IT'S A TRAAAAAAP!!!!!!!!

March 30th, 2008


     In the morning, Natalie and I found ourselves Jen-less, but were told by Jen and Dan that they'd meet us at Harajuku at about 1:00pm. Well, normal-time to bed, late to rise is the trend for me until school starts, it seems (I'll keep blaming it on the jet lag... not the perfume), so we didn't get started until late. After showering and getting ready for my day in the oh-so-famous "fashion district" of Japan, I headed downstairs to meet Natalie. Luckily for us, the festival from Saturday was still going on, so we decided to grab a few more items from there to eat. On Saturday I spied this awesome-looking meal of octopus legs on a stick but didn't get it, so it was just as if fate decided to throw the festival back at me once more, giving me the opportunity to eat this lovely dish. Some of you may find that a little disturbing, and, if forced to eat one, would probably throw it away after finding yourself in this situation. But hey! It wasn't so bad! Unsatisfying, of course, so I got some more tako-yaki, but purty good.


     After grabbing my tako-yaki and Natalie her second choco-banana, we headed to the station to get ourselves to Harajuku. We got a little mixed up at some point getting there, but that was no excuse for our exactly how late we were. If I recall correctly, we didn't get there until around 2:00pm, so we completely missed Jen and Dan. Regardless, we decided to make good of the day to see exactly what kind of fashion Harajuku had in store for us. If one walks out the exit "where a lot of people are heading" (as Dan had put it in his instructions to get us to where he was) there's a bridge that one can run into that is actually, as I found out, pretty famous for harboring people we dress pretty wildly. What Natalie and I found, though, was that while the people were dressed obscurely, they weren't necessarily as shocking as one would expect. Even in Virginia Beach I have seen some really strange looking outfits due to the Neo-Goth circles, and thus was rather unimpressed. Blame it on the weather forecast or whatever, it wasn't all that crazy. THOUGH, I may say, there was one girl with ripped fishnet wrapped around her face, which was different. Also, one can tell they're in Harajuku, from what I perceive, just by checking out the outfits of the general populous. The norm isn't necessarily to be totally dressed in strange garb, but to have maybe one or two garments or accessories that are outside the norm, which I find to be rather cool about the place.


     Also on the bridge there were people holding up "Free Hugs!" signs. These were the second and third persons that I had seen with the sign, and after giving a kid a hug in Shibuya, I decided "hey, why not!". So I gave the guy (who was looking, oddly enough, in about his late thirties...) a hug and Natalie got a video of it. Some advise against this action, but if it makes someone's day, I'll go for it! My mom told me that I'd better shy away from those people because they may pick my pockets, but I don't know... Rest assured though, Mom: Next time I do it I'll give my money to one of my friends!


     Next, we headed to a huge hyaku-en shop which is located on Takeshita Street, a long strip in Harajuku that is just an endless sea of people (notice the guy in the lower right of the second picture... I happened to get him in both photos and it's as if he was posing for my camera and not his... ha!). This shop was four floors of hyaku-en goodness, and I ended up getting a little memo book to keep in my camera case. Otherwise, aside from seeing pretty normal stuff in the shop, I would like to note that JAPAN ISN'T AS TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED AS EVERYONE THINKS IT IS. Exhibit A: THEY ONLY SELL WOODEN PENCILS!!! ... okay, so they sell packs of like, two, but otherwise it's all wood.


     After exiting we just walked for a really long time down the strip. During the trip I was trying to look for the socks that I needed: tube, two thick stripes at the top, and knee-high. I even looked in girls' sock store (which carried the closest results) until I realized that of COURSE their feet aren't going to come anywhere close to my big honkin' 13s.


     So, there was the end to that quest, but not the end to our journey. We headed into multiple shops (not including this one, which Sarah would have loved to visit!). I decided that later on I'd come back to the city to do some shopping, actually, after seeing a few cool items in some of the shops. Natalie ended up buying a raincoat and an umbrella (the umbrella in a store called "Shazzbot", which is supposedly a curse word for the aliens Mork and Mindy) since a) she needed them, and b) it started to rain while we were there.

      Getting home took a really long time. Getting into Harajuku station took probably a good 15-20 minutes in itself because people were just packed in a dead stop waiting for people to get through the gates. By the time we made it back to Warabi we were hungry, so we stopped at the 7-11 on the way home and picked up dinner. Add-water noodle dishes were an option as well, but it turns out that we both weren't comfortable just adding any-ol' amount of water in the things, so we settled on some microwavable spaghetti (which they heated up right there for us!) and ran home (I also got some awesome melon bread, I think it's called, which I'll take a picture of next time I get it).


     We made our way to our rooms to drop off stuff and grab drinks, then headed to the kitchen to finally eat. The reason this is important is that another guy came in to sit down to watch TV and read and we invited him over to chat with us! Our first friend in the DK House, Hunter Smith, a drama major from Texas U (sorry, he's not Japanese!), turned out to be pretty cool, so we exchanged G-Mail address after dinner and decided to hang out the next day.


     That's it for that night, then, and since I have a Japanese placement test in the morning and am a tad smoky right now (I'll explain later), I'm going to get a shower and then hit the sack. Wish me luck!


Until next time...!