Happy (concert) new years!

Konbachiwa minna san!!

And so the day (FINALLY) came; the day of the NEWS concert. Originally we had planned to do something else before, but after we scouted the area yesterday, we decided it was best to just head out there. We left Hatagaya around 10:30 and arrived about half an hour later at Tokyo Dome City. And when we came there... well, it was more than crowded, it was SWARMING with people! Small, Japanese girls everywhere, yeah...

But we didn't really have any other plans than to buy stuff and head to the concert, so we just got in line. And about 4,5 hours laters we could walk towards the entrance of Tokyo Dome with a whole bag filled with NEWS (Winter Party Diamond (what a lame name!!!)) concert goods. We found our surprisingly good seats and sat down. They where at the middle-right side of the stadium, not far from the aisle. Of course, we could have gotten better seats, but if you consider that I at least had been expecting to sit at the very far back, these seats were the best one there!

As for the concert... what can I say? It was by all means wonderful, perfect and everything else. The songs they sang were all great, most of it was done live and the dancing was... better than expected! Even the costumes weren't as ugly as usual, and I don't think there's ever been that FEW sparkly things at a Johnny's concert ever. So yeah, as I said, the songs were all great. The MC-part was also really fun, and although we didn't understand much of it we understood some. What was most fun was that one of the band-members (Yamashita) was forced to say a catch-phrase from one of his TV-shows. And seconds later they forced another member (Shige) to say a revised version of the line; "Shigeruja Chance" (not "Halelujah Chance" as the original goes). Very fun if you knew where it was all coming from.

I also do have to mention that Shige also smiled, pointed and waved at me and Trude. Yeah... awesome! n___n

After the concert we returned to the hotel to offer a rather simple welcome to the new year with cup-ramen and LIVE broadcast of a big concert. Yay for that!

Happy New Years everyone!

~Thea (and Trude)

PS; her finner du et live klipp fra NEWS' sin konsert i fjor!

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=WsCkefl8vMI

Trying to be cultural

Konbachiwa, minna san~!

Here we are, and our 4th day in Tokyo is about to disappear into nothing. This was supposed to be our cultural day, and with good spirits we headed off to the Imperial Palace. What we didn't know then was that it's about 5 km to walk around the whole thing, you can't get in anywhere except a small garden and that garden was CLOSED for the new years. Yeah! So much for us being cultural! We did get to see the outer walls and gates of the palace area, though, and took some pretty pictures.

To make up for our lack of culture we decided to go to museums instead, but... yeah, they were closed as well! Away went another couple of hours with us only finding closed doors.

Since everything seemed closed, we were at loss for what to do a little while, but... we found something to be the substitute of museums; Tokyo Dome City. This area holds the huuuuge concert/sports arena Tokyo Dome, an amusement park, a hotel about twice the size (and height) of the SAS hotel in Oslo and a big toy-store. That's where we're going on a concert tomorrow, so... we figured it would be a good idea just to look around.

It was too, as when we came there it was already packed with girls, ready for the night's concert. And we were there fairly early! Because of what we saw there, we decided to devote tomorrow to the concert and just ignore pretty much everything else. Yay for an entertaining new years eve!

That's about it for today!

~Thea (and Trude, again, as usual)

Yebisu Garden Place, Shibuya shopping & Shinjuku

Konbachiwa, minna-san!

Today, today! We started off by heading out to Ebisu, in search of what we thought was "Ebisu Garden Place". The location was used in a really good, Japanese drama, and we wanted to go to it and see. And so we did (after a loooooot of walking around, completely lost). It was just as awesome in the drama, and we sat there for a long time, staring. We even listened to a bit of the drama soundtrack, just to get in the right mood.

After this we headed off to Shibuya, also known as the shopping utopia of Tokyo. The place wasn't all that crowded when we came there, but after browsing some stores at Shibuya 109 (a huuuuge shopping mall) the streets were rather crammed when we came back out. No wonder they say that more than 3 million people walk past the Shibuya plaza every day! O___O

We did some more shopping, took pictures of the famous Hachiko statue and then headed off to Shinjuku.

At Shinjuku... we didn't really do much. Just walked aimlessly around, looking at stuff. Oh, but we did take pictures at a picturebooth! Something that's really fun to do in Japan, cause the pics get all.... funny. Haha!

And that was about most of our day, yeah!

Our plan tomorrow is to roam around the Imperial Palace, looking for the Emperor of Japan :P

~Thea (and Trude, for some reason still sitting on a chair next to me :P)

Geek-watching and Yokohama

Konbachiwa, minna san!

So it's the end of day two here in Tokyo! Today we met up with Peter again, and he made us familiar with the Japanese subway/railway system. He also showed us around Akihabara and Yokohama!

In Akihabara we walked around a lot and looked at the weird shops before we entered a huuuuge shopping mall.... the entire place devoted to electronics! It was like... eight floors of just electrical things and... woah, it was nice ;) I happened to buy a webcam there n__n

After that we found a nice ramen shop just outside and had a quick lunch.

Full of food we hit the road and just started to walk around randomly. Somehow we then ended up at a shrine, and yeah... in we went to see. It was really pretty there and it had a sort of... spiritual air of peace? Something like that. It was all pretty there, and me and Trude both bought a good luck charn for studies. Hope they work!!

After that we gave up on the city-walking and instead took the train to Yokohama. (We got off at the wrong stop at first, but... bah, who cares? You just wait 5 minutes and take the next train!). Once in Yokohama.... it was great! We saw Landmark tower and the gigantic ferries wheel there. We were even in time for the sunset, so everything was all pretty! Yay! We went around on the big wheel before we headed off to the arcade and played some games (and took pictures at photobooths! CONFUSING!) before heading off to look for a place to eat. Yeah, well, easier said than done! Every place we found was more or less full, and we ended up going back to Shinjuku station to find a place to eat. Yeah, real clever ;) After that... well, we said our goodbyes to Peter and headed back home.

Plans for tomorrow; Shopping in Shibuya & Ebisu Garden Place <33

-Thea (and Trude, sitting right next to me! baha!)

FINALLY!!

KONNBACHIWAAA MINNA SAN!

After several of hours by bus/train for both of us and a looooooong plane-trip, me and Trude finally reached (can you believe it?) TOKYO! It's still so unreal and I don't really know what to think. What I've seen so far was so... normal? It was actually really nice that it wasn't so extraordinary as I thought. But then... I've only seen Narita, the road to Shinjuku station and the sweet little neighbourhood Hatagaya.

When we reached Narita airport, me and Trude met up with a friend of mine from Facebook, Peter. He was at Narita to drop of his mother and was kind enough to invite us to lunch. It was nice to have like such a proper beginning to our stay here in Tokyo, so... yeah, it was really nice.

After lunch we agreed that he'd give us a tour around Tokyo tomorrow, so we were lucky there! And then, finally, me and Trude set out for our little sweet hostel. It's really tiny, but the people are all really sweet and the rooms are clean and nice. We even have slippers and toothbrushes! Something amazing happened on our trip to Hatagaya hostel, though! I SAW AN IDOL!! It was so weird, and so fun! I saw Koyama Keiichiro from NEWS as the bus waited for the lights to change. I have no doubt it was him, cause I looked at him for a looong time and he looked back, thought I think he thought I was weird. But I don't care! It was freaking Koyama! Not to mention that when we got the concert tickets today... we're sitting on the tenth row from the stage! IN TOKYO DOME! That's so extremely amazing it's weird. Haha.

After setteling in our room, we also went around the neighbourhood to just have a look around, and it's so sweet here. It's got this friendly, cozy feel to it. Like...not so "big town" as other things here in Tokyo. We found a small shopping street here too, and I managed to find two good jrock CDs for 500 yen, which is less than 50 norwegian kroner <3

But off I go! I'm hungry and I need to wake up trude from her beauty sleep.

Sayonara!

-Thea

Do we have control?

Not many days left now. And it’s the first time I’m writing anything here. Well we’re both looking forward to actually leaving the country, but it’s still some days left (and Christmas). I think we need to get our bags ready soon and start packing or at least try to figure out how much we can put in the bags and still have enough room in them to bring with us half of Japan home. That could get very interesting.

Do we have everything under control?? At least I hope so

We have decided some places to go, but not when.And I found some more suggestions in the newspaper the other day. We’ll probably post a list of places we plan to visit.

Trude