Miss Filigree

I designated the fourth day in Japan as a full on shop day, as there was a lolita secondhand market scheduled that day. I went on my way late-ish, so I didn’t expect to find the bargain of my life, but I hoped to find some cute tops or jewelry. I was worried that finding the place was going to be hard, but as soon as I entered Takeshita Dori I saw signs pointing me in the right direction.  The red sign was for the event space! Cheap buys this way! Strangely enough the hand was pointing at some stairs going down...which was the wrong way. Oops! One was held by a lolita in a very OTT outfit, even on Takeshita Dori it was hard to miss! I went up into the rented space and was, to my surprise, greeted in English by a western girl. The “international lolita” thing turned out to be actually true!  One of the event hosts. Such a cute coord, and such a cute dress! Event space. By the time I arrived most of the good buys were gone, but still fun! The market itsel...

On friday I went to Kawagoe, in Saitama prefecture but technically still in Tokyo, to meet my Japanese family! My great-grandmother was Japanese, and even though we share the tiniest bit of blood we were really excited to meet! I’ll keep their names shortened for their privacy.  I was invited over to Kawagoe because it was nice and central for all my family members, and it’s a beautiful old village. It turned out Kawagoe is also called Little Edo because half the city center is authentically Edo, including a bell tower that’s famous throughout Japan. I met up with A-san and Ai-san at the station (after walking right past eachother, followed by a panicked phone call where they were) and we took a bus to the center. A-san had booked a kimono rental service and reserved lunch for the day. The kimono rental place was incredibly small! It consisted of a small porch with hanging curtains, a heightened tatami floor with kimono racks and a dressing room the size of a big closet.  ...

Heya! Guess who’se online! Unfortunately I can’t upload any pictures yet as I didn’t bring my laptop, so these posts will be just text until I get back and edit these. Sorry!   12/04 edit: here are the pictures!   (I’ll make some posts depending on how interesting the things I did were, I’ll probably combine days where I didn’t do too much) Nothing happened on our very first day in Japan, we spent it dragging suitcases around Tokyo and cursing, and when we got to the airBnB at 4 in the midday we went straight to bed, that’s how badly the trip wore us out! The second day however, we got up early to head to Harajuku.  The first half of the day centered around bank problems, because it turned out even though the logos on our cards were on any and every ATM, we couldn’t actually withdraw any money! We figured out a way eventually but it was a super convoluted one and having to fight with bank employees while you just want to shop really puts kind of a bad aftertas...

 Despite it being only barely March, it is already so warm where I live that flowers are popping up everywhere! In this time of the year I love taking the long route to any errands I have to run so I can enjoy the flowers. My city plants loads of them everywhere and some grow naturally so every patch of green is speckled with blue, purple, yellow and white. The other day I was thinking of coords to match with the flowers that grow around here and I decided to share it in a blogpost! Snowbell Snowbells are humble little flowers. I always loved how they hide their flowers by facing the ground, as if they're too shy to look up. For a flower so subtle and elegant I wanted to make a white gothic coord. Something equally subtle, elegant and almost melancholic. I loved the shoes for this because they're very chunky without being too gothy, and the green gives it a nice springy feeling. Hyacinth Hyacinths come in lots of colours, from pink to yellow to cornflowe...