Today, as promised, I'll show you the pictures of the lolita meet up I went to at Toshimaen. Toshimaen is an amusement park in Tokyo, and our chief reason for going was to see the El Dorado carousel.
It was built in Germany in 1907, lived for a long time in New York, and in the 1970s it came to Japan. It's also been imortalised in Baby's El Dorado series, though of course the real one looks quite a bit different to the applique version.
It's a lovely carousel, with the most beautiful Art Nouveau decoration. I've never seen anything like it!
You could ride in a carriage, on a velvet bench, on a horse, or on a pig. I choose a horse, of course.
It was also unusual in that the horses didn't move up and down, and there weren't any moving figures or mirrors in the centre, and it seemed to be going ever so fast which was a bit worrying given it's age and the fact it's made of wood.
This carousel was so beautiful once you were sitting inside it. I'd like to go round and round for hours!
Of course we took outfit shots! I wish I had worn something more fitting for the scenery, but in winter I can hardly think of anything but being as warm as possible.
Here's my makeup:
And Mr Piggy:
After the carousel, we went skating! I haven't skated for years, and I was pretty bad at it then. I kept having second thoughts but once the skates were on my feet there couldn't really be any going back, and after dragging myself round the edge a couple of times annoying everyone, I got the hang of it again! It was great fun, and the other lolis looked so cute on skates!
Finally, I want to say thank you very much to the maker of my valentine this week. It means a great deal to me to receive one- thank you, thank you, thank you!
I still haven't got round to posting all the pictures from my mother's visit back in October, so I'm sharing a few with you today.
On this day we went to a couple of museums- the Edo Tokyo Museum and the Sumo Museum, which are very close to each other in Ryogoku.
You can guess where we took this picture!
I'm the referee!
Although I've been to the Edo Tokyo Museum several times before, this was the first time I've had a guided tour. I really recommend it; the tour is free, available in several languages, and you can choose how long you want the tour for and which part of the museum in particular you'd like explained.
We told the guide we only had 20 minutes, in case it was boring! It wasn't at all though, so we asked her if we could extend it, haha.
The museum is divided into different time zones, and I found these adorable Junichi Nakahara postcards in the Showa section.
I also saw this cool kimono/jumpsuit thing! There was some footage of a girl wearing one, she looked so stylish.
I picked up a couple of postcards and a "Modern Girl" pack of oil removing papers. It is a testament to my extreme oiliness that none are left now :(
After that we went to take a look at the newly restored Tokyo station. It was originally built in 1914, and I think that the architect who designed it was a student of an English architect who went to Japan to teach.
It's very interesting to see a Western-style building like this here in Tokyo! My home town in England is close to Brighton, famous for the crazy Indian/Chinese palace built by George IV while he was a decadent prince. This building is less crazy and more tasteful, but strange nonethless.
Anyway I like it! The imperial palace is nearby, and we wanted to visit that next, but all we found was a big "CLOSED" sign and a lot of angry tourists!
I hope we'll get a chance to go to the palace next visit, and we'll be sure to arrive earlier then.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures. Next time, I'll tell you about the Tokyo lolitas' adventures in ice skating and the El Dorado carousel!
How are you? Here in Tokyo the snow is melting more each day. Yesterday I thought I had caught yet another cold, so I took cold medicine and a power drink (the kind with chinese herbs and whatnot) and went to bed. This morning I feel much better. It's just as well, I can't tell you how angry I was at the thought of going through all that again! I seem to catch cold very easily. I hope this is a sign of intelligence but I fear not.
Anyway, here is today's coordinate!
Hair Accessory: Handmade
Blouse:Vintage
JSK: Innocent World
Tights:Swimmer
Bag: Metamorphose
Others: Offbrand
Oh dear, my petticoat looks a bit flat here! In this outfit I combined beige and dark brown, with some red accents. There are teddies on my tights and on my dress!
My blouse collar had beige embroidery on it originally. I went over the embroidery with coloured threads, I think it looks much cuter now!
Adding embroidery to a collar is really easy. You can draw the design on with a tailors chalk or pen and then just stitch over. If you have a blouse you're a bit bored of, I reccomend doing this!
When I got up yesterday and looked out of the window, I was amazed by....
SNOW!
Quite a bit of it has melted now, but it was quite magical for a while. On the same day, it snowed in my home down too. And my parent's central heating broke down.... not so magical.
I have something nice to share with you, mine and Aviva's twin outfits got into February's KERA!
Yay! In fact, Aviva's in this issue twice; she was snapped along with two of my other friends at another event. Quite an achievement! I'm very proud of all of them :)
That's all for now, but there'll be a longer post coming next time!
Sorry for the lack of updates, I was making the most of my time at home. I'm back in Tokyo now!
Today I have pictures from an event I went to just before I went home. I've wanted to go to one of Misako's tea parties for some time, and my friend invited me along to this one which was held in a restaurant in Shinjuku.
There are a few Alice themed cafes/restaurants in Shinjuku these days, but this was the first time I'd been to one! The name of this particular restaurant is Ehon no Kuni no Arisu (Alice of Picture Book Land) and it is usually only open in the evening, but they opened it specially for Misako's party.
Ok, according to the coaster it's Alice in Fantasy Book but I prefer my translation.
Here's my outfit!
Ribbon: Ange (Japanese indies brand)
Blouse: Vintage
Jumperskirt: Emily Temple Cute
Tights: tutuanna
Of course, the theme was Alice. I tried to give it a new twist by adding red to the usual blue (British Alice?). It's hard to see, but my tights have hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds on them!
I think this coord needs a bit more work still, so I'll try another version some time.
Here's a glimpse of the inside of the restaurant. There was a great chandelier (which I had to duck under) and huge Tenniel illustrations on the walls, lot of mirrors and some perspex walls, which gave it a wonderland feeling.
There were some talk shows, and two of my friends from GLP no Kai (a lolita circle) were part of it! Kawaii Girl Japan were covering the event too.
The food was really nice, and much more plentiful than at the Triple Fortune party. There was a savoury course and a sweet course, buffet style, and enough for seconds!
There were tomato and salmon roses (the one pictured is a tomato one) and the potato waffles were so yummy! I do miss potatoes being here. I ate ever so many at home to make up for it!
The desserts were very pretty, there were chocolate ones and starwberry ones and choux pastry as well as these nice green tea roll cakes.
There was another talk show with Hanae, a very sweet girl who is a musician. She seemed so shy and gentle, I want to be her friend! After I post this I will look up her music. She gave us some reccomendations about eyeliner and books, including a book detailing cafes and so on suitable for a maidenly lifestyle. She had a lovely Innocent World onepiece with a high collar, and tights from Grimoire!
Misako seemed very animated during the party, more than usual maybe, and happy to have so many guests come to see her. I really enjoyed the talk shows (especially with my nice friend to translate the difficult bits for me!) and I think it would be good if we did something more like that at events like Hyper Japan. Fashion shows are fun, but a bit impersonal perhaps. The talk shows were not wildly exciting, but just nice chats about clothes and hair and make up and books and cafes, so cosy and pleasant! All in all it was a very nice day, and quite relaxing in fact.
We all took a photo with Misako at the end, and I will post it as it's a happy memory, even though I look like Godzilla next to her:
Just look at Misako please, not me!
Oh yes, we did a jan-ken-pon taikai (rock paper scissors tournament) with Misako and Hanae, and I was one of the winners! Misako had bought Alice prizes at Disneyland and I got this adorable box of tea.
The hearts are apple tea, and the clubs are ceylon. I love the art deco style illustration!
Thank you for reading, and perhaps you'd like to finish by watching this video of the tea party made by Kawaii Girl Japan:
There are English subtitles, and Hanae-chan is in it! I'm in it too at the end saying "Kawaii Girl Japan", right at the back with my red ribbon!
I hope this year will be a good one for all of you, and thank you very much for all your kind seasonal greetings on the previous post.
On to today's post! I'm still getting over my cough and cold, which turned out to be a very bad one, but I did make it to the theatre the other night. I have said before that I'm a big fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and my friend got tickets for us to see the stage show!
We both wanted to dress up, and at first I thought we could be Riff-Raff and Magenta, or Brad and Janet, or the couple from the American Gothic painting that Riff-Raff and Magenta dress up as at the church, but it was all a bit difficult to coordinate being in two different continents as we tried to plan it. So, we were Transylvanians!
We hunted so hard for cummerbund sets, and then a couple of days after the show I walked into a second-hand shop and there were millions of them.
I don't have an outfit shot of my friend, so I put me twice, haha! Sorry about the messy background.
I really enjoyed wearing this boyish outfit, especially the cummerbund! One of my lolita resolutions this year is to try to put together an aristocrat outfit, a manly one I mean.
The show was great fun, although the poor actors' attempted American accents proved difficult to keep up. Every time Frank-n-Furter's slipped he replaced it with a new one from somewhere else. Still, I enjoyed it all a great deal and it made more sense than the film- I suppose they had to cut some things out for the film? The narrator was really good, and dealt very well with the audience shouting things out, even though it wasn't supposed to be one of those performances where the audience joins in. I'd like to go to one of those some day!
Have you been to see Rocky Horror at the cinema or on stage? Did you dress up? Who should I dress up as next time do you think?
