According to my planner, June 13 – 19 was Palindrome Week! Thanks to my incredible memory, I had to research on what a palindrome is again.

“A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequences of characters which reads the same backward or forward. Allowances may be made for adjustments to capital letters, punctuation, and word dividers.” (Reference)

or

“a word, line, verse, number, sentence, etc., reading the same backward as forward, as Madam, I’m Adam or Poor Dan is in a droop.” (Reference)

Anyways – back to the blog!

Day 1: June 13

Today, my mom and brother will be flying back to the Philippines – unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see them anymore because I had classes. It was raining really hard today, so I felt really lazy to go home (I just wanted to stay under a roof and eat something warm). Thankfully, I only had one class today.

Winona (she’s dismissed the same time I am usually) and I were literally in front of the train when we decided – right then and there – to go to Sweets Paradise; for two reasons – one, we were hungry and it was lunchtime, and two – Sweets Paradise in Shinjuku had an Osomatsusan (おそ松さん) collaboration. Naturally, we had to go.

If you’re not familiar with Sweets Paradise, it’s basically a buffet where they have a huge range of sweets up for eats! Aside from sweets, they also have salad, curry, pizza, and pasta – and of course, drinks. You can check out their menu and the prices here.

Each table is given a time limit on how long they could stay in the restaurant, so we quickly got food to make the most out of the time (and money) we had.

Since they held a collaboration, the price for the buffet is a bit more expensive. You also have the option to add ¥500 to have an extra collaboration dish (I didn’t understand what it meant and bought it blindly – ending up with an extra dish; this is me imparting wisdom on future diners. Haha.).

I think I mentioned this before, but Choromatsu (チョロ松) is my favorite Matsuno brother, so I ordered his drink and dish (which, is already included in the buffet price).

This is the dish for Choromatsu – a matcha brownie ice cream dessert. (Unfortunately, I wasn’t too fond of matcha, but ate it nevertheless.)

I accidentally ordered an extra dish – which was a waffle with vanilla ice cream and strawberries on the side (Ichimatsu’s dish).

There were also standees around the restaurant (of course, we took photos).

We had so much fun eating lots of pasta and dessert, we kinda forgot to take photos of the other parts of the restaurant (haha)! I would recommend Sweets Paradise if you want to try it out for the experience, but I don’t think I’ll go back again (heh).

Oh, and on the way back to the dorm, we missed our stop (AHAH).

Day 2: June 14

Today, my friends and I went to Shimokitazawa after classes. Our dorm is really close to this place, so we drop by often. Today, our mission was to eat this:

I picked the strawberry flavor since it was season-limited.

It was really chewy with a light strawberry flavor.

Day 3: June 15

We’re going out a lot this week! Today we went to Kichijoji – which later on became one of my favorite places in Tokyo!

Today, I went with friends (Pam, Dei, Miles, and Anton) to explore the area! We started off by having lunch at Ichiran (super good, by the way) —

 

It really is a fun and unique experience the first few times you eat in Ichiran because of the fact that you get your own “booth” to eat in, and you never really get to see the faces of the staff and waiters (minus the ones who greet you and show you to your seat, of course).

After lunch, we wandered around and hunted down for the Kiddyland branch there (because I wanted to see Snoopy Town hehe). Kichijoji is one of those places that you could get lost in without really ever getting lost. It has such a unique and peaceful charm as compared to the busy places in Tokyo like Shinjuku, Shibuya, and the like.

Finally found Kiddyland / Snoopy Town! 🙂

Unfortunately, Miles and Dei had classes in the afternoon, so they left for school. Anton, Pam, and I decided that we were craving for something sweet – so we went to Ben and Jerry’s!

After eating, we headed for Inokashira Park (井の頭池) for a quiet afternoon to walk around and enjoy nature.

When we saw this, we were more than ready to go. We quickly ran to the dock to see if we could make the time (it closes at 6PM and it was around 5:30PM at that time).

There were three kinds of boats you could pick from, but since we were three, our only option was the row boat.

I stupidly sat in the middle while Anton and Pam sat on each side. Only later, when the boat was pushed to the water, did I realize that I had to be the one to paddle. Luckily (dangerously), Anton and I switched places, so he got to paddle for a bit.

Carefully (again), Pam switched with Anton, so in the end – we were all able to have a chance to paddle HAHA

After the boat ride, we went back to the dorm. I completely fell in love with Kichijoji and I swore that I would return.

Day 4: June 16

Thursdays are my longest days in school (I get dismissed at 6:30PM), but the good thing is that all my friends in the same program I am in (the SAIMS program) are required to take that last class. We decided to have sushi for dinner!

Day 5: June 17

Today was a memorable day. Every morning  Winona, Pam, and I go to school together so we thought that the morning walk would be the same as always…until we got attacked by a crow (which then proceeded to chase us for a bit when we ran). Crows in Japan are freaking huge, here’s a video to get what I mean. (Oh, watch this too, it’s interesting.)

We are forever traumatized.

Day 6: June 18

There’s a lot in store for today! First of all, we’re going to the Philippine festival in Japan.

We were pretty excited because we were all pretty much craving for Filipino food and some Filipino company. With our bellies full, we left.

Aside from the Philippine Festival, it was also Winona’s birthday today!

Day 7: June 19

Happy Father’s Day!

I stayed in today to catch up with my workload huhu.

This concludes my 11th week here in the Land of the Rising Sun!

Meanwhile, school has officially started 😦 I miss Japan huhu.

See you in the next blog post!