I'd like to point out the Kis-My-Ft2 banner. (AKA Tokyo Part 2)

Ok, so, after walking around for a bit taking sneaky photos, we stopped at a Starbucks and grabbed a drink. The people were awesome. And my drink was good. Tall dark mocha chip frappuccino blended coffee. Basically, it was a Java Chip frappuccino, but made with dark chocolate. It was fantastic. So, we sat down for a bit, and just chilled. Angel whipped out her iTouch and we watched an episode of MLP while we cooled off. Already by this point it was getting hot. Like, mid-high 20's. At like, 8:30am. You heard me.

We could only stay at the 'Bux for so long, though. So, we decided to talk a walk through Yoyogi park. It holds the Meiji shrine and we paid it a visit. It was huge! When you walk up to the gate, you need to purify yourself. There's a small area to the side with a big fountain and some cups. You wash your hands and then take a sip, rinse your mouth and spit it out. (Not into the fountain, though.) Angel and David just washed their hands, but I totally did the sip thing. Tasted like... water. Go figure~

So, we walked about the shrine complex and we went up and prayed. To pray you're supposed to bring a token money offering. It can even be 1yen, but you should bring something. So, I think I gave 50yen. We clapped our hands twice (to alert the gods to our presence) and prayed for a few moments. Even so early in the morning, there were several people out and about praying and visiting the shrine. We saw shrine maidens too! I didn't take a photo, because I wasn't sure if I was allowed. They were all adorable, though! I didn't get many photos of Meiji Shrine, because I wasn't sure if photos were allowed or if they were frowned upon. I did get one of me, though. Ahaha.

We walked back to Harajuku at this point, since shops would be opening soon. We walked about and did some shopping. It was amazing to actually go INTO the shops that I've only ever browsed online. And it was a very good thing I was broke and without a credit card. I wanted to buy everything from Liz Lisa. I love their clothes. ;___; But, we browsed a bit and I bought a few things.

Why yes, that IS a bow shaped pillow! :D It was too cute for words. And at 399yen, it was pretty cheap. I bought a ring and the earmuffs from Closet Child. And I bought the passcase at Angelic Pretty. The MaruiOne location.

Angelic Pretty~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG. It was amazing. The shop girls were really nice at both La Foret and MaruiOne. It was awesome to shop at the physical store. We could see and feel all the clothes and yeah. We walked about both and went into like every lolita store. Ahahah. It was fantastic!

We got kinda thristy at one point, so we stopped in a cafe at Harajuku. I got an iced caramel latte, David got an orange juice and Angel got an iced cocoa and a strawberry millefeuille dessert. It tasted like a passion flakey! Yummm~ So, after walking about Harajuku and Shinjuku for most of the morning and a bit of the afternoon, we were tiiired. And we had to meet Zoe at the hotel at 3pm, so we hopped the train back to Ikebukuro and met up with her at the hotel.

By this point, I was a zombie. I was sweaty, tired and a bit cranky. I just wanted to sleep and a have a shower. I didn't care in which order. So, we checked in and Zoe was already there in the room to greet us. David and I passed right out, while Angel and Zoe went shopping for an outfit for her date. Slept the rest of the day away and I think we got McDonalds for dinner. Ahaha. I can't remember. Lol.

The next day David and I did our own thing. We decided to go to Shibuya and find the Square Enix store, because I was desperate to find that rare Namine figure. Like, true story. I predicted that when they released a figure of her, it's be her sitting in her chair with the lotus glass around her and with her drawing. And it totally is. And as she's my favourite character in Kingdom hearts, I neeeded that figure. So, we set out for the Squeenix shop.

Shibuya was packed when we left the station! Sooo many people! And they were blasting advertisements for different food companys and music groups and whatnot. It was fantastic!

I'd like to point out the Kis-My-Ft2 banner. They just made their debut and it's an awesome song.

So, being the genius's we are, we forgot to look up the proper address of the Square Enix store! Yeah. Good work team! Not so much. So, we just decided to walk around, confident that we'd eventually find it. AFter walking about for maybe 15 minutes, we came across something almost as good!

I WANT TO LIVE THERE! O______O
The inside of the store was all themed and amazing, too. It had 3 floors! And it was filled with amazingly cute Disney crap. ;________; But, by this point, I was pretty poor, so I didn't buy anything. So, I'll spare you the depressing details, but we walked around Shibuya for about 5-6 hours and found nothing! It made me quite angry. But, oh well. Live and learn.

We popped back to the hotel and Sarah met up with us. We had made plans to go to Ninja for dinner that night. But, seeing as we got there and they didn't have a table for us, we had to wait about 2 hours. Ahaha. So, we popped off to Krispy Kreme and Sarah treated us all to donuts. I hadn't had one of those in aaages and it was amazing! We all ate and laughed and then just puttered around the area a bit. There was a hostess club that caught our attention.

So, we finally got into Ninja at about 8:45 and I think we were there last table of the night. Lol.

 

 So, we entered the restaurant and the head waiter told us we had to wait for our Ninja guide. She clapped her hands and he appeared out of the wall! Like magic! WOAH! He said hello (in English!) and asked us to follow him through the maze for our Ninja training. He led us through a maze into the back of the restaurant. We got our own private room which was cool.

We ordered our drinks after that. Angel and I both got the apple juice and gingerale option. It had pieces of pear and apple skewered in it. Yummm~

After that we all decided on what to get for dinner. I settled for a Ninja salad and the shrimp tempura and autumn veggies sushi. Yummmm~~~ David got the french onion soup and the blacken sweet and sour pork. The food was really good!

Why yes! That IS gold leaf on top of my salad! Thanks for noticing! 8D And yes~ That is indeed a SALAD! It was an oversized crouton with the salad on the inside. We had to smash it to eat it. The whipped stuff on top was like a soy based dressing. It was really tasty! The sushi was huuuge, I might add! It was like 3 bites per pieces! And sooo good! This is about the point in the program where my batteries died! Ahahaha! Oops!

So, no pictures of my dessert, but I stole a picture of Angel's from Zoe's facebook. Lol. It was called "Piggy" on the dessert menu. And this is what she got.

Cute, eh? It tasted good, too! Mine was pretty. It was a scopp of pumpkin ice cream shaped like a full moon, with whisps of cloud made from whipped cream and there was a chocolate picture frame sticking out from the side. Yummmm. The dessert menu was cool, too. Apparently its a Ninja secret so they guard it carefully. So much so, that they burn it after we order.

Dinner was awesome. And a pretty good price for the service and whatnot. So, after this we had 2 days left. I'll make the final post tomorrow before work since this is already huge. Ahaha.

So, our adventure began on Thursday night. (AKA Tokyo Part 1)

Oh hey! I have a blog! My bad~ I forgot! 8D;;;

So, got back from Tokyo yesterday. And can I just say, my feet were SOOOOOOOOOOOORE! Like, crazy sore. They still hurt! But, then again, its my own fault for wearing daiso store flip flops all weekend. Oh well. Live and learn. Tokyo was a billion degrees, too! Freaking hooot!

So, our adventure began on Thursday night. We took the staff bus into Shirakawa at about 6:15pm, so we got into town at about 7:30ish. The bus didn't come until 11:55pm. Yup. So, we went for food. We ended up going to DohTonBori. Its an okonomiyaki place. Okonomiyaki is kinda like a cabbage omlette/pancake. You get to choose the toppings and you mix it up and cook it at your table. You put barbacue sauce and mayonaise on it too. And chopped up green stuff. No clue what it was. But it tasted good. We got the 3 meat kind. It was freaking delicious! I've also discovered that I loooove melon soda! David does as well. <3

So, after that we had a bunch of time still, so we went for a walk. We had left our luggage at the station in a locker, so we weren't dragging it all about Shirakawa, thank god. We ended up deciding that we wanted dessert, so we headed towards Mega Stage. I was hoping Mister Donut would be open, since it's supposed to be awesome. Sadly, as it was after 10 when we got there we were out of luck. Clooosed. But, the grocery store was open, so we went and bought ice cream. I got a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. With a chocolate cone. Yum. And only 87yen. Bargain!

We sat and ate our ice cream, and then we went and bought drinks. I would've given my kingdom for milk tea. I had bought something inside the store, and I remember it was horrible. Don't quite remember what it was, Maybe black, cold coffee? Whatever. It was bad. So, I quickly disposed of it and scanned the vending machines for a can of milk tea. And score! They had some. Yatta! We stumbled over to Sega World at this point, because we had time. Angel won me a Miss Bear plushy! She's got a matching one. I think I'll name mine Mimi. And we did purikura. David didn't wanna do it, so he just waited. Party pooper. It was the type of purikura that gave free stuff, too! So, now I have a cute little emergency kit for my purse.

 

 So, after this we went back to the station to wait. We got there at about 11, and the station closed at 11:30, so we waited inside until they kicked us out. Ahahah. We sat there and watched an episode of Azumanga Daioh on my laptop. Yup. We're awesome. We waited outside for the bus and it was pretty dark. The station lights were almost all turned off. Kinda creepy. The bus was exactly on time, though! And we were the last stop, so we just hopped right on. We had the entire back row to ourselves, which was nice. It was the worst sleep of my life, though. True story. I curled up against David and expected to pass right out. NO. That did NOT happen. The back of the bus was a horrible idea, apparently. There's a reason why no one booked those tickets. We felt ALL the potholes like woah. The bus was constantly jerking and bumping and it was horrid. I think I slept a grand total of 10 minutes? Yeah.

But, whatever. We got to Shinjuku station safe and sound. At 5am. Yep. We hopped the train to Ikebukuro and dropped out luggage off at the Sakura Hotel. We all freshened up a bit and changed, and then it was off to Harajuku. We made a pit stop for breakfast, though. We ate at the McDonalds across from the Ikebukuro station. It was funny. McD's tastes exactly the same over here. Kinda weird. XD

Took a few pictures of the station area, too. They had shrubbery owls! Eeeeeeeeeee! Sooo cute! And I saw an Arashi banner, so I clicked a picture. Ahahahaha. Only 3 of them are on that banner, but whatever. Oh, here's a photo of the station. At like 6:45am.

So, we boarded the train and hopped off to Harajuku. It was blazingly hot. Since it was still early, like 7am, we just kinda walked about. Took some pictures of Takeshita street. Since there was no one around, I took some shop photos.

Takashita street! OMGOMGOMG!

Why yes~ There WAS a Tamagotchi themed donut shop in the area!

It was like a good luck Hello Kitty. I HAD to take a photo!

A 3-story Daiso store. Eat your heart out, dad.

Cutest freaking store ever. Seriously.

Random music store. It had a poster for an Arashi concert DVD that showed Aiba in a schoolgirl cosplay. I laughed my ass off and promptly snapped a photo.

The Bodyline shop~ It was huge on the inside!

Liz Lisa! <3
My favourite store EVER! I wish the clothes weren't so expensive!

Closet Child~~ Its like a second hand lolita store. You can find rare things for stupid cheap here.

No idea what the hell this was. It just had a funny name. XD

Hangy and Angry-F! I love that group!

This was on the side of the LaForet building. There was a bunch of random English (and Engrish) sayings.

 And with that, I'm going to go to bed. Lol. Sorry~ I spent today in the shop listening to Backstreet Boys and folding boxes. I am le tired. Harajuku part 2 coming tomorrow!

When I got home tonight, though, David was waiting with cake!

So, work is going well. I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable at the desk and I'm starting to remember names of everyone. Megumi and Akiko are the sweetest people in existence. I looove them. And they're both so cute. Michie-san is sweet, too. I love the desk girls.

I've been closing with Megumi the past few nights and we've been chatting when its dead. (Read: most of the night.) She likes dramas too and she loves Tokyo Disney. We were talking about that tonight, actually. A girl and her family came in this evening for dinner at about 7ish. Angel was visiting me to keep me from getting too bored and we both nearly died. This girl, maybe 19, was dressed head to toe in Jesus Diamante. Jesus Diamante, for those who don't know, is a reeeeeeeally expensive clothing brand. It specializes in dresses, flower prints, and bows. Lets put it this way, the outfit she was wearing, probably cost about $1,000. Dress, bolero (cardigan), shoes, headbow, purse and necklace? Yeah~ Easily a grand spent there. AT LEAST. But, she looked adorable. And she was carrying a Shellie Mae bear dressed in an Alice costume with a big blue bonnet! Sooo cute! I wish I had taken a photo! Her brother was there, too. Carrying a Duffy bear dresses in a tux! Awwwwwwwwwww! Oh, Duffy and Shellie Mae are the Disney bears. Ridiculously popular over here. EVERYONE has a Duffy. Like, true story. And you can buy the bear alone or buy outfits for him and Shellie Mae (his girlfriend). The story is that when Mickey decided to go across the world on a trip, Minnie made him a stuffed bear to keep him company. So, Duffy is Mickey's teddy bear. But yeah, aside from that excitement, it was another boring day on the desk. Ahaha. At least I'm getting a lot of reading done!

When I got home tonight, though, David was waiting with cake! Yay!

Kyoko visited and brought cake for David and I! Wasn't that sweet? So, David and I split a piece and gave the other to Angel. It was yummy, too! Pound cake with lemon curd and whipped cream. It was a nice end to the evening. We're allowed to make and drink tea when we work, as long as we keep it in the back office, so I've been drinking apple black tea. It's amazing. I can't believe I ever drank other tea before it. Well, no, but it's really good! That and milk tea. They're both like my new favourite thing ever.

David went to town yesterday and bought us new pillows. Thank gawd. We were each given a pillow when we got here and they're small and lumpy. Yuck. So, he bought us each a new pillow. Mine's amazing, but I dunno. David's is pretty special, too.

Betcha can't guess which one is mine! Ahahaha.

Oh! A few days ago we had a girl named Saki-chan and her mother and sister visit. They're all so sweet! Saki-chan is about 12 I think and her English is really good! We chatted about dramas and k-pop for a little while. Her mum totally has a crush on Nishiwaki-san. It's kinda cute. Ahaha. And they brought us presents! We never get presents on the desk! They brought us each a Hello Kitty candy and they brought us a Japanese sweet. I forgot to get a picture of the Japanese sweet, though. It was like a thin, sweet cake shell with powdered white chocolate filling. It wasn't totally a powder, but it had a powdery texture. And the Hello Kitty things taste kinda caramelly.

Keira also introduced me to mochi. It's not bad~ The ones we had were really small, maybe 2 bites. And they had a caramel filling. She froze them and we ate them frozen. They were interesting. Might try mochi again when it's semi-warm.

Ahhh~ One more day then I have a day off! Yay! I'm thinking of going to town and just loitering. I want to buy a new pair of shoes for Tokyo so that I won't be wearing just my flip-flops. I'd like to invest in a nice pair of flats. But, we'll see what happens. I'm hoping that I won't drop too much money in Sega World, but we'll see! Currently there's a typhoon raging outside. It's like a really intense wind and rain storm. The wind is freaking insane! It keeps blowing through the doors in the manor house and howling like crazy! I thought it'd be fun to go for a run last night when it was just setting in. Not so much. Angel and I power walked/ran for about 15 minutes, then she went in. It was so foggy outside that I saw better without my glasses! And me being the genius I am, I thought I'd take them off and hang them on my running shirt. They fell, of course. But, they didn't break! Just a small chip on the bottom left lense. Yep. Good work, Ashley. Oh well. At least they didn't break and I got a bit of running in. Yay~

The cuteness nearly killed me.

Went to town with Angel today. We had a nice day~ Decided to dress up all cutesy and it was fun. We ran into Sarah (one of the teachers) and Yukiko outside when we left the staff house. Sarah was sweet enough to take a few photos for me.

 We had to ask Helen something before we left, so when we went into the Manor House the Japanese staff were all excited to see us all dressed up. Akiko got a picture of us and we got a picture with Helen.

 

So, after getting that all sorted, we hopped onto the bus. Its such a LOOONG ride! For serious. It's hard to stay awake! Martin was sitting in front of me, and he had brought a book. Treasure Island, for those who are curious. I'll have to start bringing my Kobo with me. God, I love that thing. It's so convenient. Ahaha.

We hopped off the bus at the station and started shuffling off to Aeon. I was really excited to go, since Angel's always going on about that place. The weather held for the walk over and people kept saying 'Kawaiii' as we walked by. (Kawaii = cute) When we got there, we made a beeline for the food area. We had skipped breaky, and we were hungry. Lol. The original plan was to get McDonalds, but the line was HUUUGE and the Happy Meal toy wasn't anything good anyway, so we went to KFC. It was pretty tasty! Whole wheat buns! It made me all happy!

After lunch, we just walked about. Went to Honey's and I've decided that I want to buy half the store. True story. So much cute everyday wear! Lovelove! They had 'Michigan University' sweaters there. Had I the yen, I would SO have bought one and sent it home. Just for giggles. It was pretty random. Lol. 

So, after that we went upstairs and I saw the AMAZINGNESS that is Paddy's. Oh mai gawd. DAT STORE! The cuteness nearly killed me. Sooo muuuuch cuuute stuffff! Hnnnng. I need the entire store in my life. True story. Like, everything. Just wrap it all up for me, plzkthx. Hand towels, purses, stationary, bento things, hair things, Disney, Sanrio, San-X, miscellaneous. OMG. So amazingly adorable. That place is gonna be murder for my paycheck. I just know it. 

After Paddy's, we went and took a look at the gachapon area. They had like a billion machines all in a row. Lots of cute things. Angel got a Mickey shaped ghost from the Disney Halloween one. I wanted to get one from the Popples machine, but alas no money. While we were perusing an older lady came up and was making a fuss over how cute we looked. It was really nice. She asked if we would mind saying hello to her daughter too, and after we said that's fine she went and got her. And then they both fussed and called us cute. They were really sweet and it was a cute moment.

We did purikura, too! New favourite thing ever! I love it! And we had a lot of fun decorating them. XD

Yeah! Baka couple! XD That's us! Goood times.We walked by a bunch of UFO catchers while looking around and Angel was nice enough to give me 100yen to try my luck at one. And I won! Yaaay! It's a cute pink and brown raccoon! I looove it!

We went and got ice cream from Baskin Robbins after. We couldn't decide on whether we wanted the Popping Soda or the Happy Doll sundae, so we got one of each and shared. XD

Adorable AND tasty! Hell yeah! Although, I don't like the jelly things they put in the bottom of the cup of soda. They look cute, but they have a really strange texture. It's like a gummy crunch. Or something. Like, it reminded me of like, biting someone. As weird as that sounds. o___o; I guess that's my inner vampire talking, but yeah. Weird texture. Won't be eating them again. The soda and ice cream were good, though~

After the ice cream portion of our date, we were pretty much done with Aeon. Lol. It was a billion degrees in there, I might add! I was melting! So, we went on our merry way and decided to walk to the opposite side of Shirakawa and go to Off House and Mega Stage. Off House is FANTASTIC! Like a cooler Value Village. Amazing. And not bad for pricing. It had figures, and toys, and yukata and cute shirts and skirts and wooo. 

We really only went to Mega Stage to buy yarn and groceries for Angel. Helen's going to be teaching a class on how to crochet and make amigurumi, so we bought some cute yarn at Daiso. Angel bought some groceries at the store and we stopped at Doutor for a snack before heading back. 

Yep~ Iced cocoa and a chicken curry sammich. We just split one sammich. Although, Angel ordered it without tomatoes. Sadface. It was still pretty tasty, though! It had a good amount of spicyness to it and there were raisins in it to balance out the taste. At first I was weirded out by seeing raisins in my sammich, but it worked. Iced cocoa, however, does NOT go well with a chicken curry sammich. I won't be repeating that. Iced cocoa isn't baaad, but it's not my favourite. Oh well. Now I know.

So, we walked back to the bus at this point. We got there quite early, so I fiddled with my camera until we left.

I slept most of the way home. Lots of waling and a long bus ride made for a tired Ashley. Angel and I went for dinner and it was like weird hamburger stuff, so we ate some salad and rice. And I discovered that they make potato salad for the staff! It tasted amazing! Not as good and mum or Terry's, but still good. We ended up going to the pub after for 'pizza'. It's like a flatbread with cheese, tomato and a little sauce. Good for a snack. And I chatted with Yuta about Kingdom Hearts. He looove its apparently! Yay! I have a buddy to geek about KH with up here! :D

After that, we went to Sarah's and planned out our trip to Tokyo. Booked our hotel and decided that we're going to Ninja on the 10th for dinner. It's a Ninja themed restaurant. Like, they dress and act like ninja's and the restaurant is decorated and arranged like a ninja village. I can't wait! *____________*