Weekend with the besties

I know it’s a bit late, but I’m finally blogging about last weekend and all the fun I had 🙂

Friday

So as we couldn’t meet up for Bekah’s Birthday on the weekend before last, we met up last Friday the 25th instead. Amy and Erin are two gals that also live in Tokyo and are our friends from SOAS so it was awesome to finally see them! After some critical decision making, we headed for sushi in the same place that we went with Bekah’s friends the weekend before; mostly because so far it’s the cheapest while still being amazing place to eat! Amy and Erin had bought a cake for Bekah which was really sweet (see what I did there?!). Have a photo:

Bekah with her yummy pile of cream 🙂 The text reads (essentially) Happy Birthday Bekah!

Oooh cake

After food, it was naturally time for some shopping! We went to a crazy 7 floor anime store first. For a change it wasn’t just full of men, and in fact seemed to be more aimed at girlies so it was great to have a wonder and peruse the awesome merchandise! I bought a few presents for people back home 🙂 I didn’t take any photos in my anime-overwhelmed state though, sorry! I did get some photos of a second hand media shop called “Book Off” that we went to though; it was really cool to see they had a massive stall or two of Yu-Gi-Oh cards because if you want them in England you either have to buy them brand new or go to boot sales, nowhere trades them in. The rest was games, books, DVDs, CDs, the usual but it was still fun to look at all the retro games and stuff 🙂

The cards

The more expensive cards

A super cool PSP; I mostly took this photo for Mitch 😛

We then had the need for dessert! So we went to a cool place called ‘Milky Way’ as suggested by Amy and Erin 🙂 It was a fancy looking restaurant that sells desserts according to your star sign! Erin was the only one that got her sign though, the rest of us rocked the boat a bit 😛 The whole place had neon star lights and little twinkle lights everywhere and was just generally cool-lookin’. Here are some of the things we bought!

Japan does this cool thing where they put plastic models of all the possible dishes out front so you can easily see what you’d order! Their’s was very pretty.

Erin’s crazy blue star drink!

My dessert; Japan loves to flesh such sundaes out with cornflakes for some reason, but it’s actually quite nice to have some crunch!

Arcade time! Naturally we had to go for both Purikura and the dance mats, as well as plenty of UFO machines. Bekah had said to herself she wasn’t leaving that night without the matching poster to the one she’d won before, so we searched for a machine with it in but couldn’t find one! In the end I asked a staff member who actually went and got us some especially and set it up in a machine thatwas supposed to be Pokemon stuff! It took aaaaaaages to get it though and our best ‘but we’re foreign and it’s her Birthday’ act didn’t work on the hardnut guy we asked when we couldn’t find the first one. We reckon the other arcade called Round One where they always help even if you don’t try really hard wouldn’t have let us struggle for so long! But nevermind, we got it in the end so Bekah’s walls are much happier for it 🙂 We did go to the other arcade too; I had found a Chopper cuddly toy that I really wanted so I gave it a few goes and gave up. However! When we came back down from the Purikura and dance machines I was determined to give it another go and just as I was about to put more money in, a tap on the shoulder had me turning round to find an outstreched arm offering me a bag with the exact toy in that I had wanted! This nice salary man just handed me the toy, smiled and walked off! It was so nice and I was so surprised! He didn’t even say anything, just gave it to me! I was very happy :3

Having a go on the Dance Mats

Each dance machine in this arcade had a fan! That and for 2 credits it’s about 60p! If they were that cheap and the customers that well cared for in England, the arcades would be so much less of a rip off!!

This guy was insane; not only had he been playing across two mats with the on screen arrows set to invisible (so he was dancing from memory) he then put a blindfold on and still got 300 combos without any trouble!

My prize and I after Mr. Nice had made my evening!

And here are some of the Purikura from the night with the girls 🙂 The prints we got are currently on my photo wall 🙂

The writing says ‘Ikebukuro Birthday!’

Bekah decorated this one; I wonder why I’m a devil…..

Saturday

The next day I spent with Sam; we planned to study in a cafe until we got hungry and then go shopping for things to roast; he has an oven so we thought we’d make use of it! We went on a bit of a walk to find our cafe so I took some random photos of stuff along the way:

A pretty upside daffodil tree

Japan is really into halloween, and this display is really sweet

Talking of sweet; it was a bakery! Check out these adorable cakes!

And these biscuits!

This building was really awesome, not sure you can really see the details though

I had a hotdog and a matcha latte for dinner; the hotdog had mustard and I actually liked it! First time for everything 🙂

I liked the way the shadows were forming on the work I was doing

So after we finished working we went to the supermarket and bought the world’s worth of veg to roast. We also wanted to buy stuff for a cake but we were lacking a cake tin and a recipe so we tried for cookies… that didn’t work out either so we just decided to use Sam’s pancake mix! In the end we didn’t end up eating the roasted stuff till about 11pm and the pancakes will about 2am! We also somehow managed to keep chatting till 5am…. so when we got up at 10.30 we were pretty nackered!!

Caramelised carrots; yummmmmmm 😀

Sunday

The next day we decided to meet up with Bekah again so after a pretty failed attempt at getting loads of work done before we left, we met her in Ikebukuro at about 7.30pm. We had dinner in a restaurant opposite the sushi place we seem to frequent. It was really good! I wish I’d taken a photo as it cost me about £3.60 for a refillable drink, a burger with peas and sweetcorn, hash browns, sauce and an egg! Good and cheap 🙂 We naturally then went for another Purikura; I think my wall will be full by the end of the year! We went for some yummy Baskin Robins’ ice cream and then I had to go so I didn’t miss my last train like I had on the Friday! Taxis are pretty expensive! At Shinjuku station though there was a lovely surprise waiting for me on a bench; a new Japanese friend! Basically, her hair was as awesome as the sun is hot so I asked if I could take a photo and then we just got chatting because Iasked how and her hair was white and violet! Turns out she is a hair model and studies fashion so that’s why she looks so fancy 😛 She got off the train before me but we had a good 25 minute chat and added each other on Facebook. Hopefully we can meet up soon as it was really fun to chat in natural Japanese rather than classroom Japanese or awkward-trying-to-ask-the-staff-member-for-something Japanese! Anyway, here are the Purikura photos, and a shot of Kaori’s awesome hair!

How cool is her bonnet!

The top picture is Sam’s very first Purikura!

More of the first shoot

And the second shoot with Sam and Bekah