The week in Japan went by so fast! It feels like just yesterday I was flying into Japan, and yet this morning I landed back in tropical Singapore. According to my dad I took 699 photos in total, around 20 or so that were for my project. The project was the concept of 'kawaii (かわいい)' or 'cute'. Apparently in Japan it's a pretty big deal and was easy to find overall. Since I can't post all my photos on this blog, I'll try to post a few and look into photo-sharing websites. Pretty certain I already said I would do this, but never bothered. Oops.
As I'm really tired, I'm just going to talk about Tokyo for now. I'll backtrack to Kyoto when I'm slightly more awake.
After leaving Kyoto two days ago, we took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo. It was roughly a two-hour trip. Apparently we went past the ocean and some snow-covered areas, but I was asleep. We got in and promptly went to a temple. Now, I like Japanese temples. They are very beautiful. But, I think I went to like 8 of these things on my whole trip. There was at least one day when we hit 3 sites... it was too much. Unfortunately I can't remember the order of events terribly well anymore, but I think we went to a traditional drumming class after arriving in Tokyo. It was a lot of fun, but my arms still hurt. Oh well. That night we went to a 'しあぶしあぶ’place, which is cooking really thinly cut meat in hot water. It was delicious. I must admit I sort of ignored the vegetables floating around. We stayed in a quite nice hotel that night.
The next day, we woke up really early to go to a fish market. I'll look up the name later, but it was the largest fish market in the world. My friend 'Cat' really doesn't like dead animals/fish so I ended up frog-marching her through the entire thing. I didn't mind and parts of it were a bit gross, but it was actually a really interesting place. Supposedly we went into an area that we technically weren't supposed to go. Either way, I really enjoyed it.
After that, we went back to the hotel to sleep for a few more hours before heading to yet another temple. It had a five-story pagoda so I actually remember what it looked like. While I like Japanese temples, they have all sort of started to blur together. To be frank, I was glad to leave for a tempura lunch before heading to Harajuku.
I LOVE HARAJUKU. It was actually my second time visiting, and it was weird to remember half the stores. Takeshita street is actually where most of the shopping is, while Harajuku is covered in graffiti and is just slightly shadier in general. I went to the Bodyline store on Takeshita street and bought a new Lolita dress, petticoat and blouse. Can't wait to find an opportunity to wear it.
Afterwards, we went to Akihabara street. Essentially, it's 'Otaku Lane' or 'Anime Nerd Heaven'. There were lots of interesting figurines, game shops, gaming areas, and CDs. There were also girls dressed as maids on the streets, advertising maid cafes. Which wasn't actually as weird as it sounds, though I'm sure some people were uncomfortable with it.
Well, that was probably a very messily written blog post. I do apologise. I'm super tired even though I skipped dance class to sleep. Now I get to panic about what to wear tomorrow... I'm meeting up with the guy I like tomorrow for a date!
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