Sweet Dreams: Japan 2017 day 1&2

Rocking the neck-pillow-hat look
on the airplane, lol ;)

Hi everyone! We are already back for a week now and things got a bit hectic, because our female ferret is quite ill and obviously we had to start working immediately again, but yeah some time to relax is also needed so here's the first post about our Japan vacation!

At Wednesday March 15 we got up early to prepare the last things. That day the Dutch elections happened, and as you know since politics are at a critical state right now, we wanted to make sure to vote and so we did, we were the second and third people to enter the voting hall at 07.30 o clock (not even the first)!
After that we rushed back and were in time to get an earlier bus to the station, where we could enjoy a cup of tea at the pretty Groningen station Starbucks. (really, I'd love to come there again!). I won't annoy you with a boring story of travelling to and waiting at Schiphol airport, I'm getting used to it by now (never thought I'd say that). It was however quite crowded, I guess that it was because we bought the tickets at a special offer and that other flights were on sale as well for that day. However, we didn't have to wait too much to enter the plane, in fact the flight started even earlier than planned and took an hour less than I thought, yay!

A look at the middle-north of Japan

Because we were flying east and left in the afternoon, we had a short night, even more because sleeping on the plane is hard. When we approached Japan, it was like 9 am and perfect weather so it was quite some sight. We circled around Narita airport a bit, and flew above the ocean on the east side of Japan, where you could see big waves reaching the beach, it was totally mesmerizing (I'll keep the view for a video). These things make flying an absolutely amazing experience and I love it!

When we arrived, the first thing I did was check the results of the election and luckily it turned out okay, we were very relieved. Everything went fast after that and I think we arrived at our hotel (Toshi Center Hotel, same as last time) just before lunch time. Got rid of our baggage and bought our first Japanese meal at the trusty Family Mart opposite of the hotel. Oh, Japanese bento boxes, always interesting!

The garden of the building in front
of our hotel. Pretty nice for a lunch-walk!

After that we decided to go directly to Akihabara, since Nick was so excited and we waited so long to go there again. I have to say though, once we were there for a while we sort of concluded it wasn't as exciting as the first time, haha. It was a lot of the same and we didn't come across a lot of surprisingly new things, though it was still fun.

Our drinks and food
@ the Animate Cafe

However, while visiting Animate (I think my fav. shop in Akiba), after watching all the second-hand-selling-cubes we got thirsty (literally, lol) and wanted to look for a place to drink,
then we got to the last floor and discovered there was an Animate-cafe there (duh, obviously at Animate you have a cafe but you know after being awake for so long you just forget stuff). But, surprise-surprise, it was Little Witch Academia-themed. And that was quite amazing, because that is our favourite anime series this season, and we both didn't hear about this cafe being planned so it was an amazing surprise :D!

Little Witch Academia
Character Posters

They obviously had themed food and drinks and we both ordered different things (related to characters and parts of the story) to see and try it. But next to that the cafe was decorated with screenshots from the series, documents/books (which you couldn't take photos off), and life-size cardboard figures, TV's and posters (and the soundtrack playing) in the background.
Also during our visit there was a small quiz being held, but it was in Japanese so we couldn't follow at all though they at least tried to explain you could give your answer by holding up a sheet of one of the characters. Our food came with randomly-given coasters we could take home and then they also sold some exclusive merchandise of which we bought a keychain.
I'm superhappy we came across this café, it's just one of the things you only have in Japan and we were lucky!

Look from out hotel window
at night :D

Let's get back to the hotel to actually settle down a bit at this 21st-floor room (yes, ff-ing awesome!) and decide what to do for dinner. As we were both kinda tired, we decided to go to nearby Akasaka, went for a comfy yaki-restaurant (yaki means grilled) for some yakisoba and okonomiyaki, which wasn't the best but satisfying and hey, there were four Pokemon Go stops in reach so for this short eve it was fine. Afterwards we went to a cocktail-bar which was honestly waaay too expensive. Sure, the bar was cool and it felt like a real treat, but you might forget that in Japan lots of places ask a fee for the table/seats and at this bar it was just crazy, too bad -.- sometimes it just happens I guess. We went to bed early and slept relatively good!
Next day: Harajuku + Shinjuku ^_^ yaaay!

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