Day Three, Part Two: Harajuku

A short train ride from Ikebukuro brought us to Harajuku. We started off here by joining the madness of Takeshita Dori, a narrow walk-only lane lined with small clothes shops and crepe stands. Here, we started getting a glimpse of the extreme teen counter-culture in Tokyo. Here on Takeshita Dori, some of the stores were a likely source of their threads.





Just outside the train station in front of the entrance to the Meiji Shrine garden, the kids in costume congregate. Their behaviour is one of shyness, but willingness to be on display and have their photos taken. The crowds with cameras around them, pointing and commenting, can only be compared to what you would see around a wild animal sighting back home, though the kids did not seem phased or bothered by all the attention being paid to them.



Meiji Shrine was opened in 1920 in dedication to Emperor Meiji (1868-1912). The inner gardens and shrine were crowded with tourists. A wedding party that was having their photos taken in the rock garden and their ceremony paraded through the shrine received a lot of attention.






Yoyogi Park is adjoined to the Inner Gardens. It is a huge park with a fountains, large grassy areas filled with families and couples, and a square that was filled with vendors for a weekend market. Along the sidewalks, teenaged bands played (maybe this is where they get discovered) - separated only by several metres, but taking turns playing their songs - while others sold their found and used goods.

Day Three, Part One: Ikebukuro

Started this day off in Ikebukuro, which with Shinjuku and Shibuya is one of the main sub-centres of Tokyo, though not as flashy or showy. The big claim to fame here is the two department stores that flank the train station - Tobu to the west and Seibu to the east, both monster stores. We didn't shop in either of them.

Instead, we checked out a festival that was happening in the plaza outside Metropolitan Plaza where dancers, musicians, and food vendors were set up for the entire day and the Japan Traditional Craft Centre in the plaza. Beautiful pottery, lacquerware, woodwork, jewellery, and textiles at the craft centre, but hugely expensive.

Day Three: Good eats

Breakfast: Bacon and Egg McGriddle, coffee, hashbrown. Not particularly Japanese, but an easy meal.

Lunch: From the festival tents outside Metropolitan Plaza in Ikebukuro, pork filled gyoza and grilled squid.

Snack: On Takeshita Dori from a vendor shop, a strawberry, cheesecake, and whipped cream filled crepe. Yummy!




Dinner: For every trip, doesn't it always take you until the last night to find that one of the best restaurants is the closest one to where you are staying? For us, a platter and other small dishes from the conveyor belt at a small, maybe 20 stool, sushi bar. All nigiri sushi, including squid body, squid legs, eel, octopus, salmon, tuna, and needlefish. A nice lady and her partner seated next to us were very friendly and helpful in telling us what each of the fish were.

On getting around neighbourhoods by foot

Cars drive on the left side of the road; walk on the left side of the road.

Pedestrian crossings are in crazy formations (e.g. stars), sometimes allowing you to cross in all directions across an intersection.

Train stations are busy places with people going in many directions all the time. Keep your eyes open and be ready to move quickly. And train stations can get very crowded. Here, Harajuku station on Sunday afternoon.

On biting into baby flesh

Daifukumochi, literally "great luck", is a Japanese confection consisting of a small round mochi (glutinous rice cake) stuffed with sweet filling, most commonly anko, sweetened red bean paste made from azuki beans. Soft and chewy, I have been told by a friend that eating daifuku is like biting into baby flesh.

Wayne bought a box of daifukumochi at Nakamise (old Japanese market area by Sensoji Temple) that we shared.

Day Two, Part Three: Asakusa

With haslet in our tummies and a lot of laughs at the lunch we had, we had more spring in our step as we contined onto Sensoji Temple. The streets started becoming busier and filling with stores and then vendors selling traditional Edo goods, sweets, and foods. We had made it to Sensoji temple and found it to be one of Tokyo's prime tourist attractions.

The Sensoji temple (also known as Asakusa Kannon) is Tokyo's oldest temple, dating to March 18, 628 (guidebook information). The main gate to the temple is the Grand Kaminarimon Gate with a gigantic red paper lantern.





Dinner was back in Shinjuku, in a izakaya-style restaurant on Yasukuni Dori, joining the Abbotts, Bandieras, and Wayne. Another culinary adventure in the evening was beef kidney yakitori (of which I wasn't a huge fan because of its fibrous chewiness).

Day Two, Part Two: Ueno

Ueno Koen (Ueno Park) is Tokyo's first public park when it opened in 1873. When we arrived, at about midday from Akihabara, we had enough time to check out the tables at a market in the park, then get to the Tokyo National Museum, meeting up with the Bandiera family. The museum exhibits included paintings, ceramics, swords, kimonos, and sculptures.






After our museum visit, Wayne and I took off on foot heading eastward in search of Sensoji temple. We stopped many times to orient ourselves with maps without street names and street names that were only printed in Japanese. Needless to say, we felt fairly lost. We must have appeared as lost as we felt because a friendly woman used the little English that she spoke to assure us that we were heading in the correct direction for the temple, but were still 20 minutes away. We were hungry and thirsty, so we selected a restaurant based on the plastic food display out front.


We were provide a menu of photos with basic English labels, but it was not easy to find items to eat. Our server assured us that the temple yakitori was delicious. No thank you. Instead, we ordered smoked chicken and pork haslets. The meal got stranger as we bit into the curried haslet and speculated what haslet actually was. Making the meal more awkward was our server standing next to our table, grinning at us the entire time. After sharing that meal with her, I had to have my photo taken with her. She complained afterward that her eye was funny in photos. Looking at the photo, I have the funny eye, but probably because my mind was still racing with ideas of what haslet could actually be.


I found out that evening that haslet refers to a herbed pork meatloaf - not what I had eaten - or a collection of innards, typically including intestine, heart, and kidney. Yummers!

On dressing like a maid

I didn't get to one of the maid cafes, which are apparently plentiful and easily found in Akihabara, or one of the other maid-related services (massage, beautician, tour guide) that now exist, but just outside of the train station were these two girls who were handing out flyers. For me, this otaku maid trend seems a creepy fetish, but for everyone else who did not appear to bat an eye at these girls, it is just another natural part of the day-to-day sights of Tokyo.

Day Two, Part One: Akihabara

Akihabara is Tokyo's Electric City. Unfortunately, I saw it during the day - though Shinjuku provides me with more than enough bright lights. However, I did see the anime stores and huge electronic stores that the neighbourhood is known for. I saw the future... and it looked like a 42" flat screen television that is barely 6 or 8 inches in depth or cell phones that have video screens that are supremely clear.

That morning, a sale or comic release (I can only guess) had a line-up of young guys waiting at one of the anime stores. Nearly all of the hundred or so people waiting were male, probably between ages 16 and 36 - not surprising I guess.




Just a few minutes walk from the centre of electricity and comics is Yushima Seido, a Confucian Shrine that used to be the Shoheizaka School building, reconstructed in 1935.




And just a couple minutes further walking brought us to Kanda Myojin, an ancient shrine thought to have been built in 730. Very calming quiet grounds only metres away from light, shout, and crowds.

Day One, Part Two: Shibuya

My first train ride was to Shibuya, just south of Shinjuku. Here, the youth reign supreme, leading the charge with intense high fashion. I only wish that I was able to take photos of some of the outfits, the hair, and the footwear that the girls and guys were wearing. It puts the North American ideas of fashion far into the boring category.

The high cost and extreme choices in fashion were concentrated at 109, a ten-story tower of dizzying amounts of loud music and incredible fashion. Boys get the same treatment at a different location 109 (2) with two floors dedicated to them. The trends, as I saw and can describe them, requires longer, blond or bleached hair, fitted jeans, killer jackets with rough tees underneath, and pointed toe boots or shoes. The cost of the look? Boots alone cost 67,200 yen (or approximately $650). The details may have been updated a bit, but here's more talk about the look.



Wayne arrived on Thursday evening, several hours delayed because of a late departure and longer travel time than expected.