DAY 9 in TOKYO: Stylish in Harajuku!

Day 9:

• Visit Harajuku

1. Kiddyland

2. Takeshita Street

3. Lunch at Kawaii Monster Café

*disclaimer: I can't retrieve the photos taken from my camera and can only find photos taken from our phone for the front part of the day! :(*

Today is the day we explore Harajuku! First stop was to omote-sando area. We were walking around the area when it started drizzling and we ended up in Honolulu Coffee for a quick breakfast and hide away from the rain. For detailed directions & review, read >>here<<. This store is now apparently closed though, but I believe they have other shops elsewhere!

Our drinks

Pancake for breakfast!

When the rain stopped, we walked over to Kiddyland. Sooo much cute stuffs over here; I wished I had money to buy them all! :/

Located here!

Then we went to try gyoza! It started to drizzle again while we were queuing to enter the store! For detailed directions & review, read >>here<<.

Refreshing cucumbers!

Oishii gyoza!

Time to shop and squeeze at Takeshita Street! Since we visited Harajuku on a Sunday, it was super duper crowded! Of course, we had to squeeze with everyone and take purikura!

Princess in harajuku? ;P

We entered quite a few shops but the items sold here were not that cheap. And we were feeling abit poor already... We were halfway through our trip after all! We did buy things from the daiso located at Harajuku though!

It's a rather big store! But it was also packed with people!

After much walking, shopping and squeezing, we decided to call it a day and wanted to rest our tired feet. We ended up eating a late lunch/early dinner at Maisen Tonkatsu! For detailed directions & review, read >>here<<. The store was rather empty when we arrived; we were eating at a rather odd timing after all. Even so, the restaurant can accommodate a rather large number of people inside.

Put some soyu in and the radish becomes surprisingly delicious!

Our big servings of tonkatsu! Yums! It was super good! Best tonkatsu ever! :P

Ended our filling meal with yuzu ice cream!

I had made a reservation prior to dine at Kawaii Monster cafe before having dinner at Maison initially. However, we ended up eating the tonkatsu earlier and it was super filling, we just ordered drinks and ice cream in this cafe. Read >>here<< for detailed review and more photos!

Colourful and quirky store front

Our menu

We were seated in this surreal 'forest'

We watched the monster girls performed on this stage o.o

Colourful chopsticks

Our order!

Mixing the concoction

Pretty drink!

Photo with the monster girls!

And... that's the end of Day 9!

To Day 10 Part 1!~

JAPAN THEMED RESTAURANT: KAWAII MONSTER CAFE

Kawaii Monster Café, under Diamond Dining group, is a colourful and loudly decorated themed cafe. They even have monster girls that performs in the cafe. There are various themed sections inside the cafe.

Once you reach level 4, you are greeted by a splash of pink & purple~

Store front

The different zones in the cafe

We were seated here

Quirky flower booths

This is a stage

The animals are staring into your soul ;)

Pastel-coloured section

Melted ice cream~

ze glowing bar!

Our menu! So kawaii!

Colourful chopsticks!

We were full from food so cant order much :/

Concocting the drink!

Ta da!!

Pretty toilet sink!!

We took a picture with the monster girls!

I can't really comment on the food.. since we didn't ordered any food, just ice cream and drinks. However I feel that this place is rather surreal, with all those colours and decorations; it felt worth the visit. I wouldn't mind coming back to try the colourful food in future just to see if they taste nice ;D

Cover charge: 500 yen zone charge

Map: Located at YM square building 4F


Opening hours: 11.30am to 4.30pm & 6pm to 10.30pm

pre-TOKYO [PART 2]: Other reservations

-continued from previous post-

Other reservations made in advance
For attractions:
DisneySea & DisneyLand 3 day passport
I created a Disneyland account in their Japanese site in order to be able to make online reservations for the restaurants in Disneyland/sea. However, you can create an account in their English site for ease of use. Just click on 'Reservations/Purchase' and you will be able to purchase your tickets! Note that the account created can only be used in the site it is created in i.e. account created in Japanese site can only be used to log in the Japanese site and the same goes for the English site.

For the 3 day pass, you need to choose the resort you wish to visit on the 1st and 2nd day. On the 3rd day, you can visit both resorts.
E.g. 1st day: Disneyland, 2nd day: Disneysea, 3rd day: no selection needed (you can visit both).

A good site to use to know more about planning for your Disneyland/sea trip is THIS.
To find out how crowded the resort will be, you can use THIS. It is in Japanese, just use google translate to get the gist of it. But these are the colour codes on the estimated amount of people that will be visiting the theme parks.

Price: 16,600 yen for 3-day magic passport 

Ghibli Museum 三鷹の森ジブリ美術館 & Doraemon Museum 藤子・F・不二雄ミュージアム
Tickets to both Ghibli Museum and  Doraemon Museum can only be bought in the Lawsons' stores using the Loppi machine. You can however check on the tickets availability online to see if there are still available tickets. You can't buy online using these sites as you need to be able to collect the tickets from Lawson within a certain number of days from your online purchase. Hence, if you book in advance, your reservations will still be voided if you don't collect the tickets from Lawson.

For Ghibli Museum, click >>here<<

To check availability, click on dark brown button.

For Doraemon Museum, click >>here<<

To check availability, click on the yellow/orange button of the month you wish to visit.

For my visit in April, the more popular museum is Ghibli Museum. Tickets were selling out waaaay too fast! Doraemon Museum still had many available slots. However, I just requested my kind Airbnb host to purchase both tickets for me!! Lucky me! :D A lot of thanks and appreciation to my host!!! ♥♥

Price: 1,000 yen for each museum for 1 adult

For restaurants:
Magellan @ DisneySea & Crystal Palace @ DisneyLand
As mentioned, I had created an account in Disney's Japanese site in order for me to reserve Disney's restaurants.

Magellan is a fine dining restaurant in Disneysea, you can read the review >>here<< They rated this restaurant as the best Disney restaurant, so I definitely have to try right? :P

For Crystal Palace, it is a buffet restaurant. The review is >>here<< Sounds nice too right?

I have booked both restaurants for dinner though, so it might be more expensive.. Hopefully they are as good as they had been reviewed!

Maidreamin's Digitized Café  and Dining Bar
There are several Maidreamin shops in Tokyo but I planned to visit this special-themed maid café under them. The shop's details >>here<< I just filled in the details and submitted my request. I have yet to receive any confirmation from them. I guess I will know if they had accepted my reservation once I'm there.

There is a surcharge of 500 yen per hour and each person 1 is required to order 1 main course.

Eorzea Café 
Eorzea café can be visited without making a reservation online. However, the best way to ensure you can get a seat in a themed restaurant is making a reservation. This cafe receives bookings in fixed time slots. These are the 4 time slots each day.

Booking online with a charge of 1,000 yen entitles you to one drink and receiving a free drink coaster. However, this online booking belongs to Lawson as well. Hence, you need to collect your ticket from Lawson within a certain number of days after reserving online. I will either be getting my host to buy once the date I want is released or purchase the tickets when I am in Japan.

Update: I have unfortunately been unable to book the day and time I want! So unless we managed to get time slot from the cafe when we are there, we won't be able to to eat here! >.<

Swallowtail café 
This is a butler cafe!! KYYYAAA! >.< Reservations are accepted up to 2 weeks in advance! Will book once the date I want is available! :D

The Lockup ロックアップ 渋谷店

The Lockup is a haunted prison-themed restaurant. They have various outlets in Japan. Even though I am not a fan of any horror-related things, it looks interesting so we decided to go there. My friend is okay with these kind of things though.. Besides, we are just there to eat right?? Can't be that scary right?? *convinces myself that it will be okay*

Anyways, I made my reservation >>here<< I have received an email confirmation from the restaurant on my reservation.
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The 3 restaurants listed below belong to Diamond Dining, the same company as the Alice restaurant I visited in Osaka last year. Last year, I had created an account with Diamond Dining and now I can make my reservations online for any restaurants under this company.

Vampire Café ダイヤモンドダイニングが
Vampire cafe, as the name suggests, is a Vampire-themed cafe. Hopefully the food taste as nice as the decorations I see online!

Sengoku Buyuden  乱世の個室 戦国武勇伝
Official site >>here<< As quoted from a site, it is themed of "Japanese history during segoku period (age of civil wars, around 1550-1600)". Not that I really know anything about Japanese history, but the pictures looks cool and the review mentioned that the food is good! So I shall try it out!

Kawaii Monster Café 
Last but not least Kawaii Monster Cafe! I just happened to see this cafe in the reservation page and wondered what this shop is all about. This store's concept seems to play around with loud and bright colours. Seems interesting!
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Others:
Disney bus from Grand Pacific Le Daiba
This link is only for guests who are staying with Grand Pacific Le Daiba only. To book, click >>here<<

To see if your hotel provides shuttle bus, you may click >>here<<
To compare the benefits that the hotels have, click >>here<<

DOCOMO SIM card

Initially I had wanted to rent a portable wifi device for the first few days in Disneyland as we will only get a portable wifi when we check in our airbnb apartment in the later part of our trip (see itinerary). However, my friend recommended me to buy a data SIM card instead and when I compared the prices, buying the SIM card is a cheaper option.

I purchased from simjapan where they sell 7 days or 15 days SIM card. They also offer a 'Big data' option for people who uses more data. I bought my 15 days big data (3GB) micro SIM card for S$58 after including a S$1 delivery charge. We will enjoy 200MB of data each day! This should be more than enough for the 2 of us. Furthermore, when we are in the hotel room, we can switch to using the hotel's wifi.

Price: SGD 58

-Continue to part 3 for my planned itinerary-