Sunday 27 March 2016

22/06/16 - Birthday

We had already spent a day in Tokyo, exploring Shibuya. George arrived and we met up with Kazu because he was in Tokyo for a day. That night we celebrated the start of my birthday on the stroke of midnight. George and Rhiannon started to sing happy birthday and they got out some presents that they got me! I felt so happy. They got me really nice things and I feel like they know me so well. I also got to (finally) open the package from the family and that was so nice as well. I love birthdays!

We started the day in Harajuku. I had always wanted to go there, so my excitement was literally overwhelming me. Since we left kind of late, we just got a breakfast/lunch after doing a bit of shopping in Harajuku. We went to the most popular ramen place there, which I wanted to go to through some research beforehand. It was really nice food! I love any ramen place that gives you extra noodles.

After that, we continued looking around Harajuku. We went to the store that Kyary Pamyu Pamyu apparently likes to shop at. We even came across a million second hand stores. They were all surprisingly very expensive, though. I think the most exciting place in the whole area was Harajuku street. There were so many tiny shops all crammed next to each other and a million people trying to get into them. I really wanted to get some Calbee chips while being there - since I had heard a lot about them. They're normally sold in stores as potato sticks, like they're deep fried but dry. But, when you buy them in store they're hot and fresh! They were seriously good. When we were standing outside eating them, we actually somehow bumped into a friend of ours! It was so strange because the chance of running into someone in one of the largest cities in the world feels near impossible. But, it happened! We hung out for a little bit before they went off to do their own thing. Further down the street we saw probably the 50th crepe stall, and Rhiannon and said how badly she wanted a Harajuku crepe (because they're really famous). I didn't really want a very sweet one because what I have learned from Japan so far is that they love their cream, so I got a custard cinnamon apple crepe. I made such a good choice! It was super delicious. We left Harajuku around 5pm after George booked dinner for us in a phone booth. It started to rain a little bit but thankfully it stopped really quickly! Afterwards we took a train to Shibuya.

Shibuya at night is the best! It's super lively and there's always music playing. One thing I really wanted to do on my birthday was to go karaoke where Lost in Translation was filmed. We booked it to go after dinner - but, unfortunately we didn't realise how much time we had to kill until our booking.

We stood around for a while outside 7/11, slowly realising we were in the love hotel district. Since we had a fair amount of time before our booking, we tried to see if we could get in earlier anyway. So, we went up the dodgiest looking elevator ever and got off on this floor where everything was basically pitch black. The place we were going to was called Alcatraz ER - a prison hospital themed restaurant. At first we were kind of scared that something would pop out at us, but thankfully nothing did. We were just lead to our 'table' which was in a prison cell - which was super cool. They locked us in and told us if we wanted to order anything we had to rattle the cage with a stick. The food was designed to look really gross, but it was actually pretty tasty! And I got to drink alcohol from a blood bag so that was interesting. Personally the service wasn't amazing, but we had a good time anyway.



I definitely think the highlight of the night was going to karaoke. We asked for the window room and
went up to the 9th floor. We could literally see so much from our view and I felt like I was living in the movie. We sang for an hour only because it cost so much money to go there, but it was so worth it. We got back to the apartment late and it was really got, but once we turned on the air con and started watching TV we all felt that we had a really good day. I'm really glad I got to spend my 21st in Japan with some close friends. So much fun.



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