Tokyo - Shibuya, Yoyogi Park, Meiji Shrine, Getting Lost and Ramen with the Locals

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My next day in Tokyo started with a trip on the metro to the Shibuya are of the city. I had previously looked at the map of the metro and determined it was much like a bowl of multicoloured spaghetti and chickened out of doing it by myself so I was happy to be going on the metro with Michie so I could try and understand it.

We took the short walk from the hotel to the nearest metro station and set off for Shibuya. We arrived after around 15 minutes and I had a much clearer understanding of how to find my way around the metro station! When you exit the station there is a statue of a dog - Hachikō - I had never heard of this dog, but, he is quite famous in Japan and there has been a film made about him.

Hachikō, a golden brown Akita, was born on November 10, 1923 at a farm. In 1924, Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the Tokyo Imperial University, took Hachikō as a pet and brought him to live in Shibuya, Tokyo. Ueno would commute daily to work, and Hachikō would leave the house to greet him at the end of each day at the nearby Shibuya station. The pair continued the daily routine until May 21, 1925, when Ueno did not return. The professor had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, while he was giving a lecture, and died without ever returning to the train station in which Hachikō waited.

Each day, for the next nine years, nine months and fifteen days, Hachikō awaited Ueno's return, appearing precisely when the train was due at the station.

The statue is a popular attraction and there was even an elderly man volunteering to keep an orderly line and take photos of you with the statue.

After the obligatory photography session at the statue, we took the short walk to the Shibuya intersection - famed as one of the busiest intersections in the world and although it was relatively quiet whilst I was there as it wasn’t peak season but, there can be as many as 2,500 people crossing the street at any one time when the lights change. We spent a bit of time here and went into the Starbucks which is just on the corner by the intersection and has a great view from the second floor.

After taking in the view we set off on foot for the Meiji Shrine and Yoyogi Park, the route we took also went alongside a stadium which was being renovated in readiness for the olympics in 2020. We caught a glimpse as we headed for the shrine. The temperature was close to unbearable! During my time in Japan there was a heatwave which was declared a natural disaster as a number of people died and many were admitted to hospital for heat stroke. We picked up the pace to get there and get into the shade provided in the park surrounding the shrine. We stopped for a drink as we arrived and took 10 minutes to cool down and entered the site via an huge torii gate. The etiquette to enter via the gate is to not walk through the centre as that’s the route used by spirits to enter and exit the shrine, so we walked in by the side of the massive gate towards the centre of the forest where 100,000 trees were planted during its construction.

The shrine was completed and dedicated to the Emperor Meiji and the Empress Shoken in 1920, eight years after the passing of the emperor and six years after the passing of the empress. The shrine was destroyed during WWII but was rebuilt shortly thereafter. The shrine is one of the most popular in Japan and during new year celebrations typically received 3 million visitors each day.

On the walk to the shrine we passed a display of barrels of sake wrapped in straw and beautifully decorated - these barrels are offered annually as a mark of respect for the souls of Emporer Meiji and Empress Shoken. After around a 10 minute walk we arrived at the shrine complex where we washed our hands under the guidance of Michie, briefly this comprises of taking a cup with your dominant hand, rinsing you other hand passing the cup so you can rinse your dominant hand and then rinsing the handle and placing the cup for the next person to use.

We walked through the doors into the courtyard and saw a beautiful and modern looking shrine across the yard, it was quite busy with tourists and locals alike. I went to the shrine and paid my respects (luckily the steps you need to take were listed in front of the shrine so I didn’t make an idiot out of myself!), by bowing and clapping in the corretc sequence. I also bought an ema - which is a wishing plate where you write your wishes and hang in the shrine where they hang until they are ritually burned at special events, symbolic of the liberation of the wish from the writer.

After walking around the shrine we set off back to the park entrance and onwards to Harajuku, the home of quirky youth pop culture. This was a place I was really looking forward to visiting as I knew it was something a little (in my eyes) bonkers and also unique to Japan. We took the metro and from the station walked down the Main Street which is the main shopping area. It was so full of people, the area is full of shops for quirky clothing, shoes, loads of multicoloured and massive candifloss shops. We even found a shop dedicated to clothes for sausage dogs! Most of the merchandise is pink and there are some amazing clothes to look at as you walk by. As our tour for the day was complete, I found a coffee shop and went in for a rest from the heat and to get a bite to eat before carrying on. My plan for the afternoon was to go to the didgital art museum which was newly opened in June so, along with two of my tour mates we went off to tackle the metro on our own. We first went to the wrong location as we went to the Mori museum, but, it’s actually in the Mori building which are a metro and overland train distance apart. So after taking a few photos of the art installations outside the museum we got back on the metro, exited at the metro station and braved catching a taxi to the correct location which actually resulted in us driving around in circles more lost than we’d been all day. After a massive trek we arrived to find it sold out with no way to get tickets - I was gutted! We took the overland train back and then got back on to the metro. We got off at one of the stations we needed to use for transit and decided to go for a drink... typically, we found an Irish bar and went for a drink in there. Whilst in there we chatted to one of the bar men and asked him for a recommendation for dinner, he came back with a list of western style restaurants which we weren’t keen on the idea of, so asked him where he goes with his friends, he wandered away and came back with a hand drawn map and name of a restaurant we should try. We finished our drinks and set off with the map in hand after a 10 minute walk, we arrived at the restaurant and added our name to the waiting list and sat down. We quickly started chatting to some of the locals also waiting for a table asking which item from the menu we should order. They were so much fun, asking us where we were from, our occupations, ages etc. We got our food recommendations just in time to be taken to our table, which was a private dining room - as were all the others - with a slinking door and a bell to push for service. It was so cool and different from anywhere I had ever eaten before. I ordered the seafood ramen and it was amazing!

After dinner we got back on the metro and made our way back to the hotel.

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