Harajuku

Thanks to my new pillow I slept quite well last night. Now if I could just control traffic I would be great.

Today I got up kind of early and went to look around the area of Tsutsujigaoka station. That is the station I board pretty much every day to get to actual Tokyo. I found this web cam online the other day of the station to give you an idea of what it looks like. Even though I go there everday I have never really looked around to see what is all there. On the other side of the entrance I use there is a big department store and lots of little shops. I went into one of the department stores and the people were so nice I felt I had to buy something. I just bought some bread for breakfast. I looked around at some of the book and cd stores later. You have to be somewhat careful what you are looking at in bookstores here, because Japanese people love porn. And they don't really put it away like in American bookstores. Sometimes all the covers are so cartoony you can't tell a difference. It's always a surprise what you are going to pick up. I usually avoid opening up anything too cartoony though, because usually it's just porn.

After I looked around the station I headed over to Ichigaya station to meet the girls to go to Harajuku. I also made it on time and on the right train again. Eventually I'll not be so impressed with myself but the whole subway system is so confusing to me. Being as the only mass transit system I ever knew was the trolley in downtown KC.

Harajuku is the hangout place Japanese teenagers. It has tons of hip shops where you can buy almost anything that is cool in Japan. If you are familiar with Gwen Stefani, this is the Harajuku that she is always talking about in her songs. The current style now is "ゴースロリ" (Gosu Rori) or Gothic Lolita. It's basically Japanese girls dressing up like little girls in bonnets and adding in the goth look with black clothes and chains.Here is a picture of a typical Gothic Lolita girl. These kind of girls were everywhere. Some just had the Lolita look while others had the full on Gothic Lolita. There were stores that specifically sold Gothic Lolita clothing.

We ate lunch at this little cafe that was really good. I had this thing called a hamburger steak. It was basically a meatloaf like something in gravy. It was actually pretty good. Other people had the Mexican Taco Rice, the first mexican food I have seen in Japan. After lunch we went to this thrift store called "Chicago". It was full of American clothes. Most of it hideously tacky. Some of the clothes were expensive but some of it was pretty cheap. They had some velour blazers that I am definately going to have to go back and get.

We then met up with some of the guys. We went to Meiji Shrine and looked around. There was a wedding going on so that was kind of interesting. I wasn't too sure of the significance of Meiji shrine since we didn't spend too much time there. After the shrine, since the other guys hadn't eaten yet I went with them to sit down and the girls went shopping. We ended up going to a French restaurant. They had some sort of steak but it was really thin and fatty. But what else can you expect in Japan.

We then went out to wait for the girls in the middle of Harajuku and this huge intersection. At this intersection is the infamous Condomania. It has these little cartoon condoms on the signs outside dancing and giving safe sex messages. Everything in Japan is so cute and cartoony so that wasn't too odd. While we were waiting I went to another huge thrift store that had the same American clothes way overpriced. I didn't know that Japanese people wanted this kind of stuff otherwise I would have brought more clothes over. And old license plates. They were selling old american license plates being sold for 1500 yen.

After Harajuku I went back to the girl's place and hung around because I was going to go out with them later. But right as they left I decided not to since I'd end up having to take a pretty early train to even get back at a decent time. Plus I was pretty tired from walking all day. I once again looked around Tsutsujigaoka station and found a huge 100 yen store. It was the entire bottom level of a department store.

Another bit of cultural difference is the Department store or ”デパート” (Depaato). In american english we think of a department store like Dillards or JC Penny's, but in Japan a department store is a multi level sort of mall. Each floor usually has one if not more stores on it. Usually there is one main entrance and exit. You pay for everything at each store. Just to be clear because I have mentioned department stores before and it probably sounded weird to think I just went to a place like Dillards.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. The first class doesn't start till next week so I don't have to be up there until 1:30. Pretty nice for the first day. Since we haven't found out what Japanese class they have put us in, I should probably go up there earlier to figure that out. Also to see if taking Russian is still a possibility. It's pretty funny to me how vague and unorganized this whole thing is. I think it's good for me though, makes me much more self independent. I'm forced to figure out things and make decisions on my own. But then again sometimes I'm sometimes jealous of all the Baylor students who went to Europe and have everything planned out for them. But I'm glad I took that leap outside my whole cultural centre and ventured to a place unfamiliar by far.