I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I consider a meetup to be any occasion where I am spending time with someone else and we both intentionally wear lolita fashion. If I had more days to my weekends, I’d try to spend as much of it as possible with friends! Schedules change and people move away, and I don’t want to wish I had gotten to know someone better.

Besides lolita fashion, I’m almost interested in ball-jointed dolls. Whenever I meet other lolita who also like dolls, it’s fun to get together to see each other’s dolls and talk about related subjects. Not every lolita likes dolls, and I don’t expect the two things to go hand-in-hand, so I try not to talk about it too much to avoid driving everyone else crazy~ However, I rarely get to local doll events (they are often too far for me to travel and conflict with my schedule), so I try to create my own with the friends I’ve made. ★

On Friday, a friend of mine came over with a few of her dolls. We had originally talked about making plans so that I could see her newest doll in person, as it was a doll I have liked for a while. I wanted to see how it looked in real life compared to promotional and hobbyist photographs. However, I wound up purchasing that doll at the event I went to in NYC, so we actually got together to compare dolls and talk~

My home is very tiny, but I really love having friends over! ♥ Someday I’ll have to get a bigger place so that I can do more entertaining. I was also glad to have a chance to introduce my friend to my husband, as she hadn’t met him yet. It’s nice when he can connect a face and personality to the name of whomever I’ve been talking about.

We went out to lunch at my favourite bakery~ The weather was perfect for sitting inside, enjoying the air conditioning while the sunlight streamed in through the windows. The menu was full of light and summery dishes–I ordered chilled cucumber-mint soup that was absolutely amazing! ♫ My husband and my friend each ordered a berry lemonade, one of the beverage specials of the day. It was deliciously homemade–so much better than bottled flavoured drinks!

On the walk back to our house, I showed my friend the “secret” Japanese market. It’s not really a secret, but it’s very unobtrusive and many people don’t even realize it’s there at all! She’s didn’t realize she’d walked past it so many times~ It’s not an extensive market along the lines of Mitsuwa, but they do carry an assortment of food, toiletries, dinnerware, traditional clothing, garden supplies, books, origami paper, caligraphy supplies, and more! However, since there isn’t a lot of foot-traffic they don’t do much business, and thus they don’t always have very new stock. However, it’s still convenient to have nearby. I bought some sweet rice; I’m hoping to make mochi~

When we returned to my house, we talked about dolls and I unboxed my new doll. It was a lot of fun to have the same doll! They’re literally identical, except for the fact that we’ve each dressed ours to suit our tastes. (I was very amused to see that we had both almost immediately swapped out glass eyes for the default acrylic eyes. It was so nice to have someone to talk to while I changed those in my doll. The company that makes our dolls uses hot glue to secure the eyes, and getting that hot glue out can be very difficult!)

I’m sure my husband appreciated that I had someone else to talk about doll-things with instead of him! (Although he’s a sweetheart and doesn’t mind, anyway.) Inevitably our conversation darted back and forth from dolls to clothes and back to dolls again. We enjoyed some tea, as well, although I think the weather was so warm that we kept forgetting about actually making the tea we had previously discussed! I think we both really enjoyed ourselves; I can’t wait to plan something else.

I want to do something creative and entertaining, but I haven’t focused on exactly what yet. Maybe a doll photoshoot, or an actual doll tea party… Hmm… Or some kind of craft… I think we could have a lot of fun! ♫