glorious chain cafe

Soon before leaving, I asked my friend Reimi, a stylist at Breen Tokyo, if she could style my hair and take some more professional headshots for my resume. This was followed by yakitori, drinks, and more sweets than one should consume in one sitting :D



flashback |  glorious chain cafe

Thanks for the hairdo, Reimi!

caramel banana pancakes

l-r: yomi, t.j., me, reimi, don-chan, julian

From the salon, Reimi and I made our way to Shibuya (with a pit stop at Cinnabon on the way) to meet our friend Don-chan, (Take Amublance) and T.J. (Her Name in Blood). After drinks and yakitori (because you can never have enough chicken on a stick) we headed over to Diesel's Glorious Chain Cafe to meet up with Julian (Make My Day) and tattoo artist Yomi.

This night was so fun and one of those times where I found myself realizing how much I would miss walking between Shibuya and Omotesando and just running into friends. I remember the first time I met each one of these people and sitting there having wine and cheese with everyone and splitting decadent pancakes with Don-chan, I realized how much I would miss them.


Anyway! Things you should check out next time you're in TKY:
▶ Yomi's tattoos (He did my first one!)
▶ Her Name in Blood
▶ Breen Tokyo
▶ Take Ambulance (Unfortunately, they've disbanded but still good!)
▶ Make My Day
▶ Glorious Chain Cafe


Let's all meet up again someday! Atlanta or Tokyo, haha :)


♡ jennifer

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hëyt @ otsuka deepa

From now on, I'm going to turn certain posts into a series. Not sure why I didn't do this sooner, but I figured it would be nice to have a more organized mix of music, travel, and daily life type posts. This one falls into the Music Monday category!



september 23, 2014 | hëyt @ otsuka deepa

Back in...2012 (I think?) Lisa and I were invited to an event at a bar called Rolling Stone in Shinjuku where we met dustbox's hilarious and incredibly nice drummer Reiji. A couple years later, he invited us to the first show he was playing with his other band, HËYT. We interviewed them in a little restaurant around the corner before their set :)



Electronica folk metal if you're interested!




If I ever start doing video interviews again, someone please remind me to bring a mic, haha.

♡ jennifer

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her name in blood tour final @ shibuya o-west

So I've decided to go through that huge backlog of "to-write" entries in reverse chronological order. It'll take forever, won't lie, but here we go. Also, you know. Memories :D



flashback | september 26, 2014

Her Name in Blood are an awesome metal/hardcore band that Lisa and I met for the first time when we interviewed them in Okinawa. They were always great supporters of our music webzine trick/rock., made for hilarious interviews, and just all around awesome guys.

Oh, and some pretty tight music. Tour final definitely didn't disappoint.



Instead of a full band interview this time, we got to sit down with T.J., Daiki, and Umebo and they were hilarious. In retrospect, I don't know why we never gave the camera for the guys to film themselves before!

Anyway, I don't know when I'll make it back to Japan or when we'll get a chance to interview them again, but I'm really glad we got to shine a little light on their music and awesome personalities. Definitely check them out if you haven't already!

♡ jennifer

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fish tacos, pier walkin' & pups

So I'm not sure whether to say, "Happy 2015!" or slink away in shame for never, ever being able to keep a promise to maintain a blog.

There's been a lot of developments and probably a lot more I could say on an introspective front, but before I go aaaany further I still want to post about my last couple days in LA.

Even staying so many days (sorry guys!) I managed to find myself pretty busy almost every day. Oh, and spending a lot of time with Carrie and Joey's adorable pup, Lily. Just look at that wittle faaaace.

With two full days, left I made plans to meet my cousin again around Los Feliz for a hike around Griffith Observatory on Monday.

Neither of us realized the observatory was closed on Monday, but we still managed to get in a nice hike. Still way too hot in LA for sweaters in November, though. Should've thought that one, through. Afterwards we stopped for fish tacos at the aptly titled Best Fish Taco in Ensenada. Lots of reminiscing about family; cookouts in Jersey and Philly, and our beloved grandpa.

That night Carrie and I went down to Santa Monica Pier for food and exploring. In the almost 10 days that I was in California, I never managed to make it to the beach during the day. Regardless Santa Monica was a really nice area. Oh, and we might have had soft pretzels for dinner. Like a lot of them. Thanks Wetzel's Pretzels.

On Tuesday I drove to Pasadena to meet with my darling Nina! I don't think I ever had the chance to blog about our first meet up in Tokyo, but Nina and I hit it off pretty much instantaneously; basically besties in under 30 minutes. It was kind of bittersweet that we met right before I'd decided on leaving because we'd had so many similar life experiences, guy troubles, and worries that I feel like we really could've helped each other through a lot of them.

But! We managed to meet-up in California which was kind of amazing in and of itself. We met up and then spent the next 4+ hours doing what we do best: sitting in a cafe and talking.

Even though my Japan adventure is over, I wish her the best for her continued adventures in Japan! Maybe I'll make it back for a visit one day♡

My thoughts on LA?
Actually I did like it. It was my first trip ever to the West Coast--wait, no actually I went to Seattle in college--but it was my first trip to California and it was a totally new and different experience.

But...I don't think it's for me. LA that is.

I think a lot of times, you kinda just know. I don't really know how, but I just get a feeling. When I was in Japan, I managed to travel a lot and even after all that traveling--from Sendai to Okinawa--I always knew that Tokyo was the right city for me. Not that other cities weren't great.

Likewise with LA, I realized pretty early on that while it was an awesome place to visit, I wasn't sure I wanted to make it my next adventure.

Speaking of which, I've gone through three other incarnations of my next "adventure city" since my trip to LA and I'm pretty sure I've decided; though the answer will probably shock a lot of people.

Two phone interviews before the end of the month so we'll see what happens!

 ♡ jennifer

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hollywood tour

I'm not quite sure what I thought I'd be doing when I went out to visit LA, but I'm pretty sure "take an open van ride tour around Hollywood" wasn't one of them. However, I did get some pretty cool shots, we drove by Justin Timberlake's house and we had the pleasure of the most deceptively awkward tour guide.

Possibly ever.

After some breakfast at Tinwood Flats, with the obligatory mimosas of course, we headed down the street to hop on our tour...bus? It wasn't really a bus, more like an open top van? I dunno. Great breezes, though!  

The church from Sister Act

For all the opinions and thoughts I had on LA that traffic tho, you will never, ever hear me say that the landscape isn't beautiful. Because it is. Blue, blue, blue skies and mountains, mountains, mountains. It was a lot drier than I expected, but that was kind of beautiful, too.

Our tour then led us through Beverly Hills where we basically saw every famous person's house. All of them. ALL THE HOUSES. From what we could see from the road they did look really beautiful, but unfortunately it was really hard to get any decent shots from the car without standing up and violating about 6 tenements of motor safety. I do, however, have a vague idea of what it's like to live like Bruno Mars.

On the side of a bushy hill.

Overlooking a bunch of other rich, famous people.

Look familiar? Think Pretty Woman!

 
For some reason, this was my favorite part of the tour! I guess you'd call it the Fairfax area? Angelos what would you call it? The whole street and vibe really reminded me of Little Five Points in Atlanta. Though I'd have to give the graffiti trophy to Melrose/Fairfax because wow. I completely fell in love with that wall and one of the artists even found my shot on instagram and tagged all the other great artists in it! People promoting people, I love it. Seems like a pretty cool scene!


So after the tour was over, our Jekyll-Hyde of a tour guide goes from being an incredibly knowledgeable social tour guide butterfly to, I don't even know. Mandy asked him to take our picture and he stared blankly at us for a while before going, "Of all you?"

No. Actually we'd like you to do a creative piece with this random Spiderman impersonator we're planning on taking home.

YES OF ALL OF US.

Lawd.

It was so weird because he was a great tour guide, but probably the unfriendliest person I encountered in LA. And that's including the meth head. Weird.

On our way back to the car, Carrie and I stopped by the Chinese Theatre. It was so much smaller then I expected! Still really cool and unmistakably iconic, I just expected it to have more...grandeur? I don't know. It was like looking at a mini-version and I kept expecting there to be the "real" one somewhere around the corner.

Oh, and we went looking for the oldest hand prints and footprints we could find! Shirley Temple's wasn't the oldest (1927 was I think?), but hers was definitely my favorite. Tiny, tiny hands!

○　●　○　●　○

I think I have about one more LA post to crank out? Last couple days and my thoughts on the whole trip. Actually I think I've decided on my next city as well! But that's for a different post :)

♡ jennifer

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