Harajuku and the Meiji Shrine

We met Marc at the hotel on Saturday morning and took the train to Harajuku. It was a short ride, only two stops from Shinjuku. Harajuku is well known as an area of free expression, typified by the wild outfits and costumes that some of the girls wear there. The Harajuku girls dress like vampires or little bo peep and everything in between. I thought this was an everyday thing but apparently it wasn't today. There was a shortage of harajuku girls, i think we spotted one little bo peep and a couple of girls with some odd colored hair. Frankly I wasn't too disappointed we still had a great time.

Harajuku, like most areas in tokyo has a shopping street. This one is called Takeshita street and it is full of odd shops with odd names that sell odd crap. There are stores dedicated to socks, others just to boots and then a barrage of tshirt and handbag stores. I picked up a tshirt with a bear slicing ronald mcdonalds face and the words "Be-a ku-ro" in katakana which we beleive is as close japanese can get to phonetically sounding out "Bear Claw". About the weirdest thing we saw was some zipper bags made out of toads - pretty disturbing. We also found a tokyo style mall, which isn't as sprawling as america malls but rather a collection of booth style stores with odd names - all in english. My favorite was the Hip Hop clothing store called "FAT" - no "ph" - sweet. Erica's favorite was the one called "misty woman". There was also a store who's name we couldn't agree on, The name was written in english cursive and we couldn't tell if it was "Fur Fur", "Fun Fun", "Fur Fun" or "Fun Fur".

We stopped for lunch at a small udon place called Hanamaru. This is actually a chain in japan. We had to wait for seats since the place is so small, then you order your food. Billy, Marc and Erica opted for the cold udon and I had hot. once you get your noodles and broth then you can add different tempura pieces for a few hundred yen more. These items range from chicken and sweet potato all the way to shrimp and octopus. Lunch for Erica and me came to just about $12 which is extremely reasonable considering the amount of food. It was amazing, everything tasted great and fresh. Hard to believe a chain restaurant can produce food like that. Erica thinks it was the best thing ever and has been constantly talking about since we left. We will definitely hit hanamaru up again before we leave.

We walked around and up to the ritzy Omote Sando Hills are where we saw some nice cars and some expensive stores including a place that sold Chopsticks for more than $100 per pair - crazy! Erica picked up a cool bento box set at a store called Comme Ca, definitely something you can't find back in the states.

Afterwards we walked back by the train station and took a nice winding tree shaded path to the Meiji Shrine. The walk was great as the trees kept the path cool and it was so peaceful. We passed under a Large Torii gate and by the wall of Sake that is given to the shrine by all of the Sake makers every year. The shrine area is beautiful. It is hard to describe except as japanese. Simple, elegant, peaceful and immaculate. The trees are all perfect representations and the bulidings are in amazing condition considering their age. We saw a couple of weddings in the shrine and erica did the traditional hand washing. Erica paid for a fortune from the shrine. This was a poem from the emperor meiji. The saying was in english, but underneath was another english paragraph which deciphered the first saying. The funny part is that it was rather self explanatory and didn't need help.

"Should you but resolve to climb
That peak towering to the heavens
you will find there is a pathway
to its very summit."