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.
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.
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.
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!
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! ♥
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!
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
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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!
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 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!
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!
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. ♥
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.
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
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;
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
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! ♥
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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!
Thank you for reading! ~☆~
