"Look at this place! It's called Store My Ducks! We have to go in!" Unfortunately, they sold more clothes than ducks, but it was just one of the many stores with fun names stacked along the sides of Takeshita Street in Harajuku. It was claustrophobic, chaotic, colorful, and just plain fun peeking in and out of shops or trying to find how to get into a shop you liked because some were above where you thought they were, or below, and some were crammed between two bigger stores that you'd have to figure out which entrance was which. It was wild. You could find cute feminine lolita fashions right next to a hip-hop inspired clothing store or a store with a dark/punk/goth vibe going on. Which was perfect because my friend Alex was a lolita and I was very into the punk H.Naoto type clothing (called Visual Kei). Cute has no rules in Japan either. Interspersed with the punk stuff were still cutesy things (I found an H. Naoto Hello Kitty keychain that I love for example) and there were people shopping shoulder to shoulder here with totally opposing looks, which you wouldn't find anything like that in America.
Harajuku was probably the craziest place we went while in Japan. We stayed in Tokyo in a nice hotel located super close to the train station in Shinagawa. I was very scared about going abroad because this was my first trip and I planned everything myself. So I made sure my friend and I were staying somewhere that the staff would be able to help us limp along with our Japanese and the place would be easy to find. Now that I'm more experienced, I'll be staying somewhere cheaper and more integrated in the community like an AirBnb or a Ryokan guesthouse. I rwally did love this hotel though. I don't remember the room very well (we were hardly ever in it) but I remember it was my first look at just how opposing Japan's aesthetic are. We were staying in this very modern, tall monstrosity of a hotel, and then in the back of it was this lush garden with a giant koi pond, stone lanterns, bridges, and a very traditional looking Japanese building that we never did end up checking out. It was this little slice of peace and quiet and I remember waking up early our last morning in Japan to walk to the 7/11, just down the street from our hotel, to buy some melon bread. Snacks in hand, I returned to the hotel and sat on a bench to watch the koi fish and soak up the last few moments I would have before the hustle and bustle of packing up and getting to the airport began. It was a magical half hour or so.
We also spent time at Ueno Zoo, twice, once with just the two of us where we spent tons of time taking photos and seeing all of the exhibits, and a second time with my penpal family I had been talking to before we came. That's also where we tried Takoyaki for the first time (balls of dough with octopus inside) and I actually liked it. I wish I had gotten a video of the lady flipping the dough balls with chopsticks. Her hands were like lightning, expertly knowing when to flip each one, she had built up a rhythm and a flow. Ritsuko, Kazuyoshi, and their little girl Ayamo also took us to Asakusa Shrine and Tokyo Tower. At Asakusa we went through the rituals of cleansing ourselves with smoke and our hands with water before entering the shrine, got our fortunes (which little Ayamo translated for me), and ate freashly made anpan (dough filled with red bean paste) that were in cute shapes. At Tokyo Tower we went all the way up the the observation deck and looked out at a sprawling city of Tokyo. On a better day we would have also been able to see Mt. Fuji in the distance, but it was too cloudy. Ayamo and I were very brave and even stepped on the glass part of the floor here so you could see down to the ground! Saying goodbye to them was hard! But I still have the chopsticks and the cloth that they gave me and the stickers Ayamo "bought" for us.
Mayumi was who I contacted to get a penpal assigned to me from her English class, if I remember correctly, though I don't remember how exactly I found Mayumi, it's been so long now! We met up with her in Yokohama where she introduced us to a delicious ice cream shop and this little Ramen shop above a grocery store that I neve would have known was there. Possibly the most important thing she introduced us to was bubble tea, way before it became popular in the US yeah, I'm that cool.) She instructed us to order something from this stand but refused to tell us what we were getting. So we picked our flavors and watched as the employee put it into a machine where it filled with boba, our tea flavor, and then sealed it all up. We had no idea what we were getting into. Then they handed us this wide, pointed straw, and Alex and I just looked at each other like, "huh?" Well sure enough we stabbed through the plastic top, sucked up our first taste of boba and tea and were hooked.
Oh man, we did so much that I could go on forever. We checked out the Miyazaki Museum (famous for films like Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away, and Ponyo though the last one wasn't out at the time) which was absolutely amazing. We hung out with Hachiko in Shibuya and shopped til we dropped. Oh! I forgot! While in Yokohama we did something called Pikura, which is like a photobooth in the US, except you can edit the photos with cute frames and props and things. We also went to Tokyo Disneyland, but skipped DisneySea. After hearing about my cousin's recent trip, I'm sad that we didn't do DisneySea! But that just means I'll have something else to add to my itinerary for next time I go! Here was a lot of the same Disney stuff, but also SO different! They had some of the same staple rides, like Small World, but also were quite Monsters Inc heavy with lots of merchandise for it and a ride that we didn't get to go on. The line was just too long because the ride had come out pretty recently. They had different shows, which were still fun even in a language I only understood small bits of, and the food was delish! They had curry popcorn everywhere, which is the only way I ate my popcorn for like 2 years after this trip. It was so good! And the Mickey steamed buns? Cute and tasty! We also just ate a ton of food and played a lot of charades with locals, trying to explain what we were looking for. Like the time we were wandering around Shinagawa for an hour or so trying to explain to different shop owners that we needed gift boxes and wrapping for the gifts we had brought for Ritsuko, Kazuyoshi, and Ayamo! And then when they didn't have it, directions to a place they thought might have it. This happened a couple of times before we found it.
I loved so much about Japan, and had wanted to go there for years. Alex and I figured we'd be neck deep in student loans for the next billion years, so we might as well go before they kick in...and we just went. It was wonderful. The people were so kind and helpful to two blundering Americans trying our damnedest. Our Japanese collectively was not terrible, which I think was helpful and we really did try to communicate in all Japanese when possible. I don't know if it made much sense, but we went for it! My favorite part though was wandering through...anywhere we went really- Tokyo, Harajuku, Shinagawa, Ueno, etc. No matter what part of Tokyo we were in it was the same; big modern buildings, flashing lights, the soft glow from the well decorated windows of luxury stores and tucked in between were shrines, temples, older buildings, greenery that showed how connected the country is to their roots. It was like past and present came together in this weird harmony that worked so well.
I definitely miss Japan and can't wait to go back. It is a place I would like to spend a few months exploring from top to bottom, well bottom to top really I guess- starting in Nagasaki and making my way up to Sapporo for the snow festival held in February. Big dreams. One day it will happen!
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