Japan Day 5: Cruisin in Harajuku, Crashin in Osaka

Ah Wednesday! July 27th, we shim-shammied on over to Harajuku for some work meetings, some of which involved taking these photos, and some of which involved sitting in a tiny office talking numbers for a while. Eek!

It was a nice breezy day in Harajuku, so we were amped to be able to walk around and take it in a bit without burning our faces off int he hot hot sun.

Good old Sausage roll and matcha green tea for breakfast. Thanks Starbucks Japan! Or as thy call them, "Sta-ba"

Chillin on the street like a hoodlum, rocking my Garfield x The Hundreds T-shirt.

Walking around Harajuku, I took some quick snaps on the way to meeting up with our other teammates for today’s adventures!

Walking past Lotteria, I noticed they were advertising Choco... CORN??? WHAT?

I didn't have time to look at these closely, but these multifaceted pastel chains are craaayzay cute!

Doing some re-con in the 7-11. Pepsi released a "Caribbean Gold" flavor for the summer. It taste like Sprite but less citrusy.

I love this crazy cat fabric! It was on the sleeve of a big oversized shirt.

Some cute yukata displays in LaForet

After meeting up with our bros, we took a short walk around Harajuku for everyone to do some shopping and visit a few stores they wanted to see. Poor Caro had been running around in meetings all week so she hadn’t had any free time to shop at all =0

Nadia!

When we arrived in front of  Nadia, Tavuchi informed us that this store was pretty famous in Harajuku for its selection of cute fashion goods, and their own original goods made especially for that store. The  red, white, and black platform sneakers that’ve been getting so much attention in street snaps lately are also sold here. I haven’t figured out if they are sold exclusively at Nadia or not, but I have found several other versions of the shoes around the web, after some research 🙂

Interestingly, when I was poking around in there, one of the shop staff came up to me and told me she recognized me from Tavuchi’s blog o.0 She was really cute, and she was pretty excited when I told her Tavuchi was there with me and pointed her out (she was busy browsing behind a rack of clothing).

I got a cute pterodactyl earring there ❤ and hummed and hawwed over the shoes, but they were just too expensive, unfortunately. The yen is pretty unforgivable right now!

My Dino earring I got from Nadia!

After that we headed over to G2? (Pronounced as “G two question), a cute thrift store that Caro wanted to revisit. When we got in there, lo and behold we saw our friend Kayo’s (formerly of the Polysics) line of “Kayowl” earrings in there too! So cute!

Poofy!

We stopped by one of Tavuchi's favorite stores off of Takeshita dori and she picked up this awesome Ziggy nightshirt!

I noticed on Tavuchi's blog a few days ago that she had done some DIY to it, and now it looks like this! So cute!

After that we hopped on over for a crepe break! Right around this time Tavuchi got mobbed by a SPANK! fangirl, which was pretty funny. Apparently she said to Tavuchi, in Japanese: “I’m your fan…! But.. only a little. Can I take your photo?” HAHA. After I heard that story, I taught Tavuchi the English phrase “Backhanded compliment.” Sigh. Haters gotta hate.

MISCHIEF MANAGED! this yummy Mille Feuille crepe got devoured in less than a minute after this photo was taken, haha.

Tavuchi!

Yoshitaka, Caro's translator! He's a super nice guy, but I've already warned him to watch out for the Yoshitaka fan club, which will surely form now that I've put this photo on the internet haha.

After that, though we had to say our goodbyes and hop on the bullet train to Osaka. Off to the land of awesome! I was excited to see all of my old friends there, but first, for a luxurious train ride ❤

Yum! Train bento!

Oh hello tiny tiny soy sauce bottle. Nomnom.

Here was Caro's bento set! So cute! She drew the little face on herself, hehe.

Yeahh I may have partied a little with a can of Chu-hi and some snacky bits. Caro was super sweet and bought us lunch and snacks ❤ Thank you Caro!

Trains are the bet way to travel ❤ you get to see the actual lay of the land and relax to the maximus.

We arrived We arrived in Osaka in the evening, and luckily our hotel was pretty close to the station. Caro was feeling a little under the weather so she stayed behind to rest up while I went out to meet some of my old Osaka pals and get some drinks. This night was pretty fucking epic, and reminded me of how crazy things were back when I lived in Japan. I’m only going to post a few “normal-ish” photos, but you can use your imagination to see where the rest of the night went, haha.

I went to the Suntory Old Bar that I used to work at in Shinsaibashi,met up with with my long lost freind Nicole, who I used to teach in Japan with, and went out for a long night of izakaya madness after.

Me and Nicole, the dup that struck fear into the hearts of every bar we went into. Oh, my dear Nicole, I hate not living in the same town as you anymore ;.;

And then some things started occurring.

So, funny story, we started out with a party of 4 at our table, myself NIcole, and her two house mates Trevor and Drew (the non-asians in the photo). After abuot 1 hour of sitting there, we aquired half of the Kyoto Ballroom Dance Club who was sitting behind us and were now our BFF. WHAT. THE. HELL. OSAKA.

Who are these dudes? I have no idea. They tried to teach us some fancy ballroom dance moves. The waiters kept telling us to PLEASE STOP DANCING IN THE AISLES. Oh god it was epic.

After that things sort of got out of control and basically, I ended up back at my hotel at 5am-ish, knowing I was in for the hangover of the century the next day. I am a winner winner, chicken dinner.

So that sums up this day, which was mostly just a bit of work, followed by hanging out, and insane partying.

As always, the rest of the photos from this day can be found here!

Now it’s time to gussy up and get ready for an epic night of nerd-domom at the Iam8Bit Art show opening tonight! Wish me nerd-luck!