To Tokyo and Beyond!

July 24th Saturday

Left for Tokyo today! I went via Asahikawa airport and roundtrip tickets were only 18,000yen. Cheap! ^^ ...Upon setting foot outside of the airplane in Tokyo my first and immediate reaction was "EW!" The weather was terribly humid and hot...well, compared to the cool summers of Hokkaido.

So I got there and made my way to the Ootsuka train station to meet up with Chingyi at the hotel. I was pretty sweaty by the time I got there, so our greeting hug was light and brief. lol Anyways, we checked into our hotel room and found out how small it was. It was a bunk bed room with barely enough room to open our suitcases. And we couldn`t leave our suitcases lying on the floor because otherwise we couldn`t walk around it or walk outside. o.o;

Anyways, I had found out that there was a Chipotle knock-off place in Akasaka somewhere and was dying to go there to eat. I miss American-Mexican food terribly so I was like "That`s the first place we be eatin at" And we did. This place was called Frijoles and had wonderful amazing burritos!! I ate a steak burrito...*droolした" SOOOO GOOOD だった. Everyone inside spoke English and most of the customers were all foreigners. lol It was kind of funny to see so many foreigners in one place cuz I`m not used to it. I was also not used to seeing so much exposed skin and gyarus because we have few up here and none in my town. eheh. And the styles, oh man, it`s been a while since I`ve seen such a vareity. Anyways, end of my digression.

July 25th Sunday

In the morning Chingyi and I set off for Harajuku and did a good amount of shopping. And we ate Shakey`s pizza! Oh man was it hot today. Bought a couple of stuff from Paris Kids and Body Line...oh money, goodbye.

At 6pm tonight at the Tokyo Dome was the Kattun concert! I was lucky enough to go because my friend is part of the fan club and was able to get tickets for us. The concert was damn awesome. And even though I`m not a fan of Kattun I really liked their concert and found myself trying to sing along. I think I might actually start listening to some of their songs now. =P Immediately after the last encore Chingyi and I ran out of the building as fast as we could to catch the train home so that we weren`t crowded by the other (mainly) girls leaving the building. We weren`t the only ones who ran either. lol Very good night. And Koki was extremely sexy with his "Make You Wet" song....>D

July 26th Monday

Yay for DisneySea!! Today Chingyi`s friend from Gunma also came along with us. Awesome girl who`s really into Duffy, the Disney bear. So this bear is apparantely something that Minnie made for Mickey and is only found at Tokyo DisneySea. I originally was not so keen about it for it looked like a regular normal brown teddy bear that you can find in any toy store. But due to Chingyi`s friend praises of cuteness over it and peer pressure of every Japanese person in the park having one in his/her hand/arm I gave in a bought Shellie May, Duffy`s girlfriend bear. She`s a dirty rose sort of color with a removable squishy bow on her head. She has blue eyes too. We ate so much stuff and watched almost every show at Tokyo DisneySea before we called it a day and headed on home. It was a wonderfully awesome day. Lines weren`t too bad either. hehe.

July 27th Tuesday

This morning we went out to Harajuku to eat at this amazing Hawaiian breakfast place. I had eggs benedict, turkey bacon, and kona coffee. DELICIOUS! I want to go back there again, sometime in the near future. But the line for it is always ridiculously long. We got there at a good time where there were only 4 people in front of us, thankfully.

We then went over to Roppongi to walk around and then headed over to Ginza. We went to watch 借りぐらしのアリエッティーwhich is Studio Ghibli`s newest movie. It was a little slow, but I quite liked it. It ended kind of abruptly though...lol After that we walked around Ginza, had some kind of ice cream donut, and looked at the newest 3D TVs that Sony had to offer inside the Sony building. Man, did I miss Tokyo.

At 7pm, I bid Chingyi farewell for she had to go back to Gunma for work tomorrow and I went to Shibuya to meet up with my old friends from Irvine who have been recruited into the JET program. One of them is going to be up here in Sapporo!! hurrah! My other friends are just spread around all over Japan. We decided to head over to Kichijoji and ate at an okonimiyaki place. My friend who has been placed in Sapporo had close family friends in Kichijoji that we went to go greet and the wonderful mother of the house paid for all our food! Man, I want to send her some 毛ガニor something as a thanks. I also met this lady`s son who is friends with my friend and who now works for various broadcasting companies. It`s really cool cuz he gets to be on set doing things for the shows. Neways, hung out with my friends and then went back to my hotel to spend a lonely night by myself. eheh.

July 28th Wednesday

Checked out of my hotel and went to meet up with my friend who`s currently studying abroad in Tokyo. Had burritos with her in Akasaka again and then went to the Darjheeling Tea house for cake and tea. I then stayed at the tea house for an hour longer after she left to wait for a good time to leave for the train to the airport. I was only half an hour away..sooo.....no rush.

I then left on the plane to go back to Sapporo. Upon arriving I met up with Linda!! YAY!! My friend from my hometown. Aw man, I missed seeing her. So it was definitely really nice to be able to have her with me. We ate dinner and waited around till my family arrived at 8pm. My mother cried upon seeing me...And I couldn`t believe how big my siblings have grown! It was definitely nice to see them again. However, they had soo much luggage on them it was ridiculous! It was quite an effort to get all this stuff on the train to Sapporo. But we checked into the Susukino Green Hotel 2 and got a nice Japanese style tatami room with our futons already all laid out for us. It was very nice. The only thing that was missing with the public bath house in the hotel. Most come with one and I quite enjoy them.

Ah well, the hotel was nice enough. I took them to the nearby 7eleven and showed them just how awesomely wonderfully convenient Japanese convenience stores are. hehe.