Harajuku and Shinjuku
Something strange happened to my body clock last night. At 3am I was unable to sleep, yet unable to do anything about it since turning the light on meant disturbing Debbie. At 6am I was raring to go. At 9:30am, I was fast asleep, and at 10am I was reluctant to budge.
Hence it was past eleven when we finally left the hotel, bound for Harajuku. The first point of order when we got there was lunch. We followed our noses in search of food, and were drawn into the huge throng of people walking down Takeshita-dori, where the cool kids do their clothes shopping. Or rather, the kids who are “trying too hard”. The current trend is the same as it was when our Lonely Planet guide was written — “Gothic Lolita”, which is like Little Bo Peep in pink or black, with lots of lace. It is a Very Odd Look. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. They’re trying to get noticed, yet they all look the same as each other. Odd.
Sunday is Harajuku’s busiest day, and it was jam packed. There were some pretty cool things on sale, but our focus was on food. The kids obviously weren’t interested in Japanese food, because all we could find was Italian or Greek food, and burgers. Eventually we settled for burgers in an MTV branded cafe.
Burger scoring:
- meat patty - good - probably freshly prepared
- bun - good - probably a big part of the production cost. Bread is not cheap in Japan
- cheese - poor - plastic cheese that didn’t melt under the grill
- gherkins - excellent - Japanese flavoured pickle
Debbie had avocado on hers.
We returned to the station along Takeshita-dori again, and set off on the guidebook’s Aoyama walking tour. The highlight of this was seeing a Gaijin wearing a Hawaiian shirt, leading three dogs, all of which were wearing sunglasses. Coincidentally, we had seen a shop selling Hawaiian shirts and dog accessories earlier in the day.
We did some calculations about the time, and decided to head back to the hotel to rest our feet — but not without some adventures along the way. The tube journey dumped us out Yodobashi in Akihabara, the huge shop of electronics we’d eaten at on Friday. We were awake enough to mooch around a little more - prodding at iPods and portable video players, pointing out the excessive colour saturation on enormous TVs and the like. I bought a mini-SD card for my phone — more because I wanted the adapter that comes with it than the card itself (some of the photos that go with this diary will have reached you courtesy of that adapter).
On our way through Akihabara, we tried to find some Tonari no Totoro catbus slippers for Debbie. I’m beginning to think this is too specific a requirement. We know they exist, but while we’ve found plenty of Totoro merchandise (and I mean plenty), we’ve found no slippers yet. We saw the strange sight of a cosplay girl surrounded by geeks with cameras. I didn’t count, since with my camera I was taking pictures of the entire scene, not just the girl. See?
After catching our breath at the hotel, we set off for dinner. This was quite a trek away in Shinjuku. Ruth and Dave had recommended a shabu-shabu restaurant named Ibuki.
We used the wrong station exit at Shinjuku, but this worked to our advantage. We were presented with a night time view straight out of Lost In Translation. Not only that, but we immediately recognised the bus station from the first level of Jet Set Radio — yes, when we’d looked for it in Shibuya, we’d made a mistake. This was much more like it.
We found our way under the station, to get to the right side of the tracks (or the wrong side - this is very close to the “notorious red light district”, Kabukicho), and followed the map Ruth and Dave had given us. We didn’t see the restaurant, and there was a suspicious looking recently demolished section of buildings.
On the third circuit, we decided Ibuki must have been demolished to make way for new development. We set off in search of alternative feasting, then seconds later, Debbie spotted Ibuki on the opposite side of the street to where we had expected.
Our shabu-shabu was delicious. We had tried this previously in New York: you have a pot of boiling water on a heater at the table, into which fresh vegetables are placed. You have a plate of thinly sliced raw beef steak, a bowl of soy sauce and a bowl of sesame paste. You take a piece of meat at a time, dip it in the boiling stock until it’s cooked to your liking, dip it in soy or sesame, and eat it. You can pick out vegetables to nibble on as well, and at the end, you get bowls to drink the soup you have made.
They were delighted to hear that my sister had recommended them, and gave us some free green tea ice cream by way of recognition.
Afterwards, we had a very brief stroll around the immediate environs of Shinjuku station. Highlights of this stroll included a lady with three
dogs in a pram (only the dogs were in the pram, not the woman), and an advert for Pantone branded mobile phones, playing on an enormous building-side TV, accompanied by the Nolan Sisters’ “I’m in the mood for dancing”.
We soon realised that other than that kind of detail, what Shinjuku had on offer was nightlife (we were too worn out for that) and neon (we are becoming desensitised to it). We took the train back to the hotel, stopping in the 7-11for Suntory beer on the way. Do you see how we are settling into a holidaying pattern?
April 7th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
” Highlights of this stroll included a lady with three
dogs in a pram (only the dogs were in the pram, not the woman)” - Funniest comment - ever!