pics!

It was recommended to me that I make a flickr for photo-sharing purposes.  It is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss-bookworm/sets/72157625782844670/ . From now on I'll try to post the pics with my posts.

In other news, today we missed the official tour we were going to go on, so we took the initiative on ourselves to visit Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinjuku ourselves.

We went to Shibuya first and wandered around for a while.  We finally found our way around the station to the side with Hachiko and the Times-Square-mitai-famous street crossing, which there are pics of in the above bunch.  :D Then after much scanning of a map, we walked for what was apparently (according to google maps) about a mile, down to the entrance of the Meiji Shrine. (We may go back there tomorrow - there's a big coming of age festival, a national holiday in fact, for 20-year-old girls tomorrow, so everyone will be there in their kirei kimono best.  (Too bad I left both my furisodes at home... :/) We window-shopped and actually-shopped along the way, and I almost impulse-bought the most beautiful grey pirate-y/steampunk-y/loligoth high-heeled leather boots.  Everything was marked half off, and their tag said like 15,000Y, and they even closed over my monster calves, but when the lady went to ring me up she said that 15,000 was the already-discounted price, and holy frickin crap, I am not actually paying ~$200 for even the most beautiful shoes ever. (I was still sad about leaving them, though... :X)

We finally made our way down to Harajuku (at least to Harajuku station).  There we had totally delicious takoyaki! I have been waiting to try takoyaki since I got here, but I wanted to get it from a street stand fresh and proper-like, not have the reheatable bento konbini takoyaki that they sell in all the Lawsons and 7-11s.  We shopped around a bit more there (I was irrashaimase'd approximately one million times...) and then we headed into the metro station to go back to Shibuya for dinner.

Didn't see very many people in awesome garb, but that's probably because it was late and dark. (I did see two lonely lolis getting on the train when we left from Harajuku station.) Also, not having that much of a head for fashion, I wasn't sure whether there was a particularly famous street I should be seeking out or not.  (I do want to eventually seek out Takeshita Dori and have oishii parfaits while creeping for kanon, though, haha).

We had cyborg soup for dinner - you order via vending machine thing, and it gives you a ticket, and you give the ticket to the cook, so it's definitely cyborg-y, being part machine and all. It was sooooo delicious haha, giant shrimp and all.  Then we stopped in the big departo where we'd shopped before because they had a bunch of really cheap food places in the basement - we bought some super cheap croquets and yakitori for tomorrow (we're not sure how much will be open around home) and finally jumped the train home. All in all it was an awesome day of adventuring!

Things we want to do eventually:
try a Japanese Mcdonalds >.>
go to Akihabara, which is far away which is why we didn't go today
continue finding 50-yen croquets underneath overpriced department stores