Firstly, Saturday:
Saturday Jenny and I decided to explore the expanses of Shibuya and Harajuku once more. First we went to Harajuku to see the Meiji-jingu shrine. It's freaking awesome, to be quite honest. It's in the middle of a huge park that's basically a forest in the middle of Tokyo - and as much as I love being a city-dweller, I won't deny that it was nice to be surrounded by some tranquil nature for a while. To enter the shrine, we walked down an enormous gravel driveway that led into the woods. There are little pathways and shrines that trail off the side of the walkway, but most of them seemed closed for winter so we didn't really check them out. There are also three (I think three) gigantic torii that we passed under (and took a few pictures by), as well as some huge casks of French wine (I took a picture of the sign that had the whole story behind them on it) and some huge drums of some sort (whose purpose I could not divine, but which were lovely and many).
When we got to the actual shrine we wandered around a bit rather than going into the main building, since people were praying pretty seriously inside and I didn't want to interrupt or insult anything/one by bumbling about. There was a big courtyard, however, with my favorite thing: a tree covered in peoples' wishes. Every day the priests there pray for the intentions that people submit on little wooden board that are hung on the fence around the tree. The wishes I saw ranged from things as simple as "I want to go to an Arashi tour every year!" to meaningful wishes for family and friends. Jenny and I saw things in Japanese, Spanish, French, English, German, and I'm sure many more. It was really cool. We weren't sure where to buy the plaques, but we did write down paper wishes that we put in a collection box near the tree.
We wandered around there a bit more, and then went back out of the shrine. We wandered through the gift shop (everywhere must needs have a little shop ;D) for a while before heading back into Harajuku main. At this point we still hadn't been to Takeshita-dori yet, but had not yet figured out where exactly to find it, and as it was getting dark, we abandoned that quest to jump on a train back to Shibuya.
In Shibuya we mostly shopped and sight-saw. We wandered all over into a million little shops. We found a fabric store (the prices were so cheap >___<) and a bunch of exciting-looking clothes stores and restaurants. I bought a pretty ring for Y300 in a little shop that smelled so strongly of incense it made my head hurt. Jenny was also on the lookout at the time for a bar in which we could watch the Asia Cup finals with camaraderie rather than quietly in our room (the final is tonight, unfortunately, and Jenny is curled up in bed sick and asleep, so that plan failed a bit...)
By this point in the night we were starving and exhausted, so we wandered a bit more before heading to a small restaurant in the bottom of a department store where Jenny had katsu-curry and I ate my body weight in hamburger (it comes without a bun; mine came with pasta and mashed potatoes on the side) and an enormous omurice that was super-delicious. :D
After that we pretty much waddled back to the train station and back to home. We had plans for the morrow, (and we were sooooo full) that we opted to turn in early so as not to be late in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment