[photos_greaseSTYLE?]

I don’t remember if I mentioned in my [yoyogiKOEN] post that apart from street bands you can find a re-enactment of pure 50’s rock’n'roll right at the park’s entrance. now, if you’re thinking “electric guitars” and the like you are much mistaken – it’s not music they’re out for, it’s dancing and putting on a good show. clad in worn jeans and black-leather, their hair sticking up in impossible toupees and their eyes hidden behind rayban-style sunglasses, they look like the real thing, taken straight from the past. though they are mainly men, girls with wide skirts and fuzzy ribbons holding their hair can also be seen dancing with their male counter-parts.

I took a lot of pictures, most of them look the same, but I just couldn’t decide which ones to post and which not, so I uploaded them all. the pink car was also theirs – it ROCKS!

.::rockabilly::.

[建築_aBITofARchiTECture]

I think it’s time I start posting some photos of architecture – why am I studying it for then?

I finally went for a stroll in 表参道 (omotesando) specifically to take photos of the [dior], [tods] and [prada] buildings. my tokyo architecture guide doesn’t include many buildings by sejima kazuyo – my favourite architect -, in fact it only talks about one; luckily it was not the [dior] building, which means I can now go visit TWO of her works!

the thing about omotesando is that even if the avenue in itself is wide, it’s diffeicult to get a good shot at the buildigs because of the huge trees that stand at both sides – in fact, that was the problem with toyo ito’s [tods] building, there was no space to take a good picture from the sidewalk and when I tried to aim at it from an elevated crossing the trees blocked my view…T_T

the [prada] building is slightly farther away than the previous two; you have to pass a big crossing, then the street gets narrower – I’m not sure it’s even omotesando-dori anymore – and everything becomes smaller in scale… the building stands on a lower level than the street, so when you are approching it it seems smaller than it really is.

I also included a photo of the [dolce&gabbana] building and the entrance to [comme des garcons]. then we found this really cute shinto shrine and we cleansed our hands and prayed at the altar :)

.::photos::.

[池袋]

I’m a little behind on posting lately, but since today I stayed at home and have nothing to report I guess it’s fine.

yesterday fiona and I went to 池袋 (ikebukuro) to take a look. we knew it was mainly all department stores, but we still wanted to check it out. in fact, inside tokyu hands department store there is a place called [nekobukuro] where you can play with cats for as long as you want! entry fee is 600￥ for an adult, 400￥ for children and 1000￥ for couples – in japan it is common to find “couple” fees in many places… unfortunately I only learned of this after going there…

first stop was a place to take a bite in. we found a nice cafe overlooking the street where fiona could eat something and I could take some photos of the people outside. the place was [milky-way cafe] and was zodiac-themed. each dessert corresponded to a different zodiac-sign. fiona ordered cancer for share – this sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it? this is how it looked:

 

I can assure you it tasted even better than it looked.

something that really surprised me when I came here was how much sweet stuff girls eat. you can often see couples in restaurants, the guy will be having a normal meal and his girlfriend will be eating this huge ice-cream cup with fruit, cookies, more than 4 toppings, strawberry chocolate, chantilly… and who knows how many other things underneath! what kind of lunch is that? besides, all sweets look all fancy and fairy-tale like, why? if you want to buy a crepe there is no way you will find anything simpler than the above mentioned ice-cream cup. asian girls love sweet and cute, right? so they have made cakes and ice-cream into an art. the next step was to bring sweets to clothes and accessories: cake, ice-cream and cookies designs for t-shirts, necklaces, earrings, pendants…  hummm… I don’t really see the point of looking like a bakery display.

next was the hello kitty store. I will refrain to talk about this. you can imagine it’s more cutey-cutey stuff covering from clothes, bags and other accessories to food and anything ranging in-between. I was tempted to buy something, anything! cute stuff does that to you.

and last of all came the I-don’t-know-how-to-call-it place! how do you call an 8 storey building filled with video-games, UFO machines and purikura? I daren’t try UFO machines because I really suck at it and video-games looked tempting but for the fact that they were entirely in japanese and I didn’t understand a thing… there were some pretty interesting RPGs, sniff, I wanted to try them!

UFO machines

the alternative was of course purikura. funny, cheap (200￥ – 400￥) and easy to operate! the only problem was which booth to choose! there were so many of them you even needed a floor-plan to now where you were! but the best thing about that place was that you could cosplay for free. you could borrow french-maid, schoolgirl, police-woman, gothic lolita suits… and many others for free and take your photo with them on. since we were already there and you only do this once in a lifetime we went for cosplay.

 

fiona chose french-maid and I dressed as a school-girl. I’d always wanted to get into a sailor uniform :3 the skirt was amazingly short -.-; luckily you cannot see it in this picture :)

the purikura we took are really funny, I’ll upload them next time!

so that’s all for now. next post is みたままつり　(mitamamatsuri – summer festival in hanzoumon) yay!