This is long overdue (oh no holy back log). I went to Japan in February 2024 and visited salon de SERAPHIM aka Seraphim's in person store.

Seraphim is a really lovely lolita brand... the details and attention to detail is top tier. I'd dare say better than Mary Magdalene. Their sizing is also a lot more generous. They're just not to everyone's taste as it's not super tailored to one's body.

This dress is made from cotton and so is a lot of the lace! This is actually the dress I got... it took a long time to sell out :sweat: So I guess it's not very popular (oh no) It does look quite night gown like, huh?... I wore it on the plane ride home cos it was so comfy :sweat:

The store is located in the city Ome which is about 1.5 hour away from central Tokyo. It is a bit of trek, but I really enjoyed my time there. Definitely A++++ experience.

Here is a link to the Google Maps to make it easier to find ^^ Seraphim has also published English directions here.

Note, this isn't just a walk in store... you need to make reservation ahead of time. I think I made a reservation a week in advance.

Unfortunately because I am making this post more than a year later, I don't remember a lot of the actual visit ;_; But I'll try my best to write something!

Seraphim is actually kinda located in bum fuck nowhere :sweat: This is the approach after you leave the train station. As you can see, it's a bit rural.

Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the outside, but the shop is located in a residential neighborhood and it just looks like a house (well it is one). It seems like the ground floor of the home is the shop while above is the living quarters for the staff. I think it's a husband and wife business.. The wife was tidying things up and the husband was the main manager of the shop.

My Japanese is quite poor, but I was able to ask if it was possible to take pictures. Many stores in Japan forbid you from taking pictures, but the staff said yes! It is always polite to ask first, right?

So I was really surprised that inside the salon is the same setting they use for photos of their stock pictures. It was surreal seeing it in real life! They must have put a lot of effort decorating their shop given how unique it looked! I imagine trying to emulate the antiquated European look isn't the most easily accessible in Japan.

There are two rooms of the shop. One is the main display area for dresses and a couple of display cabinets.

The above is Room 1.

The second room contains the changing room, cashier, and more display cases for accessories.

It's also customary to ask if it's possible to try on some clothes before going into the changing room. So I asked first. This is the view from the changing room.

The whole place made my classic lolita heart get giddy and squeal with excitement (kept it internal though, lol). I mean it's decorated to perfectly suit a classic lolita's taste, right?

So one thing that really surprised me was that they made me tea. Like wtf. It felt so weird to have shop staff make me tea lol. The male staff asked me things like how I knew about Seraphim. I couldn't really explain it so well... I tried to say there is a whole community of lolitas out there that like Seraphim (well maybe not a lot), but I don't think I conveyed it well.

I have no idea where it is, but I got access to the membership too. I had to fill out a form with my home address (I think).

Here's a picture of my haul.. It's customary in Japan to always wrap everything so nicely!

A beautiful flower brooch. This isn't made by Seraphim, but an indie brand and Seraphim carries their items.

I might have a problem and really like flowers...

Here's a full body pic of the dress I bought ^^

Anyhow, I really recommend going because of how personable the experience is, being able to talk to staff (even through Google translate) is really a great experience.. I wish I had prepared more questions and asked how the brand started, etc. :sweat: I feel like the male staff might have been the designer too? I doubt Seraphim is a really big brand. So I think it's not very often you get to talk to staff behind the scenes one on one..

Please let me know if you visit!

Thanks for reading!

▶︎•၊၊||၊|။|||||။၊|။• Tanpopo - Last Kiss

Back to normal jpop yay

The Hello Kitty Cafe in Santa Clara recently opened! It's located in the Westfield Valley Fair Mall. This is a very busy mall (unlike most others) and it's considered a high tier mall, I suppose, due to it's many luxury stores. ngl I love pink LV bags (but alas, I never want to actually spend that much. Lolita is more fun).

I found out reservations were open and was lucky enough to snag one on the second day of opening!

There's actually 2 portions to the cafe. The Bow Room hosts Afternoon Tea in the afternoon (hurhur) and dessert pairings in the evening. This portion of the cafe requires reservations.

The counter of the cafe has snacks, drinks, and merchandise for purchase. You cannot make a reservation here. The line can be extremely long for this!

Just a note, parking was extremely difficult. Even getting off the freeway to approach the mall was taking very long! I wanted to arrive like ~30 minutes early to browse other shops in the mall, but I ended up only arriving on time!

I got a reservation for the dessert pairing. It seems to be a little bit easier to get this reservation and it's also less expensive. The Afternoon Tea looks fun, but for ~$70, I wasn't sure I wanted to gamble since character cafes aren't typically known for their stellar food..

Here's how the cafe looks from the outside! This was around 6pm on a Saturday (second day of opening). As you can see, it is a little busy! There was maybe 20 people in line?

I spoke to a staff member holding a sign and he directed me to the Bow Room ^^

I didn't get a good picture of the inside as I didn't want to take a picture of all the patrons and make them uncomfortable (idk, maybe that's too respectful of people)

This is maybe 1/4th of the Bow Room, it's actually kind of small? I think there might be another section. Perhaps only this section is open for the dessert pairing.

Here's how the place setting looks! It's so cuteeee~ (I kinda took home the napkin and stuff for junk journaling later!)

While I was waiting for my friends, the staff were kind enough to move the carts so that I could get a good picture. They offered to do this and take my picture. I am really grateful they were so nice!

I wore Angelic Pretty's Promenade de Paris! I thought the bows on it kinda reminded me of Hello Kitty's hair bow and also, it's sweet and cute!

Here's what my friends and I ordered! There's a strawberry tiramisu, matcha tiramisu, and the strawberry tart. The apple pie with ice cream was sold out. The staff told me the strawberry tiramisu was the most popular item. There was also no alcohol that day. (damn missed opportunity of getting drunk at hello kitty cafe ><) On the top right, there's also cream that was provided. It tasted like yummy marshmallows. I almost skipped it because I thought my tiramisu already had enough cream, but the marshmallow taste was delicious!

Overall, the food was not bad. It's definitely not fancy like Japanese character cafes. But I think simple is fine too! Having very attractive looking, but not tasty food is my less preferred vibe.

The staff sprinkled powder over a stencil to make the cute outline~ My Hello Kitty looks like she has cute freckles!

I forgot to get a picture, but we all ordered strawberry sodas. All the other drinks were warm and it was quite hot in the cafe.

They didn't rush us at all (despite being one of the last reservations of the day), but eventually we got the bill. After paying the bill, they gifted us this cute keychain! It seems to be special for the grand opening of the cafe.

My friends and I wrapped up the night sticker pictures! This brings back memories to high school... I really missed doing that.

Scarlett came, but a new friend named Ashley came too! I met her from Bumble BFF. And although we haven't been friends for very long, I'm amazed at how considerate and thoughtful she is ;_; Navigating single life has been hard for me.. but she is like my cheerleader and advocate T_T I appreciate that so much. I still need to work on my own self esteem, but having a cheerleader makes me feel grateful. ilu.

It was a really fun evening. I'm thankful for how things are moving in my life.

Thanks for reading!

▶︎•၊၊||၊|။|||||။၊|။• New Jeans - ETA

I really despise modern Kpop, but gonna admit New Jeans' songs are pretty fun. My heart is still with Jpop idols because of how silly and how much more sincere it feels. Not a fan of the manufactured, completely rehearsed Kpop look.