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

Day 13: Maiko Transformation

Today was one of the days I was really looking forward to. I had made a booking back home for a Maiko transformation (a Maiko is a apprentice Geiko, which roughly translates to Geisha). I had an appointment at 10 am at studio Aya, conveniently located in Gion, so close to our hotel.
We arrived a bit early, so we were let to a waiting area where they luckily offered free wifi. At 10am a young woman asked me to follow her to the changing and washing room. There are free lockers here, so if you come alone you do not have to worry about important belongings. The assistant handed me an underdress, a pair of tabi and a pair of slippers.

Once you've put everything on you proceed to the make-up room. As the name says your make-up will be applied here, your hair will be done as well. The make-up will take a lot of time, as a lot of layers will be applied.
It all starts with putting your hair in a hair net.

Next step is putting the white face paint on, it is applied both on your neck and face. You end up looking kind of like a ghost ;)

Next up is pink eye shadow and red lip paint, already looking a bit less like a ghost.

Now you're all ready! Just kidding. They will also put a wig on your head, using bits of your own hair to make it look more natural and secure it on your head. The inside of the wig is made like some kind of metal medieval helmet, and the whole thing is heavy, really heavy. Parts of your hair get combed on the wig and are spray painted black.

More layers of underclothing are now put on and you're finished in this room.

 Now you will go upstairs to pick out which kimono you'd like to wear. They have a lot of kimonos in all kinds of colors and motives. I had already made up my mind that I'd like a dark colored kimono as this makes the light make-up pop. I chose a really pretty dark blue one.

More layers are added to make the kimono fit right, and you get to choose a matching obi.

The whole finished outfit weighs a ton, is pretty hard to move in, and you will get warm in it. I was really glad I had booked an early session, cause today would be one of the hottest days I experienced during my stay in Japan.
Last on the list is picking out hair accessories, they will make a suggestion for the season, but you are allowed to choose whichever you like. I ended up picking the season suggestion because it matched the kimono.

Now you are really finished! At studio Aya you book a package before you arrive, I had booked the Nene plan. This plan includes indoor studio photos, a 30 minute outdoor photo shoot with a professional photographer, and 30 minutes of free outdoor time to take your own photos.
You start with the indoor shoot. You can choose 2 different poses, and as usual I managed to choose the 2 most difficult ones, but I think the final photos do pay off the trouble.

After the studio photos the outdoor photos were taken. Two ladies from the studio accompanied me through the streets of Gion, one to take photos and the other to assist the photographer and to adjust make-up or clothing. Walking around Gion normally isn't that hard, except now I could hardly move my legs, was wearing really high geta, and on top of that Gion has a variety of small slopes.

However, the effort does pay off and they shot some really nice pictures. Additionally, while taking photos some Japanese people stopped to look at me and give me some happy and approving gestures. One man even pulled over his car and jumped out to take some pictures.

Once the first 30 minutes outside passed we were handed a small map with nearby sights that would be nice photo backgrounds. We decided to go to a nearby shrine, as I was moving at a snails pace, and was a bit worried of the return walk. After a few photos at the shrine grounds I had the honor of going on the photo with a complete tour bus, but I didn't mind too much as we were finished pretty quickly anyways.

As we returned a bit early at Aya we were allowed to take some more photos in their cute backyard, as far as I've understood this is where you get to take photos if you do not book the outdoor plan.

Taking everything of also took a lot of time, and soap.

After some waiting I received my photos and a CD with all photos (I ordered this separately).
After leaving Aya we went to the Teramachi market, which is a big market mainly focused on food, but there are a lot of different stores in the neighborhood.

I didn't buy anything here, but we had a delicious meal. There were a couple of Japanese men trying to have a conversation with us, though it wasn't that successful they gifted my mom and me their folding fans, I thought it was pretty cute.

In one of the streets in front of the market I bought a nice, and cheap, yukata and matching obi.
Back at the hotel we collected our suitcases and took a taxi to the station to catch a bullet train. We got reserved seats from the ticket boot and took the bullet train to Tokyo.
In Tokyo we were staying at the Tokyo Plaza hotel, which is conveniently located between two train stations on the main Tokyo tracks.
We also ate our first conveyor belt sushi here, fun, delicious and cheap!

All photos can be found at my flickr page