Nichiyoubi

1-1-08 pt 1

i'm stuck in a corner of tokyo station for two hours while i wait for my shinkansen back to akita, so i might as well try to remember what has been happening for the last two days... i think it's tuesday, right? so - sunday... got going a little late, around one, for harajuku, meiji shrine, and yoyogi park, all in the same area. jumped off the train at harajuku station and circled a few intersections first on some old crosswalk bridges. harajuku has omotesando, a broad street lined with upscale stores, on one end, and meiji jingu, the largest shrine in tokyo (i think) on the other. in the middle are more crowded, narrow lanes, these ones geared toward teens, mostly teens who like the lolita or gothic lolita stuff.

we walked down the broad gravel lane in yoyogi park leading to meiji shrine, passing under huge wooden gates, through the outer wall of the shrine, and into a wide open square in front of the main shrine. saw some young guys who tend to the shrine running around beyond the public area getting ready for new year's eve. on new year's eve, millions (honestly, millions) of people line up along the path to the shrine to give an offering and pray for a good new year. at that time it was relatively empty. huge banners with rats eating raddishes on them were hanging from the outer walls of the shrine. (2008 is the year of the rat.) we put in our offering, 5 yen for good luck, and walked back to the cramped little street in harajuku to look for a gallery i have wanted to see for a long time.

i had a little hand made map with me, and we were trying to follow it, but the street names didn't match up, and some of them seemed to be reversed from the map. we went in a few circles and kept getting further out from the central part of harajuku, so we gave up on finding the gallery and just walked. we ended up walking all the way to roppongi, cutting across the southwestern corner of the city, past a huge cemetery into roppongi's skyscrapers.

took the train to an area near shinjuku to eat some indian food, but that place was closed, so we started walking again, into the kabuki-cho area of shinjuku. stopped at a few brittish pubs for a few beers, and met up for a while with a japanese girl some of the other folks met before i got to town. she had to leave early, so we wandered around kabuki-cho, and this time through, experienced something closer to the reputation of the place. bahamanmian dudes stood out in front of buildings that had hostess bars and strip clubs stacked five stories high, and asked us if we were interested in a list of activities, none of which included needlepoint or a round of go fish, and we were practically chased down with other offers.

we thought we saw a sign that said trains would be running all night, so we stayed out a while wandering around kabuki-cho, then headed back to the station, which was locked up tight. we circled the station looking for a door and were just about to go sleep in a mcdonalds when i decided to ask a taxi how much the fare to our hostal was. turns out it's not so bad, so we got in and saw what tokyo looks like from the freeway. got home, sleepybyes, so on and so forth...