Dougy Mak's Blog

It can be so hot here. It is becoming incredibly difficult to keep myself from sweating. There are times when I go upstairs to get something and come back downstairs sweating. The heat is only making it harder to blog. Went to Harajuku today and enjoyed the nice blazing sun beaming on my black shirt sucking the life out of me. Harajuku is a district within Shibuya. Harajuku was shopping district filled with tourists and young people. We walked on Takeshita street which was a narrow pedestrian only street and a hot spot for the young. Most shops there sold female merchandise. The merchandise here was pretty cheap. The products are not top brands or any well known brand at all for that matter, but they looked very nice and they were very affordable. Unlike here, everything in America revolves around popular brands and popular store franchises. Walking down the narrow street, I noticed a lot of One Piece products (One Piece is an anime series). One Piece is really popular here, and you will probably feel like an outcast if you do not read the series or know about it because EVERYONE knows about it. At Takeshita (and most of Tokyo), many people are paid to hold signs and promote sales/deals outside of the store. Speaking of which, yesterday at Tokorozawa, I remember one girl’s head dressed up as a beer mug. It was funny because she looked so ridiculous. Anyways, back on Takeshita douri (douri = street), many Jamaicans (maybe Nigerians??) approached me trying to sell me fake merchandise. One guy said, “Why don’t you take a “, before he even able to finish, I said, “No thanks” and I walked away.The street was short and so was wait at the closest kaiten sushi. The kaiten sushi places here have self-serve tea. Each table has a set of cups and a little jar with green tea powder. There is also a hot water dispenser that dispenses hot water on push at each table. I remembered very clearly that this place had a lot of English speaking foreigners, which probably means the sushi sucks and probably means it is expensive. The sushi here was tasty, but not the best; Above average. It was not as cheap as the other kaiten sushi, but it was still pretty decent; The cost came out to around 3,000 yen ($30) between the two of us.

We were supposed to go check out the rest of Shibuya right after Harajuku, but my significant other was not feeling well, so we just visited the meiji jingu (meiji shrine) and went home. The shrine was nice! Before walking through the gates, we had to clean our hands of filth. There was this little fountain of water with wooden spatudles (spatula and ladle following the spork concept) outside of the gates where you cleanse your hands. You just scoop the water and pour it over your hands. When walking through the gates, you have to step over the gate’s hump. I cannot exactly explain it, but there is this hump for the gates to align with when being closed. You cannot step on it because your feet are dirty. Inside, there was a huge empty courtyard. To the outer right corner, there was a tree. It was surrounded by many ema hung by people. On the ema, people write down the wishes and desires that they want fulfilled. Some of them were really cute and funny as they were written by elementary children asking for Legos. We added our ema too! We bought an ema (500 yen; $5) and wrote our wishes down on the ema and hung our wishes in the highest row.