Shopping, again!

Konbachiwa, minna-san!

Another day over, another blogg-entry to write. Yay for that!

Unfortunately, there's not really anything interesting to report today, cause... we haven't really done anything utterly amazing.

We got up really early today and headed off to Harajuku and the Johnny's shop one more time. It'd be the last time to go to Harajuku as well, so... yeah. After finally finishing in the Johnny's shop, we headed out to Harajuku street to do some more shopping. Not that we found awfully much there, but Trude found a pair of shoes and I found some other small stuff. Afterwards we headed off to Shibuya and Shibuya 109 ( huge shopping mall). There we did some more shopping (I found pretty shoes!) before we headed back home for (yet another) quiet night at "home". We're really feeling the going-home blues now, so our ideas are running rather short. Thus, tomorrow will probably also be a rather eventless day, although we do plan on going out to sing karaoke again! fun!!

~Thea

Aquariums and Movies

Konbachiwa minna-san!

Yeah, well, our time in Tokyo is dangerously close to ending and we've seen pretty much of what we've wanted to see. One thing we had left to see here, though, was the Sunshine Aquarium. So, naturally, we went there today! It was really cool and they'd made parts of the aquarium more like a gallery than anything else. Beautiful arrangements with water-tanks filled with decorations and matching fish swimming around... it was really nice. We spent half the day there, and afterwards we wandered a bit around in Sunshine City, a big shopping mall in Ikebukuro. It's still sale everywhere here, so it's difficult to avoid shopping.

After this we went to the movies and saw a Japanese chick-flick named Akai Ito (Red Thread). It was really sweet and touching, and I'm a bit glad I didn't fully understand it all, cause at least I managed to not cry. (All the other girls there were sobbing quietly throughout the last half hour). But it was a really sweet movie, though.

I also think I saw another celebrity today, but it was most likely just a look-alike. It's fun though, seeing people you think you've seen in movies and stuff just walking down the street.

Tomorrow we've got no real plans but just to waltz around in Shibuya a bit more. Our ideas of what to do are slowly decreasing, as the journey home closes in.

The day where we did a whole lot we were supposed to do.

Konbachiwa minna-san!

Today we woke up and didn't really have any further plans than to finish a whole lot of earrands that had been piling up such as sending our postcards, buying new shampoo, getting new headphones and so on.

And so, our first stop of the day became Akihabara, where we once again found the gigantic shopping mall with mostly electronics. There we bought (really cool) new headphones and shampoo and stuff (a special brand that NEWS made commercials for. We just had to ). Other than that, we didn't really do there, but we did get to take a good look around the mall, and my god what weird things they had there! You could even get diamond-covered headphones for your specially designed iPhone!

After this we headed back home to Hatagaya and just waltzed around the streets there to see what we found. We did find quite a lot of CD's and other things too, and we did something that.... is still a secret, but everyone will see later. Hahhaha! It was all fun, though!

That's about it. Our very uneventful day finished and we think that we're off to the Sunshine Aquarium tomorrow. Yay for that!

Thank you and goodnight!

~Thea

Harajuku Shopping and My Birthday :D

Soooo...... Happy birthday to me.... :P

Today we got up early to get tickets to the Johnny's shop, we arrived there around 8'ish in the morning and got a ticket that said 10.30 (the time we had to come back to get in to the shop) which meant that we had some time to kill, before actually getting in line to get in to the shop. So we began walking around Meiji Jinju for the second time, only this time it was not that crowded as new years day.

Eventually we entered the Johnny's shop and it was small and very crowded and we got papers and pens to write down what we wanted and bring it to the cashier that would get our things, and then it was lunch time since it took some time to get in and out of that shop.

Then we went to a shopping street that was very crowded, there is a lot of people shopping in Harajuku. We found some clothes and other things that we wanted and we spent hours just walking down that one street because there where so many shops to go in to. We met a really nice shop attendant, that we talked to when Thea was buying some shoes, we also thought her some words in Norwegian and that was fun.

When we had finnished our shopping we went back to Shinjuku to get some food. We found a place to eat and ended up sitting next to an old man that was very interessted in what country we were from and what we had done in Japan and so on, the conversation was partially in japanese and partially in english. It was kinda fun :p

Then we started walking around trying to find the right entrance on Shinjuku station, which led us to Krispy Kreme and donuts that we consider my birthday cake :P

~Trude

Ueno Zoo And the National Museum of Tokyo

Konbachiwa minna san!

Another day passed, which means another day less here in Tokyo.

Today we ate breakfast at a closeby cafe (they have lovely sandwhices and caffe mocchas) before we headed off for Shinjuku station. That's the closest and biggest station from where we live, and so that's where we go to take all the connecting trains. And today it bore off to Ueno and Ueno park. Ueno park is the Hyde Park of Japan, only it's bigger and there's a lot more to see there. We didn't get to see all there was, though, because we headed off to Ueno Zoo first thing.

It was really fun to go there, and it was HUGE! It took us about half the day to see everything there was and to walk around the whole place. It was much more interesting than any other zoo I've been to, because they had a lot of animals I've never really seen before such as Japanese mountain monkeys and raccoon dogs.

After a quick lunch we then headed of to one of Ueno park's many museums, the Tokyo National Museum. It was a gigantic building built in Western Style filled with many of Japans most valued treasures. We saw a lot of beautiful handcrafts and art, and it's amazing to see how skilled and advanced this old culture was. Japanese women even had cosmetic boxes in the 13th century! Fancy that!

When we had seen our fill of old artifacts we headed bacl to Shinjuku and walked around there a bit before returning to our hotel. We'll have to get up early tomorrow, cause we're going to a shop where there's normally a line to get in, and we're gonna go on a shopping spree in Harajuku. It's also Trude's birthday tomorrow, so... yay for that! :D

~Thea (and not so much Trude, cause she's occupied with reading a book at the moment n__~)

Tokyo Tower & Karaoke!

Konbachiwa, minna san!

It's time for another update in the blog, and yeah... today's been the seventh day here in Tokyo. Both me and Trude are finally adjusting to the way htings go here, and we're loving the place more and more. I know that I will be very sad to leave it. I'm even getting used to the cramped subways and to wait in line to get into a restaurant!

But yeah, today's another day, and we started it off by heading directly to Roppongi and Tokyo Tower. The gigantic steel construction is 13 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower and is just... amazing. We went to the first observatory deck, but not further, as it was... too crowded. We got to see a great view of the city, though, and we even saw all the way to Yokohama!

The Tokyo Tower is not only just a tower, though. It contains and aquarium, several museums, shops and restaurants. We visited a Wax museum, a museum dedicated to World records and we went to a real Japanese restaurant where they didn't even have menues. So to order what we wanted, I asked one of the men that stood infront of me in the waiting line what was on the pictures outside the restaurant, and just ordered that. It was a fun (but a bit scary) experience for me. Oh, and just before we left the Tokyo Tower arena, we saw a lady perform together with a Japanese Monkey! It was really fun, and the monkey was really sweet.

Another landmark seen, and we set off to meet a couple of Norwegian girls we've gotten to know through facebook. They were both really nice, and we headed off to a four hours long session of karaoke in Roppongi. It was really fun, and we sang a lot of well-known Japanese songs. I also realised that karaoke is a great way to learn how to read/write Japanese better!

That prettu much ends our day. After singing we returned to the hotel for a quiet evening in Hatagaya. Tomorrow we plan to go to Ueno Zoo and the National History Museum. I'm looking forward to both!

~Thea

New Years Day (in Tokyo!)

Konbachiwa, minna san!

And yeah, for those of you who wonder... that's a mesh of words up there! Konbachiwa is a merging of "Konbanwa" as in good evening, "konnichiwa" as in good day. Minna-san is a polite way of saying, well...everyone. So it means something like "Good day/evening everyone!"

So! Yes! Happy 2009 everyone! A new year with fresh beginnings! Yay!
Today we headed off to Meiji Jinju, one of the largest shinto-shrines in Tokyo. And yeah, it was huge! Even teh garden around was huge, and we spent quite some time just wandering around there, looking for the exit. We also stumbled across a Meiji Treasure Museum where we saw different artifacts used by the emperor Meiji and his wife. It was pretty interesting, especially for me, since I've read so much about what happened in Japan in the Meiji Era.

Another thing worth mentioning is that... there were a LOT of people there. And not just a little lot, a LOT A LOT! Everywhere we went, there were people heading off to the shrine to pray for good fortune. Some wore kimonos as well, and it was really fun to see all the different patterns they had on them.

Afterwards we started to just walk randomly around the area, Harajuku and Omotesando, and every now and then we stumbled upon a shop that was open! haha! We even got to do some shopping of clothes and souvenires. Yay for that! Not to mention that we've entered a sale-week here in Tokyo, so mostly everything is off 50%.

And that sort of ends our day! So much is closed that we didn't plan much anyways.
Have a still happy new year! (Pictures will come later!)

~Thea (and Trude)