Harajuku and Shibuya

These two neighbourhoods within Tokyo were my favourite and ones that I made a point of returning to on my last day in Japan.  To get there I took the Yamanote Line to the Harajuku station.

Harajuku again delivers on the contrasts I have seen throughout Japan - modern vs. centuries old traditions.  My first visit in the neighbourhood was the Meiji-jingu-koen.  This is a park just to the west of the train station.  There were many birdsongs in the air, it was peaceful and the shrine itself was pristine.  I really felt like I belonged in this park....I was quite moved actually.  It is a feeling that I had multiple times in Japan and I don't know how to explain it.  Almost like a part of me somehow comes from these lands.

From there I headed down Takeshita-dori.  This is THE street to walk down if you want to see Japanese teenagers dressed in maid, punk-rock, electric, funk dress.  Anything goes.  The shops and the pedestrian only street are jam packed with young people expressing themselves.  I continued down Takeshita-dori and it became calmer and the boutiques more upscale.  On to Omotesando and you could easily be in a European capital.  A wide boulevard with all the haute couture shops (Dior, Versace...it goes on).  The one difference being that it is not only a small one storey boutique.  We are talking three or four storeys here.  Cafes, terraces.  From there I walked about twenty minutes to Shibuya.


Shibuya is the shopping mecca.  There are apparently not enough stores on the streets so the ten storey buildings all around are filled with small boutiques as well.  Each one is advertised with a neon sign outside.  Lots of action, lots of people, great energy.  As with other places in Japan it was surprisingly quiet, people were well behaved and I never saw any arguments.

The day ended with my walk back to Harajuku station along the street that forms the southern end of the park I began my day at.  It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and I loved what I saw.  Musical bands, every 10 metres or so, set up with their amps, their instruments and playing, singing, cranking out tunes.  Punk, metal, jazz, classical, rock, country, electronica.  Crowds gathered around each band and as you walked along the sidewalk one genre faded into another.  It was, again, great expression by the, mostly, youth of Tokyo.


I have to say that was has struck me about Tokyo is that, while there are not many non-Japanese walking around (not as much as in European and North American cities) you can definitely sense the influence of the world here - in their dress, their, music, their style, their food.  They seem to take what is best of the world and morph it into something new, something uniquely Japanese.  It is a wonderful part of Tokyo.


View Larger Map

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Temples, Forests and Streams - Nikko

Image
I spent a day and a half in Nikko October 28 and 29th.  It is a village of 95,000 people north of Tokyo.  To get here I took the bullet train from Ueon Station in Tokyo to Utsunomiya Station.  There I switched to a local train line called the Nikko Line.  In all it took about an hour and forty minutes of travel time. Nikko is situated in a valley with a river called the Daiya-gawa running through it.  It really is a rushing stream.  In fact, every where in Nikko you here rushing water.  Whether it is the Daiya itself or the numerous other streams that are all rushing rapidly down to meet the Daiya.  Most streets have narrow stone culverts on either side and you can see the rushing water (or hear it when they are covered).  It is a nice sound that drowns out other man-made ones. Forests.  The valley that Nikko is built in has some fantastic forests.  The trees are immense.  They look like cedars to me based on the stringy bark.  One thing for sure is that they are in fact big.  Many of
Read more

The Ueno Area - History in Art and Those Passed Away

Image
I spent the afternoon of my second day, the 24th of October in the Ueno area...about 1.5 to 2 km to the west of Asakusa and my ryokan - a nice walk.   I had lunch at an Udon place just south of the Ueno Station, under the tracks.  To order my meal I had to go to a vending machine that had the pictures of meals and their respective prices.  I inserted my 390 yen, pushed the button, brought my ticket to the kitchen and about five minutes later I was slurping (noisily as one is supposed to do) my noodles. I then headed through Ueno Park to Tokyo National Museum.  It was just pouring rain...in fact it poured all day.  Torrential rain...all day.  I had never experienced that before, not for that length of time.  I got soaked and parts of the park were saturated.  The museum would be a good place to spend a few hours.   I did three of the multiple buildings of the museum.  The one that impressed me most was the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, mostly because I really liked the modern architectu
Read more

Taking the Train - Stereotypes of Japan

To date I have taken nine intercity trains in Japan (excluding the many commuter trains in Tokyo). Here are a few things that have struck me, although they don’t surprise me given all I had heard and read over the years. I guess they just prove the facts and further show how engrained respect for people and property is in this beautiful country. 1) The Shinkansen that I rode on from Tokyo to Nagoya pulled in from some other part of Japan at my platform about 15 minutes before the scheduled 12:33 departure - although right on time for its arrival from wherever it was arriving from. It emptied itself of its passengers and the ladies clad in pink took over. They boarded, closed the doors of the cars and got to work. We were lined up outside and watched the show through the windows. Here is what they accomplished in 15 minutes in a train that was 12 cars long. -turned all the chairs around to face in the other direction (our train was going to head back the way it came) -removed th
Read more