Tokyo Day 4 / Shopping Day 1

20.11.2014

Finally a good skin day and goo hair day!! Plus I woke up to my normal eyes! Therefore, this warrants….selfies!!^^

Today is the first of our shopping day and our first stop is…

Shibuya!!! :D 

Finally got to take picture with the much famed Hachiko! ♡

Wish I can have an Akita too, but oh well…. People who know me knows that I love breeds that are, unfortunately, of high maintenance in Sg.  -.- 

To be honest we did not plan a detailed itinerary, all we planned were places to go in general, and most of them were left to be free and easy literally. So it was really lucky that we entered Parco and found the Mugiwara One Piece shop. I only realized after Google-ing that it was actually quite famous. 

Sorry for the spam. It's just that I feel Shanks hardly gets the attention he deserves and I really don't know when I will get to see "him" again so might as well make full use of the opportunity! :P

Pardon me, I was trying very hard to capture Shank's handsome face. 

Posing with my 2 favourites!!! 

I tried really hard to be as cool as Law.

 And I gave up. 

So much effort for special effects even when it is just a store display! 

Left after buying another figurine and we were on a mission to find….

We were damn amazed because this is the first Bape store we went to in Tokyo and it's so huge!!! Sadly, we didn't get anything because most of the stuff we wanted were sold out in our sizes. We knew we would be going to the other branches over the next few days so we decided to hold our impulse to purchase other designs.

Saw this pair of sneakers that I wanted so badly but they didn't have it in my size :'( I even asked around the other branches over the next few days but still to no avail so, if any of you know where to get this (but at a cheaper price that Sg's retail), please let me know! 

Anyway, even though we did not plan our itinerary in detail, JP did however went to research and noted down the locations and addresses of the street wear shops we wanted to visit so that is why you will soon see that we visited a lot of branches of the same stores, and also a lot of street wear shops that are not so easy to locate. 

What we did was just to find exact addresses of these places and Google Map-ed our way around. I would really recommend this "shopping itinerary" method for people who, like us, have specific tastes in apparels and accessories because shopping in Tokyo is just…..crazy. It will take you ages just to comb through a departmental store and you wouldn't want to waste your time browsing through stuff that don't suit your tastes. 

After Bape store, we didn't have any other stores in Shibuya that was on our list but it was still early so we walked around window shopping and also stopping by shops that looked interesting to us. Stopped by Burberry Black and Blue Label to get JP a present because he had been whining about it since the day before. (Ok la he didn't exactly whine but he kept on talking about getting a new wallet)

 Then, we decided to have lunch and we decided to go for ramen but just when you want to have it, the ramen stalls just disappear and we couldn't find one in the longest time. 

We wanted to find one that specializes in ramen so we could try something even more legit (if that is even possible) and it was damn hard to find. Plus, the weather was even colder today and we were freezing outside. 

Thank goodness we found this "street" ramen restaurant where the legendary ramen vending machine is. But….it was in Japanese -.- This place didn't have any service staff at all, and the kitchen staff all looked really busy so we didn't think to ask for a English menu. So, being smart, we went out of the shop to check out the food replicas in the window display, the number of the one we wanted, went in  to see the food name of the number, and went out again to double confirm that the food name looks the same. Wahahahaha. 

I think the next day JP found an app that could help you translate Jap words to English by taking pictures and it really did help us a lot in situations like this. Lol. 

After lunch, we walked to Harajuku and went to a few of the shops on our list. Unfortunately, it started raining halfway through and we were forced to put our shopping on hold because it was too cold for us to continue walking on the streets, and also very inconvenient shopping with an umbrella. Oh and speaking of umbrellas, we bought one off their convenience store when we finally got fed up with the rain and I finally had the chance to hold a pretty, transparent umbrella like those I've seen in Japanese movies!! :D

However, that was not the end of our misfortune…I had to have my period at such a timing. 

GG.com. 

Pit stop at Starbucks to fend off the cold and pain. We were sitting outside smoking when we realized at some point that the "smoke" coming out from our mouths weren't from inhaling cigarettes but from breathing!!! Which meant that it was cold to the point where "smoke" comes out from our mouths simply from exhaling air yet all we're wearing were 2 T-shirts and a thick hoodie! Now that I'm back, I really wonder how had we survived the cold...

Yes can you spot the pretty transparent umbrella I'm talking about?! Imagine seeing the entire street filled with people holding umbrellas like that!! So pretty right?!?!

Yup it's raining and we're freezing but I still insist on at least a photo. 

Found a shop that sells footwear for dance.

Really disappointed that I couldn't find anything for myself :( 

It was a pretty unlucky day and due to my cramps, we were unable to even try and endure the rain to continue shopping. I had to stop by another Starbucks after that to get a hot drink and try to make the pain go away. Tips for girls: If this happen to you, heat packs do help. 

I was so disappointed that I didn't even buy a single piece of clothing from the shops we'd been to and I was desperate to buy something because I'd ran out of clothes to wear. We went into a departmental store after it got late and most of the shops out on the streets were closed and thankfully, I managed to find something there. 

It was such a suay day and I was so uncomfortable that we decided to just go back to the hotel earlier tonight and grab dinner on the way. 

Nightly routine supper (and dinner for tonight), all from Family Mart. 

P.s The hot cocoa is to die for. 

Loots of the day:

Monkey.D.Luffy New Era Beanie from a cap shop that was in our list but I forgot the name. 

Tee from Joyrich. Luffy figurine and One Piece Gachapon from Mugiwara Shop. 

I can't believe there was a day I returned back to the hotel with so little loots :/ 

Didn't manage to take much pictures due to the rain and the cold and the inconvenience of it all. We were also very disappointed with the shopping so after today, our plans for the rest of the trip got switched up a little because we wanted to return to Harajuku to finish up our "business" at the legendary shopping heaven :P 

X

Tokyo Day 3 / Otaku Day

 19.11.2014

Puffy faces in the morning. 

Took the metro to Ikebukuro Station and "Google Maps"ed our way to find J-World. By the way, I forgot to mention that JP rented a Mobile Pocket WiFi from the airport's post office on our first day here so we had WiFi with us all the time and it made finding our way around places a lot easier. 

Saw Yoshinoya on our way and decided to give the local's version a go. 

Verdict: Yoshinoya there is way way way nicer. 

After brunch, we spent like almost an hour looking for the smoking corner when it was located pretty close to us actually. In fact, we were looking for it before brunch, and we just happened to pass by Yoshinoya while looking for it. JP's maps brought us to "smoking" restaurants and we took damn long to find a place so big -.-

Even their smoking corner looks pretty! >.<

J-World Tokyo and Namja Town are both located at Sunshine City and it's pretty easy to locate if you have Google Maps :) 

Turned into kids when we found so many One Piece Gachapon! 

The characters on the screen were talking to one another and it almost felt like they were with us in the room!!! It was so cool I couldn't help squealing and poor JP had to deal with my high-pitched voice. 

Oh gawd. Doesn't it look exactly like what you see in the anime? 

Chopper ride! 

Happygirl93 because I got to drive Thousand Sunny!!! Hehe, cheap thrills. 

This couple was queueing for some One Piece game and I was so sad we couldn't go for it because you need to know Japanese words to play. I think it's sort of like some mission kind of game, something like escape rooms where you would need to solve puzzles and stuff, so we definitely would be wasting our money playing anyway :( 

Can you hear Chopper's voice at the end? Damn cute please!! 

JP was damn clueless here because before this, he only read One Piece and didn't watch the anime at all so he didn't know who was who so I had to identify the voices to him. Lol. 

Ahhhhh Luffy!!! 

When you are standing there, it really feels like the entire crew is just there with you, just behind the doors around you and stuff like that. It feels like you are on the real Thousand Sunny with them! Gosh. I miss this place so much! 

The arcade there. 

The entrance of it all: One Piece's Entrance

The white/blue thing in the center is supposed to simulate the sea as we are on the ship. Doesn't look like much in the photos but up close, we could see a lot of effort was done although it could be improved still. hahahaha. 

Damn sad because I took a video of Sanji's & Brook's voice but it couldn't be uploaded cus file size exceeded. 

I was trying very hard not to gush while taking the videos.

*Sorry for video spam because I lazy to edit the videos so I took short videos so it's easier to upload*

Can I have the whole set please?!?!

If only I'm rich enough to buy everything...

Damn fucking cool what is this omgwtfbbq. 

Naruto! It's damn cool please! Looked like he kakebunshin all around the box. 

Played the game with their ds. Teehee. 

Naruto's Entrance. 

Again, the mission room that we can't play :( 

Hahahahaahaha. Told JP to pretend to order ramen. 

EXACT REPLICA. I was so excited just being there. 

Summoning technique to win I-forget-who-is-that! 

Haha ya okay I said the wrong technique in the video just ignore that, I was too excited.

The video is taken at such a bad angle cus it's JP -.- 

*Ahem you need to practice more, my face damn round here please. 

Hahahaha you're not supposed to hold on to the bar cus it's suppose to test your balancing skills so yes, I cheated. We both tried again without holding on to the bar and JP had like 13 bulbs lighted while I only had 11 :( 

Hahahaha I don't know why he suddenly turned the camera please don't ask me. 

I totally can't be a shinobi. Hahahaha. 

Nevermind, just let me join the Mugiwara pirates then. 

Taken from JP's phone. Okay I admit, his phone camera quite zai.

Dragon Ball Z's Entrance. 

Didn't watch Dragon Ball at all so I just went around taking photos not knowing what it was all about. Lol. 

And…while walking around…we saw Naruto!!! I immediately shouted over to JP to run over and Naruto heard me so he stopped for us to take photos! ^^ 

We saw a few foreigners taking photos with him after that while doing Ninjutsu poses and I was like…"Damn, we should have done that too!"

Walked back to try the One Piece restaurant for tea break because the food on display looked soooo cute! 

Before that I was waiting for brook to come back out from this thingy to serenade us but he never did but while we were waiting for our food, I heard his voice singing and I immediately took my camera and ran out of the restaurant. Lololol. Fangirl mode maximum. 

This actually didn't taste so bad. The yellow ball that represents the straw hat is ice cream and I can't remember but the drink is like some sort of tomato and it tasted fine. (Not if you hate tomatoes tho)

This, however, which is supposed to be Chopper's drink, tasted horrible. Hahahahaha. Taste like some kind of medicine please. 

Chicken was ok but then again, how can you go wrong with chicken. 

And then did I find out, it was supposed to be Sanji's restaurant, so it's like Sanji is the cook cooking for us!!! We can hear him talking in the kitchen while we were eating (it's the same as the voice videos from before). Heh. The whole concept is so cool. 

After tea break we went over to the souvenir area and I got a J-World Exclusive Limited Edition Metallic Chopper figurine! Hehehe. Trying to find a display case for it now. 

Left shortly after and I was on high for the rest of the day. I really wanna visit it again even though it's gonna be the same stuff because……it's the only place where I really felt like I was part of their world. It felt as if I jumped through my screen and went into the anime world, their world, and lived with them. It was that realistic. 

Sigh, miss this place so much now. 

Anyway, we walked over to Namja Town which was just a floor below, and we didn't went in because it was by Namco and we don't even know most of the characters at all. 

Decided to visit Akihabara after that because since we visited J-World, it shall be an Otaku Day. Lol. 

Akihabara is filled with buildings after buildings of anime/manga stuff so if you are an Otaku, you can come here to get your fix. However, cus I only watched mainstream animes like One Piece and Naruto, their figurines and other merchandise can be found all over Tokyo at around the same price so it doesn't matter to me. 

Super huge SEGA mall 

We went to a few of the departmental stores (when I say departmental store here, I mean an entire building), namely Seibu, Parco and Tobu which are located near Ikebukuro station, to shop before heading over to Akihabara.

Went around looking for the smoking corners in the mall and we found ourselves one at the rooftop area. It was such a picturesque moment because the sun was setting. 

Amused by the "No Smoking" sticker on a smoking can in a smoking area. 

Didn't buy anything here because the clothes were either not our style, or too ex. Lol. It's pretty interesting tho, because some higher-end stores have translators working there and it's damn cool because we finally had minimal language barrier. Hahahaha. Everything is cool to me today. 

Headed over to Akihabara after we got tired of window-shopping. Hahahaha. 

Guys and Gundams :D

Smoking in Smokers' Style. 

Guys and playing cards. Ok but I also played these when I was young so at least I wasn't bored browsing through the shops. 

Chanced upon a sushi restaurant and we decided to have dinner here because…we haven't had sushi since we touched down in Tokyo. Unbelievable right?!?!?! How can we not have sushi when in Japan?!

Prices were pretty affordable and everything is fresh. 

Just look at the difference. 

If you're reading this in the middle of the night….I'm sorry. Hahaha xP

Total billed added up to $30+ SGD per person? 

I can't remember because JP footed the bill for this one :P

Walked around some more, and we headed home exhausted from all the excitement of the day. 

Didn't get to shop much tho because by the time we reached Akihabara it was already evening time and most of the shops were gonna in close in about 2 hours time so we didn't get a chance to explore the different buildings. 

Told ourselves that we would leave this place to come back to if we had any time left because we left most of our last day free in case we wanted to go back to somewhere again.

Reached Ningyocho and our nightly routine is to go into Family Mart / 7-11 to get our drinks supply, supper fix and other miscellaneous stuff we needed, like heat packs, for the night.

Oh I also forgot to mention that JP bought a different beer to try every night.

This is his choice of beer for today. 

Supper :))

Smudge-free make-up despite not touching up for the entire day! I can never get this in Singapore. Everytime I go back home in Sg, I would have at least minimal smudges under my eyes despite touching up throughout the day as I have oily lids plus our humid weather so this is a major thing to me.  Imagine going about the entire day without having to touch up and still have your makeup in place! It's like lifting a huge burden off your shoulders and not only that, the boyfriend don't have to wait too long outside the restrooms as well. Hahahaha. 

Loots of the day:

Belt from Uniqlo, Chopper figurines, One piece Gachapons, Free drink coasters, Fancl calorie limit pills, Dollywink falsies and eyelash fix, Canmake brow mascara, Sekkisei toner for my aunt. 

J-World Exclusive Limited Edition!!

Back in Sg, I saw a few friends raving about this mochi on FB and IG and I knew I had to try:

Dope. Shit. Period. 

Had a super fun Otaku day and I had so many people comment on how cool the pictures look. I enjoyed the day so much and I think this was one of the best days we had in Tokyo. 

Gosh, I miss Tokyo so much now. 

X