[JAPAN 2012] Getting my hair done in Shibuya // 渋谷でエクステ☆

How're ya all doin'?

So today I decided to do a post about Japan again.

I'll tell you about when I had my hair done in Shibuya! (´⊙ω⊙`)

I went to a salon called "hair space COCO" in Shibuya. I found it through "HOT PEPPER BEAUTY", a Japanese beauty magazine (both off and online) that has a lot of offers (coupons) to different hair- or nail salons. 

I ordered a hairdye and extensions for about 10,000 yen (about 100 USD). The staff was super nice and efficient. The dye and the extensions were done by different people, and because the dyeing took a long time - like almost 2 hours - I figured I'd be spending most of the day in the salon, because surely, doing the extensions would take a lot longer.

Yes?

No.

Dead wrong. 

I tell you, 

I had a full head of extensions (about 70) done, braided, and it took less than 30 minutes. I was like "wtf" when she was done. I had it done by the skinniest person on this planet, I'm sure. She looked like she'd break from the sheer impact of walking. щ(ºДºщ)

Anyways, the extensions turned out great!

These puri's are taken about 1 hour after getting them done:

And I washed and dried and straightened and curled and treated my hair just like I would've done with my own (using treatment once a week and sleeping with braids, not using a dryer to dry) and they looked perfectly fine when I had them taken out almost 4 months later, only because my hair had grown long enough for the braids to be ridiculously visible.

If you ever want to have your hair done in Japan, I highly recommend this salon! 

I had them set my hair for the gyaru meet later the same week, and it looked fab as well. Sadly, humidity kills all nice hair. 

The salon is located in central Shibuya, walking from Shibuya 109 towards 109MENS, when you reach the crosswalk with LUMINE on your right and the Disney Store up the street on your left, walk up until you get to Forever21 and LOFT. It's right beside LOFT, on the 5th floor.

I have no idea if they speak English though, and I kinda doubt it... ^^'' 

That's it for this time!

Hope you have a great Easter

(\__/)

(•ㅅ•)

Three things

Hello to all of you!

SO, the weekend is approaching. How are you going to spend it?

I'll spend it doing homework. And cleaning my room. And possibly eating more of all the gross stuff I've been stuffing myself with lately. Yummy!
I need to figure out a way to quit. Anyone who knows a way to quit yummy stuff?
No?
Thought so.

Speaking of yummy.

This face has a problem.

Yup, you got that right.

It's my face.

And no, even though I appreciate you wanting to point it out for me - what a generous being you are!  - it's not my face itself that has a problem (at least I hope not).

My problem is cravings.

We all have them from time to time, and now, because I am a generous person as well (oh my! we match!) I want to share some of my cravings with you!

1. ZERO CALORIE JELLY .:. ゼリーでゼロ

oh god. this.

It's just like... jelly ... 

but it's so good.

It comes in different flavors, all very sweet. I had it for breakfast a few times, and I swear, it's ridiculously good. I suffer from cravings for these very often, but they seem unobtainable outside of Japan. 

They come in versions that have and don't have calories, apparently, but the ones with no calories taste just as freakishly awesome as the ones with. This will forever be my really synthetic, dirty pleasure. 

2. REALLY GREAT NOMS 

This particular noms is from a restaurant that me and my bff visited in Shibuya. We went there twice and had this dish both times. It's like..... omurice, pasta, korokke (like cream-filled potato-thingies. They're good, okay?) and salad and some really good sauce-thing. 

OK, honestly, I don't really care what it is, I just want it, and I want it right now. 

Funny story about the restaurant (OK, maybe it's more... sad):

First time we went, there was a REALLY cute guy in there too, eating with his friend. He was sitting a few tables away from us, and when I strategically pretended to be checking my beautiful face in the mirror, I could spy on him over my friend's shoulder. He looked like an idol, and a hot one at that.

Yes, he totally knew we were spying on him.

But he was really good-looking, I swear.

We waited outside the restaurant for about an hour for him to come down after we left, because I regretted chickening out on talking to him. 

We're kind of desperate....

3. PARFAIT .:. パッフェ

As sad as it might make you, one can't buy parfaits in Denmark.

I know, it makes you want to cry.

It makes me want to cry after trying Japanese parfait.

Because dang, that thing is tasty.

I had a billion parfaits.

I blame my significant weight-gain while in Japan on this. 

But it was so worth it.

Right now when I'm having these cravings for food and things I can't have, I kind of just drown in my own self-pity. Anyone who recognizes this, or should I just shut up now?

THANKS FOR READING

& TAKE CARE!! 

[JAPAN 2012] The home of my heart

I think it's amazing how you can find some place, far away and so very different from where you were born, and still breathe in the air there and feel like you're somewhere you belong.

That's really how I feel with Tokyo. 

One of the places I stayed at were on 9th floor and in the evening - or rather, in the night - when stepping onto the veranda of my room, I would be faced with this breathtaking view of tall buildings of all shapes, stacked close up next to each other, all with windows lit randomly on the floors, all with people living their lives behind those windows.

It's not the same kind of beauty as a blue ocean or a mighty forest, but to me, it's just as beautiful. Just as awe-striking.

I could spend half a night on that veranda, looking at the houses, listening to the cars on the streets below and the occasional couples or old men walking home after another late night at work.

I know I will always be Danish and no matter for how long I'll live abroad, even if I get a foreign citizenship, I will always have a home in Denmark.


Even if I tell everyone my country is boring and nothing special, Denmark will always be where I'm from.


But just as much as Denmark is my home, I think Tokyo is as well


- at least the home of my heart.

 

Watching the city from that small veranda,
I really cried.
I really felt how I love this place.

Its people and its customs, the constant, slightly annoying but yet welcomed "Your Japanese is so good!".
The petite people rushing through their daily lives to catch the next train.
The old, hunchbacked women who are so eternally grateful when you offer them a seat in the train, even of they don't accept it.
The office workers in their tight suits taking a well-earned nap in the train.
The nasal shopkeepers telling you what amazing offers their shop has.
The heat that makes you smell like a pig.
The weird but so delicious foods available at every corner.
The convenience stores that for once actually are convenient...

I know there's a lot of shitty things about Japan.

But knowing of them, I also know how to accept them and I know how to reason them out. I know how to not let the weird TV shows and perverted cartoons swallow up the wonders of this country.

Standing on this veranda, I want to give it my all to return back as soon as possible.

I want to stand on this veranda again. I want to remind myself why I spent so much time working, why I didn't buy all the stuff everyone else did, why I missed out on so much.

I want to see the friendly faces of the people here, I want to meet so many more, I want to become a part of this forever evolving town, this ancient country.

I really wish for others to try experiencing not only Tokyo, but this feeling of really loving a place.

I don't need sightseeing, fancy sushi or five-star hotels. I just need to be there.

I'm sure there's others out there who feel the same way, and even more who would - who will - feel like this if or when they one day set foot there. It's hard to love something so far away from your everyday life, but it's an important feeling. It feels good that even though I don't know what I want to do with my life, I know where to find out, where to spend a great deal of it.





It feels good to love Japan.

[JAPAN 2012] ホスト見・Host-looking pt. 2

warning: this is a very long, but hopefully entertaining entry!

 

So, this is going to be different from what you probably expect.

I might just as well put the cards on the table.
We never got to a host club.

Yes.

I know.

Shame on us.

 These are our faces of "why are there no hosts when we wanna go"-ness.

Because we did wanna go. Problem was, that our friend (the "I quit"-guy), whom we ended up talking to a lot more and even figured out was called Tsubasa either kept not being around or just.. suddenly disappearing for the rest of the night whenever we decided we wanted to go.

And the very last night we had no money. Whatsoever.

 Hence, no hostclub for us. My sincere apologies!

But! 

I'm not completely out of stories.
We did get something out of staring at more-or-less pretty people all day.

(actually, there was this one guy that was so ridiculously unattractive that we seriously thought he had been placed there to make the others look hotter. I'm not even kidding you.)

Well,

here goes!

While we were spending our lovely free time on our favorite fence next to the big-headed cat-man (an old, really nice guy wearing a cat-costume trying to make people enter the girl's bar there), we, as said earlier, got hit on quite a few times. 

But one time, a big group of men looking to be between 18 and 30 years old came out. They were more or less drunk, and came up to us talking in English, but as I replied in Japanese they were like "..........what???" and kept talking in half-English, half-Japanese.
Eventually, they invited us to go bowling with them.
And we were like
"why not".

I mean. Look at these shoes. 

These are Japanese bowling shoes.

I think they alone are a pretty good reason to go. 

So, we went with this group of strange, drunk men that we did not know whatsoever who brought us to some weird little bowling hall. Oh yeah, and it was in the middle of the night.

responsibility, what are you?

Did I mention, that half of them were bleached blonde or just bald and tattooed all over?

I present to you, the only Japanese people who are expected to have tattoos:

yakuza.

and we knew that. and we were like

yolo.

So we ended up spending all night - because yes, our curfew of 2am passed by, so we had to stay until 7am - bowling with a bunch of strange men until our arms died and we just sat cheering them on.

I tell you, they were quite a curious group.

One of them was, admittably, rather good-looking, but really seemed to have some weird fetish of touching his tummy. all. the. time.

An other one was pretty drunk, but the only one able to speak English. He also turned out to have two completely different names, and we still have no idea why.
As far as I'm concerned, Japanese people have no middle names.... so...... what?
(if you read this... ... ..... what?)

A third, around 30 years old, turned out to be the boss, and he didn't speak English, but had an awesome pronounciation of the little he did know, and when we taught him how to say "you're good" in Danish, he kept running around to everyone, giving them thumbs up and say "YOU'RE GOOD!!" very enthusiastically. It was hilarious.

Eventually, around 4.30am, they made the craziest bet I have ever witnessed.

They seperated themselves into two teams - the young (19~21) and the old (21~30) - and bet that the loser would have to pay the winner around 1000 yen for every point the other team won by.
(well, I'm not quite sure that was the exact bet, but something along those lines)

The "old" team ended up winning by .... a lot.
We're talking, they ended up receiving  like 50.000 yen or more. It's like... $600 dollars. 


(I repeat,

or more. )




and the young ones just gathered the money and handed them over.

I wanna bowl with them again sometime and I wanna be on the winning team. 

I wouldn't need to work again. ever.

At least it got evened out somewhat when we got invited to eat sushi for breakfast. And not just random, cheapskate sushi.
The sushi on this picture. Delicious sushi.

Expensive sushi.
yes, i know i put this picture in an entry earlier, but who doesn't wanna look at good sushi? 
That's what I thought.  

Sugardaddies? 

We got 'em.

That's about it for our host-watching adventure.
If you stuck around to reading this far, thank you. I hope I managed to entertain you.
I shall now return to paying attention to class.

I'm so sorry! (two weeks break)

Hi guys!

First I wanna say thank you for my new followers ♥
I get so excited every time I receive a new follower, thank you so much! 

But (x_x) Unfortunately I wont be able to make any blog-posts before I'm back home around August 17 or 18. For one, I still can't connect my phone to any internet, which means I can't load any pictures, and I have really limited access to internet in the first place.

But I promise you I have a lot to tell when I get the time - I'm now in Gifu near Nagoya, after half a week in Osaka and one and a half week in Okinawa. I'm going back to Tokyo tomorrow, and I'll be seeing a lot of people and going to the Gaijin Gyaru meet in Shibuya on August 14. I hope to make some friends there, if I have the guts to talk to anyone... OTL 

Anyhow, sorry for yet another boring update, but thank you so much for sticking around. Just have patience for another two weeks! 
Around that time I'll also update the blog with a new design my sweetheart from www.littlemisscawaii.com has been a doll and designed for me, so keep an eye out for it!! 

Thank you!

[JAPAN 2012] ホスト見・Host-looking (loads of text.......) pt. 1

Hi people♡

How are you doing?

I hope you're enjoying summer just as much as I am. As soon as it's not raining here, it's really fricking hot, haha. And I know it's only gonna get worse from now on, especially when I'll be going to Okinawa. I might just die.

If I do, tell my mom and dad I like them.
And my dog.
I like my dog too.



Well, I thought about making all my posts here in Japan chronological, but.....

nahhh.
If I did, I'd be making one heck of a lot of posts about shopping and staring at hosts (seriously, it's my new most favorite hobby. ever.).

So instead, I'll just write, well, whatever I want.

Here goes!!

I bet you all know already, but in case there's some innocent people left out there in the world, I'll just make a quick introduction to hosts.

Basically, it's guys ranging from super-duper-extremely-I'd-do-you-anyday-hot to wtf-u-doin looking guys standing on basically every street corner from around 9pm every night trying to pick up desperate girls who'd like the hosts to treat them as princesses for one night.

Sounds like hookers?

Yes.

Are they hookers?

Definitely not.

yes this is a completely unrelated picture, but I don't have any related
pics right now, and if there wasn't any pics in this blog post,
it would kill you. I swear.

They are, as the name sort of implies, hosts. Guys who earn money from sitting with you trying to get you drunk (that way their "shop" as they call it (read: bar) earns more money you see) while entertaining you as much as possible and doing their best to treat you like a princess to make you wanna stay longer or even come back again.

Or at least that's what I know.

So far.

We decided to skip Disneyland and go to a hostbar sometime before my friend leaves, so I'll tell you in details later.

You want to read this. I totally know you do.

Anyhow, the way the hosts go about it is that whenever a girl or a group of girls passes by them, they go up to them and asks like if they're busy or if they wouldn't wanna go to the hostclub 'cause it's "soooo cheap" and they'd have an awesome time and blablabla.

The hosts aren't making any money unless they get customers, so one would think they're trying pretty hard to get some, right?

Nope.

Not in Ikebukuro!

Half of the time they're just lurking on the corners just texting on their phones looking like the really, really don't like life.

But it's super fun watching them, so lately me and my friend have spent basically every night sitting on a fence close to where the hosts are, cheering for them going like "GO GET HERRRRRR!!!!", "NO TRY HARDER", "awwww, rejected again..", "SMILE MORE", "omg bitch try harder!" etcetera etcetera...

It might sound ridiculous, and believe me, it really is.

 But it's also really fun, especially 'cause we're kind of trolling the hosts.

You see, two young, foreign girls in pretty much full make-up with our big, pretty foreign eyes (coughcirclelensescough) and oh-so-cute-outfits really attract a lot of attention. Mostly from really drunk guys in their late thirties going like "herrroooo wherre arrre uuu fwom?" and then almost shitting themselves when I reply in Japanese.

this means that we get hit on at least three times in an hour, meaning we totally do the hosts job better than they do, and we're trying (if that's even possible) even less than they do.

hahahahaha, owned.

I even said to one of the hosts (we keep forgetting to ask for his name, so right now we're just calling him "buddy") that we're kind of beating them, and he made a supersad face and went like "....I quit."

In the beginning, we were kind of just circling around Ikebukuro being really desperate and embarrassed and probably the hosts were all like "wtffff", but eventually we picked out a place somewhere close to them and figured that since they were standing on the street all night, we were in our full rights to stare shamelessly at them.

And after doing that for three days, they not only try to make us come into their clubs (where the first one will be like "it's so cheap! Only 10.000 yen!" and then 10 minutes later another one will go "It's only 1500 yen!" and the latest bid was 1000 yen. We're wondering when they'll start offering to pay us for going...), they actually start talking to us whenever they're bored (OK, not whenever, 'cause that's basically all the time). It's pretty cool.

Seeing as we're enjoying this waaay to much to quit, I'm aiming at ending up befriending them. Please cross your fingers for me.

To be continued!



[JAPAN 2012] ただいま、東京！・Tokyo, I'm home!

Hi guys! (＾∇＾)
Long time no see!

I'm sorry I haven't written anything in a while, but I've been really busy the past week after I finally felt Japanese ground under my feet again!

I'm currently staying at a hotel in Ikebukuro with a friend, and we had the longest flight ever. We left home the night before our flight departed, 'cause we were afraid we wouldn't make it if we took the morning train. Ergo, we spent almost 10 hours in the airport, then 3 hours to Vienna, then 10,5 hours to Narita. And the flight to Narita was ... so... fricking.... long.
 I kept falling asleep and then waking up only to realize I'd been sleeping for like 30 minutes and we were still crossing Russia.

Russia, y u so big??

But but but but...

we finally landed.

Tokyo, I'm home!!

I actually ended up weeping like a little baby as soon as we landed, 'cause it's just been so long and I missed it so much here. I really feel like I'm back home.

The first day we were obviously super tired after not having slept properly for what must've been almost 48 hours, so when we got to Ikebukuro and checked in at our hotel (Kimi Ryokan, it's really recommendable!) around noon, we decided to just spend the day in Ikebukuro and check out the neightbourhood.

Of course that included introducing my friend to some Japanese food（￣ー￣）

So we went for Okonomiyaki in Sunshine City, a pretty big shopping mall in Ikebukuro, and the waitress there apparently really liked us, 'cause we got free ice cream for dessert.

It was so good, I tell you.

My friend also said about it what she's said about almost everything she's tasted ever since

"this is a hit."

and that's basically how it's been ever since.

I have looooads more to tell, but I'm going to split it up into seperate posts.
But I can tell you that we've been shopping a lot, and we've been spending the evenings cheering for the hosts in Ikebukuro (this will include a really funny story!), and we've been treated to bowling and sushi by a group of rather suspicious looking guys who turned out to be the sweetest people ever.

So... stay tuned (:

Outfits and an unhealthy obsession?

Hi everyone♥
Thank you so much for the recent comments I received!!
They made me super-duper happy! ＼（＾ ＾）／

I also reached 40 followers! It's not an amazingly large number, but I'm so happy everytime I get a new follower, especially because it was followed by comments this time. It's really nice to know that people are actually somewhat interested in reading what I write, haha... 

Yesterday I passed the two weeks-mark before I'll leave for Tokyo. It's sooo weird, haha.  
Somehow it feels like the next .. what, 12 days .. will take FOREVER, but on the other hand, I've got a lot of stuff to do before I leave. 

My last exam is on Monday('-'*) It's not a hard one (I hope) but I don't feel like I have time to prepare for it, nor the will to do so... haha. 

Anyhow,
I just wanted to show you my outfits for the past two days. I'm loving pretty hard on the flower-patterned shoes I bought in London. They're cute and casual at the same time. How do you like them? 

And today I met with two friends who have also been to Japan as exchange students. We went to have lunch and then just.. hung out. I bought a present for my hostsis for when I'll be going to their house.

(I'm not sure why, but a lot of people seemed to be staring at me today.. I guess I should take it as a compliment?)

 Talking about lunch, I'm starting to get worried for myself...

I think I have developed a waaay unhealthy relationship to food o(>< )o

Everytime I'm about to eat, I worry my butt off about whether the food is healthy or not, I feel super guilty after eating something unhealthy (despite being crazy addicted to coca cola zero!) but somehow I spend almost all of my awake hours thinking about food, especially when my next meal will be. It's beginning to frustrate me quite a lot, 'cause I'm always talking about food. 
I wonder if by forcing myself to stop talking about food, I can break free from this? Do any of you have any thoughts on this? It's not normal, is it??? I really doubt it is..

I mean, I think it's fine to care about what you eat and so on, but it's getting so obsessive I'm getting worried myself..

Anyhow...
I think that's it for now.

Take care, lovelies♥

 

Memories

I was just looking at pictures from my time in Japan; the few ones I've put up on my Facebook. Some went through Instagram. So many memories connected to each and every one of them...

I left my heart, my mind and my soul in that city. 

See you again in 32 days, Tokyo.