zombies in harajuku
This morning Rupa and I dragged ourselves out of bed and visited Shinjuku. Shinjuku is a big shopping and entertainment center. It has long avenues full of sky scrapers and perpendicular alleys with shops and restaurants.
As we wandered around, I was secretly hoping to find a coffee shop (we seem to bump into a Starbucks every two hours or so when we wander Tokyo) and Rupa was keeping her eyes out for the bookstore that sells English books so she can have something to read on the plane.
We had a field day in a five story art supply store whole first two stories were dedicated to stationary and paper.
We then decided to go to Harujuki. Harujuki is where the fashionable and angst-filled youth go on the weekend. Its streets are full of interesting shops with crowds of young girls in crazy costumes.
Rupa and are were pretty tired from yesterdays Temple Death March; we didn't have a lot of neurons firing. Forgetting that Tokyo is very much *not* a grid, that the street signs are no longer in English when you wander away from the touristy areas, that we have no idea which direction is north because we have no landmarks and it was cloudy... forgetting all of these things, we looked at the (not very good) map in the Lonely Planet Japan Guidebook, decided that Harujuku was not that far away and we decided to walk. A good, frustrated hour later, after consulting many public maps and spinning in circles, we found ourselves at a big park in Yoyugi. Normally that would be enough of a landmark to help us but the park is roughly circular and the highway skirts a big part of it so it was difficult to say exactly where we were. We braved our way into the park, looked at the public map (which was also in English-- thank god because we weren't smart enough today to deal with characters) and walked through the park
and down a long street to Harujuku.
Between the crowds and our zombie-like haze, we didn't take many photos. We did, however, try on a lot of funky glasses.
There is an entire store there dedicated to dog costumes. I think that this one would suit Chief very well.
I tried to get this dog to look at me but she didn't seem to know English. Oh well.
Rupa and I had a faux pas in a girls photo booth shop. She wrote about it in her blog.
As we wandered around, I was secretly hoping to find a coffee shop (we seem to bump into a Starbucks every two hours or so when we wander Tokyo) and Rupa was keeping her eyes out for the bookstore that sells English books so she can have something to read on the plane.
We had a field day in a five story art supply store whole first two stories were dedicated to stationary and paper.
We then decided to go to Harujuki. Harujuki is where the fashionable and angst-filled youth go on the weekend. Its streets are full of interesting shops with crowds of young girls in crazy costumes.
Rupa and are were pretty tired from yesterdays Temple Death March; we didn't have a lot of neurons firing. Forgetting that Tokyo is very much *not* a grid, that the street signs are no longer in English when you wander away from the touristy areas, that we have no idea which direction is north because we have no landmarks and it was cloudy... forgetting all of these things, we looked at the (not very good) map in the Lonely Planet Japan Guidebook, decided that Harujuku was not that far away and we decided to walk. A good, frustrated hour later, after consulting many public maps and spinning in circles, we found ourselves at a big park in Yoyugi. Normally that would be enough of a landmark to help us but the park is roughly circular and the highway skirts a big part of it so it was difficult to say exactly where we were. We braved our way into the park, looked at the public map (which was also in English-- thank god because we weren't smart enough today to deal with characters) and walked through the park
and down a long street to Harujuku.
Between the crowds and our zombie-like haze, we didn't take many photos. We did, however, try on a lot of funky glasses.
There is an entire store there dedicated to dog costumes. I think that this one would suit Chief very well.
I tried to get this dog to look at me but she didn't seem to know English. Oh well.
Rupa and I had a faux pas in a girls photo booth shop. She wrote about it in her blog.
posted by Michelle at 6:49 a.m.
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