Sunday, August 30, 2020

Tokyo ’19, Day 3 – Harajuku Shopping and Café Ron Ron


Unfortunately, due to the trauma of 2017, I didn’t sleep well at all. Despite the prescribed sleeping- and calming pills, I couldn’t sleep anyway and I was freaking out. Finally, by repeating breathing exercises over and over again, I fell asleep somewhere around 3 am.
When the alarm clock went off, my mom and I put on some clothes and headed downstairs for breakfast. I was still quite sleepy, but excited because I love breakfast, haha! I was super happy to see the lady working there I had seen several times before, who is really nice and smiley. She is so kind and was there most days of the week! ♥
Even though I was sincerely convinced I could never have rice for breakfast, during this trip I completely came around. I had rice with nori every single morning, combined with all kinds of food and absolutely loved it! Breakfast at our hotel had the greatest variety was wonderful every day.

I never thought this could be my breakfast someday, but here we are!

Once we were done, we headed back upstairs to our room. We were both still super tired, so we decided to sleep a bit more. Honestly, that was the best decision we could make. I ended up waking up at 12:30 pm and jumping up in shock, but both my mom and I felt so much more awake and clear after that!
We got dressed, grabbed our things and headed out for our day in Harajuku.

Our outfits of the day.

My mom and I went to get money at the bank and then headed for Shinjuku station. It was a lovely, sunny day and quite warm. At Shinjuku station, we put money onto our Suica cards and took the Yamanote line to Harajuku station, a destination my mom and been look forward to visiting again for a long time.

On our way to Harajuku! ♥

We arrived in Harajuku at 1:45 pm. We took the exit near Takeshita-dori and took some time to just take pictures of the amazing gate leading to shopping heaven! Ah, we were so happy and excited to be there!

Excited for a day of shopping in Harajuku!

We entered Takeshita-dori and almost immediately went down the stairs leading to a big basement of purikura machines. Both my mom and I love doing purikura. In fact, we took some almost every day!
It was very crowded in the room, but it didn’t bother us. It was fun hearing all the machines’ sounds and the laughter of girls taking pictures. Almost immediately I spotted a machine I’d never seen before that said ‘Harajuku Puri’. It was clearly aimed at tourists especially, as it was both in Japanese and English and the pictures were all in Harajuku theme. It was basically a Harajuku weeb booth, so naturally we had to do that one! The pictures ended up so cute! ♥

The ‘Harajuku Puri’ booth was so much fun!

We wanted to take more pictures, so my mom picked another booth, which was super pastelly and called ‘Candy Studio’. The pictures turned out super cute and are some of my favourites of this trip!

I really love editing purikura pictures!

We left the purikura room and walked into the roofed side street called LePonte. It had changed quite a bit since we were there last, as some of the shops in the back had been replaced by different shops and honestly, with great result for me personally, as now there was a shop called ‘Harajuku Picnic’ filled with gacha machines! I had always wanted to go to a store lines and lines of gacha machines and now there was one right in Harajuku! I was so ridiculously happy! XD

Happy, surrounded by gacha machines!

My mom and I walked around and pointed cute machines to each other while a loud ‘Harajuku Picnic’-tune was playing on the speakers over and over. There were machines with squishy animals, glittery accessories and key chains, but also ridiculous ones with bugs and dessert shaped like the statues on Easter Island. It was absolutely amazing! I ended up getting myself a see-through milk carton key chain with glitter and small items floating in it and felt super lucky getting one of the ones I liked most!

Some of the many amazing options in the gacha shop (and me dying over them). XD

The shop next to the gacha one was… unclear what the target audience was exactly. XD They sold the most varying things, from key chains to electric mini fans and plushies, but they also had a ‘slime station’, where you could put tiny items in bulk to put in your slime, but also gachapon prizes, so that you could pick them out yourself instead of trying to get lucky. It was an interesting shop to say the least.

My mom really liked this shiba plushie. ♥

We left LePonte and crossed the street to enter Wego. Sometime ago Wego released this amazing knit vest in pastel rainbow colours and I had seen on Instagram they had re-released it! I went to ask one of the stop staff members about it while my mom looked around, specifically at the bags. The shop girl told me that if they still had it, I would find the vest at their other store called W♥C, so I decided to check it out once we got to that store. Meanwhile my mom had found a bag she really liked, so we took a picture of it so we would remember it and she could think about buying it.

The Wego shop at the entrance of Takeshita-dori is hard to miss.

My mom and I walked on and arrived at one of my favourite stores: Paris Kid’s! I have bought so many accessories from them in the past and I wasn’t planning on stopping now! Paris Kid’s, if you’re out there: make me your brand ambassador! ;0;

I absolutely love Paris Kid’s’ accessories!

I browsed all the walls diligently and ended up with a lot of really nice earrings and other accessories, mostly pink. Some of them were even on sale! You can check my purchases at the end of this post, in case you’re curious!
My mom got herself a cute Rilakkuma mirror and a keychain that spelled ‘Harajuku’ in katakana.

You might have guessed it, but I really love pink. :3

After paying we left the Paris Kid’s again and walked into some stores that caught our attention. One of them was particularly cute, filled with the most varying items, but sadly I can’t find the store’s name. They had clothing, bags, key chains, hats. They had so many things! My mom fell in love with a hedgehog-shaped pouch, which she ended up buying later in the week. I really liked all the tote bags with shiba inu prints on them, but they were a bit expensive so we ended up not buying one (even though they were really cute).

This shop really breathed the Harajuku atmosphere to me!

We walked on and arrived at the W♥C store, where they had the knitted vest I wanted on display at the edge of the store, perfectly in view! I was over the moon to find this vest!

I couldn’t believe I was holding my dream vest in my hands!

We browsed the W♥C store, which is an amazing place, but although the clothing is amazing, I was mostly eager to try on the vest and see if it fit me ok. We went upstairs to the fitting rooms and also took some pictures of the amazingly colourful store!

The dreamy W♥C store!

The vest ended up being absolutely perfect! I was so happy… ;o; We brosed a little more and then I went to pay, after which I left the store with my amazing pastel rainbow knit vest!

Posing in front of the W♥C store with my new purchase.

While we left the sore, I spotted two Lolitas! Both of them were wearing Milky Berry, one in white and one in mint. ♥
We then arrived at the small shopping centre Studio Alta. Last time, there was a Swimmer store there, which was now replaced by a brightly coloured candy store called ‘Sugar High’. The store was super cute and the shop girls wore American diner-like uniforms. Also, they were super nice!

Even just walking around this store gives you a sugar high!

It was very loud on the street level floor, but when we went up the escalator and arrived at the Disney store, it was a lot calmer. But, time for my mom to go wild! She loves Disney and the Disney stores, so she showed me many things she liked. ♥

The Harajuku Disney store.

She especially really liked the collaboration series Disney did with Sebastian Masuda, designer of the brand 6% Dokidoki. He had designed a line of very 6% Dokidoki-like prints with Toy Store items and since my mom has met him several times, she really liked the idea of buying one of the items. She especially loved the camera bag, so she kept it in mind for later.

Disney’s Toy Story x Sebastian Masuda collection.

My eye fell on some lovely Disney princess clear files, which I decided to buy
We left the Disney store and Studio Alta again and continued down Takeshita-dori. The next shop we passed was ACDC Rag, which is also a super colourful shop with the most amazing clothing! I saw many cheerful cardigans, hoodies and skirts!

Just looking at the ACDC Rag store makes me so happy!

We walked into To Alice for a bit, which had moved from a second story shop to semi-street level. The store was lovely and so were its items! We also frequently stopped inside an amazing cotton candy store, but didn’t stay there long.
As we were getting a bit hungry, I suggested to keep walking (even skipping Closet Child, gasp) and head for our lunch/dinner destination: Café RonRon. This is a café where, instead of sushi-go-round, they have sweets-go-round! I had seen many pictures and videos on Instagram and when I showed them to my mom, she said we definitely had to go there! And so we did. We left Takeshita-dori, walked past Laforet and walked into a part what I think is near Cat Street. I was afraid we’d have trouble finding the café, but my map led us straight there!

I was so excited to go to café RonRon!

The rules of the café were really simple: you buy a ticket, pick a special drink in a Café RonRon bottle and can eat all you want and have extra water, tea or coffee for 40 minutes, provided you don’t take tons of plates all at once. To buy a ticket, we had to insert money into a machine (the café staff helped us, which was really kind). I thought it was really interesting that men and women paid separate fees: 2100 yen for women, 2400 yen for men!
My mom and I both picked the same appealing dark pink drink and were seated about halfway down the ‘carousel’. The café wasn’t very big, but had a spacious and modern feel to it, which was lovely. ♥ The small strip of table in between the carousel was decorated with Halloween items. Both my mom and I were very excited!

Matching the décor like it was meant to be. :3

At first we just looked at all the snacks that passed us by, which was a lot of fun in itself! Most of the food was sweet, like cupcakes, macarons, brownies and mini crêpes, but there were also some savoury items, like potato salad that looked like ice cream and little trays of plain potato chips, which I really appreciated.

All sorts of snacks passed us by.

I was really impressed by how much some of the guests could eat! One couple left leaving two absolutely huge stacks of plates behind! No judging at all, just very impressed. ^^
Before my mom and I started eating, we took some pictures. And we were definitely not the only ones. There was a group of cute girls giggling and taking pictures together, which was super cute.

A selfie I posted on my Instagram which I still really like.

And then we started! We just tried all sorts of things, recommending our favourite foods to each other. All the food was really delicious! I didn’t like maybe one or two things, but the rest was so good! ♥ My favourites were the sanshoku dango, a pink macaron with a black cat tail accompanied by red fruits and a bowl of yellow, chewy balls which might have been some kind of mochi.
Sometimes, when you really liked a specific kind of food and you wanted to have it again, you had to wait a while for it to come by again, but honestly that was also part of the fun!

Some of my favourite snacks available in one aesthetically pleasing picture. ♥

After 40 minutes it was time to leave again, which was fine as we felt pretty full. We thanked the staff wholeheartedly, when they suddenly asked if my mom and I maybe wanted to have a picture together inside the café! That was so sweet! ;0;


With my mom in Café RonRon. ♥

We thanked the staff again and left. By now it was getting dark outside and we headed back in the direction of Takeshita-dori. We decided to visit Laforet first. The building was decorated with a poster of a… uhm… monkey-kangaroo-dragon? It sure looked interesting. XD

Laforet in the twilight.

I believe we first went to the toilet and then to Maison de Fleur, which is a new love of mine. Their bags are just so beautiful! The store was really cute too, but I didn’t see anything that particularly interested me, so I hoped we’d be able to visit one of their other stores later during the week.
We passed some really nice stores, among which one called Hei Hei. I didn’t know this brand at all back then and now I see all sorts of street snaps with girls wearing this brand! I saw a lot of stores with awesome clothes and styles again, I felt surrounded by magic!
We went on to the basement, where we visited Angelic Pretty. The store was pink and lavender as ever! ♥

Strolling through Laforet.

Although I ended up not buying anything, my mom bought a set of beautiful earrings at the shop across from Angelic Pretty, which was very nice. We looked around for a bit and then left Laforet again. We walked back to Takeshita-dori, which was now full of lights and colourful neon. It was so pretty!
We went into the Etude House, where I was once again more enchanted by the packagings rather than the products itself. Neither of us bought something, but just browsing there was very nice.

My mom in Harajuku by night.

We walked up the stairs and entered the small Sanrio store. As usual everything was way too cute, but I behaved and ended up buying a Harajuku exclusive clear file only.
We then went up another set of stairs and entered the Spinns, where my mom browsed mostly and I just followed her around.

The Spinns store is so colourful and exciting!

Next, we visited Closet Child at last! Not visiting it first during the day felt a bit weird almost, but it didn’t make it any less fun to browse. Although they had many nice dresses, none of them really drew my attention. Well, maybe the ivory version of Angelic Pretty’s Cinema Doll.

Browsing through the Angelic Pretty dresses in Closet Child.

Unfortunately, during this trip I didn’t feel comfortable enough in my skin to try, and so buy, any dresses, which means that in terms of a Lolita haul you’ll be disappointed. I did end up buying a lovely ivory Angelic Pretty hat!< br > We made our way down Takeshita-dori, walking into shops that interested us, like Bodyline, or just window shopping. We were getting quite tired by now, so we tried to prioritize a bit. We ended up back at Wego, as my mom had decided to buy the bag she had seen earlier that day. She immediately started using it the next day and kept saying how convenient it was and how happy it made her, so I am happy she bought it!

Mom posing with the bag she had just bought.

We went back into the LePonte area, where I went back to the gacha machine heaven shop and got a cute little hat for my dog. I ended up getting a white and blue panda one! I tried it on her at home and she didn’t really appreciate it, so I didn’t leave it on her for too long, but needless to say she looked utterly adorable!

You can see the panda hat I got on the cat on the right on the machine!

We briefly browsed around in the LePonte area, but then it was really time to go home, as we needed to take a bit of care of ourselves. Although we hadn’t been there for a full day as we normally would, we had still gotten quite tired from all the impressions of course.
We said goodbye to Takeshita-dori and took a few more pictures in front of the entrance.

Bye bye, Takeshita-dori~!

We took the metro back to Shinjuku and headed back to our hotel. There we changed into pyjamas, chilled and Instagrammed for a while and I took pictures of our purchases. It had been a tiring, but amazing day and there were more to come!

Purchases of the day

Purikura of the day

Thank you for reading! ~☆~

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Tokyo ’19, Day 2 – Wandering Around Shinjuku


The plane drove to the gate and people started to gather their things. As always, my mom and I took their time and as I wanted to check our chairs' surrounding really well, we were pretty much the last people to leave the plane. But finally, we set foot in Japan!

First selfie on Japanese grounds!

My mom and I started in the direction of customs. The hallways of the airport were very quiet: everyone had probably already raced on. XD But then they still have to wait in line, so what’s the difference? We took our time, which gave us the time to take good pictures of the various welcome signs we passed, including one giant and bright red Mario and Luigi one!

Mario and Luigi welcoming us into Japan.

We entered customs and stood in line for quite a while. It’s always pretty warm there and I was already feeling hot from the plane and the excitement, so I wasn’t too thrilled about that. Luckily it didn’t take super long and soon my mom and I found ourselves in the luggage hall. We headed for the belt where our suitcases would (hopefully) appear, which they not long after did. I am always very relieved to see our suitcases again.

Reunited with our suitcases.

We went through one final check and then entered Narita airport. As last time we were there we had found a very convenient, quiet ATM, we headed there again and got ourselves some money. Then we headed for the Airport Limousine desk. During our previous trips, we didn’t know it was possible to take this bus to Shinjuku actually (don’t ask me why), but now we did! So we got ourselves two tickets and went outside to wait for the bus, which arrived not long after. We handed over our suitcases and entered the bus. Sadly it was already pretty full, so my mom and I had to sit separated, but it was fine.

Ready to head for Tokyo!

Soon the bus started driving and we enjoyed the ride. I don’t know what it is, but I just love buses. I find them so relaxing!
At some point, a mother with a small child suddenly pulled a child’s seat from under one of the bus’s seats, out of nowhere it seemed! It made it easier for the mother to relax while the child had its own seat. It was brilliant!
The ride took about one and a half hours and then we arrived in Shinjuku! We got of the bus, took our suitcases back and headed for our favourite hotel. ♥
It wasn’t check in time at all yet, but we could leave our suitcases in the lobby until then. My mom and I rested for a few minutes and then went out into Shinjuku.
When we passed some vending machines, we decided to get some drinks as it was quite warm. To my great joy I spotted my favourite drink: Milk Tea by Kirin! I had longed for that drink so much! Naturally I chose that one and my mom went for something lemon-y.

I was so happy I could have Milk Tea again!

We then walked into the direction of MyLord, the big shopping centre nearby. The weather was lovely, albeit it very warm, and the sounds and smells so nostalgic, I was so happy to be back!
We walked up the stairs leading to the bridge that leads to MyLord, when suddenly I spotted a new café which name made me laugh throughout our whole trip: Boul’ange Eggslut. I don’t know, it just sounded so freaking funny to me! I thought it was one of those Japanglish things, but it turns out Eggslut is an actual American chain!? So in hindsight, it was probably two cafés, one of them being an international chain.
Still, it makes me laugh until this day. XD

Peak humor, in my opinion. XD

We then went on to MyLord. From the bridge over the road you have a really nice view over the oncoming traffic, both during the day and at night. It’s a place that holds dear memories of mine. ♥

Shopping centre MyLord and the views from the bridge.

As we know MyLord fairly well by now, we walked into an arts and crafts shop we really like, which has everything you can imagine for making jewelry. My mom loves looking at all the beads there, I looked at the resin products (which I didn’t buy).
We then just took the escalators up and walked into stores we liked, some brand names which we knew, like Axes Femme, others we didn’t. I took a picture of the Ank Rouge clothing display near the escalators, as I love their clothes so much! Their clothing was very cute again this season…

Ank Rouge outfits on display.

When we finally got tired, we left MyLord and got us some bread rolls at bakery Hokuo. My mom got a croissant-resembling pastry while I treated myself to some long-awaited Melon pan. ♥
We took our snacks to the hotel, where it was time to check in, and took everything with us upstairs to our room. For the first time our room was located at the other side of the hotel, so not facing the Shinjuku sky scrapers. We had a bit of a small room this time, but we chose that deliberately and we didn’t mind at all. ^^ However, apparently neither my mom nor I has taken any pictures of our room whatsoever though, sorry. We had our snacks, set an alarm clock and had some long-awaited sleep.
After a few hours the alarm clock went off and we headed out to have something to eat. Shinjuku by night is one of my favourite things in the world, so I was quite happy. ^^
We decided to have dinner at our favourite restaurant in MyLord: Obon de Gohan. My dad and I had our first ever meal in Japan there and we have been coming back to it ever since! It was a busy night, as we had to wait to write our name on the waiting list. I wrote our surname in katakana, which was fun, and soon we were called and were seated. We put our bags in the convenient bag basket next to the table and had a look at the menu, although we knew from experience what we wanted to order anyway: the fried chicken set!

Dinner at Obon de Gohan.

As expected, the food was delicious! Ah, it was so good… I’m getting hungry now. ;0;
On our way back to the hotel, we walked into a conbini and got some desserts. We had made it our goal to try more conbini food and there were both a FamilyMart and a 7/11 near our hotel, so that was nice. This time, I chose a matcha dessert while my mom went with a flan-like pudding. They were so good!

Desserts of the day. ^^

Thank you for reading! ~☆~

Monday, August 10, 2020

Tokyo ’19, Day 1 – Flight and Arrival


Hi everyone, today I am starting my Tokyo 2019 series! I had an amazing time and am excited to tell you all about it! I went to Japan with my mom from September 29th until October 8th. Originally, I was supposed to be studying in Japan for three months starting April 2020, so going on this trip felt a bit excessive. However, due to some problems on our previous trip and just really wanting to go with just the two of us again, I was lucky enough to fly to Japan once again with my mom before I went on my own. However, thanks to the current crisis, my study abroad was cancelled (let’s not talk about how many tears that cost me), so I’m extra grateful I got to go on this trip before everything turned around! Alright, without further ado, let’s start~!

On Sunday September 29th the day had finally come. I had been working very hard during the weeks prior in order not to get behind on school while also packing, but now I could leave all those things behind me, as we would embark on our trip to Japan!
My dad would initially drive us to Schiphol, the airport, but since traffic was pretty jammed, he drove us to the nearest station to the airport and we took the train from there. Once there, we checked in our suitcases, went through security and pretty soon found ourselves within the airport!

Mother and daughter, ready for a new adventure!

We walked around for a bit, browsing the stores and doing some people watching. I really love Schiphol airport, I could easily spend hours there. As always my mom liked sniffing some nice perfumes, while I insisted on taking a picture with Miffy.

Miffy and me. ♥

We decided to have some snacks and ended up getting drinks, pastries and a bag of potato chips at one of the nice cafés. I was feeling quite hot, so I ended up sticking my Cola down my shirt to cool off. XD The pastries were very nice and the potato chips delicious, so that was very nice. ^^

Our lunch at the airport.

We browsed some more stores, particularly the touristy ones. I love looking at souvenirs from my own country. I was especially enamoured with a shop that sold all things tulips. They had one side panel in the wall completely covered in magnets of clogs with tiny tulips. It looked just so cute! ♥

These magnets looked so cute in bulk!

My mom and I decided to head for our gate, but while walking in that direction, we came across the Rijksmuseum Schiphol, a small exhibition by the famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where real art pieces from the 17th century were displayed! Of course we wanted to have a look, so we walked in. I was especially impressed by Abraham Mignon’s ‘The Overturned Bouquet’, which depicts a beautiful flower vase accompanied by a very ugly cat. I loved the cat especially, it looked so funny and cute. XD

That cat seems to be having some issues, right?

While I was admiring the art, my mom was admiring… the gift shop. XD In her defence, they had some really nice art-themed items. She especially liked a statue of an elephant decorated in Delft blue.
Finally, we headed for our gate, passing another Miffy, but once we arrived there, it was really quiet. We sat down and waited for a bit, but there was almost no one. When I checked my app, it turned out our gate has changed! So we headed for the right one, where a lot more people were waiting and there was a plane already visible.

Mom posing in front of our plane.

We waited around for a bit until not long after it was already time to board! We had our passports checked and entered the long hallway towards the plane. This was the moment to leave my mom alone for a bit. She is actually really afraid of flying, but keeps doing it anyway! How brave is that? I am always impressed.
We entered the plane and walked to our seats, somewhere in the back of the middle. I sat down at the window and my mom in the middle, soon joined by a very nice Dutch lady. I texted my dad and friends and then turned off my phone.

A rainy Netherlands behind the window.

Before we knew it, the plane started moving! We drove to the take off strip and I looked out the window while holding my mom’s hand. Soon the plane started speeding and we took off! My mom hates this moment, but I love it! ♥
My mom soon recovered and we settled in for the 11-hour long flight. The flight was uneventful. The food was lovely as always, I watched some series and watched the Japanese movie ‘Masquerade Hotel’, which I had wanted to see for a while and which was really good and exciting!

Food and views on the plane.

I also tried to sleep. Sadly I rarely sleep on planes, plus for some reason I was really hot like, all the time. For some reason our part of the plane was quite warm. I felt quite icky at the end of the flight, oh well.
Finally, after about 11 hours, we were almost there! The windows were opened and the morning sun shone into the plane. Soon after, Japan’s coastline came into view!

Almost there!

Not long after, the wheels of our plane touched the ground. We had arrived in Japan!

Even though our flight, arrival and first day in Japan felt as one long day because of time zones, I count the flight and arrival as day 1. ^^

Thank you for reading! ~☆~