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.