Dedicated Follower of Fashion

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Sunday today, and it was decided some time ago that today would be a day to try to get some video of some of the cosplayers that some areas of Tokyo are famous for. (For those of us not up with modern youth culture, Mum, cosplay is people putting on costumes, wigs, makeup, the whole deal, of popular cartoons and characters.) Stephen did some research, and confirmed that Harajuku was the place to go, to see people in costume in Yoyogi Park. The best time to see them would be 1.00 - 2.30ish. We worked out that that would mean leaving home at 10, to give us time to have lunch, then find and video them. Stephen warned, however, that all the instructions on the Interwebs were very vague, and quite old - there was no information newer than about 2013.

We were ready and had nothing else to do at home, so we left early, and got to Harajuku Station at about 11.30. The instructions had said to go out by the north exit. Unfortunately, the exits had proper names, according to the street they faced, and from the inside there was no way to know which was north or south. (I'm not that great at figuring it out outside either, especially if it's cloudy.) Problem number two was that there was no choice for your exit anyway: using one set of stairs from the platform took you to one exit, the other, another. There is a lot of construction going on, at many of the stations actually, in preparation for the 2020 Olympics presumably; and currently at Harajuku, alighting passengers are all shepherded along their designated corridor towards the outside. But anyway, we emerged into the daylight, and right opposite that exit was Takeshita Street. I had never heard of it, but it was clearly famous, with hordes of people swarming it, and almost as many just taking photos of the crowds. There didn't seem to be anything specific attracting the crowds, and there were no cosplay people to be seen, so we passed that by and followed other crowds to Yoyogi Park entrance. Stephen's information said that there could be cosplayers at the entrance to the park, but there was nobody here either, except bona fide tourists and visitors to the Meiji-jingu Shrine. There was a cafe at the entrance,so we partook of a pre-lunch refreshment, then set off up the road to the shrine.

This certainly is a magnificent park. The shrine is dedicated to Emperor Meiji, who came to the throne in 1868 and led the country by example into Westernisation, so it's not particularly old by Japanese standards. In fact, 2020 will be the centenary of its dedication. The grounds cover 70 Ha, with 120,000 trees as well as open parkland. We walked up to the shrine itself, but a lot of the buildings were scaffolded and covered with screens because they are replacing the copper on the roofs and pillars for the centenary. So, not terribly photogenic. We walked out the other side, and still saw nobody of interest for the videoing. And anyway, they wouldn't do their cosplay stuff inside the gates of the shrine, I'm sure: it would be too disrespectful.

So we came back out onto a main road, and we had nothing else to do but head back towards the station. Today is Sunday, as I said, and it's a long weekend, and some people are taking a few more days off next week as their summer holidays ,apparently, so even in a place as supposedly buzzing as Harajuku, there was little happening on these roads. One or two cafes or restaurants hadcustomers, and convenience stores abounded, of course, but no other shops or businesses were open. After a while we got our bearings with Google Maps, but it wasn't great because, although we had brought with us the portable wifi device, it had managed to not get itself charged last night. I had plugged it in at its end, but I had earlier unplugged the other end of its cable, and so when we tried to look something up on the train, our phones would not connect because the device had too low a battery level. Sorry, my fault. But the GPS told us mainly where we were, it just couldn't give us much detail of our surroundings. Still, we needed to change direction to get back near the station, and as we did so we found an interesting little restaurant with a pie and salad menu. It was now well after 12, a most respectable time for lunch, so we had it here. And very nice it was too, with a delicious garlic dressing on the salad.

We were nearly back at the station by now, and Takeshita St was even more crowded than before. Yesterday I wondered if crowds were really a big deal in Japan after all, and now I can say, yes. Yes they are. I could see no reason to go into that street, and frankly, no way to get in, even if I had wanted to, whatever might have been there. (Apparently it's just fashion shops.) We decided to try the shrine entrance again, being closer to the right time, and there were now a couple of performers (a band, a dancer) at the edge. There was an overbridge, so we climbed that to see if there was anything to see, and there were a couple of older men there, one with a camera and the other with a sheaf of papers. They seemed to be waiting for a photo opportunity, so I asked if this was the right place for the cosplay. He said no, but then we got on to what they were doing there. He showed me photos they had that had been taken from that vantage point 30, 50, 70 years ago. They were getting similar shots now for comparison. He pointed out, not cosplayers, but a group of dancers, and said that they had been performing there for 40 years, and they were actually visible in the 30-year-ago photo. We went down then to get ready to watch the dancers, and they were getting ready, getting dressed, winding electrical tape around their boots to make the soles smooth and slidey, and so on. I realised that I had seen these guys when I was here for the Tour Guides' course in 1997. I visited the park to see the famous dancers, but hadn't been impressed. There were quite a few groups dancing then, and one of the guys, who I believe I recognised today, and who was undoubtedly the one here 40 years ago, was bossing around a couple of overseas film crews, telling them where to go and what to film. It wasn't a bunch of rebels dancing rockabilly because that was their only outlet for fun, it was a bunch of guys and a couple of girls who came here to show off and get famous. The more I watched, the more I remembered that several of these dancers were here 20 years ago. Today we waited and waited, and at 1.30 the dancers moved - they came together, and sat on the ground in a circle while one of the women talked to them all. We couldn't hear anything, but it didn't seem like instructions because no one was nodding, they were just listening blankly. Finally after about 10 minutes of this we got fed up, and decided to move off into the park proper. And now, the scenery became familiar. Although I remembered the dancers from 1997, the surroundings hadn't helped bring anything back, until we got past a retractable gate, and at last, it all made sense. Here was the grass with people sitting together, here was the long walkway for wandering, there were the cherry trees (not in flower of course), and this was now the Yoyogi Park of memory. Although when I saw it last it was February, and that was where I got the shock of discovering that Japanese lawns go brown in winter. Today the grass was green, and there were many different activities going on: choir practise, extreme yoga, two girls doing a selfie marathon, guitarists solo and in groups, bubble-blowing, bongos, break-dancing and tap-dancing, and one sad young chap dancing out the video choreography of J-pop songs, lip-synching to his iPhone speakers, facing a fountain as his audience. I say sad:he had the full forced cute smile of J-pop and K-pop (Japan and Korean music) but it was to nobody there. I don't know if loved doing this on his Sunday afternoons, or if he went home and cried, but I suspect it might be both.

We walked back to the park entrance, and finally the Rockabilly dancers were dancing. They still had the moves, some of them, but they were now being performed a little less often, with a little less gusto, and a little more carefully. I'm not sniping at them for getting old; I just mean it's a shame that for a group that is now apparently an institution, they haven't had any new, younger people come along to carry it on.

It was still only about 2.30, so I suggested to Stephen that since we were only one station away, we could go to Shibuya, another youth mecca. This is the station that has the statue of Hachiko, the faithful dog who waited for his master to come home from work every day, even for years after the master died. It also has that iconic street crossing, that you always see when any TV program wants to express the concept of "Tokyo." I had been trying to think of the Japanese word for that kind of pedestrian crossing, a Barnes' Dance or barndance, depending on your background (Stephen calls it the former, I call it the latter) when everyone crosses in all directions at once. We came out of the station and were looking for the Hachiko statue but couldn't find it due to all the reconstruction work going on here too, but I did see a cafe called Scramble, and I said, "That's it!" That was what Japanese people call a diagonal street crossing, and we knew that the famous intersection must be around here. So we crossed at it, took some photos, then went to that cafe for a coffee to repay it for having a good name. (It repaid us for the favour by having a very good chocolate fondant cake.)

We wandered around Shibuya, and wound our way through a shop I remembered from the past, called Tokyu Hands, a craft and DIY and everything else shop. It wasn't quite time for dinner when we came out, but it was a good time for a beer. A little later and a bit more of a wander to see if any food places appealed, and we ended up at TGI Fridays. Not very Japanese, but it's been at least 20 years since we've eaten at one, so a valid tourist experience. Not a great meal, and not cheap, but it rounded out the Shibuya experience. It was dark when we came out, and the lights and the people gave the area a different vibe, so we saw and felt more of Shibuya than we have before.

The trains home were straightforward, and we were home around 8.00. We walked maybe 10km today, so baths were in order again. Still haven't dropped my Kindle in, so that's good.

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Photos

Fiona and Stephen
Main Entrance to Meiji Shrine

Takeshita St, Harajuku
A bit too crowded for my taste

Looking down to Yoyogi Park Entrance
Two men taking photos from the same spots as photos from decades ago.

Shibuya
Street scene