Au Revoir Tokyo, Mon Amour

Welll it has been almost a whole month since I have updated.

So much has happened!

School was a real drag of course but there were amazing parties, cooler weather, $$$ clothes, etc. etc.

These last two weeks were jam packed with fun things that I'll slowly be bloggin' about once I get back to the states.

I met a handful of really awesome people in the past two weeks and I'm very very sad / bummed / blah about leaving Tokyo.

I don't want to leave but I do miss everyone at home... aye aye.

Anyways, here are some photos that are not mine as I have still not taken photos off of my camera:








Everything this week was just a blur of izakaya, karaoke, booze, Japanese Christmas parties, shopping, etc. etc. etc.


Make sure to come back here in two or so days when I will have more fun photos from tonight's crazy last hurrah and also when I develop my FILM. Woooo!

Oh Tokyo.... I miss you already.

Funny 'Cause it's True

Accurate portrayal of how I feel on the Tokyo Metro sometimes:

Pancakes of Gloom

Well I woke up to a gloomy cold November Sunday and I was reminded of a little tradition that my mother used to do on gloomy cold November Sundays... make pancakes!!!

So that's what I decided to do. I walked around for an hour hunting for ingredients to make some vegan pancakes from scratch. I found a basic recipe online and then jazzed it up resulting in blueberry banana pancakes.

This simple task was complicated by:

1.) Small workspace
2.) Kanji
3.) Measuring utensils
4.) Veganism in Japan

In the end I managed to deal with my small workplace, correctly bought the correct kind of oil based on pictures, bought some measuring spoons and figured out conversions, anddd successfully bought all the ingredients necessary for pancakes.

The gloom outside my room.

Ingredients like... baking powder, soy oil (?), sugar, some sort of flour ( I think all purpose but I can't tell ), maple syrup, bananas, and frozen blueberries. For some reason Seiyu only has frozen blueberries and no other sort of frozen fruit. Oh well!
Mixin' bowl that is actually soup bowl and a mixing spoon that is actually my soup spoon.
And the results! They were so so so good. The oil I used for grillin' made them taste extra good. Plus, how can ya go wrong with bananas and blueberries.

Recipe ( I cut it in half to make five - six small pancakes since I was cookin' for one! ):

1/2 cup whole wheat all purpose flour.
1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1/2 cup blueberries
One banana

Pour a little bit of the oil into a pan and put on medium heat. Thoroughly mix all the dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Add oil and soy milk and mix until smooth ( a few small lumps don't hurt no one! ). Fold in the blueberries. Spoon in just enough batter so that you can cook two small pancakes at a time. When the edges begin to look crispy, flip the pancakes over. Cup up a banana to put on the pancakes and pour a little maple syrup on 'em!

Sooo good.

Hasselhoff Halloween

My new friend Marlene from Germany!

And speaking of Germany...

Tri***le Ni***les

Tokyoween

TUJ

All work and no play makes blogging a dull chore.

Topshop and Muffins

This past Thursday, Topshop/Topman had its grand re-opening. They closed THREE days before I came to Tokyo so that kind of sucked but I guess it was (supposed to be) worth the wait.

Because the H&M opening in Ginza had two hour-ish lines the day it opened, I decided to wake up early and grab some food at Pure Cafe and then wait in line for the opening.

After only thirty minutes or so of sweating in queue next to two French girls, we were let in.

It was SUPREMELY disappointing. The clothes were uninteresting. It was basically like H&M in terms of style of clothing ( blah / nu-wave remnants ) and also in terms of shitty quality. Even if I had found something interesting, the prices were 'chotakai' (extremely expensive) as they say in Tokyo.

Ohh well. With all the money I saved on not buying anything there, I went to Shinjuku and bought some Cheap Mondays I had my eye on. The highlight of my dad was certainly my vegan choco orange muffin and coffee from my perma-favorite restaurant "Pure Cafe":

Niku o Tabemasen!!

I'm so excited!

This Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. there is going to be a vegetarian festival in Yoyogi park!

There's going to be soooo much good food I can't even stand it. There's also going to be tons of vegetarian / vegan groceries which will also be exciting. I really hope they have nutritional yeast. Aye aye!

Princess, Jokers, and Slayers University

Well my three day weekend iscoming to a close and thus begins midterm week. Basically I have two art history exams and a Japanese oral thing. It should be whatever.

Yesterday, we did a little shopping and then went to "Tokyo School Night". This party is held the night before a day off from school ( aka typically a school night ). It was held on two whole floors at Trump Room. How fun! The dress code was school uniform or "castle" ( which entailed princess, jokers, or slayers ). Themes are always so fun because people usually play around with it and never do a straight up literal interpretation of a theme. Also, sometimes a theme will be something strange like "the boudoir of Danae" or "Andy Warhol's threesome with John and Yoko". You get the idea.

The night was really enjoyable and we made some new friends with people that we constantly see at parties and what not.

Here are some photos:

Trump Room is basically what I want my entire house to look like someday.

Someone should really invent a dress that looks like that as opposed to it just being an optical illusion created by my camera.

Marie Antoinette took time out of her busy schedule of macaron eating to make an appearance.

"Syrup" girls and boy. Please note the following: cat mask turned into a hat, leopard jacket, lace dresses under leather motorcycle jackets, and general kawaii-ness. Not featured are the furry flats the girl on the right was sporting.




Hannah went for the school girl look.


Party people.

These girls are known as the "Spank Girls". We see them a lot. They went for the "princess" look. Also, apart from some stray stripper at the party, nobody does stupid "sexy" costumes which is such a relief. People always look mad classy.

Hannah auditioning for a spot as one of the Spank Girls.

I forget names like nobody's business, but this is one of our friends. He has these really great Jerri Blank jeans with braid details on the side.

Tokyo parties usually culminate into slumber parties.


Found objects: Gold crown, broken tiara, and hand cream.

This chucklehead was taking a photo of this sleeping girl so I thought I'd capture his creepiness. He turned to me and said "I'm going to send this into Vice" and proceeded to fix his hair in one of the mirrors. It was too perfect.


You put a pole in a club and this is bound to happen. Nobody really cares too much (as evidenced by those two people on the left more concerned with conversation) except that white girl in the blue wig was patiently waiting her turn. Oh and also, some awkward white guy (there is always one or two) was staring hxc.

This is our friend Tomo. He was at Narzib Saturday and was all excited about this party. We thought he'd be decked out in the best costume but he just wore what he wore the night before and fell asleep. Oh well. He's still awesome.


Blowin' bubbles out of a sword.

Well good morning! Does anything say 'school' uniform better than mixin' plaid? Also, considering how crazy in Japan dressed you think people wouldn't give me a second glance but I've never had so many double-takes in my life.

Oh well.

Now to study some Early Heian and Kamakura period junk. Ugh.

Come back and visit!