Tokyo day 4: Harajuku

Saturday, April 19, 2014
Tokyo, Kanto, Japan
We got woken up by an earthquake around 7am, how nice was of Japan to give us this memorable sensation on the last day! It was a very minor one, just a bit of shaking, things weren't even falling off.

After packing the suitcases and checking out of the hotel, we walked to Shinjuku station with an intention of leaving the luggage at some coin lockers there. Unfortunately, due to some security restrictions (because of Obama's visit, they said) all coin lockers in the station were occupied. We roamed around for a while looking for an empty locker, but then we gave up and rode a train to a nearby Harajuku station. It is supposed to be a hub of teen fashion and culture. On Sundays there are supposed to be some people dressed in extravagant and eccentric costumes (just google "Harajuku fashion", you'll get the idea). We were there on Saturday, however, so we only saw a few outrageously fashionable teens.

With a bit of luck, we managed to find a couple of unoccupied large lockers at a nearest subway station and left the suitcases there. Then we had some breakfast and walked around the area to see if we can find anything interesting-looking. We saw a lot of stores and boutiques on Takeshita Dori, which was crowded with people even in that early hour (around 11am). Then we checked out Kiddy Land, a fantastic toy store; it had a large selection of fighting robot toys, some Cheburashka dolls, Lego sets, Ghibli products and much more. Then we walked along Omotesando, an elegant tree-lined boulevard yet again lined with fancy stores. There was a giant line at one of the stores, literally going around the block, but I have no idea what they were waiting for.

Then we walked through an old dense forest of Yoyogi Park to Meiji Shrine, dedicated to deified emperor Meiji (here's some history about him, if you are interested). The shrine's main hall is a very elegant building surrounded by two giant trees with nearly spherical crowns. We saw a traditional Japanese wedding there, the costumes are very interesting.

Finally, we made our way back to the subway station, picked up the luggage, then had a short but difficult walk back to the train station, because the area was ridiculously packed with people just standing around or moving slowly. After a while we managed to get into the station, took a train to Shinjuku, from where we had tickets for Narita Express train (that goes to Narita airport). Since we were a bit early, we replaced our tickets with ones for an earlier time, bought some bento and caught the train.

After that it was simply a matter of riding to the airport, spending the rest of Japanese cash on souvenirs and getting on a plane. Then, 3 movies later, we were back in Toronto.

THE END!

P.S.: Overall, I consider this trip a huge success, I accomplished all of my "must do", "must see" and "must photograph" items for the trip, brought back a big pile of souvenirs (which will take some time to sort and to gift to people), and took over 3700 photos (which will also take some time to sort and post-process). Carrying around a heavy backpack with the camera, lenses, travel book and my Nintendo 3DS (for a number of reasons) all day left me very tired every evening, but it was a happy and wonderful time!
H.C. Andersen said: "To travel is to live", and I could not agree more!

P.P.S.: I will be posting more photos on Facebook as I process them, so if you are interested, keep an eye on my albums here.
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