Shibuya- Swimming in a Sea of People

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Today we tackled the busy shopping district of Shibuya. Even the train to get there was packed. Disembarking from the platform, we were overwhelmed by the noisy skyscrapers that streched more miles. As we waited to cross the famous Shibuya crossing, James spotted some people racing Go Karts in the street in Mario Kart costumes. When the little green man began to flash, it was almost impossible to cross the street in time, as we were engulfed in a sea of people.

In Shibuya, we stumbled upon a cool little book and entertainment shop. Here you could buy classic books such as 'Where's Wally?' in Japanese. I took sone time to look at the music section and their wide range of J-Pop. I opted to get the CD- 'Uver-World Progultion.' Sounds deep right? Plus the cover art is psychedelic.

We looked around for a while and grabbed a bento box each for lunch from Family Mart. Family Mart is basically like a high class 7-11 and they are everywhere. Their bento boxes aren't bad either.

James and I and aren't really the shopping kind, so we took a train to Harajuku. Harajuku is a pop culture area full of cosplayers. (I was hoping). We thought Shibuya was big, we knew nothing. Harajuku was insanely crowded. We were walking at minimum speed just to escape the platform.

To our left, we could see some trees, so we thought we would (very slowly) walk in that direction. So did everyone else. It turned out that we were walking towards a humongous shrine. And it was New Years. We never saw the actual shrine itself, but the outskirts of it were beautiful.

We headed towards the streets of Harajuku. It was one hell of a fashionable city. The cosplayers were interspersed amongst the normcore folk. There were goths and anime characters I probably should have known. I wasn't paying enough attention because my senses were too distracted by the rows of delicious street food. So much street food. So much choice- even for me. I decided to go for a savoury pancake covered in mystery sauces. Nom nom nom.

The ride back to Shinjuku was crowded, but luckily only one stop away. It was nice to be back in our 'quiet' part of Tokyo.

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