The weekend & Harajuku 「原宿」

Saturday started off on a quiet note. We're still getting settled in at Taka's house. His family is so lovely-- especially his mum. Ben and I sleep in the attic above Taka's bedroom, on a little futon. If Taka didn't have a fan blowing the air-conditioned air up into our room it would be stifling hot.

We woke up and it was just Taka, Ben and I at home. We got ready and Taka drove us to the phone shop, picking his mum up on the way. In Japan it can be hard for tourists to obtain a mobile phone, as even the pre-paid phones here come with contracts, which require a residential address and Japanese ID of some sort. So we gave Taka money and he bought us this cool phone through one of Japan's major phone providers SoftBank.

The cool thing about Japanese phone services is... they're so cheap. To send a text message to Taka, it costs nothing. To call him it costs nothing. And for a small fee of 300yen/month (less than AUD$3) you can access the internet and send emails. The phone itself only cost 10,000yen (~$100), plus an extra 3,000yen for the pre-paid credit. At the time of writing this, 1￥ = 1cent, for big numbers, remove the last 2 digits and you have the Australian price.

For lunch, the four of us went out to an all-you-can-eat restaurant (which seem to be very popular here in Japan) called Sutami-no-Tarou. Here you can go nuts and eat whatever you want. Just pick up a plate, load it with food and chow down. Unlike Australian buffets, in Japan I've noticed people try to only put one type of food on a plate. So you use one plate for your sushi selection, another plate for your fried goods, another for salads, and so on.

We've developed a taste for squid sushi, though tuna sushi is also quite nice too. So you pile up your plates with your desired foods and bring them back to the table. There's also a fridge filled with various raw meats, which you can bring back to your table and cook for yourself. In the centre of the table there's a grill, which you cook the meat on, dip it in a sauce and eat it.

We spent about two hours eating and drinking and trying new things, before heading back home (read: Taka's house). Taka's dad was now home, so Ben and I took the opportunity to bring down the presents we'd lugged over from Australia and gave them to Taka's parents.

We bought over various kinds of Australian sweets, biscuits and tea, as well as jam, and a few non-edible items-- namely some nifty little espresso cups (they just moved into this house a couple of weeks ago, so this was like a little house-warming gift) and a book filled with photographs of Australian scenery. Taka's dad seemed to really like the book-- he looked at it for hours, and I sat with him and (using my limited Japanese) described where and what the photographs contained.

Taka disappeared for a while and returned 45 minutes later with his boyfriend Jason. Jason is from America, and lives and works in Japan as a neuroscientist. He speaks Japanese amazingly well-- probably from having lived here for the past three years. Or something.

Taka's mum whipped up dinner-- tempura prawns and vegetables as entrée, and cold soba (buckwheat noodles) with a dipping sauce as main. The noodles were so good-- colored with green tea extracts, which also added a subtle flavour to the dish. After dinner we spent a few hours talking and drinking in the lounge room, then made our way to bed after Jason fell asleep on the floor with Dan-kun (sounds like "Duncan" when the Japanese say it)-- the dog.


Sunday morning was a bit of a non-event. We ate bacon, eggs, salad, a tub of yoghurt with fruit, and an enormous piece of toast with jam for breakfast before deciding to go to Harajuku for the day.

Anyone who pays attention to Gwen Stefani should have at least heard of Harajuku. It's the town where the trendy kids gather on the weekend to raid the shops for the latest fashion trends-- which are very different from Australian fashion.

We caught the train from Moriya to Akihabara, then hopped on the JR Yamanote line (which is basically a big loop around Tokyo) to Harajuku. Taka was going to Jason's house to study, so Ben and I navigated ourselves around the area. Pretty easy, really... Everything is clearly marked in Japanese, with the English reading below, so even if you cannot read kanji, you'll have minimal problem getting around Tokyo.

First stop in Harajuku: cos-play girls. Cos-play (short for 'costume-play'... I think) is a hobby taken by some Japanese teenage girls. To put it simply-- they dress up to express themselves to the public every Sunday. We saw girls dressed up as hardcore goths, cyborgs, and a couple of girls wearing old-Victorian style frocks, with intricately applied make-up. A lot of the girls are bullied at school, and dressing up and taking on a new identity for a day is a way of escape.

Walking beyond the cos-play girls, we made a beeline for one of Tokyo's most famous shrines-- Meiji-jingu 「明治神宮」is the Shinto Shrine that is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken. When Emperor Meiji died in 1912 and Empress Shōken in 1914, the Japanese people wished to pay their respects to the two influential Japanese figures. It was for this reason that Meiji Shrine was constructed and their souls enshrined on November 1, 1920.

Access to the shrine itself is easy-- follow the path until you get there. It's an easy and pleasant stroll along the gravel path, lined with lush greenery and wooden lanterns. Before entering the shrine, you have to cleanse yourself with water from a spring below the ground. You take the cup in your right hand dip it in the water, pour it over your left hand. Repeat with the opposite hand, then pour water into your hand and rinse your mouth out with it, spitting the water into the trough next to the spring.

Once inside the shrine, you have the option to pray. Toss a coin into the collection box, clap your hands twice, bow, pray, bow twice, clap twice, leave.

There is a huge tree in the plaza outside the main shrine, a sacred tree, surrounded by the wishes of hundreds of visitors (both Japanese and foreign). These wishes of peace and goodwill are written on a wooden plaque and hung around the tree. The temple priests remove them every morning and offer them to the souls of the Emperor and his wife in the hope that they will become true.

On your way out of (or in to...) the shrine, you have the option to take a stroll through the shrine's gardens. It costs 500￥ for a nifty little ticket, but is worth it. The gardens are tended to regularly, and have several historic buildings, including a tea house, a well containing pure spring water (fed by a natural spring below), an azalea garden, an iris garden, and a lake filled with turtles, koi (ornamental carp) and a snake. It was so nice to go for a peaceful stroll under the cool shade of the Japanese maples-- and the complex was nowhere near as crowded as the Lonely Planet Japan book made out.

Before departing the shrine, we Ben and I got our fortunes told, and bought a little charm with the temple's name on it as a souvenir. You pay 100￥ to hold a box upside down and shake it until a thin stick comes out of the hole in the end of the box. On the stick is a number. Tell the temple employee your number and she'll give you your fortune written on a piece of paper. I got number 9, Ben got 19.

Instead of your fortune, at Meiji-jingu you receive a piece of inspirational poetry written by either Emperor Meiji or his wife, the Empress Shoken. Normally, you'd receive your fortune, which could either be good or bad, and you'd tie it to a sacred tree, or rack within the temple compound to avoid your bad fortune from coming true, or to ensure your good fortune occurs.

The poetry we received:

Amidst the raging storms of life
Never flinch, o heart of man--
No more than wind-tossed pine

Deep-rooted in the rock.

and

Such is the force of water
That it will with gentle pressure
Shape itself to the very vessel
And yet pierce the very rock.

Both were written by Emperor Meiji, and, when read in Japanese, follow the traditional 31-syllable form.

After lingering at Meiji-jingu for a couple of hours we made our way to the main street in Harajuku-- Omote-sando. This place is consumer central. Clothes, food, accessories and assorted goods in varieties most foreigners would be amazed at.

From Harajuku station, we walked down a long, narrow street/alley packed with squeaky girls and trendy boys, shopping in the small boutique-type shops that lined either side of the street. Narrow alleys snaked off either side of the road, also containing clothes and accessories.

We wandered onto Omote-sando, into a department store called Laforet. Wow. Just... wow. Clothes everywhere. And not just regular clothes-- quirky-designed, bright, happy, and above all, trendy items. I looked at the price-tags in the shops-- some were cheaper than Melbourne, some were the same, and some were expensive. One shop had these really awesome shorts, and i really wanted them, but then I saw that they were over $300, so I decided against it.

After escaping the glitz of Laforet, Ben and I hunted for something to eat-- eventually just getting a small burger and Coke each from a Japanese fast-food chain called Lotteria, and at $4, the Coke cost more than the burger! Who'd have thought...

On our way to Lotteria, we were distracted by a shop titled Condomania. You don't need to be a genius to figure out what they stock. Hundreds of varieties of condoms and flavoured lubricants (that cost over $30 each, for 100ml). It was good for a novelty moment, but we had food on the mind, so colored condoms could only hold our attention for so long.

Right after eating hamburgers, Taka messaged us and asked if we wanted to meet him and Jason in Takadanobaba in an hour and a half for all-you-can-eat sukiyaki. Hell yeah we did. Sukiyaki is my favorite Japanese dish. There is a hot-plate in the middle of the table, on top of which you put a deep frypan, put in a thin layer sukiyaki sauce and some water and boil your meat and vegetables. When cooked, you dip the meat into a small bowl containing a raw egg, and then eat it. Not only did this restaurant (called Momo-Paradise) have all-you-can-eat, but for a little extra you could have all-you-can-drink.

We emerged from Momo-Paradise a couple hours later, feeling contentedly full. For the four of us to eat there, it only cost 10,000￥ ($25 each), which was amazingly cheap, considering the same dish costs around $40 in Melbourne, with only one plate each of meat and vegetables.

Taka was staying at Jason's house, so Ben and I took the train back to Moriya station by ourselves, got home, and went to bed.

Thus concludes another day in Japan.
Another day of learning, experiencing and broadening our horizons.