This
morning Japan offered us another of its traditions – a 5.5 magnitude
earthquake. I was just about to step out
of the bathroom and suddenly found that the floor wasn’t quite in the right
place. The rocking and rolling was quite
brief, and certainly not as strong as the one I experienced in April in
Wakayama. It spooked Erin a bit, but
gave her another experience to record in her journal.
After
breakfast we made our way to Harajuku, the place for young people to be on
Sundays. We went over to the bridge to
see if we could spot any cosplay folk, but we were a bit early for them. What we did see was a number of beautiful
little girls dressed in all their finery for ‘shichi-go-san’, which is a
ceremony for 7, 5 and 3 year olds. They
get beautifully done up and visit a shrine with their families for a special
ceremony. They were posing for photos in
front of the shrine’s torii gate, so we had some great photo opportunities.
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| Visiting the shrine for Shichi-Go-San |
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| ...and another one |
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| ...and this one with ugg boots |
We
decided to run the gauntlet of Takeshita Street, which is full of shops selling
clothes, shoes, accessories etc., as well as the crepe shop which was my sole
purpose for being there. Whoever thought
of putting chunks of cheesecake in a crepe deserves a medal! I did buy myself some cute socks, partly as a
souvenir and partly as a practical item that I’ll use.
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| No losing weight on this holiday! |
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| I'm sure this shop name meant something to someone! |
After
our shopping trip, we made our way back to the bridge and found a beautiful
cosplay girl in pink. She didn’t look
very Japanese to us, but I guess there are no rules about who can dress up in
Harajuku. I’m now struggling with the
word Harajuku. I’ve always pronounced it
as Hara-joo-koo, but on the announcement on the train, it sounded like
Ha-raj-koo. I think it might have to
remain Hara-joo-koo in my mind.
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| Erin with lovely pink girl |
We
went looking for something to eat in the local shopping centre and found the
most beautiful pizza restaurant. As is
very common at mealtimes, we needed to queue for a table, but it didn’t take
long. We had a bit of a misunderstanding
when ordering. We thought we were
getting a serve of pizza, a cup of tea and a salad. What we actually received was a whole pizza
each! We managed fine as the pizza crust
and the toppings were both very light.
The meal was delicious and we were pleased that we’d found this little
gem.
We
headed off to the station, went through the gates and made it to the platform
when Erin suddenly realised that she didn’t have her Ha-raj-koo shopping
bag! I explained to the station
attendants and we made our way back to the pizza restaurant, to find that they
had put the shopping safely behind their counter. Not remotely surprising in Japan.
We
retraced our steps to the station and made our way to the dance studio. After seeing Erin safely inside and arranging
to meet in 2 hours, John and I went for a stroll through the park. We saw a young man dressed up doing Michael
Jackson moves, including a very skilled moonwalk, kids zooming around on
skateboards, families on bikes and some people who seemed to be rehearsing a
play. Eventually we found ourselves a comfortable place to sit and rest, with
the bonus features of a vending machine and toilets nearby. As it started to become dark and the
temperature dropped, some people arrived with packages of clothes blankets
which they distributed to the homeless people.
We didn’t wanted to gawk too much, but they also seemed to set up a soup
kitchen.
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| Relaxing in Shinjuku Park |
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| Another thing to do in Shinjuku Park |
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| And someone practicing his Michael Jackson moves |
We
made our way back to the dance studio and only had to wait a few minutes before
Erin came out. She really enjoyed
watching the contest and managed to make friends with a young Japanese lady who
has added Erin as a Facebook friend. Her
friend later posted on Facebook that she met a ‘beautiful alien’, but that was
just the Google Translate version. What
she actually said was that she met a ‘beautiful foreigner’.
From
the dance studio, we made our way to Shibuya for some more shop trawling and to
take the obligatory picture of Erin with the Hachiko statue. We went to a small noodle bar for dinner and
I had the most fantastic fried noodle dish.
Due to another misunderstanding, Erin and John got more food than they
bargained for again, but it was a good feed at a good price.
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| Erin with Hachiko |
We
were pretty worn out by then, so made our way back to the station to catch the
train back to Shinjuku. As we approached
the gate, the station staff directed us away from the gate, explaining that the
Yamanote Line was closed due to an accident..
That wasn’t what we really wanted to hear, but there was another option
to get to Shinjuku, but this meant quite a trek through the station to catch a
train on a different line. The platform
was so crowded that the staff had to stop people going down the
escalators. We only had to wait through
one arrival and departure to squeeze onto a train, and we were very grateful
that we were only going a couple of stops.
How nice it was to get back to the hotel!
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| The 'Getting on the Train When it's Already Full' technique |
We’re
off to Nikko in the countryside tomorrow and have a very early start.
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