A shopping day in Harajuku!

Hello! Again, I have been away from the blog for quite some time, but I had good reasons I swear!

First, I wrote a super long article which completely disappeared by mistake (thank you Blogger for your stupid autosave feature) and it made me so mad that I had to stay away from Blogger for a while!
(and you'll never see this entry, because I didn't have courage to write it all over again! Haha)
Then, I recently went to Japan for two weeks, so I was pretty busy planning my trip and doing more work hours (because money).

As you probably already guessed by reading the title, this entry will be about the Lolita shopping day I spent in Harajuku with my French friend Marie. I have been very lucky, because Marie already was in Japan as the same time as me 3 years ago so it was actually the second time we could spent time together in Tokyo :)
Before telling you about our adventures in Harajuku, I just wanted to say that Marie is one of the sweetest persons I know and she is working so hard right now to fulfill her dream: opening her very own Japanese fashion shop, Kawaii Style!
Kawaii Style website will be launched very soon and you should totally check it out because it will be filled with the most gorgeous clothes and accessories Marie especially selected from WEGO, Triple Fortune, Amavel and many many others! So you should totally bookmark those two links ;)

Kawaii Style Facebook page
Kawaii Style website

Ok, so luckily Marie and I were in Tokyo at the same time. We planned to spend March 23 together and we met around 11:00 at the old Harajuku station (I heard they want to demolish it for the Olympic games in 3 years.. which makes me so sad...) and our crazy day of shopping and fun started!
I planned to wear a quite simple and comfortable outfit for the day, I decided to wear my Angelic Pretty Sweetie Violet JSK, that I actually bought exactly there 3 years ago combined with lavender accessories!

Marie & I in front of Harajuku station!

We headed to Takeshita-dori, starting by shopping at Paris Kids! They always have the cutest and cheapest accessories and I was especially happy as they had plenty of shells/sea themed items as well as galaxy/constellations ones! 

Hello Takeshita-dori!

Some of the cute accessories at Paris Kids ♥

Now. Small digress, but I have read a lot recently about how Lolita fashion is dying. In Tokyo, many shops are still selling Lolita clothing and I didn't see any difference comparing to when I was there 3 years ago.... BUT what I saw changed a lot is the amount of tourists. In Takeshita-dori, it was horrible. As I was fully dressed in Lolita, I couldn't walk without having random people almost jostling me to have a picture, putting their camera right into my face. I hated it. Now, I'm European and I post my pictures everywhere on internet, so ok... but let's imagine a shy, protective, young Japaneses girl walking down the street suffer such harassment (because yes, it came to the point that I consider it harrassment when people dare to touch you and to disturb you while you are doing your thing). Japanese people are pretty protective of themselves, don't like to be touched and are very sensitive and polite and the consequence is that I barely saw anybody dressed up in Harajuku. Maybe Japanese street fashion is dying in Harajuku, because tourists only see it as an amusement for themselves and don't respect the persons anymore, especially the Japanese persons. Harajuku is probably advertised now in all travel guides as the place where you can see crazy dressed people and tourists go there just like they could go to the zoo. And as a Lolita, I surely wouldn't want to go to Harajuku dressed up on a regular basis.

But let's back to topic! After going to a shoe shop where we spotted amazing shoes (I bought mint shoes! Something I wanted for a long time), we headed to Closet Child!
Before going to Japan, I said to myself not to compulsory buy too many things at Closet Child because it was cheap. I sold almost all the dresses I bought there in the past few years without actually wearing them. I told myself I would only buy one dress second hand: Angelic Pretty Dreamy Jewel in bordeaux. And guess what? It was there!!! I was so lucky! Well, it wasn't my favourite JSK cut, but it was quite cheap and in the right colour so I went for it! So happy!

Dreamy Jewel is such an underrated print!

Marie didn't buy much as she was here for business and already did her shopping days before, so I felt a bit guilty buying that much... haha. Now I had a pretty AP dress, mint shoes, accessories from Paris Kids, but I still managed to buy a yellow beret from Listen Flavor (a bit expensive, but it had the perfect pastel yellow shade!) and accessories from Spinns! Allllll of this, before even go to Laforêt (better known as the vile temple of tentations).

But first, it was time for lunch. Marie really wanted to try the Kawaii Monster Café but after seeing the queue, we gave up. I'm not really the kind to wait hours to have lunch, Marie neither. We went back to Takeshita-dori to try our luck on the Pompompurin café, but it wasn't better... so in the end we crashed at the Patty & Jimmy themed café! I didn't know these two characters, but they're from Sanrio just like Hello Kitty. The café was super cute and we didn't have to wait at all! Fair enough!

Lovely Marie ♥

I ordered the cutest dish ever and an ice cream soda, but I actually couldn't eat much as I felt sick during most of my trip having nausea. It was really good though and I hope the staff didn't think I didn't enjoy it.

It took me time to realize the blue thing was actually a cap... XD

After lunch break, it was time to go to Laforêt! Yay! They had a special event called "Flower by Laforêt" and many brands made special releases for the occasion, including Alice and the Pirates, Metamorphose and Angelic Pretty.

I bought some more things at Swimmer: gifts for friends and a lovely pair of glitter shoes for myself before heading to Metamorphose shop where I wanted to buy the special set they released for the Flower event. This stock picture don't do it justice at all, because I swear this dress is gorgeous and so elegant in real (I will probably make a review with details pictures later, it totally deserves it). It was a bit expensive, but totally worth it!

Garden tea time set by Metamorphose

When then went upstairs to check Rose Marie seoir shop for Kawaii Style and I also wanted to browse Leur Getter shop! Worst idea ever as I spotted the cutest dress... but I already had spent a lot of money and decided not to buy it :( It left me a bit frustrated because I really fell in love with it and was dying to get a Leur Getter dress for some time already (..... but I can tell you that I came back to buy it the next week and it is now the most favourite thing I bought during this trip ♥ haha)

Time was flying, there was still a thing I reeeeeally wanted to do with Marie: purikura of course! So we came back to Takeshita-dori. But first, we stopped for a crêpe because you can't be in Harajuku and not have a crêpe. That is not possible. No. No way. You have to.
We went to Santa Monica crêpe, which is my favourite shop, and as I fortunately wasn't feeling nauseous anymore for now I could really enjoy it! I took a crêpe with whipped cream, strawberries and chocolate cake. Yummy!

We found a quiet corner where we could sit ant eat our crêpes and then went to make our glorious purkiura! I LOVE purikura! It is so much fun to decorate and we always have a good laugh about how non-human we are looking. We tried two different machine, but the seconde time, a Barbie themed one, was a bit failed as Marie chose the couple option by accident! I was Barbie and she was my Ken. Haha!

Aren't we the cutest? ♥

The night had now come on Harajuku and it was time to say goodbye to Marie. My feet were hurting so much after a full day walking and I still had to go through Shinjuku station all by myself carrying tons of bags, but I spent such a lovely day with a very dear friend that it was all worth it ♥ I will cherish memories of this day! Thank you Marie, until next time ;)