Japan Holiday, July 25 (Harajuku Girls)

Harajuku to start today, which is just one station from Shibuya, you could even walk it if you wanted, which I don't want to do right now as I'm getting blisters on my feet and still many days of Tokyo to get through. The main highlight of Harajuku is Yoyogi Park, although you can probably also access it from the next station which is called, believe it or not, Yoyogi. The paths in the park were really wide, so they must get a lot of people coming through, but perhaps because it was still early there wasn't so many there just yet. Supposedly on the Sunday is when all the cosplayers and other crazy people come out to play, but I didn't even see one of them!

Across to the other side of the city now, and my first visit (of many) to Akihabara (Akiba for short). Still no cosplayers! but there was lots of girls on the street advertising their maid cafes - a bit too strange and confusing for me. Akiba has a lot of electronic stores, anime/manga stores and video games - sounds like fun for me but not everyone else. So I'll come back and do some exploring on my own later.

Akiba is conveniently located right near Tokyo (and Ginza), so we had to stop there to book some train tickets and there was supposed to be a Disney ticket office nearby. We didn't find Disney, but we did find Godzilla! Kris and Lauren wanted to explore the Imperial east gardens (as in east of the Imperial Palace), so I went back to Akiba instead (good call it turns out, as the east gardens were a lot of walking for little reward).

Ginza

I searched through a whole bunch of stores, looking for interesting things to buy but really struggled to find anything. Obviously most of the electronics are designed for Japan, so they are out of the running. There wasn't nearly as much video game memorabilia as I was hoping for - there was some stores specialising in old games (NES, SNES etc.) but again they were all in Japanese, and only a little bit of Mario stuff. Most of the anime I was unfamiliar with - and 90% of it seemed to be One Piece - since I haven't watched any in years. So you really need to be up to date with your Japanese pop culture to get the most out of Akiba I think.

Stopped back at Harajuku in the afternoon and it was a totally different scenario. People everywhere, even a few cosplayers and performers outside the park. However the main reason for the crowds was the "Ayumi Hamasaki Rock n Roll Circus" about to begin at Yoyogi National Gymnasium - Ayumi being a Japanese female pop singer. Somehow everyone walking towards the gymnasium already had their tour t-shirts on, I really did not understand that.

Team Ayu Lady, better than Team Edward, that's for sure !

I went for a walk down Takeshita Dori in Harajuku which was ridiculously crowded, it was like being stuck in a wave, everyone was just moving down the street and nobody seemed to be going in or out of any of the stores. At the other end of the street is Omotesando (street) which has a Kiddy Land! store containing about six floors of merchandise stuff.

Harajuku station.

Walked back down to Shibuya and after meeting back up with Kris and Lauren we went to the Disney Store to buy tickets for tomorrow. A tough call, but we ended up going for Disney Sea rather than Disney Land.