The ubiquitous vending machines. Found everywhere here and they sell everything!  Today we’ll go to Harajuku and Yoyogi park.

Mata-ne!

 

June 23, 2006

 

Well, we did entirely too much yesterday.  We went to Harajuku which is famous for its youth oriented fashion stores and the young people who show up to strut their so called outrageous (for the japanese) fashions.  It’s the place where the cosplay girls hang out on Sundays at Yoyogi Park and the tourists go to gawk and photograph them. We didn’t make it to Yoyogi Park but we still saw a few of them on the train.  What the japanese consider outrageous would pretty much be average back in LA.  A lot of this area is decorated with  designer graffiti which is kind of funny to us since we consider it bad when it shows up in our neighborhood.  Here they treat it as desirable!

 

 

 

After lunch, we went to the Meiji Shrine which was built to commemorate Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shoken.  Built in 1920, it burned down during the fires of WWII and was rebuilt and completed in 1958.  

 

 

 

 

Next we went to Akihabara on the way to Asakusa where we had to meet our host to check out the house we will move to on the 30th.  Long story there but it is located near the very famous Sensoji Temple and has lots of interesting things to see in the vicinity.  We will be sad to leave the Nakai neighborhood as it is very comfortable and quiet.  We will have a new housemate there. Her name is Hotaru (which means firefly) and she also speaks english very well.  She is moving in there permanently from her parents house and at 23 it is the first time she will be on her own.  She works in nearby Akihabara which we stopped at on our way.

It is the electronics district and if I knew what anything was I might buy something!  Tris found some magic adaptor we really needed for a cheap price.

We’ll go back there after we move to Asakusa as it is only a couple of stations away .

So,  quite a day...........from this

 

 

to this.......