Japan Day 7 (nana)

SUNDAY

On our way down from the apartment I finally caught sight of one of those cicadas. They're kind of neat looking with the turquoise coloring.


Today we headed out for Harajuku to see the famed Harajuku girls. They mostly hang out on the bridge crossing the railroad tracks going into Harajuku station at the entrance to the Meiji Shrine.


When we got there at about one o'clock, most of them were just kicking it eating some lunch. Not too many were about.

Debbie and I decided to continue on to Meiji Shrine. This is the big Torii at the entrance.


It's a nice walk up to the shrine along this tree shrouded path.



About halfway up the path is where we got a nice suprise. Four college students came up to us and offered themselves as guides, with the purpose of practicing speaking English with some Americans. I tried to take a picture of them but one of them really didn't want his picture taken, so I didn't try purposefully get them. So began our first real interaction with some locals!

They explained that these sake barrels were an offering to the shrine from the different areas of Japan. Not to be outdone, France also offered up some of their own wine.



It was amusing that the two girls latched on to me, and the two boys latched onto Debbie for conversation as we moved along the path. We asked each other questions about where we were from, where we went to school, etc. They tried to remember to interject tidbits of information about the shrine, as good tour guides should. Tomoko was the more talkative of the girls, and Hide was the more talkative of the boys.

That's Hide on the right hand side with the green armband. Tomoko showed me how to get cleansed before going to the shrine. Basically you wash your hands and mouth using water that you get with the ladle.


This is the view looking up at the shrine. That's Tomoko's head down on the left hand side.


Turns out there was a wedding going on. Tomoko said they do about 300 weddings a year, so there's a good chance you'll see one whenever you visit.


Here's Debbie and I standing beneath the marriage trees. The left one is the male-tree and the right one is that female-tree, and the rope between them represents marriage.


This is the inside of the main shrine building. Those tables are offering tables. There are little grates and you throw a 5 yen coin into them as an offering. Hide explained the procedure to me. You throw the coin, then you bow twice, then you clap twice, then you silently make a wish, then you bow once more. On New Years Day about 3 million people cram into the shrine grounds. Since they can't all get to the offering tables they throw the coins up at the shrine. Up close you can see the dents in the columns outside from where coins have hit.


All those little wooden boards represent wishes. You write down your wish, hang it up there, and it comes true! hehe


Some of them were pretty amusing:


After seeing the temple, er... shrine (Tomoko explained that shrines were Shinto, and temples were buddhist) we told our guides we were looking to go grab a bite to eat and we asked if they wanted to come join us. They seemed eager to so we set back out for town. The Harajuku folks seemed to have come out of the woodwork by the time we got back to the bridge. Here's a sample:





We found a nice little sushi place that had the little conveyor belt where you take differently priced plates as they catch your eye. Hide thought it was funny that I amassed a tower of 6 plates or so. We talked about what kind of foods we liked in Japan, and which ones we didn't. Ultimately, they had to get going to meet some of their friends, so we said goodbye and exchanged email addresses with them. Tomoko offered to guide us around Yokohama if we make it down there, since that's where she's from.

After lunch we wandered around the Harajuku area. There's a very crowded street filled with vendors, but since we were already hot and sweaty from wandering around we didn't feel like jumping into the crush of people.


I'm glad we decided to circle the bustling area since we stumbled upon this little park:


It had a nice pond swarming with koi and turtles. You can see the little kids throwing bread crumbs into the water.




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