Day 15: Hospital

Just a little disclaimer before I start this blog post, this part of the blog will be less happy than all the rest of it. Most of this day is spend in the hospital, where my father got admitted with acute liver failure. We had to go back to Holland as soon as possible, so there will only be 1 more blog post after this one for our 2014 trip. Before everyone gets all sad, it is too bad that we had to leave early, but we had a really great time and our top priority was my fathers health, he is all healed now and we already have plans to redo our Tokyo trip this year.


We started this day in Ikubukuro, for some geek time and to shop at Closet Child.
We were quite early, so it was a bit quiet, but this allowed us to have a good look around. There are a lot of arcades, figurine shops, and maid cafes.

One of the greatest features of Japanese advertising is the free handouts, I had a small bag filled with handkerchiefs when I left Tokyo.

I love arcades, and especially ufo catchers (though I am really, really bad at them) so we entered a random arcade to play some ufo catcher games. One of the games that caught my eye was a bit different from the "normal" ufo games. There were various items on small ball strings, that you had to pull down with the machine, with every go the machine would only go down a small bit, so you had to be lucky that someone had given up early. On top of that, it was really hard to catch the string in the device. However, my mom was able to pull out a small sailor Mercury figurine, yay :D

After the tiring ordeal at the arcade we went to eat something at KFC, they offered a special menu for Halloween, wish they had that here in Holland （￣へ￣）

We walked around some more but decided to go back to the hotel due to my dad not feeling too good.
Back in the hotel we finally convinced my father to visit a hospital (we had been urging him for a few days already, as he was slowly turning yellow ⊙﹏⊙ )

I think above picture says it all? My poor dad is a guy of about 185cm long and they had him wear a pink hospital dress (ᗒᗜᗕ)՛̵̖ Actually the whole hospital had a pink theme going on, it was pretty quite cute, though I can't imagine the men enjoying it just as much ;)

We had to leave him in the hospital till tomorrow so after a long day in the hospital my mom and I went back alone late at night. Normally in Holland I wouldn't have felt safe traveling with public transport as woman, but I didn't feel unsafe here. We had take-out at a nearby McDonalds because it was already pretty late and decided to eat our burgers at the hotel.

Being emotionally exhausted we fell asleep pretty quickly.

All photos can be found at my flickr page

Day 14: Godiva Cafe

I had already claimed this day as my lolita shopping day back home, so that is what we mostly did today.
We started this day by going to Closet Child Shinjuku, only to find out it wouldn't open for another hour, oops. Thus, we decided to get some breakfast in a nearby coffee shop.

After finishing our food and drinks we tried Closet Child again to find it was now opened. Though I was really happy to finally enter a real Closet Child store, it was a little bit disappointing compared to Maiden Clothing. I didn't buy that much here, however I did buy some really pretty pieces at this Closet Child later on.

Our next stop was Harajuku! It was so magical to finally enter the street I had seen on so many pictures, I wanted to enter all the shops, but managed to contain my excitement and pick my top shops for today.

My first choice was, of course, Closet Child. While this store was way smaller than the previous location they offered way more items that were up to my ally. I think at least one hour (might have even been a few hours, sorry dad!) was spend here by my mom and me shifting through clothing racks and picking out pieces to try on. I exited the shop with 2 bags filled with lolita items.

We visited a few more shops before reaching the end of the street. A cafe I had listed in my must visit list was the Godiva cafe, as chocolate lover I couldn't miss it.

The cafe, of course, has a chocolate theme going on, with chocolate bricks on the wall and chocolate dripping from the ceiling. Downstairs you can order your drink and/or your pastry and they have a small sitting area upstairs.

We all ordered a different taste of cold chocolate drink, they were all really delicious, though a bit sweet (my mom and I didn't mind, but my dad thought it was a bit too much).

After finishing our drinks we crossed the street to the Laforet building. I wanted to visit the lolita shops and make an appointment at Maison de Julietta. This department building is a must visit for any lolita, the main brands are located at the basement of the building, including Maison de Julietta.

We managed to make an appointment at Maison de Julietta after some confusion, cause they only have one employee who speaks decent English, and it turned out to be the photographer.

I had a good look around the various lolita brands and discovered some awesome shoes at AatP, sadly they were sold out in my size in my preferred color (I ordered them online back home).

After dropping off mu purchases at the hotel we went to look for the Alice restaurant. We had to look around for a bit, but did find it eventually, only to find it was closed for some unknown reason. Thus, we moved on to the Christon restaurant, situated almost next door.

The Christon restaurant has a church theme going on, though the food is pretty standard. Even though we had a delicious meal I wouldn't really recommend this restaurant unless you have time to spare, the theme is pretty minimal, and for a themed restaurant the food was pretty disappointing (no theme going on at all).

All photos can be found at my flickr page