Excusemimasen, have you seen my wabi-sabi?

13.5.10

Intermezzo: Omote-sandou (From Harajuku Sta. to Shibuya)

Harajuku Sta.

Intriguing smoke design

Surreptitious fashion-watching

A Japanese gas station

Harajuku Lover

The path out of Meiji Jinguu pretty much opens out right next to the bridge to Harajuku Station, where a lot of the youngsters who dress up like to hang out. This was pretty much the highlight of my day: I've wanted to visit Harajuku ever since I'd heard about it and collected photos of strangely dressed teenagers and college students. Going to stick with the term "strangely dressed", because there's no one particular style they all wear. Some are , some are Lolita, and some are Goth-Loli; others are apart of the cosplay crowd (which is considered a type of performance art, by the way); there's visual kei and decora; and then there's styles that I'm not sure have a name or categorization. Needless to say, it's a fashion hot-spot, albeit a strange one.

Deco, probably. Maybe cosplay?

A Loli specimen (actually two, there's one sitting on the ground to her left as well), easily identified by their poisonously pastel frills, their natural defense mechanism. She's pretty cute though.

I...I don't know. I really don't.

It's very important to take pictures. Otherwise, how can you prove anything?

Goth or visual kei, maybe a bit of both

And then there were the "Free Hugs" kids lined up on the other side of the bridge, a trend that has also carried over into anime conventions in the U.S. Although the couple of Free Hug girls I remember seeing at Animazement seemed to be keeping count and competing.

Guillaume hugged them all, right down the line.

12.5.10

Hail, Flowing Fount of Sentiment

On the way to Meiji Jinguu, we stopped by a Lawson's for some snacks, and I bought a drink and couple of boxes of chips promoting the new Evangelion film series. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance is the second in a film series called Rebuild of Evangelion. Once I'd paid for them, the cashier lady asked me to wait a moment, then she went back to the shelf and brought back a Shinji folder, saying "Purestenoo desu." Which was cool--free folder. Even though Shinji's kind of a whiny...Not complaining, though: free folders are good.

Once we entered Meiji Jinguu, we saw (with the aid of maps) that the shrine proper was actually a ways into the wooded area, which gave us yet another beautiful walk in a park. As we approached the shrine, we saw a line of Shinto priests, and realized a religious ceremony was starting--a couple of people got videos I believe--I'll ask someone for permission to post their video. I'm not sure if the ceremony was for anything in particular, though. The shrine was quite crowded, so it may have been something special, or it could have just been busy because it was Golden Week.

Meiji Jinguu is reportedly Tokyo's best shrine--probably not a bad assessment, considering it's in the largest wooded area in Tokyo. The shrine was built to commemorate the souls of Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shoken, whose tombs are actually in Kyoto. The forest was actually created, the trees donated by people from all over Japan and overseas, when it was decided a shrine dedicated to the late Emperor and Empress be built in Tokyo in 1920.

(That is, the souls of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken are considered kami, though Hirohito publicly repudiated the idea that the Japanese Emperor was divinity by descent from Amaterasu. Then again, this seems to have been a statement made more for outsiders than the Japanese themselves. Still, I don't believe Emperor Shouwa was posthumously deified...)

Just opposite the main shrine building, there were some beautiful ikebana pieces lined up along one corner of the square.

Here are a couple of waka, Japanese poems of 31 syllables, written by Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken (as provided by a nifty pamphlet from the shrine. I just though they were rather beautiful):

Even while yielding/
To its container's form/
Water too can pierce/
Entirely through the hardest rock;/
Such is its enduring strength.

By self-reflection/
And questioning our own hearts/
We should then perceive/
The proper path to pursue/
And nothing would confuse us

11.5.10

Oh the world is in tune on a spring afternoon...

(No pidgeons to poison here, really.)

We took a break from the urban view heading down towards the Meiji Jinguu area by taking a detour through a Shinjuku Chou, a beautiful little park (even with the small groups of homeless men in the corners.)