Day 5: Hie Shrine, Diet Building, Harajuku

Today is the end of the first part of our trip before heading to Nagoya tomorrow late morning.  With that  said we had to take care of a few things before going out and exploring some more.

Before we took care of the necessities, we had breakfast and today there were two elderly gentlemen sitting next to us and they asked where we came from.  When we said the states, one then told us he had spent a year there.  He asked us to guess how many miles he drove in that year on his motorcycle.  The answer… over 22000 miles.  He drove the four corners of the US and Canada from Alaska to San Diego, to Key West to Nova Scotia.  We then got to tell him where we had been in Japan and where we were headed this trip too.  He gave us some recommendations for our next trip here and all this provided more opportunities to try out more japanese.  At the end he had told us he traveled to the US in the 1970s and now he is 71 years old.  We thanked him for sharing his stories with us and when we left breakfast he and his friend stood up and bowed to us, the bows are are a really nice gesture let me say.

After breakfast we had to forward our luggage to our hotel in Nagoya this morning as well as buy our Shinkansen tickets from Tokyo Station to Nagoya Station.  This provided us with two really good opportunities to use our japanese and we were successful in both endeavors without needing english.  I even attempted at filling out our luggage forwarding slips in japanese writing some tricky kanji, which I received an A-OK sign from the front desk receptionist after I asked her if she could check my writing for me.  Anyways, our luggage will meet us in Nagoya tomorrow, so we kept just what we need to change into in the morning.  We left the hotel then and went to Shinjuku station and reserved our Shinkansen tickets for tomorrow to Nagoya.

Now, we were able to start our day and get out into Tokyo again.

Hie Shrine:

We had found a shrine in the center of Tokyo near, the japanese government buildings.  It was just lightly drizzling as we arrived and the street we walked down led us to the back entrance way to the shrine which was a staircase covered by tori:

We entered the shrine and looked around the area and even stopped into a small museum displaying ceremonial katana from long ago.  The blades were well kept and various scripts were etched into the blade’s metal.  Before heading on to see the National Diet Building we grabbed a picture of the front entrance to the shrine:

National Diet Building:

Across the street and up a hill we came to the National Diet Building, which is the japanese’s congress building.  It was guarded by checkpoints on all four sides, but at the front we were able to take pictures through the guarded gate.  Here’s what it looks like:

We completed our circuit around the Diet and went back to the train station to head over to Harajuku.

Harajuku:

Once in Harajuku we headed for the Kawaii Monster Cafe to have lunch.  The Monster Cafe is extremely extravagant and over the top, we walked up the stairs to the cafe and when we told the receptionist it was just the two of us for lunch in japanese, she broke out into full on japanese, which was neat since she figured we knew more than we did, but we did get the gist of what she was saying.  She took us to our seat which was a booth shaped like a giant cupcake and in a ridiculously colorful room with crazy decor.  In the center was a giant cake that spun and later acted as a stage for the lunch show:

Here is another picture of the room we were in.  Notice the lights hanging from the ceiling are baby bottles:

Since it’s October they had a special menu with more Halloween themed foods on top of their other outlandish foods.  Here is Sara’s meal:

Her meal was colorful spaghetti called Rainbow Pasta Painta with various dipping sauces around the perimeter.  Here’s my meal, which was a chicken burger called Bagaa Medama Monstaa (Moster’s Eye Burger):

We both had drinks too, Sara’s was a fruity soda and mine was a vanilla shake with caramel infused in it, topped with popcorn of course.  Her’s was called Kakuteru Non-dogragu (Non-drug cocktail experiment) and mine was Shaku Hippu Shaku Poppucon (Shake hips shake with popcorn):

The food was really good so we decided to order a dessert too called Broomu Monsta (Broom Monster) and was a berry icing covered chocolate brownie with orange whipped cream and cotton candy:

During our meal there was a brief dance routine that went on (sorry for the sideways view at times, I’ve not learned much on video editing yet):

When we finished eating we headed into Omotesando, a short walk away which is known for its shopping and designer brands.  We went into a mall to the Tabio shop where they sell the best socks.  I got two pairs and Sara got one too.  Best socks!

The mall was triangular shaped and was a giant spiralled ramp essentially so you could keep walking around and hit every floor:

Following that we decided to skip some things on our planned schedule to leave for our return to Tokyo later next week and headed to Meiji Shrine, but as we reached it they closed for the evening, so we swapped Meiji for something we were going to save until our last day… the Owl Cafe.

So, in Japan they have animal cafes where you can get a drink, non-alcoholic due to the animals around and then pet the animals, such as cats, hedgehogs or owls.  We chose the owl cafe and when we entered we were shown a paper with the rules on how to behave and interact with the owls, as to not spook them or harm them.  The greeter told us we had to wait for the owls’ rest time to finish and as she was telling us the time her english got stuck on the numbers so we told her she could say it in japanese and she was like, “thank you thank you thank you.”  It’s pretty fun getting to use the language we’ve been studying.  When it was time to go in, one of the trainers went to each owl, told us its name and how and where to pet it, some owls like their heads and backs pet, some like their faces.

Here are the pictures:

Once we left the Owl Cafe we headed over to Shibuya around 7pm to see and make the Shibuya crossing.  If you recall from our first trip it’s a street crossing where tons of people cross all at once for every light rotation.  I will post a new video again once I have time to make the upload.

(VIDEO HERE)

We also walked around a bit and looked at some clothing stores to kill some time before meeting up with one of my brother’s friends who just arrived in Tokyo yesterday to work for the next several months.  We met in Ebisu, near where we ate last night and ate in a neat restaurant where you ordered from a screen at your table.  We shared with him a lot of cool things to see and do in Tokyo and other cities in Japan.

One heads-up, Sara and I both ordered a meal called 6 chicken cuts skewers.  You may think, as we did, and incorrectly at that, that 6 chicken cuts means 6 different chicken preparations, it turned out the cuts were, chicken: liver, pope’s nose, cartilage, skin, thigh and breast.  I ate a liver piece before knowing what it was and… never again.  What a terrible consistency it was.

Tomorrow we head to Nagoya.