My trip to Japan - part 3 (final)

Hello guys,

Sorry I was a bit busy this week, that's why part 3 couldn't come earlier. But here it is ! :D

Well I noticed that I forgot to talk about Shinjuku a little ! My bad. I didn't do anything interesting there, just went shopping a little and went to a karaoke :D But I'll add a few pictures of Shinjuku at the end. Also, I've found there the AppBank Store, a shop with Apple accessories, the 1st floor is goodies only, and they sell nameko goodies. You might wanna know that I'm a nameko lover, and I found my paradise there. xD

The weekend before I left, I went to Asakusa. I met my friend at the Kaminari-mon (main gate), and here we go ! There were lots of little shops in the main street, mostly souvenirs and stuff like tradtional japanese sweets/food, clothes or accessories. The shrine itself is very pretty, it's all in red. There were a lot of people on that day but I didn't met a lot of foreigners ! When we entered the shrine, there was a buddhist ceremony, I don't know what it was about but the sound of the monk praying and the taiko was pretty amazing. Also I did omikuji (kind of fortune telling) and I got kichi (good fortune), yay ! The area around the shrine is also very pretty, and from Asakusa you can see the Tokyo Skytree, so that's pretty close. 

After that, we headed to Ueno (it's not too far) to the Ueno park. I was hoping to see some red leaves but nope, fail xD; The park itself is very nice, also it has inside the Ueno zoo, we didn't go there, it was late in the afternoon (and it close at something like 5pm). I took some pictures :3 But at that time of the year, night falls pretty early in Tokyo, at 4pm it was starting to get darker... Yeah, early, right ? Anyway, we found a shrine inside, but as it wasn't illuminated, it was kinda scary, but still, it was cool. After the park we headed to Ameyoko, a street in Ueno with lots of little shops, of every kind : food, clothes, shoes, fish (hum, nice smell), etc...

After that we decided to go to the Tokyo Skytree ! There is a bus shuttle that goes from Ueno to Skytree, it took about 20-30mn. We didn't go inside the tower, I bet at that time it was closed (it was something like 7:30pm), but it's also kinda expensive. But there is a big mall around it, so we went there and could take pics of the tower. It's soooooooo big (that's what she said), and very pretty at night with all the lights and colors on. Too bad it started raining... But finally it stopped soon after.

I was completely dead after that day, and I had to meet friends at Shibuya (again) to have fun all night at a nightclub, seriously I looked like a zombie when the morning came... But it was pretty fun and I made super good memories there !!

Do I really need to tell you how much I didn't want to leave ? I was pretty sad on the morning of the flight back, also it was raining... When I jumped on the Skyliner I started to realize that I'm leaving Tokyo for real... The worse was in the plane, when we started leaving the airport terminal, I could feel the tears coming into my eyes, and that feeling of a "knot" in my throat. I wanted to cry so badly but I hate crying in public so I just hid my face behind my hair while looking through the window, haha.

Although those 2 weeks were pretty short, it was definitely worth it !! This was perfect and I'm very happy to be able to go there. Tokyo is such an interesting city, and so different from our cities here in Europe. I'll be back next year, for sure. But I already miss Tokyo so bad, you don't even know how much I wanna go back there. I'll just have to wait again !

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed my little "trip report" ! :D 

My trip to Japan - part 2

Hello ! I hope you enjoyed the part 1. As promised, here is the part 2 of my trip.

Let me talk about Akihabara. At first I came here to find a denshi jisho (electronic dictionary), because Akihabara is known for their electronic shops. They are everywhere ! But sadly, I didn't find one in these... After searching in the Bic Camera and Yodobashi Camera of Shibuya, Shinjuku and Ikebukuro, I finally found the """"cheapest"""" in the Yodobashi Camera of Akihabara. The price was 30,800Y but I paid it without the taxes so I paid something like ~28,000Y. The others I found weren't under 33,000Y. Yay !
Of course, there are tons of game centers in this area, gachapons on the street, and... maid cafes. With the girls dressed as maids who invite you to go to their cafe. Nothing wrong here, it's just like those dudes on the street who invite people to go to that restaurant, it's like "advertising" (? sorry my english sucks) for their restaurants, so it's ok. On that day I was with a japanese friend and she asked me to go to a maid cafe, since she's never been there. And well, we went to that place XD
The name of the cafe is Maidreamin and at first I was expecting to see only dudes in there, but there were girls too, there was a couple, a group of friends (boys-girls), so it was ok. But there also was a group of 4 dudes who were pretty noisy (I'm sure they like to come here) and THE stereotype, aka the 40-50 year old dude, alone, who buy a lot of food and TONS of goods with the maid faces on it... He looked creepy as hell.
The food here is pretty cute ! I got an ice cream that looks like a kitty, aww~ I've put the picture down below. But the maids were also pretty cute, even if I found pretty weird to say "moe moe kyun" when they gave your orders...

I went to Harajuku and Meiji jingumae ! The 2 places are very close, you get off at the Harajuku station on the Yamanote line, you walk 5mn and you're at the shrine. The Meiji jingumae is a shrine surrounded by lots of trees and torii (big "doors", they mean that you're entering a shrine area), on that day there were a lot of people since it was for shichigosan (celebration for the kids aged 3, 5 and 7 years old), the little girls were dressed in kimono, it was so adorable ♥ And they come with the family so that's why there was more people. Also there was a traditional shinto wedding, we didn't chose a good day to visit the shrine !
As I said before Harajuku is close to this area. But as we went on a Saturday, the Takeshita street was COMPLETELY full of people... Ergh... And some shops are very small too. But it was fun somehow, with my friend we went to the Laforet (building with tons of clothes shops) and Kiddyland (toy store) and I said byebye to 8,000Y. Yep, I was crazy. At the end we went back to the Takeshita street and it was a little bit better this time. Of course I couldn't miss the famous crepes of Harajuku, and I bought one with banana-chocolate-whipped cream. It was awesome, yum ! I also ate the best takoyaki there, aw yiss.

Alright, I think I'm gonna make a 3rd and last part about Asakusa, Ueno, the Tokyo Skytree and my "trip" back to Narita airport. Enjoy the pictures below !

My trip to Japan - part 1

Heeeeeeeeello there !
I haven't been writing here for like ages, my apologies for that. I've been pretty busy-lazy-tired-meh since I've come back, but here it is, my posts about my trip to Japan !
It's gonna be long so let's cut it into few parts. :) I'll put some pictures here but for those who don't know me and who don't have access to my facebook, I've uploaded some on my Instagram. I'll put the link at the end of my posts !

So I left on the 28th, and I arrived the 29th, on my birthday (I turned 25 wooo) ! I couldn't expect better, seriously. Anyway, after I landed I managed to survive in the airport to find my way to the Skyliner, and after to find my way to the Yamanote line.
My first reaction when I jumped into these trains was "omg it's so clean hhhh", in case you didn't know the metro in Paris is pretty dirty and meh, but that's what I expected from Tokyo ! Also I was looking pretty bad after an 11 hour flight, tired, hiding my face behind my glasses, and I was half deaf lol. But yeah, I made it to Ikebukuro to find my friend who I was staying at.
We took the metro again to Kami-itabashi, and I could finally have a shower and change clothes ! After that we went to a kaitenzushi for dinner. It's pretty cheap (each plate = 100Y) and yummy ! I was full after 5 or 6 plates haha, I noticed that it's pretty easy to eat (when I say eat, I mean have a nice meal and being full) for less than 1000Y, so yeah I enjoyed. :)
I was a little bit jet lagged, but not too much... Actually I did good by leaving on the evening and landing on the afternoon, so I could sleep when I went to bed, I guess that's what helped me not being too jet lagged. Woo !

One thing that I noticed when I arrived in Tokyo : the -famous- vending machines. They're everywhere ! And when I say everywhere, it's REALLY everywhere. On the stations, on the streets, even in parks and close to shrines. I only found drinks and cigarettes machines, but I've heard on some places there are weird ones... xD
I should say that they're pretty useful since you can find one every 200m, so if you're walking and stuff and you become suddenly thirsty, you can go for a drink ! Not too expensive (between 100 and 150Y, depending on the machines and the drink you chose), and yeah it's pretty nice.

The 31st was Halloween, and we decided to go to Shibuya that day. Oh my god... The streets were FULL of people, especially at night. Young people dressed in fun costumes to have party, I was still tired and it was like eeeergghhhhhhh all the time, I didn't took any pictures of Shibuya at night, but at least it was fun even if I carried a headache with me all day. Let's say that I was happy to go to bed after that...
On that day I tried a Burger King, we were hungry and it was cheap so yeah !
I came back to Shibuya few days after and it was more quiet, phew XD

I'll end my post here and add some pictures; next time I'll talk about Akihabara, Meiji jingumae and Harajuku !