very happy we had decided to pack one day in advance, because it was a lot of work! Getting everything into our bags and suitcases was like one big puzzle, but somehow we managed to do it! A little before 10:30 pm we were done and went to sleep. It had been a great day, but the next day would be even greater and we needed our sleep!

Purchases of the day

Purchases of the day