We spent an amazing 36 days in Japan! We did a lot of traveling, and we went back and forth between a lot of locations, cities, and districts. To make things easier to read and write, we have grouped everything in our travels into city locations and not exactly by time.
First up is Tokyo! Tokyo is divided up into districts and wards. To keep things all organized we kept all the districts and wards of Tokyo separate, even though some of these locations we visited days and sometimes weeks apart from each other. The districts and cities we visited in Tokyo are:
Harajuku is a district inside of Shibuya. Our Shibuya and Harajuku postings are not strict on separating the two, and this Harajuku post is named after more of a representation of what we found rather than what was found in a specific district; youths, fashion, and lots of crowds.
Also a lot of handheld sweets such as crepes! We saw no less than 5 crepe shops on a single street in Harajuku. Crepe shops are the Japanese Starbucks.
In a day walking back to our apartment from Harajuku we noticed it was very crowded at Yoyogi station. We were unable to figure out what was going on and watched the crowd from our apartment when we got back. We noticed that the majority of them were young girls and young women.
The next day it was overcast and rainy, and the crowd returned. This time we were able to find an advertisement for the event they were all waiting for.
Sexy Zone!
It turns out there is a jpop band named Sexy Zone and these girls were waiting for multiple days in the sun and in the rain to see them.
We found an "antique" toy store hidden in one of the alleys of Harajuku that had many gems from our childhood.
My pet monster. I wanted to buy this pretty bad, but it was being sold for 36,000 yen which at the time was around $350.
The store was a pretty big nostalgia overload and very expensive. We browsed and left empty handed. Despite the posted warnings for no pictures, we took some anyway. :p
There were also a ton of modern toy stores.
If you have ever wanted a dinosaur necklace, well, we found a store that sells them.
COCO-agepan
The crowd near and around Harajuku never end. It is like walking the streets of Las Vegas in terms of crowds.
On our final days in Shibuya we turned a corner somewhere and found a
Pablo!. I am realizing now that those reading this have no idea about why this was a cool find for us. We first visited Pablo in Osaka, which was shortly after visiting Ginza and Ueno Park. I'll talk more about Pablo in Osaka postings, but basically, Pablo serves these amazing cheese tarts that are cooked rare and nothing like the "cheesecake" we have back in America. They are incredibly delicious, and during our time in Shibuya we found ourselves craving one again. Luck would have it that we stumbled upon one!
Our Airbnb host recommended a sushi resturaunt in the area for us. We had difficulty locating it at first because it was on the third floor of an unmarked building in the "hipster fashion district" part of Harajuku/Shibuya.
Even after an exhaustive google search we were unable to find the name, but
here is the GPS locations. It is the top floor and you can enter it on the side where a staircase goes all the way up.
There was one other couple with at the location who were enjoying themselves and the sushi master prepared our meal without hesitation. It was a great little joint to sit and observe the Sushi Chef at work. If you manage to locate it, it is very good sushi with a nice quiet atmosphere.
With Harajuku complete we are almost done with Tokyo. One last post for the odds & ends and final thoughts on Tokyo!
