Japan Pictures Day 5: Ikebukuro, Yoyogi Park and Harajuku

Day 5: Ikebukuro again, Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi Park, and Harajuku again!

It was Sunday in Japan, but still Saturday night in Utah when we got up. Because of that, we were just in time to watch the Relief Society broadcast live. After fighting with my tablet and lds.org, we ended up watching it on byutv.org.

Before leaving the hotel for the day, I checked my email for my parents' help, couldn't get the Visa phone number to work for Japan and ended up calling international to the US. They directed me to the Credit Union's lost card number (because it was outside of work hours in Utah) where the girl was able to clear up a hold on my card, but I still couldn't get any money! Bah!

After that, our plan was to try not spending the entire day shopping, because it was Sunday after all, so we decided to go to Yoyogi park and see the Meiji shrine. First things first, though, we decided to stop by Ikebukuro to see if my markers had been found and turned in.

Theft is almost non-existent in Japan, so I had some good hope. First I stopped by the little Conbini where I had tried their ATM, but they didn't have anything. So next we went to the Animate store and they had them! I was so happy!

Not sure what was going on. a bunch of people in the
middle of the street, chanting together and
bouncing the gold thing slowly moving down the street.

Markers found, we went back to Harajuku where Yoyogi park is located. We looked up one of the shops that we had missed before, called the Oriental Bazaar. We spent some time there, looking at all the traditional items, like chopsticks, Kimonos and such. I got a little coin purse because I really needed a way to keep the coins separate from the bills. In Japan, they don't have any paper money below a 1000Y ($10), and all those below are coins. They have 500Y, 100Y, 50Y, 10Y, 5Y and 1Y, all as coins, so most change is in coin format. It was super useful, so even if I never use it again, it was worth the purchase.

My lunch at "Jonathan's Cafe" that
started with a D and was some
kind of pasta/cheese dish

Finally we headed into Yoyogi park. Inside is the Meiji Shrine, where Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken, are enshrined. In Japan, they used to track the years by saying how far they were into an Emperor's reign. The Meiji era was the one where Japan emerged as a modernized nation in the twentieth century. The emperor died in 1912, and the original building was destroyed in the WWII air raids.

Now a whole ton of pictures. You have been warned.

The first Tori gate was huge! Look at the
people in the back.

I liked this bridge because it was curved.

Kerri from behind. Actually I was
aiming for that decoration on the bridge.

I may have been trying to get Kerri in as many pictures as
I could. These are barrels of Sake that were donated
from all the regions in Japan to the shrine.

And this side is all wine.

The path was so WIDE!

This is a purification area. You fill the cup with water,
pour it over one hand, switch hands and pour it over
the other, take some in your hand to rinse your mouth
and then tilt the whole thing up so the last water
rinses off the handle.

Here I am doing the rinsing. With my cool hat.

Once again caught Kerri at the next Tori gate

A shrine girl doing something I couldn't see.

The main shrine gate. The ends of the beams are
painted white, which makes a neat effect.

There was a wedding procession when we arrived.
The bride and groom are under the parasol, and behind
the guy carrying it was a whole train of family members
in nice clothes, though not traditional.
The man in the white at the right is the priest.
They had just finished the marriage and they were headed
to take pictures, from what I understood of the Priest's words.

You could buy these wooden slates to write a prayer or
wish on, and the priests would pray over them.

This one in Japanese

This one looks Arabic

And English

I like lanterns. I took a lot of pictures of lanterns.

I took a gazillion pictures of Kerri here, with her camera,
trying to get a good one. I like the perpective it gives
of the size of the lantern.

One of the lanterns on the path as we left.
It was getting dark, so it was lit.
I only come up to halfway of the whole
height.

It was just starting to get dark as we left, but we discovered they were closing the park, so it's good we got there when we did. Even then, it was only 5:00 or 5:30 and it would have been sad to just go back to the hotel, so we headed toward Takeshita street again. There was a 7-11 there, and we figured I could call Visa again while Kerri browsed the shops.

I found a quiet-ish alley and called again. The Indian guy I got tried to be helpful, but wasn't really. I ended up calling back and got a different lady. We finally determined that while the hold was removed by Visa (they had called my Parents' place to confirm a transaction, but I was in Japan and my parents were on vacation as well), the Credit Union itself was blocking the transactions! I had talked to the Credit Union TWICE to make sure they wouldn't do that! ARGH! And it was still early Sunday morning in Utah, so I was going to have to also go all of Monday in Japan mooching from Kerri. Okay, I had like 53Y, but that's the same thing. We couldn't even get me some "Emergency Cash" that is part of the Visa benefits, because the Credit Union would have had to approve it. So upsetting!

I got sweet potato, with sweet potato ice cream
and an actual sweet potato that you can see here.

After hijinks finding Kerri again, we found a larger ACDC Rag store where I got a cool sweater. Then we got crepes that were fun and delicious. It was still not that late, but we were tired, so we made the trip back to the hotel and slept.

Kerri got Strawberry Cheesecake, with an actual
slice of cheesecake in it.

Kerri got these cute "Mameshiba" treats at
Animate while I got my markers back. They
were like marshmallow with chocolate inside.

Kerri also discovered this gel at the 7-11 that she
ended up liking enough to get more to bring home.

Japan Pictures Day 4: Shinjuku and Ikebukuro

 Day 4: Shinjuku and Ikebukuro!

(There are a TON of pictures, so I am going to do a lot of talking in the captions)

Melon Pan! Bread covered with cookie-
like crust. Called "Melon" because
the scoring makes it look like a
melon, not because it tastes like it.

Saturday the 28th of September. We started off in Shinjuku, where our hotel was located. We wanted to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which has the highest observation deck for free, we were told. So we walked straight from our hotel (after getting breakfast).

My Pan was filled with vanilla and
chocolate pudding. Yum!

Large intersection in Shinjuku.

My new favorite drink! Some kind of "Yogurt"
drink, that tasted kinda carmel-ly.

Fun Whale named Kuu-chan.

Kerri rockin it out!

On the way we saw a few shops, and some Gachapon machines, so we had to stop (of course!). There we saw they had a DDR-like game, but with Taiko drums! You hit the drums when the circles passed by, and it was surprisingly fun. I was not the best at it. XD

And me, about to beat up the drum.

We can see the building now!

When we got to the building, they had just barely opened, so we didn't even have to wait to go up (going back down was a different matter).

Selfie in the tower.

The funny-looking building in the middle was some
kind of art building, and it was called the "Cocoon".
Pretty accurate if you ask me.

I liked these three buildings all lined up.

Central park below us. What's going on down there?

This is "Tokyo." Buildings crammed together as
far as the eye can see. Also, like Salt Lake can mean the entire
valley, but it actually has many cities in it, that's the way
Tokyo is referred to a lot.

Very large, tall installation in the middle of
the tower.

Waterfall where the Market was being held.

We were interested in what was happening in Central Park (pictured above), so we went over after we finally got down from the tower. It was a Flea Market! I think they have it either every day, or once a week, or something, because there was a fairly permanent-looking sign calling it the Central Market.

Someone offered to take a picture of the two of us.

And a full-grown cicada (we think)!
It was huge!

I thought this was a live cicada, but it
was actually just a husk. I pinched
off the leaf and stuck it in an
empty gatchapon to take home!

Flea Market!

Base of the tower. They had a bunch of artsy statues and such.

We got a lot of stuff at the Tower and the flea market, so before moving on to Ikebukuro, we decided to stop by the hotel and drop our stuff off. We ended up walking in an underground passage almost all the way from the Tower to the train station near our hotel.

One part of the underground passage.
More like a station/shopping center!

I needed to get some more cash, so we did a detour to a 7-11 on the way to Ikebukuro. The 7-11s were the only place besides a bank to get cash, because they had ATMs that would take foreign credit cards.

A large, old fashioned gate on
the way to 7-11

Same gate, with a very
Japanese-y tree.

And a large monolith on
the other side

Kerri got some An-man while waiting
for me at 7-11. Steamed bun with
anko, sweetened red bean paste.

Then the drama started. The ATM wouldn't take my card. It wasn't that I couldn't read it, because I could check the balance and such, but it wouldn't let me withdraw any money! After trying to get it to work for a long time, we finally decided to move on and try again at a different location later. I still had some money, but only about 3000Y ($30) and it was only day 4! The good thing was that Kerri still had plenty of cash, and could cover me for the day.

 We stopped at Health/Makeup store (that's how they billed themselves) to get me some Ibuprofen, ice packs for me knees (which were starting to hurt a whole ton), and some shoe inserts. Explanation time: For the last several walking-intensive activities I have done, my knees have hurt like the freakin' blazes. I learned at the last activity that it was related to swelling somehow, though that wasn't the cause so much as the main symptom. So I brought knee braces, cold packs, and anti-inflammatories to help stave off the inevitable. While in Japan, however, I noticed that my arches were starting to hurt as well. "That's suspicious" thought I, and so I started looking for some arch supports.

I put them in immediately, and while it really hurt to walk in them, because I wasn't used to it, they really helped my knees! They didn't get a ton better, but they didn't get any worse, and that was sufficient.

Eating gyoza with dinner. It came out with
a sheet of whatever on the top, from being
fried and flipped over onto the plate.
Gyoza is Srs Business.

After food we went and got Puri-Kura's. Basically
super-photo booths. I stole Kerri's that she posted,
but I have my own that's a little different.
Can you tell what the booth did that is funny?

Nekobukuro in Ikebukuro

After Puri-Kura (see photo sheet) we went to Tokyu Hands, which had all sorts of stuff, and is called a do-it-yourself store. We went through almost all the floors, and all I got were a couple glass bottles. The main attraction was on the top floor, the Cat cafe, Nekobukuro. You pay a cover charge (600Y) to enter and get to pet their cats that they have all over. The cats get really good at dodging the people visiting. Until they let the kittens out after dinner, and I was able to entice them with my shoelaces.

My favorite part was the cats were trained to jump into the arms of the workers when their name was called! All the cats were hanging around the door to the back, since they knew it was dinner time. Then a worker girl came out and called a cat, who literally jumped straight into her arms (or so, since they were full-grown cats and the girl was rather small). So fun!

Enclosure with kitty in a basket

Cat walks, complete with cat.

Cat from below.

This kitty knew it was dinner time.

Little scottish fold kitten. They are called that because
their ears are folded over from a defect in
the cartilage gene.

No kitten can resist the laces.
The one advantage I had with my shoes.

After kitties, we went to a large Anime store called Animate. They had a lot of stuff for animes that we didn't know, and from the most recent flame "Shinjeki no Kyojin" or "Attack on Titan" that I had actually watched most of. We went through almost all the floors, but I ended up just borrowing 5000Y from Kerri to get a bunch of Copic markers! They are some amazing markers that are great for coloring and blending, but they are wicked expensive. They are $5 or more in the US, so for about 400Y a piece, it was a great deal! So I got like 16!

By now my feet hurt a lot, so I sat outside while Kerri finished perusing the shop. I tried another ATM that didn't work (not surprising because it wasn't a 7-11) and mostly just sat on the curb playing with my gameboy and people-watching. It was busy!

I should have gotten this, but it was
too expensive for something that I
would only wear in Japan.

We were wiped out by this time, so we went back to the hotel. I emailed my parents begging for help with my card/money problem, then realized that I had left the entire bag of copic markers somewhere in Ikebukuro! Oh man!