Day 5: Sunday May 30

Sunday was another rainy day, and our last in Tokyo for a week. I was up at 0745 and plugging away on the Internet downstairs to find ryokans in Kyoto and Hakone, our next stops. We didn't reach Harajuku, our destination for the day, until noon. Harajuku was probably the Japan destination I had most been looking forward to. Every Sunday, all the kids, businessmen, and other people who are too busy studying or working during the week, get dressed up in drag or as their favorite anime characters or as blond Western girls or in other extravagant costumes, and parade around the square, apparently to let off their tension.

The sky was a threatening dark gray tinged with yellow. We walked around the park and bridges, but didn’t see the anticipated costumes, and then we overheard a woman explaining to another disappointed Gaijin (foreigner) that there was another cosplay event today--probably most people were there.

Luckily, we did see this sign, which we enjoyed.




Still, disappointed, we wandered the narrow shopping aisles, which were still packed with people, bought bento boxes from a 7/11 for lunch and ate them perched on a railing in an alley full of Western style shops.



We hopped the subway to nearby Shibuya, bought a few more things at Tokyu Hands and continued the days-old fruitless search for a warm fleece for D. Back at Harajuku later in the afternoon, hoping there were a few more people around, we headed to the park. Darryl bought takoyaki, or balls of fried octopus, from row of little stands like hotdog stands. There were indeed a few more people around, girls in long jackets with bandages on their faces, a Rockabilly collection of men with Elvis hair and leather jackets and women in poodle skirts, girls dressed like schoolgirls posing for cameras. One very tall costumed person was obviously a man, dressed all in pink, with a tail and a Noh mask covering his face. We were too creeped out to take a photo of him.








We reenergized with chocolate banana croissants at a place called Choc Cro, rested our aching feet and walked to the next subway stop, Omotesando. Here, in front of a fancy facade called Diamond Hall, we met D’s old friend and former English student, Hiroko. A lovely, smiley woman, she bought us a rather expensive dinner. The best part was my fresh lemon squash, which was totally unsweetened but came with a little silver teapot of sugar syrup so you could pour in as much as you liked.



We thanked Hiroko and made plans to meet again the next week, then D and I headed for Akihabara again, in search of more camera gear for him. Then we realised we were completely out of cash. We wasted a good forty minutes in a fruitless search for an ATM that took international cards. At home by 2030, we settled down to figure out how to get to the ryokan in Hakone I had booked for the next day. After some confused searching, we realised that the ryokan--which was a dreamy, enormous resort deep in the mountains--was, in fact, located on the southern island of Japan. Needless to say, we could have reached it only by about six hours on the train. Thankfully they hadn't taken a credit card deposit, but we were still up til midnight searching for another.

Just for fun, check out how beautiful this ryokan is that I had booked for us: HYPERLINK "http://www.japaneseguesthouses.com/db/kurokawa/sanga.htm" \t "_blank" http://www.japaneseguesthouses.com/db/kurokawa/sanga.htm