I can get ten miles to the gallon on this hog.
Dan was busy this morning so I went on an adventure to Harajuku.
I’m doing a lot of cycling on one of Dan’s bikes, Black Thunder, between here and the nearest train station. I don’t have one back home, and riding one here reminds me of why I got a disability allowance at university.
I got the Pokémon train to Harajuku.
Inside there’s a lot of advertisements for Pokémon toys, pictures of people having an incredible time with Pokémon merchandise and videos of how amazing Pokémon noodles are. There was a clip of the Pokémon Center in Tokyo and it made me want to go.
I really wanted to do something ‘cultural’ out here and, so far, I’m not sure if I have. I was going to Harajuku to see the Meiji shrine, which is supposed to be kind of a deal and looks awesome.
Opposite the station was a Yoshinoya. My pointing and nodding at menus is improving and I ordered some gyudon with minimal fuss. I could tell the staff were impressed.
I had a few hours left here so just walked around looking at stuff and hoped I’d find the shrine at some point. There seemed to be just a load of designer places like Louis Vuitton. I bought a t-shirt from a clothes shop with an ‘extra secret’ 4th floor, which sold all its clothes in plastic capsules and played trance music with a french person talking over it.
Down an alley somewhere I found a graveyard. The culture was intense.
By this point I was getting seriously greasy (the humidity is still 90% or something) so I had a walk back to the train station and saw this, outside a radio station.
There were three girls stood at the window but I wasn’t allowed to take a picture, sadly.
I took a picture of Condomania because it seemed like kind of a weird idea for an entire shop. Apparently it’s a big chain and is quite an experience.
This is Yoyogi National Gymnasium, where they had the 1964 olympics.
On the other side of the road I could hear 50s music and saw this car.
There were five groups of people dressed up like something from Grease, each with their own PA playing different songs and dancing around the entrance to a park.
The thing that seemed weird to me was that after a song finished, only one or two people from the massive audience would applaud. Bit awkward.
This guy loved it though.
Yoyogi park is huge. There were a lot of dogs, bands playing some weird instruments and people who go there to dress up as their favourite anime or computer game characters or like members of this old band, X Japan.
These guys on the left were practicing Iaido. I think the whole point of it is to take your sword out of its scabbard and put it back nicely, so they were only fighting for about ten seconds at a time.
These people were dancing around with fans to the most inspirational music I’d ever heard.
Yoyogi park has a massive enclosure where you can bring your dogs to meet other dogs. It was separated into three sections: Large dogs, medium dogs and small dogs.
This was the ‘medium dogs’ section, the one for small dogs made my brain melt.
I looked for the shrine for about an hour and gave up as I’ll probably be going back here anyways when my friend Paul comes out in a week. On the way back to the train station there was a group of cosplayers dancing in a wood, in silence, while a load of guys sat around and watched.
Dan met me at Omiya station and I bought some tendon prawns and chicken skewers from the supermarket canteen thing. Tasty.
There was a seriously intense thunderstorm on the way home and we were totally drenched. A genius was riding his bike with an umbrella in front of his face. Dan says the police are fining people for cycling while holding an umbrella in one hand and a phone in the other.
We played Taiko No Tatsujin with Dan’s neighbour for a bit…
…and went to see G.I Joe at a japanese cinema. I’ll be honest, I didn’t have high hopes - so I wasn’t that upset by it. On our way to the cinema there was an earthquake. It lasted about 20 seconds and was awesome, but Dan’s origami flowers and Guitar Hero controller fell over so I wasn’t surprised to hear it was 7.1.
We went to McDonalds, but I’d just got a call from my dad telling me to make sure I did cultural things and felt way too guilty to not go next door and get some gyoza.
By the time we got home it was about 1130 and time for a bit of Delocated before bed.
