Yesterday: Harajuku-->Today: Kichijoji

I've already added most of these to facebook, but I thought I'd upload them here too and explain a little more about them.

Saturday, me and Eilika went to Harajuku:

 We walked there from Shibuya station and there was a really pretty shrine along the way. A peice of tradition in a modern city.

 Haha I always have to take pictures of things like this. Ohno, MatsuJun, and Nino advertizing Kirin Beer.

 Another peice of traditional art.

 I don't even keep up with Johnny's anymore but this made me so excited...It was filled with posters and fans that you could buy with faces of so called "idols" aka pretty boys (or girls) who pretty much do everything (sing, dance, act, etc) and show up everywhere in ads, dramas, tv shows...The little coin machines with keychains were the most dangerous...they can suck up your money really easily especially if you don't get the guy you're looking for. Luckily I got the guy I wanted on my second try♪ But I wanted to try one more time after that so...I ended up with two I didn't want lol. Well, I gave one of those to the girl I was with to repay her since she paid for the photo booth pictures we took together.

 Why do Japanese food displays look so pretty?? They don't actually look that beautiful when you buy them lol. But they taste good!

 Tamagotchi! I just thought this tower was cute.

 This was the street we were on most of the time--Takeshita dohri.

 On our way back to Shinjuku station, we stopped by the Disney store. Why isn't any Disney store in Maryland this cute??? Everything inside was also doubled in cuteness. Disney turns into something different in Japan's hands.

 Secret photo of boys on the train haha...I just thought it was funny how they were all playing their psps in a row. They were probably middle school students. The middle one looked more like a girl than a boy.

 The keychain I got! Yabu! This made me stupidly happy...and still does when I look at it.

The photo booth pictures we took. Super cute. The booths are huge and the lights are really bright. The options move by too fast. You got to choose what eye shape etc your eyes were but it took too long for us to decide apparently (well me, since i was the only one who could read it) cuz it pretty much chose for us. I think they photoshopped our eyes cuz my eyes turned out blue...The poses were copied from a set of poses they had to chose from and then we decorated two of them and forgot about the rest...

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Today, I went with Kumiko (my friend from Cambridge) to Kichijoji:

There was an unexpected local festival being held in the streets so it was really crowded. These people in blue yukata were carrying the portable shrine. It looked really heavy. On it were banners that read "Stand strong, Japan".

 We went to lunch at a small buffet place. I couldn't finish all of this but...this was fried rice, a little fish, chicken wings, eggplant, pickled cucumber, cold rice noodles, spicy tofu, and egg soup.

 I got a picture of former prime minister Naoto Kan! Although it's the back of his head only... (He's the one in the blue yukata in the center). There were so many people it was hard to pull off anything else. Apparently he's a Kichijoji local.

 A gift from Kumiko! This store had lots of cute, tiny accessories.

 This is the mug and towel that I finally bought from the Loft department store. Necessary stuff. The mug has a map print of Jiyuugaoka. Apparently it's a really fashionable place and Kumiko says she really likes it there. It's one of the stops that I pass to go to school, so I wanna go sometime soon to visit there.

After walking for hours trying to find the perfect towel and mug, we decided to reward ourselves with something sweet. This was green tea shaved ice with anko (red bean), mochi, and soft serve ice cream on top. It was cute and delicious.

 Me and Kumiko! We took this photo at Shibuya station in front of a poster with actor Tamaki Hiroshi. In her picture, he turne up between us, but I wasn't able to do that with my camera...oh well. It was really fun hanging out with her today! Plus it was great speaking Japanese the whole time. And great to realize that I suck at speaking haha...