Tuesday 29 April 2014

23/04/2014 - Kiki & Lala Cafe

Last week I met up with Miku to go to the Kiki & Lala cafe in Shibuya Parco


The cafe/diner opened in March, and I believe it's only around for a limited time. We went on a Thursday afternoon, but we still had to wait for about 45 minutes to get in. I think it's worth going at least once, though! 

The interior was very plain apart from the entrance and the statue in the photo above. The menu had a small selection of slightly expensive -but all very cute and pertaining to the cafe's theme- drinks, main courses, and desserts. 

Honey chai latte

 Lala soda

 Kiki and Lala's sweet, fluffy pancake

It was delicious, but this definitely isn't a pancake! 

Afterwards, we took purikura, of course~

This was the "natural" (least thin) leg setting haha, what?!

Outfit rundown
Eyeball bow: Kreepsville 666
Top: Karen Miller
Heart ring garter, choker: Creepyyeha
Shoes, bow: Bodyline


Tuesday 22 April 2014

12/04/2014 - Maid cafe and Shibuya

On this day, I met up with a friend who was visiting from England. He'd already been in Tokyo for a few days and seen a lot of things, but he hadn't been to Akihabara yet, so I decided to show him around there a little before showing him some of Tokyo's nightlife, which was our main reason for meeting up. 

Outfit of the day:
Cross necklace: GLAVIL by tutuHA
Harness: GLAVIL by tutuHA
Shorts: d.i.a.
Skeleton body suit: Primark
Heart ring garter: Creepyyeha
X garter: Black Milk Tea

The obvious thing to do was to visit a maid cafe, so that's where we started. I'd only been to a maid cafe once before (Maidreamin, about 2 years ago), but I'd heard good things about @home cafe, so decided to try the one in Don Quijote. I have to say, it was much better than Maidreamin. Despite the fact that we went on a Saturday and it was fairly busy, I felt that the maids paid more attention to us than at Maidreamin (I believe I went there on a weekday, and it wasn't very busy), the food was cuter (I think taste-wise it was about the same), and the overall atmosphere was just somehow better. 

Simon chose the food set menu, which includes one main meal and one drink of your choice, and you also get to take a polaroid photo with the maid of your choice as a souvenir. I think it costed 1900 yen (about £11). I opted for the dessert set menu, which is the same thing, but with a dessert instead of a main meal, and it costs about 100 or 200 yen less. 

After ordering, our maid brought us a board with photos of all of the maids working that day so we could choose who we wanted to take our photo with, and whilst waiting for our food we were called to take our photos. They also had a selection of silly hats/ears that you could wear for the photos haha. I chose some kind of bat wings, but you can't see them very well. 
After taking the photo, your maid takes it away to decorate it for you. 

Unfortunately, you're only allowed to take photos of your food (as opposed to the actual cafe and the maids), so I don't have many photos, but this seems to be a pretty universal maid cafe rule. Anyway, here's what I had:
Yummy iced matcha latte. The maid who brought it to me asked me what I wanted her to draw on it with sauce. I couldn't think of anything, so told her to do whatever she wanted, and she drew this bunny. c: 

My parfait was also delicious. 

With every drink and food item brought to us, the maid would have us help her to "cast a spell" to make it more delicious, which involved little hand gestures and cutesy incantations. I knew to expect this, but Simon seemed rather bemused (and slightly embarrassed haha). 

After our time was up at the cafe, we went to take purikura. Some purikura shops have cosplays available for rental, but I'd never paid them much attention because I'd assumed you'd have to pay to use them, but on closer inspection I realised that it was completely free! So of course, we took advantage of it.

(I'm not sure why these are sideways, sorry!) 

After that, we headed to Shibuya, where we stopped at an izakaya for some cheap nomihoudai (all you can drink alcohol), before going to meet Tom at a rock club called shibuya THE GAME
With great music and friendly people, it had a good atmosphere and was a lot of fun.

At about 3am we decided to move on to Trump Room (another night club).
I also came here last time I went to Tokyo. While the music isn't quite to my taste, the interior is really cool, and the people are really nice so I always have fun. 

By the time Trump Room closed, the rest of our group had either gone home or just lost us, so Tom and I went to sing karaoke until the first train. Except somehow we got carried away and ended up singing for about 3 hours (rather than the hour or so needed until the trains did start), and had to actually go to a different karaoke place because the first one we were in closed haha. By the end of it I could barely even speak any more. Good times. 



Monday 21 April 2014

11/04/2014 - Purikura and Alice in Wonderland restaurant!

Hello! I'm pretty behind on posting because I've been insanely busy lately, but I'm trying to get back into it, because I miss blogging.  

A little over a week ago, I met up with my Mari after class. We wandered around Shibuya 109 for a while, then took purikura. 


The height difference makes me laugh a lot (I'm bending very awkwardly here because I'm too tall for the machines when I stand up straight)

While purikura isn't exactly known for being natural, the second machine we tried did some REALLY intense face-editing ahaha:



After purikura, we went to an Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurant. This is a chain, but the particular one we went to (in Shibuya) is called 舞踏の国のアリス (Butou no Kuni no Arisu), or Alice in Dancing Land.





All the waitresses were dressed as Alice

The menus were shaped like the White Rabbit's pocket watch

Mari's chocolate cake

My ridiculous Cheshire Cat parfait c: 

There was a pretty good selection of both desserts and main courses, as well as cocktails and other drinks. While the prices are a little higher than what you'd expect to pay elsewhere, it's still very affordable, and definitely worth it. I believe there was also a cover charge of about 500 yen (about £3) per person, but I'm afraid I don't really remember.
 Glowing cocktail

The overall atmosphere felt like a slightly more laid-back Disneyland. It was nice. 

At the end, we were both given a free packet of strawberry tea to take home. 

Tuesday 8 April 2014

05/04/2014

This weekend was the first weekend I've had in Tokyo where I've actually had time to do what I want and haven't been super jetlagged. It was really fun! 

 This was Saturday's look:
Dress: Fernopaa
Belt: GLAVIL by tutuHA
Boots: YOSUKE
Heart garter: Creepyyeha
Necklace: tutuHA

Make up

That day Chriss arrived in Japan, so I met up with her and Dayle (both of them have just started studying here, too!) in Shibuya. We hung around in Starbucks for a while, then went to take purikura.

After that, we wandered around some shops until it was time to meet Rozzi and Deej and go to an izakaya.
 It was my first time going to an izakaya, and I was impressed.
 I really liked being able to order with this touch screen thing, thus minimising the need to speak/wait around for waiters. 
We each had about 4 alcoholic drinks and shared looooads of food, and it only came to about 1,800yen (about £10) per person! You couldn't even get the drinks for that price in England! 

After the izakaya, we headed to JPU Records' event, which was held in a rock bar situated somewhere in dodgy love hotel land. 
 The bar was next to a shrine...
...which was right next to a love hotel. We kept running out to go to the conbini to buy cheap alcohol (and pizza buns!), then drank it outside whilst watching couples awkwardly leaving the hotel as if they weren't together aha

At about 2.30am, we and some others from the bar went to do karaoke. They had some kind of special offer if you did it until 5.30am (which is when the trains start running), so we did that. It was also all-you-can-drink! 
I'm not sure you can quite call it "singing", but we... made lots of noise until morning. It was a lot of fun. 

Wednesday 2 April 2014

Tokyo!

Hello, hope you're all well! 
I moved to Tokyo last week, and am pretty settled in now~ I'm sharing a student apartment in Kodaira with some other exchange students from different countries (and one Japanese) who go to the same university as me. It's about an hour by train from central Tokyo, but it's not far from Kunitachi (where the university is), which is a really nice area. 

Here are some photos from around where I live and go to university: 

 My university



That name made me laugh