Ozashiki Odori Dance

When my boyfriend and I went to Asakusa, our goal was to find a mawashi which is a belt sumo wrestlers use. Upon exiting Asakusa Station we saw Asakusa Culture and Tourism Center. We decided to go inside and inquire to make our search easier.

A lady was standing by the doors and asking if we wanted to watch a Geisha show, tickets are free of course. Since we didn’t really have any agenda for the day, we decided to watch the show. How often do you get to watch Geisha’s perform? Rarely.

So I asked for two tickets, and luckily we only had to wait under half an hour. Yey!

Here is a photo of the introduction. The guy was explaining to us some things both in Japanese and in English. We later moved in front as there were a few seats available. Initially we were supposed to be standing during the whole show.

After we got seated, they had a little surprise. There were numbers on the seats and those called were the lucky ones who are to play a game on stage. The game was about who could spin the fastest.

Here are the three Geishas who performed the different acts.

These ladies were the singers and the musican.

The final act was made by a Hohkan which is a Geisha’s male counterpart in the Ozashiki Odori Dance. He was really funny! The sad part though is that there used to be 470 Hohkans, but now they are only 7 🙁

 

Over all it was a wonderful experience 😀

 
Robot Restaurant

When I first visited Tokyo I wanted to go to the Robot Restaurant, however my brother and I didn’t have a lot of time. During my second visit to Tokyo I wanted to go there as well, however for some reason it went to my ”forgot to do list”. This year though I really wanted to experience it. My boyfriend was against it since it was weird and he has seen the weirdness through YouTube. I managed to change his mind after much convincing.

I booked our reservation around two or three weeks before our arrival. The entrance fee was 9000 Yen per person and meals were 1000 yen per person. Around 720 NOK per person with the meal.

We went there on a Friday on their latest show that started 9:45 PM. We were there about half an hour earlier though.

Payment was made at a place right in front of the restaurant. The walls were filled with pictures and signatures of known people who has visited the place. We could also borrow lockers for free!

This is the outside of the restaurant.

I had to take a photo, I am the one sitting on the red haired girl. That sounds so wrong.

We had to go down some stairs, and it was too much lights.

We were then lead to a waiting area. The waiting area reminded me of cruise boats. The velvet chairs and the live entertainers.

I think we sat there for 20 minutes before we were allowed to down to where the action is starting. On our tables our food was already there, also we sat at the front row.

The food we got was very good by the way, but kind of difficult to eat while watching an action packed show.

The meal we both ordered was grilled boneless short ribs. A little too difficult to see, that’s because when we could open our bento boxes, the show already started. You see we had to wait sometime before we could open our meal.

We had some breaks during the show. I think we got 15 minutes break about three times.

Anyways, here are some photos from the Robot Restaurant.

The show was very entertaining! The performers were great! It wasn’t as weird as I expected, but then again I have watched some Japanese shows, movies and anime where they can be as random as this show. It is still an experience though.

Also, when we were on our way to leave the place, like the last floor before the exit. We were met by women in bras and thongs, well they were standning at the door talking to some men. We found out a few minutes later when we were picking up our things from the locker that there is a strip club right beside Robot Restaurant, so that explains it .

Kokono- Tonkatsu

We went to Kokono on our way to Maricar to eat lunch. It was located inside a building with a lot more other restaurants.

One has to pay for food already at the reception or waiting area, which meant you had to already have decided what to eat. Both my boyfriend and I chose Tonkatsu, around 900 Yen each or around 65. I may have gotten the price wrong though, so please forgive me 😛 We were also asked if we were smokers or not.

We were then lead to a room where we had to take of our shoes. The reason we had to take our shoes off was because the room is one big step up, and the floor is made of tatami. It would be highly unhygenic if you have your shoes on on a mat you may sit on.

The dark part on the photo is well also the floor. So I am guessing you can choose to sit Japanese style or western style where your feet are on the ground.

We were served cold tea, and their cold tea is literally cold tea, without any added sugars like we have in Norway.

Here are the different sauces, wet tissue and chopsticks

Here is my food. Tonkatsu! Tonkatsu is a breaded deep-fried pork cutlet served with shredded cabbage, rice, miso soup and pickled radish and something else that I don’t know.

When they served us our food, the server closed the door to our room. Quite nice if you ask me, we were able to eat in peace without others looking at us.

The food was good! However, we had to rush outside when we found out we had under 20 minutes to find Maricar. I was so thankful that we decided to eat before doing the MariCar, or else we would’ve been very hungry for the whole duration of our tour.

Date in Akihabara

The lovely thing about technology is that we can reach people from different countries just with a button. A few months ago I got to know someone through IG. She is from Tokyo, but has an interest in Norwegian as well 🙂

A few months ago I told her I was going to Tokyo, and since she lives near where we live we decided to meet. Since after easter, I have been collecting some Norwegian goodies. The day after the Easter holiday I actually went hunting for Påskeegg, with no luck. You would think they would still have some påskeegg given that they started selling them way before easter. All easter eggs were gone the day after Easter holiday was done. I did find påskeskum and påskemarsipan.

So yeah, I have been collecting chocolates such as Smash and Stratos chocolate bars, and not to mention melkehjerter. I also bought salted liquorice. So my luggage was actually quite heavy because of my collected Norwegian goodies.

Anyways, we did meet in Akihabara from 11AM on our third day. We decided to go to Starbucks and ordered some drinks. We had such a good and interesting conversation that we had to force ourselves to end our meeting at 5PM. If we did not do it, we would’ve stayed and talked until late at night. Since she had to study, we ( my boyfriend and I) had to end our meeting. Her studies are much more important. I didn’t leave empty handed. She gave me some Japanese snacks. I felt so guilty that I wasn’t able to give her as much goodies as she gave me.

 

She gave me four different KitKat flavors: Pudding, Dark Chocolate, Ginger and Matcha. Matcha is my favorite!

She also gave me some snacks. Potato Chips with honey, popcorn, wasabi snacks and Pretz with some kind of fish eggs. I forgot what kind of fish eggs they were, they were smaller than caviar but kinda like roe eggs?

My boyfriend and I ate the one with honey and it was good, so we bought another one. The popcorn I just ate yesterday. It is salty, but not as salty as the ones they serve in Norway. It was deliciously salty, like the saltiness had a taste that was pleasant to the taste buds. Does that even make sense? Otherwise I haven’t tried the other two

Lastly I got a Hello Kitty handkerchief, a postcard and bookmarks from Kyoto. The bookmarks are really lovely! I do not want to use them in fear of ruining them!

I am planing on saving up on Norwegian goodies again so that I can send it to her. I actually forgot to bring Kvikk Lunsj! It’s the most Norwegian sweets and I forgot it.

It is nice though to be able to meet friends you meet online 🙂 and not to mention to be able to have friends from all around the world 😀

L’Ueno and the cutest pastries!

Ever since I discovered this place with my brother on December 2015, I keep coming back to buy something from this place. This is a bakery located near Ueno Station. If you walk from Ueno Station to Ueno Jr Line station, one can walk past this bakery.

L’Ueno has the cutest pastries I have seen. They’re so cute that you don’t really want to eat them.

Just look at how cute they are

We visited late at night, so we didn’t by a lot, only a few.

Here is a koala, a bear and a lion. I think the lion is matcha flavored, while the bear is chocolate and the koala as well.

We also bought these blocks that had sakura (cherry blossom) filling, red bean filling and chocolate filling.

There is a new baby panda on Ueno Zoo so Ueno was filled with souveniers of a baby panda, these breads are celebrating it as well.

All these pastries were good! I’m saying this because there are some pastries that looks good but taste’s horrible. These however both looks cute and tastes good!

I must say that they only accept cash, and not visa card. So I ran out of cash and had to stand at the counter while waiting for my boyfriend to come back from the nearest ATM. That was 5 minutes of awkwardness 😛

Maricar

Before coming to Japan, we booked a MariCar tour. MariCar is where you can go-kart in the streets of Tokyo. We wanted to try it last year, unfortunately my boyfriend did not have a licence that time nor did we have an international drivings permit.

This year though, both of us have a licence and we did a research on the requirements. We booked a tour to be done the day after we arrive in Tokyo. We booked it the day after our arrival so that we could see more of Tokyo or maybe see someting that interests us, and visit those places,

One of the requirements for MariCar is an International Drivers Permit. Without it, well you cannot drive. We fixed it here in Norway by going to KNA. KNA and NAF issues international drivers permit 🙂 For Japan it is the Geneva convention variant.

Our booking was for 2 PM and was to last for three hours.

This was our course. Photo borrowed from Maricar.com

SuperHero Kart Tour SL

We went to Shinagawa around 12 so that we may have a good margin. We actually got lost a bit and then had to take a detour to eat lunch. We arrived at the place around 1:45PM 😁

It wasn’t hard to find the place, since we had Google Maps as our guide, also we saw other people in costumes, so we followed them.

Also the entrance is full of go-karts 😜

Chosing a costume was a bit difficult, there were so many to chose from. I would also like to add that we were only three people driving, we thought we would be a big group. It was only I, my boyfriend and our guide Ryan (really nice guy). It was okay to be three people 🙂

Our MariCar tour was fun! We had some our pictures taken on some places. I drove on the wrong side of the road, since they drive the opposite side in Japan. Also you feel like a celebrity with people waving and taking photos at you, in full blown Yoshi costume! We had some breaks by the way!

Three hours went by so fast! It was fun and we did get to see places we visited afterwards.

We paid 16 000 YEN or around 1700NOK for two people! It is not that expensive and the experience is worth it! I think I would want to try it again. NExt time though I would maybe bring a GoPro that doesn’t get low on battery fast. I think my GoPro had low battery in the middle of a three hour tour, such a bummer.

For those who are interested just visit their site MariCar . You can also chose a different starting place, we just chose Shinagawa 😄

Here is my Maricar Video 🙂

https://youtu.be/RzzhJEfWRig

 

 

 

Marion Crepes

If you walk along Takeshita Street in Harajuku, there are creperies on almost every corner. There are a lot of crepes to choose from and they are quite cheap.

Before we left for Tokyo I learned of Marion Crepes from Running Man. Running Man is a variety show from South Korea, but they did a segment where they were in South Korea. Through the show I learned that Marion Crepes is the oldest creperie in Harajuku.

Marion Crepes was fairly easy to spot. It is, if I am not mistaken the only blue creperie store among the many pink creperie stores.Not pictured, but in front of Marion Crepes is another creperie 😛

There are a lot of crepes to choose from, as I have mentioned earlier. So picking a crepe to try is kind of hard. Below is some of the varieties you can chose from. One thing I like about Japan is that you get a visualisation of their menu with their models.After looking at the menu for a few minutes, we decided on which crepes to try. My boyfriend chose the Brownie Crunch (no. 92) for 600 YEN, while I chose Green Tea Milk choco brownie (no. 88) for 500 YEN. Converted to Norwegian kroner they cost 44 NOK and 36 NOK! Now that’s cheap.

Here is the brownie crunch

While here is my Green tea milk choco brownie

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to taste the brownie crunch, but my boyfriend said it was delicious. My green tea milk choco brownie crepe was delicious!

I do recommend trying crepes when you’re in Harajuku 🙂

Japanese Home

We decided to use AirBnb for this trip as we did last year. We used the same place as we did last year because we really liked the place. Checking in was quite easy, since our host just left the keys in the mailbox instead of having to meet us at the station.

We lived in Koiwa which was in Edogawa ward.

Here is our apartment.

This is the living roomWe got some welcome snacks from our hostHere is the kitchenHere is our bedroomHere is the toilet! Our toilet has these fancy Japanese buttons.This is the bathroom. The washing machine doubles as a dryer as well.This is the bathroom. The whole room is a bathroom. You can actually get the whole room wet. You’re supposed to shower first before entering the bath tub, hence why the shower head is not in the bath tub like they do in the west. The bathtub is quite small compared to it’s western counterparts. Also on the wall there are these buttons which regulates the temperature of the water. It is also throught this buttons you fill the tub with water, my boyfriend was the one filling the tub with water. I only know how to turn of the filling of the water. It also gives you an indication or alarm when to turn of the water. Also there is also a button thing in the kitchen, so you can turn off the water while on the kitchen.I forgot to mention maybe that we also got a pocket wi-fi. Our host left us with a pocket wi-fi. Pocket wi-fi’s are really handy in Japan. Free wi-fi from restaurants and such is quite a hassle if you ask me. We have to log in to this and that, but with pocket wi-fi you have wi-fi with you everywhere you go. The downside of it is you have to have a pocket charger with you in case it runs out of battery.

Also we had airconditioning in our apartment, which was great since it was quite hot in Japan when we were there.

I really want to go back to Japan already 😀

Det er utrolig mye som har skjedd i det siste! Jeg  har begynt på skolen igjen blant annet! Tenkte å  dele innlegg fra Japan, men de blir desverre på engelsk 🙂