Harajuku Girls

Sunday, our first full day in Japan. David was eager to go to church to see people he knew and visit with them. Lisa and I thought sitting in 3 hours worth of church listening to a language we understood exactly 5 words in (Arrigato, Konichiwa, Sayonara, Toide, Pokemon. After the trip, I still only know those same 5 words, nothing would stick!) sounded like a drag, so we decided to use the only Sunday we would be in Tokyo to do some Harajuku exploring. The Harajuku kids are best viewed on a Sunday (or so said my handy-dandy guide book) and that is just what we wanted to do. David gave us some basic directions on how to get there and Lisa and I took off early. We figured out how to buy our train tickets and transferred seamlessly to the correct train and were quite proud of getting ourselves there without any help from our translator (David).


Two unique things we encountered along our way: Train sleepers and squatty potties. I don't know how they do it, but people can sleep on the trains (usually only a 15-30 minute journey). They can do it sitting down, they can do it standing up. More than once did Lisa and I have to serve as pillows to a sleeping Japanese train rider. In Harajuku, Lisa and I had our first encounter with the dreaded "squatty-potty" in the Harajuku train station. There is something really unnatural about squatting over a urinal mounted into the floor. We quickly discovered if we were in a nicer store, we could escape those horrible things!



We set off to do some shopping and exploring. The sights were over-
whelming. Sensory overload. And being a city girl (and boy am I), I enjoyed every second of it. Lisa found her way to Chanel were she promptly picked up the sunglasses she had been eyeing on the Internet. A girl's got to have sunglasses. I found a cute boutique store and picked out my one and only souvenir, a kitchy ring shaped like an owl. (I love the silly thing.) Our shopping adventures took us to a place called "Bodywild". I think it is the only underwear store in the world that can boast selling both undergarments as well as art, box-headed lego-like characters, postcards, and toys. I mean, really, only in Japan.
We hit Kiddie-Land (Which looked a lot like "adult land" from the clientele inside. Who has heard of a toy store with only a couple of kids in it?) Inside was a Pokemon bonanza! I still hadn't had a chance to talk to Bill and the boys and was missing them terribly, so the kids got a bit spoiled, when I just couldn't seem to pick just one thing to take back home to them. Lunch was calling our name by this point, so we stumbled on a delicious cafe. Luckily it also happened to be the one and only place I ever found with free wifi, so I was able to Skype Bill and the boys, which helped with the missing them component to this trip.



We headed to the Meji-shrine and along the way stumbled across all of the crazy Harajuku kids. Along the sidewalk, next to the train station, were a load of teenagers all sporting their fashion-forward looks ( or just plain crazy, depending on the kid). They were lined up like pop-stars taking pictures with the more traditionally clad onlookers.









After enjoying a moment with the Harajuku teenage crowd, we headed for the Meji shrine. The shrine itself is set back away from the Tokyo madness along a gravel path about a 1/2 mile (or so) long. Along the path are these beautiful drum like objects. They are covered in beautiful colors and script, but without David we couldn't read what they were.






At the shrine, there were wooden slates for sale, where visitors could write down their prayers to hang at the shrine. Some had lovely pictures drawn along side their prayers and were endlessly interesting to look through. We were lucky and there was a traditional wedding taking place when we got there, so we were able to enjoy viewing that. We took a million pictures of the shrine itself and then ran back to the train station to get back to Sasame (the town we were staying in, about an hour away from Tokyo) for dinner with the Uchida family.





We arrived at the Uchida's new home (much bigger than their first apartment) to find a pet prairie dog. Who knew there was such a thing. It even had it's own special bag of "prairie dog food". I am not a big fan of caged wild animals, but it was awful cute, even if it did draw blood from Lisa's finger when she stuck it close to the cage.






The Uchida's nine year old daughter thought it would be fun to teach us some Origami, and pulled out her origami book and paper and attempted (that being the operative word for this situation) teaching us how to make an orchid. We were all sadly quite pitiful at it especially with all the instructions being in Japanese (did I mention that only the wife spoke any english at all, and she was shy about it and only spoke a little.)






They fed us a feast and then drove us back to the apartment, were I slept like a log again, after another long and exciting day.