After breakfast, we set out for a walking tour of Harajuku, a popular shopping and fashion district in Tokyo. This is the place to see trendy people. We saw more trendy, upscale stores in one place than we think we've ever seen anywhere, including a Prada store that was several floors and the size of a small US department store. It was in a very modern-looking building:
What's more, many of these high-end stores had actual shoppers in them. Walk by a Prada, Gucci or similar store here in California and there will be expensive purses or shoes in elegant lighting with lots of white space around them and a well-dressed salesperson trying his or her best not to look bored. In Harajuku, there were people actually buying things in these stores.
We didn't need to go in to a "common" luxury brand store, but thought we should stop in a randomly selected boutique store that looked like it had clothes the fashionable Japanese people on the subway might wear:
Again with the crazy glass architecture. We had to browse just out of curiosity. I found pants that I am positive I would never wear:
Well, those are pretty crazy. How much could they possibly be? $100? $200? I look at the price tag. 75,000 yen. Nine hundred dollars. Are you kidding me? I can buy a good suit - probably even an Armani if there's a sale - for that much. If I owned those pants, I'd put them in a glass case and say they were designed by a famous artist. Anyway, there must be someone willing to pay for them.
After looking at clothes we couldn't afford, our feet were sore and our wallets hurt just thinking about all the expensive clothes. So we stopped at a multi-story mall and found some sake we could afford. We're on vacation, it's a weekend, and at the time, it was about 5pm in Hawaii. The sake also helped brace us for Takeshita Dori.
This is a pedestrian street in Harajuku which on a Sunday was jammed with every teenager and young adult in Tokyo looking for fashionable bargains. The narrow street was Times-Square-on-New-Year's-packed at times. All you could do was shuffle along with the crowd. If you wanted any kind of look for your wardrobe, you could probably find it here. I took a series of candids as we walked and I'll try and post of a few of them in a separate entry.
At the other end of Takeshita Dori, we came to the Meiju Jingu shrine - another one of the major shrines our guidebook recommended. As we walked past the gate, we were approached by 3 Japanese college students who asked us if they could take us on a free tour in exchange for practicing their English with us. Being American, we both had the same shamefully sad thought at first - "this is probably a scam." But it quickly occurred to us that they were genuine. This was not the sort of country where locals would scam you. It would be hugely shameful and dishonorable to do so.
They showed us around the shrine and told us a little about both the shrine and Japanese culture. Among other things, we learned the proper way to pray at a shrine, and also learned that it's ok to put 1 yen or 5 yen in the donation box when you pray (I think I'd dropped a 100 yen coin in previously). There were several weddings at the shrine that day, so we also talked a bit about different wedding customs. The women traditionally wear tall hats on their wedding day rather than a veil. Apparently, the hat is supposed to hide their horns. I'm not going to try and analyze this one.
Our student friends were also very curious about our life and American culture as well, so we spent an hour as international ambassadors. As a thank you for their time, we have them a small gift of chocolate-covered apricots we had brought with us from California. Everyone (probably including passer-bys) took pictures of the gift being opened:
I hope we were good ambassadors! And I hope those apricots were good!
Next: People everywhere, Electronics Town and dinner in a family restaurant.
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