Today Charles and I bussed it to Sydney ready for our flight to Tokyo tomorrow morning. Starting from tomorrow evening we’ll be blogging about our trip daily at nipponkyujitsu.blogspot.com. There will be pictures and stories and Burando!
Blog
Trip to Japan!
Next Thursday, Charles and I are going to be flying out to Japan for our second ever trip! We’ll be visiting Tokyo, Nagasaki, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, and some mystery places north of Tokyo. We’ve got some great activities lined up too.
I have two things planned that I’m really super excited about. Firstly, I’m getting a hair cut. Let me explain.
Last year, I had my hair cut in Japan at my friend’s favourite hairdresser. This hairdresser was a super-stylish handsome man who also worked part time at a Host Club. He cut my hair really well. You know how in most hairdressers, they wash your hair and then give your head a “massage”? And the massage is more like they’re trying to break your skull? He was really gentle. I felt like a pretty princess. And then, when I came back to Australia, I got a haircut at a local place. The woman was telling me all about how she’s trained in New York and Paris and everything… and she cut my fringe too short. I nearly died. Since then I’ve cut my own hair, and it’s worked out really well. It’s not so hard. So now I can say… “I only get my hair cut my by my stylist in Japan”.
The second thing I’m super excited about… is visiting Victorian Maiden in Osaka. Victorian Maiden is my favourite brand in the whole world ever. Baby Schmaby (not that I’ve ever tried on either a VM or a Baby dress). What makes this visit so special is that they only have one actual shop. It’s called the “Victorian Maiden Press Room”. You have to send them an email to book a time to come, and boys are not allowed in the shop alone. I think I should be ok bringing Charles, though, because he’ll be with me, and because I’m a gaijin. Victorian Maiden is notoriously expensive (more than the other brands, even), and I’ve been saving up all year. I even know what I’ll buy – that is, if the stuff I want is in stock. I’ll make another post about that another day. Anyone interested?
I’ve also been looking at some other shops to visit in Tokyo, like the Marui One Shinjuku department store, and of course Laforet Harajuku. I went there last time but had no idea about anything at the time. This time I’ll appreciate it more. I’d like to go to more Lolita shops, such as Innocent World and Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. I never got to one last time! In Osaka I’m going to go to the Aranzi Aronzo shop again – I went last time and it was one of my favourite places. We both bought a lot of cute stuff there!
Here are some photos from our last trip, in December 2008:
Five vending machines in a row!
Me at the famous bridge in Akihabara
Harajuku girls at the famous Meiji-dori.
Pretty street at Ginza. I took this while on the pedestrian crossing – and got a telling off from Charles for my foolishness. Worth it.
Christmas Eve
So it’s 11:28pm on Christmas Eve and I only just finished creating and wrapping the last of my Christmas presents. I’ve made *so many things*. Tomorrow I’ll force my family to put on their items and take photos for youse.
There are Christmas beetles EVERYWHERE IN MY HOUSE flying into stuff. It’s like they don’t have eyes.
This evening was Carols on the Lawn at my church. I was going to be playing 3 or 4 carols, and another man was going to play the other 4 or 5. He rang me up this morning saying he’d been in a car crash (!) and was too shaky to play. His car was totaled but somehow (thank goodness) he was unhurt. So I spent all day practicing the songs he was going to play, and ended up playing them all this evening. It was a bit shaky, but it was a casual event and everyone appreciated it. Luckily it was overcast and not too hot. Performing in the hot sucks.
Time for bed, and maybe Santa will visit tonight! Happy Christmas friends!
MORE SKIRTS OKAY GOSH
This is my last skirt for a while, maybe. There’s another one in my cupboard that I haven’t shown you guise yet, and the one I made my mum, but surely you’re sick of skirts by now. So one more.
Here you can see the skirt reaching critical mass. It burst into flames seconds after the camera went.
This fabric is mostly transparent. To overcome this embarrassing problem, I sewed an underskirt into it. Hooray for modesty!
This fabric has a pretty edge. So when I sewed it all up and it was about 4 inches too long, I had to be creative about how to shorten it. I sewed in 2 pintucks around the skirt (a bit uneven in some places) which looks kind of cute.What kind of skirt should I make next?
No Poo = Poo
So I quit using bi-carb instead of shampoo. I did it for about 3 weeks, washing my hair every 3 – 4 days. At first I just used the bi-carb, but it felt horrible so I started using normal conditioner as well. That helped a little, but the other day I washed my hair and it came out AS GREASY AS BEFORE, and felt like bits of straw or pipe cleaners. I washed with normal shampoo and my hair feels amazing. Perhaps I just needed a change. Perhaps my hair is not suited to this treatment. Perhaps no-poo sucks.
Here are some common arguments for the “no poo” method, and my counter arguments.
“My hair is so shiny” – Really? Maybe that’s because it’s so greasy.
“My hair holds any style” – You know how wire stays when you bend it? This.
“I don’t have to wash my hair as often” – I guess this just depends on how greasy you like your hair to look.
“I just have to blow dry my hair and go” – When it wasn’t weird and greasy, my hair went strange and frizzy and stiff (both at once! weird!) and I had to use my straightener to make it look any kind of normal.
Also, this made my head really itchy and gave me dandruff. It was as though I had a buildup of dry bi-carb on my head, even though I washed it out very thoroughly. Now with real shampoo, my hair feels silky rather than stiff, clean rather than coated in grease, shiny rather than frizzy, and my head doesn’t itch. I would like to reduce how much I shampoo, though. That will be my next experiment.
Here is a link to someone else who failed at no-poo. She has a more in-depth discussion which is really interesting.
No-poo, I am disappointed in you. Disappointed.
Christina Hopgood 