NOV - JAPAN (pt 2)

Day 3 – Sunday

Today we planned to head towards Meiji-Shrine for the Emperor’s National Holiday and the festivities, only to find out that we were one day late! Oops – I guess that’s what happens when you’re on holidays. Anyway, it seemed like there was still heaps on. We visited the Shinto shrine which is pretty amazing – apparently it’s the most authentic restoration of one of these shrines in Japan. We hit a beautiful sunny patch and it was actually hot enough to walk around in just a t-shirt for a good part of the day. (Top temperature expected 19 degrees).

We saw quite a few ladies and their daughters dressed in traditional kimonos (geisha-style) with the socks and thongs as well. We wanted to be discreet and not make a fuss of them. It seemed as if people came here almost like going to church (although there was no service happening). In fact there was a wedding procession happening at one point where virtually the whole guest list wore Black!

After exploring the shrine, we walked around the gardens and then went to see the famous Harajuku girls, see below.

We also chanced upon a phenomenon not mentioned in any of the guide books – battle of the bands along a strip skinnier than The St Kilda Esplanade in Melbourne! There were at least 20 bands who had set up with full gear – drum kits from scratch, amplifiers, speakers on stands, own power source, cables, microphones on stands – everything. They were each playing there own style of thrashy, heavy pop or backstreet boys style of music.

The high light was the Dub act on the far corner – we saw them setting up around 12pm and thought – wow, how much stuff have they got? Easily 5 times as much as all the others – then came back around 2.30pm and saw why. There was about 5 DJ’s and numerous groupies listening to their dub, reggae and ska with a ‘wicked’ sound system (pa stack over 2 metres high). We hung around for about 1hr.

In between we explored the Jingimae area which has a blend of down-home flea markets as well as ultra premium haute couture clothing shops. We found Fujimama’s which was listed in the Lonely Planet and had a slightly overpriced lunch, although not too bad. We came home around 4.15pm exhausted as usual but enjoyed the day enormously.

After watching ‘Bullit' on DVD for our English fix (great car chase scene) we ventured out again for dinner locally before heading back to Shibuya to see the main crossing at night (busy but nothing compared to either Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City!).

We had a bit more of a wander and both of us came away victorious. Mark found a Ska/Dancehall vinyl record store (level 4 but you could hear the bass in the lift from level 1) which resulted in only one purchase whilst Tam found a crepe store (not as satisfying as the crepes in France in winter but France didn’t have 50 odd plastic varieties out the front making your choice easier).