Hannah's Harajuku Adventures

(No pictures because I'm dumb and left my memory card in my computer)

While Pother and Mickey went off to the Studio Ghibli Museum, I got to explore Tokyo with Zelda. She describes Harajuku as "a big name for a small place" in that what you might think of as being "Harajuku" is actually confined to the small side streets, while the big streets are more mall-like.

We had decided when we were in Tokyo Station that we were going to find a cat cafe if it was the last thing we did, and Harajuku seemed like a likely place for one to be. About two and a half hours of wandering and getting lost later, we found an empty room and someone telling us the cat cafe was closed. That might have been good information to put on their official website, but they must not have thought so. Zelda thought that not getting to a cat cafe ruined the day, but I thought it was wonderful.

Wandering down the smaller streets was a lot of fun. Jingumae borders Harajuku and Shibuya, which are shopping districts, so even though we didn't go to Shibuya Crossing, we saw a lot of fashionable people and interesting stores. Some of the streets were basically empty but some of them were just as busy as the main street. In the smaller streets there were a handful of name-brand stores (including one with a celebrity endorsement by one of the actors from the heist film - YOU CAN'T BUY ME TOFU MAN) but mostly they were unmarked. They looked like small, touristy stores from the outside, but they probably paid a fortune to be in that neighborhood.

The only store we spent much time in was a toy store because if we couldn't spend time with cats, Hello Kitty was a good second. We spent far too much time with a toy that records what you say and says it back much higher. It must have been strange to see two foreigners yelling in English at a toy but we were having fun. We wanted to buy giant Rilakkuma pillows/stuffed animals to create a lazy-themed rug to sleep on, but that won't happen (this year).

Parting ways after dinner was sad, but school starts in a month and we will Orinoco Flow together then.