While I was away on hiatus recovering my health, I also had the awesome pleasure of having Naoki, one of the admin’s of BOKUTACHI, the latter half of the infamous ship HanNao and moreover, a close friend of mine, come down from the Netherlands and spend a wonderful, fun-filled ten days with me!
On some days we were super lazy and spent hours watching back to back episodes of Kuroko no Basuke and My Love From Another Star, and on others we were super… ‘productive’? Well, we went to school, did some shopping and we even found a cool store to share with you guys! If you’re interested, why not read on and find out all we did this last week.
Arrival::
Naoki arrived in Manchester airport at 10am on Friday 28th February, which meant that I had to get up about 4 hours beforehand to give my room a last minute clean, get ready and get to the airport. But it was all worth the effort because we were laughing and joking from the second that he arrived and we were out of the terminal (this is the first time we’ve met in person.) After the /very/ expensive train ride home - OTL my wallet - we both stripped (not all the way you dirty—), crashed down in my bed and chatted for a while.
By ‘a while’ I mean about a couple of days but because our stomachs got the better of us and we had to get up and go food shopping - I hardly eat cause I’m a poor university student, so my cupboards are usually bare if I don’t have a guest… Having previously striped down, we had to dress up again, but being the lazy buggers that we are, we weren’t up for completely dressing up again which helped us invent this wonderful thing:
Conbini Fashion! ::
No, but on a serious note, we were both wondering why this wasn’t a thing cause you always see street snaps of idols/models going out casually, similarly to airport fashion; guys, lets make this tag a thing! #ConbiniFashion
But yes, looking like ‘conveniently’ dressed Gyaru/Ulzzang (respectively) we headed down arm in arm to the store and stocked up on food for the week - granted it didn’t last a week, not even close :’D…
Going out :: [Part 1 - Rocky Horrors]
After spending the rest of the weekend doing nothing but sitting on our butts, watching endless hours of TV (namely Aku no Hana, Noragami and My Love From Another Star) we decided that if we were going to go out at all, Monday would be the day that it would happen! (The fact that I had university gave us a fair push as well.)
Fortunately my Korean tutors are quite kind and allowed Naoki to sit in during our lessons quietly doing Japanese (and my business lessons are too big for the lecturer to even notice) so we went to all my lessons on Monday and Tuesday (although we skipped Korean History on Tuesday morning, because 9am start…)
After my lecturers, we went off into town (which is also new to me) and walked around for a bit. The first thing we did was go to get Naoki’s ears pierced. We were supposed to both get piercings done but I hadn’t decided what I wanted and I was set back money wise by the unexpectedly expensive tickets between Manchester Airport and Sheffield station (T_T)
However, whilst I couldn’t get my ears pierced, we did make a lucky find as we wondered aimlessly through the back street stores of the town: we came across an *amazing* alternative fashion store called Rocky Horrors. Not only was it alternative, the variety was amazing and pricing was reasonable too!
We went back multiple times during the week and ended up spending about £100 between us. In fact, we loved it so much that we’re actually going to write a shop review on the store on our respective blogs so look forward to that in the upcoming weeks!
Going Out :: [Part 2 - Central London]
Second only to Rocky Horrors, this was my favourite part of the week as London is my hometown; it’s were I was born and lived most of my life, although I’ve only just gotten to know the ins and outs of the center of the great city.
Now, our trip to London was supposed to double up as a Gyaru (Gal) meet, but due to poor planning (not mine though ;O) lots of people pulled out last minute. We did however manage to meet one person, Yamii! Some of your might know her in the Gal community on Facebook as Chewie.
I dropped Naoki off with Yamii whilst I disappeared for a few minutes to go visit my beloved mother at work and pick up my new camera! She’d helped me purchase it on her recent trip to Las Vegas for the African Fashion week (my aunt is a designer and her work was being showcased.) Anyhow, by the time I regrouped with Naoki and Yamii, the two we like siblings… or rather, father and child since by the end of the day Yamii was calling us ‘daddy 1’ and ‘daddy 2’ XD
After some bubble tea (Naoki’s first cup) we went off to the part of the day I looked forward to most: Purikura! I’d always known we had a checkie place in Central London but I didn’t know where it was - special thanks to Yamii for acting as our guide for most of the day to make up for my incompetence ;___; - and I’d never had someone to go with either.
We had a lot of fun taking them and even more so decorating; Yamii, having done this a thousand times, was an absolute pro and decorating whilst Naoki and I struggled with changing backgrounds and adding text, but it was still fun nonetheless.
Once our pictures were printed we headed off further into China town, where we found lots of stores selling tonnes of cute (but overpriced) trinkets from Asia, and also an arcade! Yamii destroyed us on DDR but we got our own back at pool (although Naoki was a complete and utter noob xD)
To end the day we eat in a nice cheap Japanese restaurant (called Misato) before heading back to the coach station for the long 4 hour journey back up to Sheffield. We were actually really lucky that my university is A++ and gives us key chains with cheap taxi services’ numbers on it, otherwise we’d have been stranded at the coach station in Sheffield for 5 hours until trains started running again (we arrived at 2am.)
More shopping + more TV
Completely destroyed by walking all day Wednesday, we decided to ‘call in sick’ and have another lazy day at home on Thursday, we spent most of it watching TV again, and doing a bit of drawing. Naoki has a tablet and I’ve never tried digital art before so I was super excited to use it for the first time. Granted my drawing was almost toddler level, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
On Friday we dragged ourselves out of bed again (though our legs were still sore) but we still had money in our wallets (and my student finance came in ;D) and we still had shops we hadn’t visited. We went to Rocky Horrors for the umpteenth time before heading into the City center and raiding every floor of Primark, we actually both ended up doing a complete Josou haul (more details later ;P.) We also got some nice matching (self-hold-up) thigh high stockings and necklaces. #Bromance We finished the day with some McDonalds and some more Kuroko no Basuke.
Saturday was our last chance to do anything major together but we decided it’d be better to sit home and chat a bit more rather than going out. We spent the entire day laying on my bed and watching back to back episodes of Kuroko no Basuke (we actually finished the entire first season and now I’m a die-hard fan like you guys don— *holds back fanboying*) Also, we finally cooked the pasta we’d been pushing back for the entire week (since Naoki was adamant he wanted to cook it for me, and it wasn’t have bad too - his omelettes are amazing though!)
Goodbye myloverfriend
Unfortunately, our bromantic week had to come to an end eventually, and that was Sunday 9th March. Not wanting the fun to end we actually pushed back out departure time as late as we could, ending up only arriving at the station 10 minutes before the last train left~
Speaking of the train, we had quite a fright. I used my railcard to buy the ticket for him, since it’d get us a discount, not knowing that the ticket master would actually ask to see it on the train - since this has never happened to me. So we were scared Naoki was going to get kicked off the train, get stranded in the middle of nowhere since neither of us had any money left and he’d miss his flight by a good 30 minutes. Fortunately, the ticket master forgot all about him as he went to check the remaining passenger’s tickets so we got away lucky this time. Phew!
All in all, we had an amazing week. We didn’t do all that we’d planned to do - which included a stream with all of your guys - but we it was great to finally be able to meet each other. We had loads of fun getting ready together, helping each other pick outfits and going out and such, and hopefully if money allows it, we’ll be doing it all over again in June but in Amsterdam instead, and then again in London this July. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that I’ll get to write another lengthy post like this soon!
