3 May 2009

There were no peanut butter sandwiches at breakfast this morning, so that was a bummer. Instead, there was bread with smooth red bean paste and another type of roll, along with the usual miso soup and nigiris. Derrick and I were the only people from our class that we saw this morning at breakfast. I guess we are the only two people who are highly driven by food. Haha. After breakfast, we met up with Jeff and Don to discuss places to visit today. We were already thinking about visiting the Harajuku District, so Don provided us with some suggestions on where to go. Most of his suggestions were from his Tokyo architectural guide book, so we ended up going to a bookstore with him so we could each buy our own copy. Since Tokyo is so large, there ended up being two books we had to buy since there was a part I and part II. They were 1,000 yen each, so that made a total of 2,000 yen. I can already tell that I’m going to be very satisfied with my purchase. We split paths with Don and went down to the JR train line. All of the signs for the ticket machines were in Japanese, so we had no idea how much it would cost us to get to the Harajuku stop. We ended up having to ask a worker, and it was 160 yen. The train and subway system here is already much larger and more confusing than anywhere else we have visited, but I seem to be learning quickly since I have been submerged in this environment for over a month now. The train was crowded, as expected, and we made it to Harajuku with no problem.
Once in Harajuku, we had no idea where we were going, so we just began wandering around. We began by walking through a small street market, and it was SO incredibly crowded. We were like a huge herd of cows just slowly pushing our way through one another. It reminded me a lot of Taiwan when I visited the city of Taipei. After getting through that crowded street, we poured onto the sidewalks of the Harajuku District, which were equally crowded and chaotic. Since it is Golden Week, it is directly affecting the number of people on the streets, and there are still a large number of tourists as well. We shuffled our way through the masses and walked for the majority of the day, just photographing any buildings that looked cool and wandering into any stores that caught our eye. It was crazy how busy some places were. Apparently, a Forever 21 store just opened in central Harajuku, and the line to get in was down the block! It was almost unreal to see so many people waiting in line to go into a store that is only considered mediocre in the U.S. The H&M also had a huge line, so I wasn’t able to go in there either. Since our final set of accommodations is directly by Yoyogi Park and the Harajuku District, I’m sure I will have plenty more opportunities to visit those stores again when they are less busy. So, during our wandering, we were able to find the Prada Building, Tod’s Building, Audi Showcase Building, a Tadao Ando building, and Yoyogi Park. In Yoyogi Park, there was a Flower Festival going on as well, so there were concerts and street vendors everywhere. It was a really cool and lively atmosphere. For lunch, we actually found a chicken kebab place where they had the huge chunks of sliced chicken rotating vertically on a rotisserie, and they sliced it off to mix with sauce and cabbage in a pita. It only cost 500 yen, and it tasted amazing! For dinner, we were originally planning to eat at a ramen place by our hotel that Don suggested, but we couldn’t wait, so we instead went to Shakey’s Pizza. I find it amusing that Shakey’s Pizza is an American pizzeria, yet none of us had ever been to one in the U.S. We ordered a whole pepperoni pizza and split it three ways. Since it was a thin crust pizza, it ended up being the perfect amount of food for me, and it surprisingly tasted the same as pizza I’ve had in the U.S. Boy did it taste good!
To avoid being out too late, we left Harajuku a little past 7pm. It was a long day of walking, and my knee was beginning to bug me again. Resting and icing it last night really helped, so I did the same thing the rest of the night. I also did some laundry while in the hotel, so that pretty much finished out my night. Tomorrow we start “class” again, so we will meet Don in the lobby at 10am. I’m not sure what he has planned for us, but hopefully he’ll give us more time to explore before we move to our next place on Wednesday.