They'll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate

Here's the last of my backlog of entries, from Halloween weekend.

Halloween weekend was a busy time. I definitely needed it to get away from everything else that was going on.

I spent Saturday, Halloween, in Ikebukuro and Harajuku with meepalicious , Greta, and Nicole. We got an early start so we would have time to do everything we wanted. We didn’t have any costumes to wear for Halloween, but Leslie and I decided to dress-up anyways. Leslie wore her frilly lolita skirt and I wore my punky, visual kei-esqe dress. We also both wore heels with our outfits because we were wearing skirts/dresses. We first made our way to Ikebukuro, to go to Saiyuki Festa. Saiyuki Festa was awesome! It was mostly a giant show of Minekura’s Saiyuki illustrations (color prints, sketches, and manga pages). We wandered through the show, fangirling at all the gorgeous illustrations. (“He’s wearing the coat.”) If there’s one thing Minekura knows how to draw, it’s pretty men. I picked up a Saiyuki shirt and a copy of the newest Saiyuki artbook (vol. 6). The illustrations are so pretty! It’s got a lot of really nice Gaiden art in it. After Saiyuki Festa, we unintentionally spent about an hour getting lost in and around the Sunshine City, looking for the exit we had come in through. (Fuck Sunshine City). We eventually found it though. Then we hopped the Yamanote-sen to Harajuku. Leslie and I had decided that Harajuku, with its myriad of awesome fashion, would be a suitable Halloween substitute. We did some shopping at Bodyline and Closet Child. Leslie and I were able to convince Greta and Nicole to buy some cute clothes at Bodyline. I ended up buying a long black Algonquins vest (or maybe it’s a sleeveless jacket?) at Closet Child. It’s pretty cool looking and was relatively inexpensive, since Closet Child is a second hand store. We wandered around some more and ended up at Takuya Angel. I wish I had more money because I love Takuya Angel’s clothes, but they can be quite expensive. I did however buy an adorable purse, made out of kimono fabric there. Still haven’t been able to catch Sisen working at the store though, but I plan on going back and looking around some more before I leave. We may have looked around at some of the stores around Takeshita Dori, but my feet and Leslie’s feet were hurting quite a bit. I guess that’s the price you pay for wearing heels. We decided that we had had our fill of awesome shopping and that it was time to go home.

On Sunday, I had a field trip to the Ghibli Museum with my Anime and Manga class. I ended up grouping up with Leslie, Greta, and Lauren for a day of Miyazaki. The Ghibli Museum was so neat! I loved how you just wandered through it, finding things in no discernible order. It had a whimsical feel. There were pretty stained glass windows, featuring different Miyazaki movies throughout the place. We stopped and saw the short movie that was playing in the theatre. It was about water bugs. Only Miyazaki could make water bugs cute. Then, we went up the fun spiral staircase to the roof and took a picture with the giant statue from Laputa. At one point we went to the café and Lauren got some Ghibli brand beer. It seemed like beer was something you shouldn’t have in the Ghibli museum, but clearly it was okay because they were selling it there. We did a bit of shopping at the gift shop. I got a keychain of one of the soot fuzzies and a Howl pin. The Ghibli Museum was definitely a fun time.