Shopping in Harajuku 25th March 2007

Tina and I went off and did our own thing today, while Steve went to this Animae festival in another part of Tokyo. Tina and I went shopping in the fashion district of Tokyo – Harajuku. There was this big, long street filled with trendy shops where you could buy the coolest, outlandish clothes ever! We pretty much bought the whole of Tokyo that day!

It was lots of fun shopping, but Harajuku also had a great atmosphere. There were lots of young people shopping there and they all had different styles of clothing. They were very loud with their dress sense. We saw one girl with a velvet suit on and a top hat with red paint on her neck making it look like she had cut her neck. There were some other girls who were dressed in black and white dresses and they looked like little maids. They even had the little maid hats on! It was really fun walking down the street and seeing all the different fashions.

We then made our way to Shibuya. This was the place that blew me away the most. When we got out of the train station, we found the busiest intersection in the world. This is a fact, not an exaggeration! When the pedestrian lights went green, thousands upon thousands of people would cross the road. Tina and I stopped for about fifteen minutes just looking at the busy intersection. As soon as the people crossed the road, another crowd of people would stand on the footpaths waiting to cross the next set of lights. It just went on and on like that. Every time the lights went green, thousands of pedestrians would cross the busy road. It was just amazing!

Tina and I enjoyed looking at the shops and the people and it was nice just to be able to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the liveliness of the district. If you ever get to Tokyo, I would definitely recommend you to go to Shibuya.

For dinner, we went to this place called Sweets Paradise. It was an all-you-can-eat restaurant and had the largest selection of cakes and sweets I have ever seen. It was really delicious! We wanted to take a photo of us sitting in the restaurant and we asked the people at the table next to us to take a photo. Then we got them to get in the photo with us and they thought it was hilarious! It was lots of fun!