frillish

Japan Day 6 & 7

• travel

See day 5 of the trip

3.15 Saturday

Today, I just wanted to take it easy (I kind of feel like I wrote that every day, haha ) so I decided to check out a nice hearty breakfast place nearby while waiting to hear back from Sarah and Mina if they would be free today.

I went to GARDEN HOUSE CRAFTS DAIKANYAMA, a breakfast & bakery place - I was really excited for it!

When you step in, the right side of the place is all their baked goods where you can pick out pastries/bread and order drinks for takeout. They had so many delicious looking options, I wished I came here earlier to try something new daily

The left side of the place is where you can dine-in, although it seems like this place gets quite popular, so they allow you 1 hour of dine-in if the place is full.

I ordered their croque madame (requested without meat), a cafe latte, and when I finished I bought their specialty salted butter melon bread to take with me. They were really busy so they mixed up my drink order and accidentally gave me a regular coffee, but fixed it really quickly once I requested the cafe latte switch.

When I saw how huge the croque madame was, I almost regretted my order (I get stomach aches easily from being too full), but OMG it was actually incredibly delicious (salivating at the thought hahaha) They make it on their housemade bread and the amount of cheese wasn’t too much. Again, I rarely eat egg so it felt really indulgent and I was stuffed for the morning

After breakfast, unfortunately Mina wasn’t going to be free for the rest of my trip’s duration and Sarah was going to be busy til dinner time so I just spent some time looking for gifts.

While walking around, I saw this moai statue that looked incredibly similar to my manz Monster Hunter character I spent probably too much time observing and laughing about it that people probably thought I was crazy LOL

I made it to Mega Donki in Shibuya for a gifts stop! I was hoping to pick up a bunch of candies too but at this point in my trip, I started to get really anxious that my luggage was going to be overweight so I was nervous to buy too much stuff.

I did see this hilarious Star Rail chocolate day collab and wanted to pick up a Dan Heng for my friend but he was completely out of stock… so I got her a Jing Yuan

Afterward, I figured I had enough time to go out to visit Rainbowholic which is pretty far from the main area of Tokyo - in fact, it cost like 600 yen to go there (one way) However, it was really worth it. It’s located inside this interesting “indoor mall”, which helped since it started to rain again.

It’s a very cute “stationery cafe” - this concept is apparently quite popular in SEA countries, where a stationery store also has a crafting/creating corner for you to play around after you shop.

Here, there is a HUGE amount of playables for you to use while you stayed here! You just have to check out with at least one item but it was definitely a good time

The store is very small, but super packed with adorable curation Rainbowholic has a lot of their own collab items as well and I spent a bunch of time looking through everything! It took a lot of self control not to buy too much…

I picked out some postcards and stationery and ordered their blue raspberry soda parfait I ended up spending a few hours here writing all the postcards and journalling a bit.

Since I don’t follow the Rainbowholic channel that closely I didn’t realize the shopgirl was Kaila (the owner/creator of Rainbowholic) until another girl walked in to shop and was chatting with her! I don’t like to bug creators too much but I was happy I got to chat with her a bit to tell her how lovely the stationery cafe is & that visiting here was one of my favouruite (solo) parts on this trip

Honestly just sitting down and working on something was really recharging

For dinner, I met up with Sarah and Sidney for チャカン食堂, a place that Sidney wanted to try (I think?)! This was in “Korean town” kind of area of Shinjuku which was near their Airbnb, so it was nice and chill

We had a silly moment where Sidney requested the waiter for a suggestion for “someone who doesn’t eat meat” and “someone who doesn’t eat spicy” and we ended up with this pancake-like dish, which we then realised had meat in it… the waiter then proceeded to try to demonstrate that you can take the meat out manually, but from how he was performing it for us we thought it looked like he was offering to feed me the pieces lol Harmless miscommunications end up pretty funny on travels!

Next up was what we were waiting for: JIGGLY BOIS at NAMCHINI82 CAFE!!!!

Endless jiggle!!!

Sarah found this place near her Airbnb and what a gem. I think we howled nonstop for way too long in such an otherwise-peaceful cafe, but it was completely worth it

I love their mugs… I wish they sold them as merch, but unfortunately they don’t

I ended up laughing so much my eyelashes came off and matcha ended up on my coat lol

After such a lovely evening together, Sarah gave me a warm boy shirokuma that she got for me from her last trip! He would become very useful on this super cold trip soon! (Sidney also gave me apple juice coz their friend gave them wayyy too many??? LOL it was delicious!!)

3.16 Sunday

Sunday was another rainy day. At this time, I really wanted more pastries from the bakery place, so I went back for breakfast again! I normally think that I should vary my eateries, but sometimes you just crave something, and I really wanted a yoghurt breakfast. Also, I usually headed out early for breakfasts - around 8am - and a lot of places just weren’t open yet at that time.

This time, I went for a sweet breakfast of their greek yoghurt + housemade granola & jam and a hot houjicha latte. It came with a little honeycomb on top as well!

I really love looking at how food places plate their items, especially for something that I’d normally gorge myself on like yoghurt. There was so little of it but it definitely ended up filling me up! Since I don’t normally go out to eat much in the states, I was thinking a lot during this trip of how simply dishes I’ve been getting during this trip are presented, yet they look so appealing.

After eating, I got more of their salted butter melon bread and an egg tart to try!

Today, I wanted to go back to a food/gift store I saw in Shibuya called Akomeya Tokyo - I saw they had an eatery here inside the store that I really wanted to try, but sadly I didn’t make it on this trip! Still, they caught my eye for having lots of giftable food that I wanted to pick out for my manz.

It felt really nice walking in the light rain Since I stayed only 20-25min walk away from Shibuya, I walked a lot between the areas instead of taking the train. This was probably one of my favourite “features” of this trip - opting to walk a lot instead of zipping around. Of course, it helped that I knew if I got lazy or tired I could easily hop into a station any time!

On the way through strolling in Shibuya, I decided to try to check Loft again for K’s soy sauce dishes request (they did not have any in stock…) but I somehow found THE jiggly boy cat mold! I didn’t see this the previous time I was here on this trip, but I thought it was funny I only found it after experiencing the jiggly pudding. Anyway, of course, I bought ‘em.

Since it was nearing lunch time, I went to Shark Coffee again since I knew there wasn’t a wait for people eating cafe food for lunch and ordered just one cheesecake (blueberry) this time, and a matcha latte.

I wanted to spend some time writing my postcards and mailing them out today, so this coffeeshop was perfect for that. I also thought for when I get back: with all my cheesecake eating on this trip, I’m really thinking I should try making them as treats for myself! (I basically finished my entire lactaid pill stash on this trip lol)

For a late lunch/early dinner, since I ate a bunch of sugar today, I went back to get sushi again at Uobei Shibuya Dogenzaka. This was another “conveyor belt” sushi place, but not as fancy as the previous place. It only ended up to about $15 for 10 plates + a parfait though so it was crazy cheap!

Though I preferred the rice at the previous place, the fish here was delicious and my favourite was their seared mayo salmon. I ended up pushing the rice off the sushi later lol I’m sure it was a huge faux pas but I just really wanted to eat the delicious fish

Walking around during the evening was really lovely too I headed back towards Ebisu to go to East Table ceramics on the way where I wanted to find dishes for my manz house. I saw them on Google Maps earlier but it was a bit out of the way, so I was glad I got a chance to come here!

I wasn’t sure if I could take photos indoors, but it was really fun to browse! The styles are a bit more westernized but SO fun to look through. I wished suddenly that I wasn’t so anxious about my luggage being overweight

I ended up buying some gifts that were really fun to pick out!

Here were the buys from today (somehow missing the cat mold in photo) Aren’t those “traditional style” dinosaur soy sauce dishes so cute??? I got furikake and canned mackerel for the manz and sakura flavoured soba for myself. Also, since my travel set of face wash was running low, I got the FANCL set from the konbini.

Japan Day 5

• travel

See day 4 of the trip

3.14 Friday

Today, I felt like having a nice cheesecake and coffee again, so I went to Shark Coffee It’s in Shibuya and not too far away from the bustle, but is not too hustle. It seems like it’s really popular with foreigners/tourists because almost everyone who came in was speaking in English

They have lots of options for desserts a bit of housemade granola that you can have for breakfast! I wanted to try the granola some time, but didn’t end up doing so. There was just too many cheesecake options to try

The interior feels very spacious and airy with plenty of sit spots

I ordered a dirty matcha (matcha + espresso latte), carrot cake, and matcha cake. It ended up being kind of a bit too much cake for me so I had to eat it soooo slowly LOL but it was really tasty! For some reason, I was really craving carrot cake!

When they serve you your food/drink, there’s a little doodle on the napkin wrapper

I spent a little time here writing postcards and eating my breakfast slowly It was really peaceful and enjoyable! Afterwards, I stopped by the post office nearby and dropped off the postcards. Then, I headed to some other Shibuya shops to do some gift shopping.

Initially I went to PARCO to try to go to Pokemon Center to pick up gifts, but it was already SO crowded even after it barely opened. I just did not want to use energy on the crowd so I left after stepping 1 step in Instead, I stumbled on this unexpected Chiikawa stand that had a bunch of merch that I had seen earlier at Tokyo Station!

The shopgirl was so sweet and offered to help me take photos when she saw me struggling to take selfies with the displays

To space out shopping trips, I visited Yoyogi Park This one was a lot more… wintered than Shijuku Gyoen lol, basically every tree was entirely barren, but it was still really nice to take a walk in the crisp atmosphere

I did find this one pink tree but I don’t remember if it was inside or outside of the park (I think it was outside…)

Next stop was some more Harajuku shopping - I went to the Jill Stuart counter, but for some reason everything just looked unappealing, even though after my last trip I remember I wanted a bunch more JS makeup. I think it’s hard to compete with Flower Knows which also has beautiful packaging for cheaper prices… but I still love the clean designs of JS, too.

Anyway, I left empty-handed and headed to Kiddyland! Here I did pick up some gifts and Things For Me

Since it was just around lunch time, I picked Kaiten Sushi Ginza Onodera as a quick eat - with the hope that I could slip in as a single eater, and it worked out! I think this place is quite popular but I was able to be seated in 5 or so minutes (You can safely guess by now i hate waiting to eat… lol)

This is a “conveyor belt sushi” place, but rather than the sushi options rolling around on belts for you to pluck for eating, you order via a tablet and it is zoomed to you via the belt! In my case, I sat near the sushi chefs so they just handed it to me directly

I picked this place from Google Maps spontaneously and didn’t it had $$$ on Maps (which means it should likely be pretty pricey)… but I had an entire fill of sushi and it only ended up around $20!!

Silly thing, but I don’t know very much about fish lol so I just ordered off the recommended options and some that just looked good. Everything was super fresh and so delicious. I also noticed they do some sort of flavouring to their rice that makes it brownish but it is flavourful (not salty) & really elevates the sushi!!! So good!!

After lunch was a cheerful walk around the area

I saw these adorable garden displays It’s so fun to walk around in Tokyo because there’s just endless things to keep stimulated looking at

Randomly, I spotted a Mariage Frères boutique which I had to visit! This is a French tea label that I’ve always wanted to try, but there are no suppliers or importers to the US, so I was so pleasantly surprised to find them here

I did a bunch more wandering around including some drugstore beauty stops when we got to hear that Mina was getting out of her concert later tonight so we could meet up for dinner!!!

We met up at Darumanome Akihabara Mina’s place for gigantic melon soda

There wasn’t any option for meatless lol so I just suffered later after trying my best with their corn ramen but it was totally worth it!!

Even though we only got to meet up briefly (and it ended up being the only time I got to meet up with Mina), it was really lovely to hug and have a… very low-energy (everyone being exhausted haha) chat

Since it was so chilly and Mina left her jacket at her airbnb, we wandered a bit through Donki to help pick out a jacket for her

While there, I saw a bunch of potential gifts so I realised I needed to stop at Donki later even though I originally didn’t want to go to it on this trip since it highly overstimulates me.

It was so fun to meet up

These were my buys from Kiddyland My manz likes the green guys so I got a few for him! Most of these were gifts, but I was really excited to see the cute chiikawa hairties, sumikko portable utensils set, and tokage/shirokuma hook which I got for myself