Japan day 2.. or the first full day.
Japan day 2.. or the first full day.
Today we went to see the “cosplay” kids, people who get dressed up in outfits like anime characters and meet up at this bridge. The bridge was in Harajuku near a park that was created by a former emperor named Meiji It was raining today, so we didn’t get the full effect. While we were in this park, we got to visit a temple in which they were doing some kind of service. The main thing that stuck with me was the huge drum they played during the service. It was this huge Taiko-type drum that they played towards the end of the service.
While we didn’t see much of the cosplay kids (we did see some, but there weren’t that many because of the rain), we were struck by the costumery. We saw many kids dressed up in outfits that make them look like dolls, teenage girls dressed up in school-girl uniforms (despite the fact that today is Sunday). A couple girls we saw on the train on the way home were dressed up in things that looked a little like schoolgirl outfits, but reminded me of naval uniforms (blue blazer with blue and white collars) with Playboy bunny logos.
We ended up walking around in Harajuku on a number of streets that had stores of various types. The funniest thing to me were the places that were trying to be some kind of american culture or other. One place called “Mother Earth Father Sky” which sold jewelry made of turquoise and other stones, basically faux southwestern culture. I went into another one trying to be the rastafarian culture, had embroidered patches that said things like “Marijuana forever”, pot leaves.
I ended up buying a some t shirt/hoodie/tank top combo with unintelligible english phrases which all express “no time to waste”.this place was a sort of Hot Topic sort of place that was playing THe Clash. The weirdest thing for me has been all the bastardized english/american culture things. The store I bought the t shirt at had “union 76” gas attendent shirts, for example. It’s obvious that almost nobody here really knows what all this english stuff really means (see www.engrish.com to see more extreme examples of this fully expressed) It’s a bit like how t shirts written in Russian were popular in the US. You could have written anything in Russian and people would like it. Same thing with some Japanese things in the US, these kids clearly have no idea what they’re putting on their bodies. It makes for really funny readings of stuff.
Japan has about the best cel phones, by the way. These phones have large screens. We went to one place that had all this Spiderman 3 stuff connected with their phones. This one phone that i realy liked has this large screen that rotates nad the becomes a landscape screen on which you could watch a movie. It seems that many of the phones carried around by the kids have MP3 players built into them.
We did a lot of trains today, which is more like how everyone gets around. than the car we used to get to and from the airport. It’s notable to mention that the car that Dalton has is called a Nissan Primera, a local model, and he paid only $300 for it. On our way out this morning we passed a lot that had a bunch of decent cars priced for only about $1800
We had noodles from some little restaurant for lunch. There wasnt really a menu, and there were specials posted all over the walls, but when it came to picking food, we had to step out and look at the display case which had 3-d models of the things we could pick. I got noodles with a tempura shrimp. D says that tipping just isnt done, and that if you want a refill on your drink you have to call the waitress over and ask because other than that they try to leave you alone.
Near this place we went to a store called Snoopy World that was al Peanuts cartoon memorabilia. At least the stuff in this place was all genuine stuff that I might find in an american store, but still… there was this on shirt that had an embroidered snoopy fighting the red baron, and it said, in embroidery, on the shirt, that this was “snoopy of the 1960’s”
Nearly everyone had umbrellas (parasols), and many stores had these things near the front of the store that let you park your umbrella, but others had this thing that slipped your umbrella into a plastic bag, presumably to prevent you getting the merchandise wet.
In the end it was a rather exhausting day, we were on our feet nearly 7 hours. We’re about to go out to get some dinner, but hopefuly we wont have to walk very far :) Japan is about 15 hrs ahead, so when it’s 7:41 pm here , it feels like 4:41 am to my poor jetlagged brain.