原宿-東京 (Harajuku-Tokyo)

Ohayou gozaimasu!
I woke up much earlier than I planned due to A-chan crawling around the room army style in an attempt to secretly sniff me. Although I'm tired still, I can't fall back asleep, so I'm going to write my entry as promised.
While we were on the bus going to Tama Plaza, we passed through night time Tokyo. As we approached the city from the outside, we could see Tokyo Disneyland in Chiba. It was dark outside, and the park was lit with little lights everywhere, and it looked amazing. Apparently it's expensive for a theme park- about $60...yeah.

As we got into Tokyo, it was...unbelievable. I can't even compare it to anything that I've seen before. The buildings were lit up, and stories and stories tall, and the road started high and then we road down, spiraling down between these buildings. Tokyo tower was lit up with red, but my camera doesn't take good night pictures, so I couldn't capture the sights well.

We passed the coolest and craziest looking apartments, passed vending machines on the street every 5 buildings, and saw many American stores and restaurants that I didn't expect I would find in Japan, such as Denny's.

Yesterday, we had planned to go back to Tokyo, but this time to Harajuku, the legendary shopping district of Tokyo. But not before going with Mizuho to class from 9-10:30. Mizuho and I woke up at 6, and the sun was already up, since Japan is at the far east end of the time zone. Mizuho's mom made us yummy omuretsu, aka omelets, mini sausage (that had hello kitty on them! Magic!), bread (with the apple butter I brought ^_^), and cooked green peppers. It was all so delicious!! After we were ready, Mizuho's mom was kind enough to drive us to the train station. Along the way, we kept seeing groups of tiny school children walking in lines to school with their little matching hats and ransel backpacks. I wanted to take pictures, but I didn't want to seem like a child stalker. Something else that I found interesting, was that the car had a tv on the dashboard, so instead of listening to the radio, you could just turn off the picture, but listen to the television program as you drove. On the train, we saw a variety of people- lots of people wearing their little surgery masks to protect from germs-my favorite being seeing a salary man reading a manga magazine.

Mizuho's university was a tall tall building surrounded by lots of trees and flowers and a court yard that had a river full of colorful coy and baby ducks. Mizuho and I sat in the back of the classroom so that it wouldn't be awkward for me as a non student/very much obviously a foreigner to sit in the middle where she usually sits, but I had print outs of the power point slides so I could follow along. And follow along, I could not. The professor spoke quickly, using words I had no clue what they meant. I couldn't read much of the kanji on the slides, and he didn't read the slides verbatim, so I couldn't tell what they were saying. Although I wish I could understand more than every 20th word, maybe it was a good things I couldn't, seeing as the class was about animal genitalia.

After her class was over, the two of us took a train to Harajuku. We had some time to spare before Alex and Yuki could meet us, so we took a tour of the Meiji Jinguu, the Meiji Shrine. We went into the park at the quieter, less touristy end. It was so crazy- like stepping back hundreds of years (even though the shrine was built not even a century ago). Throughout Japan, the flora and fauna is mostly like that of Michigan, but in this forest, there were groves of bamboo alongside tropical looking plants and coniferous trees. 

                                     

 It was gorgeous at this shrine here, but by the time we were exiting, it was filled with tourists. We exited the shrine, and were greeted by the hustle and bustle of Harajuku station right across from Takeshita street, Harajuku's main shopping drag.
Harajuku is famous for its crazy fashions. However, since it was a school and work day, most of the crazily dressed people were not out, and even those who were do not like their pictures taken. It's strange. Why dress in such a way if you don't want people to take any pictures of you? If I had had my zoom lens, I would have done sneaky ninja pictures...I asked Mizuho why won't they let me take pictures, and her answer was simply "because they're Japanese". Which makes sense, in a strange way. Japanese people are a contradiction of both bold and conservative, where they will dress unlike anything you have ever seen, and yet won't have their picture taken. Since I didn't get any pictures of them, I'll google some examples to explain what I mean.

<--- Visual Kei

<--- Decora    Cosplay --->

Lolita --->

Yeah, so if only I was a better picture taking stalker. Here are some other pictures/videos from Harajuku, and then I'll go on to describe a bit more.

^ Takeshita Street

We then went to the higher end district and found a pizza viking for lunch. Yes, the word is viking, and it means buffet. It comes from the fact that Smörgåsbord is too hard to say, so decided to just use a different Scandinavian word. Alex was much more adventurous than I, and she ate cuddlefish pizza, among other things, while I stuck to things that sounded less...non-pizza like. We then got rid of Yuki (he had to go back to class) and us girls did a bit more shopping before returning to the station to wait for my friend Miho, who was an exchange student at MSU in the same program Yuki was.

During our wait, I attempted to save a poor young man from a swindler. We had already been bothered by these people four times in the two hours we had been in Harajuku; first, as soon as we crossed the street leaving the station, a man dressed as a monk handed me a pretty card, and I nodded and tried to walk off, but he kept speaking to me in some other language, and opened a ledger that was full of signatures. I was looking at it like "what, you handed me a card so now I have to sign your book?" but Mizuho pulled me away because she thought whatever was going on, it was weird. Later, another monk tried to give me a card but I shook my head and tried to walk away, but he GRABBED MY ARM. I pulled my arm away and kept going. Another lady came up to Alex, and she ended up having to give her money somehow through all this, so she gave her 100 yen. Then when we were waiting for Miho, the same monk tried to get to me again, and I had to shake my head vigorously twice to get him to go away. But he didn't go away, he just targeted another foreigner who was just coming out of the station and obviously was not expecting this to happen. The guy politely took his card and looked at the ledger book and signed. This guy gave the man a little bracelet, and wanted a donation in return. The guy, I guess, tried to feign ignorance, saying what most people would do in that situation, saying something like not knowing how much he had, claiming he was short on money, saying he didn't know what the coins were, something to that effect. So the monk took it upon himself to ROOT THROUGH THE GUY'S BACKPACK, pulling out coins, tossing back the ones that weren't enough. I went to the guy and tried to give him an out, saying, "Heeeeey, friend, wanna come hang with us over THAT way for a bit?" He knew what I was doing, but he said he thinks the monk was done, and as I went back to wait, I could hear him telling the monk that he thinks that he's gotten enough now and he won't have any more money. As he left the station, he thanked me that I helped him, and I warned him that foreigners are being targeted by these people as we'd been.

Once Miho arrived, we.....continued shopping :D go figure :P. We also got some wonderful, beautiful, delicious crepes :D

                                 

Now, some stuff in Japan in weird. It's generally acknowledged. For example, as I write this, Mizuho and I are watching some variety show program in which several crossdressers and several comedians pretending to be crossdressers have a dance party on a boat. So there is this singer called Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and her videos are very. very. weird. And when I came across Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, I thought it was one of those obscure Japanese things that people don't actually know, it's just weird and it exists, but I was WRONG. Not only is she famous, her style is INCREDIBLY POPULAR.

yes, her style is popular.we found the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu store, but it was rather expensive despite being in a tiny tiny shop.

If you are interested, here is her first music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g

In the higher end streets, we found a mall. Malls are very different in Japan, but I plan on describing malls in my next entry, so I won't cover it much here. But unlike Takeshita street, the shops in the mall were very on the expensive side, but very fashionable. There was a whole floor dedicated to Lolita clothes and accessories, and I'm not gonna lie, I really would have liked some of that stuff. After not buying anything at the mall, we walked around town looking for food. We were feeling a bit frugal after a day of spending money, so we found a cheap Udon shop that had udon for under 300 yen. Udon is a type of soup noodle, it's rather thick, and you can chose something to go in it, like fried squid (Alex, being adventurous, got that) or shrimp (I, being unadventurous, got that). 

^Us in the Udon shop

We went to the station together and Alex, Mizuho, and I split from Miho. Yuki picked up Alex at her stop, and Mizuho and I took the insanely crowded train home. Where I was too tired to write this blog by the time I had uploaded the pics to the computer. 

So I hope you enjoyed this blog entry, cause it took me hours to make it. I am too tired to write the next one about what Mizuho and I did today, but I will write it tomorrow. We are leaving for Shiga tomorrow, and we should arrive mid afternoon, so I should be able to write about both shopping in Shibuya and about the trip to Hikone. As they say in Japan, please look forward to it!

Mary

Location: Sitting on Mizuho's bed...again...

Current Mood: Satisfied （￣ー￣）

Listening to: Run With Wolves - Girls Dead Monster

Japanese of the day: 宝くじに当たったら、日本で靴を全部買おうよ (たからくじ に あたったら、にほんで くつを ぜんぶかおうよ) atarakuji ni atattara, nihon de kutsu o zenbu kaou yo - If I win the lottery, I will buy all the shoes in Japan.