Day 4: tokyo

*back dated entry*

today is the second of the new year sales which is also the day of INTENSIVE shopping for the rest of the crowd cause all the shops resumed business..... for today, my targets are samantha bags & shibuya 109....

i guess most people should have know the samantha brand by now... i like their bags, they have several series & all of them look very sweet & nice but the prices here are just too high... of cause, if you compared to the high end brands then samantha still belongs to the affordable range... i would say in SG, average price of the bag will be about SGD400, if there are sales, lowest price i saw was something like SGD300+.... my friend told me that samantha is much cheaper in japan since it's local brand so naturally samantha bags will be my target for this trip....

as i stayed in Ueno this time, my goal is to chiong samantha in Ueno marui since they have 3 shops in that mall.... i arrived at marui at about 10am & woah.... all the girls were "fighting" for samantha vegas lucky bags.... not so much for petite & thavasa probably due to the price.... lucky bag for vegas cost 10,800 yen but thavasa 1 cost 21,000yen... i was very tempted to get vegas lucky bag but i was worried that if the design or colour not nice then will be wasted.... so in the end i go for thavasa 50% sales bags.... not all the bags were having sales but substantial amount & i found the bag i always wanted at half price = 14,500 yen!!!! which is like 160sgd!!! common man, that's like half price of the so call SALES price you get in SG!!!!

tada my very first samantha!!!

samantha petite lucky bag

helped my friend gotten the petite lucky bag... not too bad i would say, 2 wallets for 10,800yen when normally 1 will cost that much.... after gotten my samantha, we chiong to shibuya 109!!!

shibuya view from station

shibuya 109

finally i arrived at SHIBUYA!!!! by the time i reached it was close to 12nn so the morning crowd has left but there was still some small groups of girls outside the building to do exchanges for their lucky bag items..... when i stepped inside the building, woah, super packed with people!!!!

INGNI sales

people everywhere

more people

ank rouge sales

seriously, everywhere is packed with people cause every stores were having sales & selling lucky bags!!! if SG has winter, i am so going to sweep back at least 5 more lucky bags from shibuya but i controlled!!!! the sales were really tempting cause they were really cheap!!! when they say sales, it means serious sales... really everything on sales, not like SG, always 1 small section has sales items but they put the super huge sales word in the store....

after some serious consideration, i only bought 2 lucky bags at shibuya

ober tashe 3000yen lucky bags

2015yen lucky bag from some accessory shop

the ober lucky bag really worthy, you get a total of 4 bags for 3000yen.... so damn cheap!!! the 2015yen lucky bag was cheap too but you have more random & not so useful stuff....

after shibuya we slowly made our way back to ueno & inside the station we saw this very cute bakery....

cute bakery

usagi bun!!!

 the usagi bun was so cute!!! taste wise was average but the look was really cute!!!! & then we had dinner a yoshinoya....

dinner

after which we went to ueno ABAB, it's a relatively new shopping center, i wanted to go there cause i need to go daiso to get more vacuum bags to contain my clothes.... & there i found amazing stuff....

ABAB at ueno

daiso

cute calendars from daiso

golden store

 this golden store is somewhat like a mixture of supermarket & daiso cause their items are so cheap!!! average snack cost like 90yen, even cheaper than daiso (100yen)!!! really amazing store... & within the buildings you have other less well known boutique brands but their designs are nice too & best thing, they are CHEAP!!! i didnt manage to take any photo of those shops but like a decent looking down jacket cost 2990yen, shoes 990yen, nice coats at 4000yen+, etc.... seriously.... you can just shop till you drop inside ABAB & the good thing is you dont have to fight with the crowd cause there wasnt too many customers.....

after some small shopping at ABAB we walked back to hotel & we saw another amazing thing.... FROZEN lucky bag!!! yup, japan really has lucky bags for everything!!!

2000yen frozen lucky bag

i am not a frozen fan but my nieces are, they LOVE frozen... & i can imagine their happy faces when they saw the bags....

so that marks the end of tokyo & first laps of my japan trip... tomorrow we will head up to nagano where the sightseeing part of the trip will start =)