Harajuku Girls and the freshest sushi

We landed in Tokyo around 6am. We had planned to take advantage of the early arrival to be able to go see the Tsukiji Fish Market – the biggest fish market in the world – in action, but we felt terrible, having only slept a couple of hours, and were lucky that the hotel let us check in early. We were immediately struck by the incredible politeness of the Japanese and by that weird contraption in our bathroom, where the toilet was supposed to be. The traditional Japanese-style toilet is of the squatting variety (very popular in Asia, actually) but nowadays the type of toilet you’ll find in most bathrooms, even public ones, looks just like a Western one, only with lots of buttons – from the seat heating function to the errr… “spray” function. Although we were curious, we ended up never pushing the buttons, so we can’t tell you how it works.

After a couple of hours of sleep, we felt much better, though hungry, so we decided to try to make it to Tsukiji anyways, at least for a bite of fresh sushi. Navigating the subways wasn’t too bad. The most confusing part is that there are two different companies that administrate different lines and you must get a new ticket when you switch from one to the other. It was about 3pm when we finally made it to the fish market and, not surprisingly, it was already closed, as were most sushi restaurants and stalls in the neighborhood. Still there were a couple that were still open and we feasted on the freshest sushi ever, including several different types of tuna (Japan’s favorite), some of them pretty expensive as we found out later. However, I must say the squid was tough and I didn’t touch the sea urchin (not that time, at least.)

With a full stomach, we decided to make our way to the Harajuku/Aoyama area, which wasn’t on the schedule for the tour the next day. Trying to stick to one subway company, we had to get out still pretty far from it, by the national stadium, and we saw the long lines of supporters for the red and the blue teams, going into the stadium through different entrances, for some important soccer game. Although we had a map, we were pretty much lost, especially because very few Tokyo streets have names (only the big ones) but we had a stroke of luck when we spotted a gothic lolita, all pink bows and ruffles, ahead of us. All we had to do was follow her and soon we found ourselves in Harajuku.

Unfortunately it was Saturday, because on Sunday all the gothic lolitas gather at the entrance to the Meiji gardens to show off their threads and let tourist take their picture. So instead we went into the gardens and visited the Meiji Shinto shrine, built in the 19th century in memory of the first emperor of the Restoration. It’s a rather large compound housing several simple wooden buildings, in true Japanese style, including a main altar that has no statues or pictures but where you can throw a coin and pray (bow twice, clap twice, bow once… or something along those lines – we heard it so many times, you’d think we’d never forget it.)

Then we walked down Takeshita-dôri, an extremely busy pedestrian street, filled with teenagers in more of less funky clothes, including a good dose of Goths and gothic lolitas (which are far from the same thing), hanging out at MacDonald’s and Burger King, or at the many funky clothes and accessory stores. Quite a sight!

The area of Harajuku/Aoyama/Shibuya is where you can find the most fashionable people these days - Ginza is passé – and just by walking around, soon you start finding yourself very inadequate. The stores have plenty of awesome clothes (including tons you can wear outside of Harajuku without having people stare at you funny), but one look at the tags will make you cry. Needless to say, by dinner time I was feeling very frustrated. Still, the whole experience was a lesson in Japanese pop culture and that was all we could take for the day. Feeling exhausted and sleepy, we ate in a small, quite restaurant which served tasty, reasonably priced Chinese food - we were starving, so we weren’t picky - and went back to the hotel, for some well deserved sleep.