Japan Day 2: Harajuku and Shibuya

Today, we woke up early. It was rush hour so I said we should walk to Harajuku and Shibuya. It would take us about 40 minutes, which was not bad at all.

Harajuku was so pink and girly! I got lured into eating Santa Monica crepes by the pink exterior and the beautiful fake food display.

It was pretty good, but not worth what we paid for it because most of its volume was whipped cream. Everything was pink and pretty on Takeshita street, the main street of Harajuku. We saw so many people dressed up and crazy things to buy and wear. We tried to see the cat cafe but it looked sooooo sad. There were two people there just standing around with a phone camera and a feather wand just looking at the cat. LIMP. We left. Then we passed this three story building: the basement and first floor had an owl cafe. The second floor had pigs, and the third floor had shiba inus, which was super popular.

People were lining up on the stairs to get inside. We BOUNCED. Masa got a croquette burger at McDonald’s. It was okay. Masa then bought me an avocado plushie and I hung it on my bag. We walked to Shibuya, another 10-15 minutes. We saw the people crossing!!’ We passed the google office which was in one of three MASSIVE SUPER CLEAN AND MASSIVE MALLS!!!! So crazy!!!!!!!! We walked around in some small streets. It’s so weird because the cars just zoom around you, even on those brick roads which are so narrow.

We ate at genji sushi and it was soooooo good. All the sushi was like a dollar a piece!! Masa said he wasn’t hungry but… he ate double what I ate… Then we walked around and bought some goodies at donki and bic camera!

He bought two whiskies on our FIRST DAY. We would later carry it everywhere around Japan lol.

Then we walked around some more and checked out this claw game arcade. No one won anything, but they kept trying. Loud, fast-paced music blasted at us as we walked through the narrow walkways between the machines.

We saw many strange home goods that you could buy.

We went to mandarake, a manga store but it was scary cuz they had flashing lights in the stairwell and the stairwell went down from the ground level for two stories… then it was a massive collection of manga, like a library but also kind of like a dungeon. We GTFOed.

Then we ate at Monja, at the entrance of the yokocho. They had urinals at the end of the yokocho, only separated from the street by a small partition! You could totes see pee trickling down into the urinal from some of the stores there. The street was so narrow you could touch both sides with your arms stretched out. It looked super historic because it was all made of wood and the doors were sliding doors, and it looked like nothing had changed for a long time.

We chose one that had a nice bartender, and each of these shops had between 4 to 8 seats. We had sake and a yummy plum wine with soda. She also gave us some small dishes, chicken cooked with Napa cabbage, and tofu topped with something weird and seaweed like. It was so good!! Then we went outside again and went to another one. It can be kind of intimidating to walk inside if you don’t really know what is going on, since it looks so small and intimate. Especially cuz it’s winter and the doors kinda are closed. We went to one run by a family and there were two Koreans next to us. They were here for the weekend to party it up. It was so nice, we had great drinks and I got a yummy peach sake that they import from somewhere up north and it’s otherwise impossible to find in stores. We walked back to Shibuya crossing and watched the people walk around for a few lights.

Then went to the supermarket in the subway. We bought a peach sake and went back to the apartment. When we got back to the apartment the sake was nowhere to be found, so we must have left it either in the store, on the subway, or in the station.