Tokyo Redux VII: HarajukuOnce More, With Feeling

I whiled away the evening hours getting to know Harajuku better. And since we'd already covered Omotesando the first time I visited, I started with Takeshita Dori, the other main street in the Harajuku area. Unfortunately, seeing as it wasn't Sunday, and it was getting dark, there were hardly any strange fashion statements hanging around the bridge by the station--just the normal fashion statements weaving from shop to shop.

I spent a good few hours perusing the veritable beehive that was Takeshita Dori's shops and stalls, picking through Engrish t-shirts, touristy items, floaty hippie chic skirts,
and ridiculously gothy clothing. I managed to find some amusing souvenirs for me family, as well as a souvenir charm for my bracelet. I'd been looking for something that struck me as very...Harajuku. Something trendy, gauche, and possibly gothy.
I think I managed to find just the thing: a small red plate inscribed with a kanji, and with a cheap rhinestone dangling above it. I didn't recognize the kanji, so I asked the lady standing next to me what it meant. After her initial pantomime explanation didn't translate very well, her maybe-seven-year-old daughter whipped out her keitai like a pro and used the dictionary. And then I completely understood why the pantomime was rather insufficient. "Kizuna" means "bonds." Try getting that one in charades.

 

A  glaringly bright underwear shop

 

a Goth-Loli supplier

Eventually, I got bit peckish, so I stopped at one of the several crepe stands along the street. I think Harajuku must be known for all the crepe stands, because I remember also seeing these cheesy little crepe charms with little "Harajuku" tags where I bought my charm.
Kiwi and cream. Yummy.

Some very colorful graffiti reminiscent of John Lennon's drawings...

 

While some of my favorite clothing has come from Forever 21, Tokyo's Forever 21 is...much tackier and gaudier even than the some of the stuff I've seen in America's lately

 

What can I say? She wears taboo, apparently.

 

"OH SNAP!"

 

say the streets of Harajuku

Tokyo Redux VI: Shibuya

While I wasn't expecting as much time as I would have liked for shopping in Shibuya--I was saving that for Harajuku--in the middle of my search for Hachiko I passed by an accessories shop. Actually, most of the accessories were various types of leg-wear, tights, fishnets, socks, legwarmers...*cough* I might have bought a pair of loose socks, which are pretty much extreme leg-warmers with feet. They aren't really worn anymore, except by people still sporting '90s styles, I think, but I've had a guilty desire for them since I took an interest in Japanese fashion. More importantly, I bought new aviators at said accessory shop, for slightly cheaper than I had in America. My old ones finally broke on me several weeks back--and you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find a normal pair of aviators in Kyoto or Tokyo. Most of them had painted frames, or were the wrong color, or the the top of the double-bridge had a funky curve to it. 

Ok, so I must have passed this statue about four or five times in our few excursions to Shibuya. I also had completely missed it every single time, probably due to the enormous mass of bodies usually occupying the square outside Shibuya station. (I had to ask a police officer where to find it.) Hachiko was a professor's Akita dog who would come to the station every day and wait for his owner to come home. After the professor died in 1925, the dog still kept coming to the station every day, until he died over a decade later.

 

I think this is the McDonald's we slept at after leaving the club that other night

 

Or it could have been this one...

 

The Disney Store,  a cute little place...slightly unsatisfying if your favorite Disney characters ever don't include Mickey, Minnie, Tinkerbell, Alice, or Chip and Dale.

Japan does love its Disney though.

 

the Tower Records building

 

Pink.

 

some nonsensical English graffiti...

 

a very interesting piece of architecture I passed walking up to Harajuku, called First Gymnasium

Tokyo Redux V: Yasukuni Jinja

"I assure those of you who fought and died for your country, that your names will live forever at this shrine in Musashino."

~Emperor Meiji

Yasukuni Jinja is probably one of the best-known of Japan's shrines, probably due to its controversial nature as a war memorial shrine. Japan has had separation of state and religion since 1945, but since it was built in 1869, the souls of the war dead have been enshrined here, deifying them. Emperor Meiji ordered its construction originally to commemorate the souls of all those who died for their country after the Boshin War ended (1869.)

Here is the bronze statue of Vice-Minister of War Omura Masujiro, a key figure in the development the Japanese army during the Meiji Restoration. It was also Japan's first Western-style statue.

 

Yasukuni Jinja reportedly enshrines more than 2,466,000 kami of souls who died in war efforts from the Boshin War until WWII: included are volunteers in war efforts, citizen casualties, and those who were condemned and executed as war criminals by the Allies after WWII. Which I think is why there was some fussing when President Bush visited it at some point--I don't really remember well. And I'm not really going to argue about whether it's right or wrong to deify war criminals.

(This is only one of the controversies surrounding Yasukuni Jinja.) The tradition of deification in order to pacify spirits of the deceased is ancient and long-standing. So is the Japanese sense of respect for their ancestors and honoring the dead in general. All of the kami here are thought to be deserving of equal respect, no matter their social background or their past deeds. I'd also like to point out that Japan's not the only country who pays respects to war dead who might have and probably committed horrible atrocities in the line of duty, so to speak.

 

Yasukuni Jinja's Haiden

 

the torii leading to Motomiya, a small shrine built out of sympathy for imperial loyalists of the Meiji Restoration, and Chinreisha, a shrine built to pacify war dead from all over the world

Tokyo Redux IV: Kitanomaru-kouen

A note, gentle viewers: Please bear with me while I try to catch up on these posts. I find myself with some free time on my hands, so I'm going to continue to post like a crazy maniac in the next few hours. Seriously, Tokyo was sooo over more than two weeks ago. I'm running around like a "headless chuck" here, as our International Coordinator person Paul would say. (He's from New Zealand, and does hilarious impressions and imitations, especially of monkeys.) But I did read your comments: I'm glad you're enjoying reading this, Lisa, and Kiri, thanks for the information about the gallery!

Kitanomaru-kouen was where I started having problems...of the getting lost variety, that is. The park is right next to the Imperial Palace East Garden, and inside the park are a couple of museums and the Nihon Budokan, the latter of which I was most interested in seeing. Not that I minded wandering around the park for a little bit. I had a small, inside giggle when one of the cheery-faced guards asked me what I was carrying.
And well, I was carrying a long, thin, brown-paper-wrapped package, so I couldn't very well blame him for asking. I told him they were parasols I bought in Asakusa, he checked the shape of the package, smiled, and waved me on. So I walked into the park, and proceeded to get lost.
At least it was pretty.

 

 

The gardens were lush and beautiful, and a couple of sakura were on their last legs of blooming.

Now, losing one's way can be fun and adventurous, but after about an hour and a half of fruitless searching for the in-park access to the Nihon Budokan, at the hottest time of the day, I grew wearing of the constant getting turned-around by confusing maps which simply wouldn't point north.

Fed up, I went back out to the road and started to walk around the edge of the park. I may or may not have walked past the gates leading to the Budokan.
It was hard to tell since the gates and security outside were all formidable and slightly imposing.
So, perhaps it wasn't the Budokan at all. Eventually I ran into some street-side maps of the area and made sure I was walking in the general direction of Yasukuni Jinja.
(On my way out, I saw a policeman carrying a katana...Cool.)

an old watchtower in Kitanomaru-kouen

 

mm, Algae Fountain

Tokyo Redux III: Akiba

Yard-sale like vendors outside the Akihabara UDX Building

As I made my way back towards nerd central, which I recently learned is affectionately shorted from "Akihabara" to just "Akiba," I stopped in a couple of anime figurine shops...
mostly in the vague hopes of discovering a nice mini of any number of various characters who were probably a lot more popular back in the '90s. No such luck for me. The Sailor Moon minis I found were actually quite hideous, and I already know a place in Kyoto where I can buy the adorable chibi-fied Final Fantasy figurines.

(Google "Sunako" and "Sunako chibi." For the main character of the anime/manga The Wallflower, or Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge, Tomoko Hayakawa actually utilizes the chibi style regularly to show Sunako going back and forth between her humorous self-conscious side and her more mature, self-confident side. The Wallflower is essentially a modern Pygmalion/My Fair Lady story.)

In any case, no figurines really struck me besides fairly large one of Elwyn/Elwing (an elf character from the anime Shining Tears X Wind)--about whom I know nothing else. She was just pretty, and in the end, too expensive.

I found my way to the Tokyo Anime Center, which I found rather lackluster. Like the Pokemon center, it's mostly a small shop of a fairly limited selection of merchandise. I think there's also a theater next door, which probably shows promotional clips or screenings or some such, and perhaps the Center sometimes has important guests from the anime industry visiting.

That day all was fairly quiet and empty. The store mostly carries merchandise from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Bleach, One Piece, Astro Boy, some Studio Ghibli films, and a few anime unknown to me. Here, the coolest thing I saw was some NERV duct tape.
Not saying too much.
Near the Akihabara UDX building, I ducked inside a dinky merchandise shop, which sold CDs, books, folders, figurines and small knick-knacks. I actually spent probably about twenty minutes in there digging through the baskets of discounted posters and folders. My efforts were pretty well-rewarded, too, I think; I found an adorable Furuba poster of Kyo and Tohru, as well as a tin commemorating the n-th anniversary of Clamp's X series.

Since I was running out of the the couple of hours I'd allotted for exploring Akiba, I didn't manage to check out the Kanda Second-hand Books Area nearby, which is said to have over 150 bookstores I would have loved to get lost in had I had the time. Second-hand bookshops in Japan are slightly dangerous places for me, I think.
But it sounds...fascinating.

A few examples of kogyaru fashion, above; there are several different sub-categories of this style, taken to different extremes. The basic idea of the look is a schoolgirl uniform with a shortened skirt, usually with loose socks, died hair, and sometimes with tanned skin (although there's a more recent gyaru style called shiro gyaru which goes for the pale look).

Tokyo Redux II: Kanda Myojin

Before diving back into the nerdom of Akihabara, I took a short stroll down from the station to Kanda Myojin shrine.

There was something rather enchanting about finding it, the small side entrance torii coyly and quietly tucked away between the red-brick city buildings.

Kando Myojin was an important shrine, at first mostly to the samurai class, but in the Edo period it became popular with the general public after the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu paid it particular respect. People today visit Kanda Myoji to pray for luck in business, family, and in finding future spouses; the kami enshrined here are Daikokuten, Ebisu and Taira no Masakado.

 

a beautiful fountain to the right of the Main Hall

 

a statue of Dakokuten

A somewhat unusual statue of Ebisu, who is usually portrayed as a cheery man with a fishing rod. This statue hearkens more to his origins as the firstborn "leech child" of Izanagi and Izanami. Because of a Izanami basically messed up the marriage ritual by greeting Izanagi first--and they had to redo it--Ebisu was born deformed and thrown into the sea in a basket as a child. He washed ashore on one of the northern islands, where Ainu found and raised him, and he eventually grew bones. Thankfully.



A fortune-teller machine. Reminds me of Big a little bit, only with a Japanese puppet instead of Zoltar.

When I arrived, workers at the shrine were taking out some of the mikoshi. I believe they were making preparations for a festival coming up soon. Kanda Matsuri would be held this year on the 15th and 16th of May (about a week and a half after I visited), in honor of the kami of Kanda Myojin, although originally it started as a victory celebration after Tokugawa Ieyasu won at the battle of Sekigahara.