Monday, February 4, 2013

Tokyo Part Three - Harajuku and Shibuya

If you want to see people dressed up and totally in their comfort zone, then Harajuku is the place to visit. A real mix bag. On Sundays, the different styles truly come out on show and the outfits you see can be quite incredible....and different.
Harajuku is also home to a huge park called Yoyogi Park. Popular for teenage dancers and bird enthusiasts alike.
 The teenagers practice their dance routines, often in costume whilst there are people around picnicking, people taking pictures of birds and groups performing with instruments. There is also a dog park that I think is so well thought out as it has different sections based on the size of your dog. Teddy would be in doggy heaven if that was our local park (apart from the fact that all the dogs are all dressed up and Ted would have none of that).
The streets that line Harakjuku are made up of various different stores to shop at. Down Takeshita Dori there are cute little themed shops where you can buy costumes and there are also the usual department stores that you will see all over Tokyo. Luckily for me, we found a Marc Jacobs store and I found a perfect handbag that S ended up buying for me. I am very lucky!
Shibuya is similar to Shinjuku, but you will find cute little streets that have little boutique style shops in the. We also found a few designer op-shops that were interesting to have a look through. We didn't spend too much time here as we had been there last year as well and we had seen most of it. It is home to the busiest crossing in the world though which is evident at around lunch time. It reminded me of Newtown/Paddington in Sydney. 

There are plenty of good places to eat lunch and from memory, we found a little Yakiniku place (stirfried beef) and all up for both of us we paid 1200 Yen (about $12.5o) for our meal. I'm not sure if it would be somewhere you could spend a whole day, unless you were set on doing a lot of shopping there. We were only there for about 3 hours but we had been there the year before, so we didn't have as much to see this time. There are quite a few good coffee places around too, if you look hard enough. A nice change, since most places sell the dripolator coffee.
 We found good coffee in Shibuya

2 comments :

  1. I am green with envy reading your Toyko posts! It looks like you both had a wonderful time. Japan always looks different to what I imagine it would be like when I see photos of it.

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    1. Actually, I was surprised when I first went to Japan as I had imagined it to be totally different to what it is. I was pleasantly surprised, though!

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