Tokyo, March 19

9:13PM JST - “The districts who start with a Shi-; Shinjuku, Shin-Okubo & Shibuya”

Soo today was a full day! We have walked a lot, seen a lot and bought a lot hahaha.
As you know we went to explore quite a few places today!

We started with Shin-Okubo. Took the metro to it since it was about a 51min walk otherwise. We stepped out of the station and are immediately aware of how different each part of Tokyo can be. As Akihabara was an Anime lovers’ paradise so was Shin-Okubo a K-pop lovers’ heaven! So much stores with K-pop merchandise and albums. It was a sight to see and also a bit new. I’m not used to seeing K-pop being blatantly advertised and having so many options of stuff to choose from and buy. I think we went into like 30 different shops just so we could admire everything.
(If you’re not aware of what K-pop is, here a small explanation: K-pop is basically music out of Korea. There the concept of Girlgroups and Boygroups are very popular and maybe you’ve heard of BTS, a very worldwide successful group. You basically can buy a lot of merchandise ranging from keychains with their name or face on it to blankets etc. and of course, the most important aspect, they release albums with their music on it!) It was really fun to just walk around and do some window shopping. Shin-Okubo is like a Koreatown with also a lot of Korean food based restaurants. We didn’t go there for dinner though but we definitely want to sometime this trip.

We walked up and down the main street for quite some time and decided to grab a drink somewhere. Jo-Anne knew that there was a cute 2D themed cafe nearby and so we went there. 2D themed? What does that mean? Well the whole interior of the cafe was made to look like as if it was drawn. Everything was white with black outlines which gave you the impression it was just a picture on paper. Super fun and cute to see! They sold super delicious drinks and really big bowls of shaved ice with toppings. We both got just a drink, Jo-anne got a 2D black sugar milk tea with tapioca pearls and I got Strawberry juice. I unfortunately don’t really like the infamous Tapioca pearls which is served a lot in drinks here. They have a very chewy and a bit jelly-like texture and are absolutely not my taste hahaha. Well the strawberry juice was super delicious and refreshing too! I’ll include some photos of the interior of the 2D café!

After we had rested we went on our way again. We have spent quite some time in Shin-Okubo without really exploring the rest of Shinjuku, as Shin-Okubo is located in Shinjuku XD so yeah we’ll have to go back for Shinjuku. Well after spending more time inside K-pop stores we had to decide what we wanted to do next. We knew there was a place in Shibuya where we could eat but it wasn’t time for dinner yet, that meant either eating there and maybe just snacking for dinner or do that another time and wait for dinner. We chose the first option XD

Now the reason to choose that was because of the place we wanted to eat. It was a conveyor belt place which had an all you can eat menu. But not just any conveyor belt restaurant, it was a sweets and savory conveyor belt place!! That means that there they served a lot of small sweets instead of the usual ‘sushi’ places you see.
We went to Shibuya, as it was located there, and went to the shop! We had to buy a ticket through a vending machine and after that we could choose a free drink and were seated. We got 40 minutes to eat whatever was served on the conveyor belt. And while 40 minutes doesn’t seem very long considering that you’re eating a lot of sweet stuff you get full easily. The menu ranged fom brownies to macarons and small pieces of cake and even small pancakes. It was really delicious! In between the sweet stuff they also served savory bites so you wouldn’t get sick too easily. They had small cups with chips, salads and potato salad. The potato salad was so tasty! I couldn’t get enough of that one hahaha. At the end we were both really full and content. In total we had eaten 45 plates XD Jo-anne 23 and I 22. It was really fun to experience as you don’t really see conveyor belt places with something other than sushi being served. We got to keep the bottle we got our drink in! That was really cute~

It wasn’t super late when we stepped out of the restaurant so we decided to go to one of Shibuya’s big shopping streets; Takeshita street!
In the beginning of this day I was hesitant to buy anything because a lot of stuff wasn’t official K-pop merch and I didn’t find anything I really wanted. I also wanted to visit more stores before impulsively buying everything I see hahaha. Well upon entering Takeshita street that thought left my brain hahaha. We stumbled into a nice jewelry shop and I bought 3 more pair pf earrings XD Uhmm I counted the earrings I bought here at the hotel and I already bought about 12-13 pairs! Me having an earring addiction? What no way! Hahaha well that happened.
There were also several ‘Etude House’ stores, where I bought my eyeshadow palette from and we decided to check these out too. I found really nice and pretty matte, velvet lipsticks~ they were quite expensive but as said before ‘Etude House’ is a really good brand. I bought 2 shades; Burnt sun and Nude red. Jo-anne found a nice fixing powder and wanted to try out a really moisturizing primer so she bough that too!
After walking around again we saw a LINE friends store and they sold a LOT of BT21 merchandise. I was so hyped. BT21 are these 8 really adorable characters created by BTS and I just had to have a piece of merchandise. I was really indecisive as there was so much and I didn’t know what I should buy. In the end i bought this really cute plushie of the Character ‘RJ’, who is a white alpaca and this plushie is in its baby form so every more adorable!!
I also bought some presents for a few people at home so maybe one of you who is reading this is the lucky one who gets some Japan souvenirs XD

I can really tell that Tokyo is so much different than the previous two cities we visited. Osaka was very atmospheric, it had a lot of roofed-in shopping streets and just in general a really cozy and fun city. It was really food based though but that’s just the impression I got since I only stayed there for 3 full days and the 2 other days we had to travel.
Kyoto in some ways looked a little bit like Osaka, it also had roofed-in shopping streets and a lot of nice places nearby to eat! But it was a lot more historic and started to really look like a big city too. Though in Kyoto the railway was a lot less used and we usually had to travel by bus. All the temples and sights we got to see there was amazing!
Tokyo however really is a metropolitan city. It’s super freaking big and there are so much tall and large buildings. The ads are as expected largely portrayed on these buildings and there are lights and colors everywhere. Though I have to say even in such a futuristic and modern city there are also so many alleys who have such a different feel. You’ll be walking on a main street and turn into one side street and suddenly be met with an alley with those paper lanterns and it’s just as if you see a google picture of all those scenic alleys at nighttime when you search ‘Japan’. It’s really charming that in such a city these alleys can also exist. I could get used to this. You’ll also never know if you get hit by a delicious smell from food or a waft of air coming from the sewers or whatsoever hahahaha really sometimes there is a foul stench at certain parts of some streets. It’s just a surprise every time XD

Well it has been a long but fun day today. I’ve been taking in beautiful sights these past few weeks and I really can’t get enough of this. I do wish that one day my Family may witness these sights too. The temples, the atmospheric dining alleys, the futuristic buildings and the beautiful nature here is really something else, I would like to go here again with all of them to show this pretty country :)

Sweet dreams~

- Yaru

P.S. To my sister, Happy birthday! I know it’s tomorrow but I’ll upload tomorrow’s log way too late and by then I’ll have already congratulated you once again XD