We decided yesterday that we'd venture to Harajuku again to go clothes shopping. Because mum and Whitney were with us, this meant it would be an all day thing.... My feet and tendons at the back of my knees were already sore.
I woke up early to get some much needed washing done at the nearest laundromat. It was 6.30 and I was running around the banking/financial district of Tokyo during the coldest month of the year (2*C yesterday morning) in a pair of boardshorts, T-shirt and light jacket. And people think I'm the sane one.
After having a shower and heading to Mos Burger for breakfast, we started towards Nihombashi to get the subway for Meiji-Tengumae. Oops we missed the train... doesn't matter there will be another one 3 minutes later.... Gotta love a country with the best mass transit system in the world when you are on holidays with no car. We got off the subway at the top end of Omote-Sando dori (Avenue) at about 9.30, but this being Japan, no shops were open except coffee shops (most retail opens at 10am closes at 7 or 8pm). We headed down the street towards Oriental Bazaar. This shop is a pretty traditional looking shop front selling traditional/cultural gifts. Only thing strange is that its nestled in between Dior & Chanel on one side, Chaumet on the other and Ralph Lauren on the opposite side of the street. Ritzy area, but cheap shop. Too bad, Thursday's they aren't open... bugger.
It was still before 10am, so we decided to head back up the street to Lavazza coffee shop. Its one gripe I have about Tokyo is it is hard to find places that do a good strong coffees like we're used to. Fortunately they also have hot can's of coffee in vending machines, and Wonda premium is nice and strong. This time I went for an Ice Chocolate, but it wasn't like the cream, chocolate syrup and chocolate milk we get in Australia... it was actually like a milky italian chocolate over ice.. not what I wanted, but still quite tasty.
After sitting in the coffee shop for a couple of minutes and relieving ourselves, we headed down the street to Kiddy Land. This place is 6 levels of toys... awesome. After a while you feel overwhelmed by the levels of cute in this place, with a level set aside for Hello Kitty/Sanrio characters, Miffy/Dick Bruna characters, and all the other characters that are created for no other purpose than to be cute. They also had some cool toys like little remote control helicopters. By now we started feeling over-kawaii-d so, we headed for the cloths shops.
The next 6 hours were a blur of looking in and out of clothing shops, punctuated by periods of people watching. While there were some freaks, its good to see the whole emo lip piercing thing hasn't really taken over here. There are some, but no where near as many as Chermside on a Thursday night. One thing any foreign person over here notices is the amount of girls running around in winter with short (really short) skirts and stockings. You realise that they must be used to it, because even their school uniforms are like that.
Once we were all notibly wrecked, we headed back towards the hotel. The nearest subway station to Tokyo rail station is Otemachi which sort of surrounds it. It also has the most amount of connecting lines. What this leaves is tunnels that you could easily get lost in. Fortunately there are signs, but it has a couple of corridors that go for nearly a kilometre each. When you are dead on your feet, endless corridors can be a scary prospect. Fortunately there are food places and drink machines the whole way, so you can get your packed lunch for the expedition. We finally made it towards the Yaesu mall and we could be bothered thinking so we went to the sushi place. Afterwards, Dean and I headed back to the hotel. Mum came back, with a bottle of Drambuie she got for cheap. Usually Drambuie goes for about AU$50 but she got it for about $33 at yesterdays exchange rate. Not bad..
Not much else to report... Watched TV and went to sleep.
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