Day 7 in Japan: A Dancing bear man is written up at Shibuya Crossing
Today was light on sightseeing, as Ciaran and I had to make the two-and-a-half-hour Shinkansen trip from Kyoto to Tokyo (not including the transportation times to and from hotels) and because we met multiple friends. As soon as we left our bags at our apartment near Tokyo Skytree, we took the metro to the very other end of the city to meet Kevin and Jaya at the Meiji Shrine. The shrine is one of Tokyo’s most famous even though it was completed relatively recently – in 1921 – using materials from every prefecture ruled by Japan, including Karafuto (modern day Sakhalin), Korea, Kwantung, and Taiwan. Although it did not really blow us away, we were impressed by the very roundly pruned trees in its courtyard.
While Kevin and Jaya
were shopping, Ciaran and I made a quick excursion to the iconic Shibuya
Crossing – a busy intersection known for the massive tides of pedestrians
triggered by every change of the traffic lights. We spotted two elevated places
that had good views and were open to the public as we prospected the crossing
from a streetcorner: the train station tunnel and the Starbucks. When we made
it into the tunnel, we found that its windows were patterned with a black grid,
presumably to dissuade people from flocking there in large numbers to take
pictures. We had better luck at the Starbucks, though I did have to order a
drink to get us in.
For lunch, the four of
us met Brent and Joel, who had just flown into Tokyo from Okinawa. Finding six
seats at an eatery proved to be quite a challenge, but we staked out in front
of a small omelette restaurant for about half an hour, and by three o’clock, it
was almost empty. We spent the rest of the day engaging in commercial pursuits.
Kevin really wanted to go to a Pokémon store, which just so happened to be
located in a tower along with a bunch of other anime-themed stores – as well as
a very strange photo exhibition by a lesbian artist from Perm. While Kevin and
Jaya continued with their itinerary, the four of us walked around the shops of
Shibuya entranced by its neon lights. We saw a man dressed in a bear costume
dancing wildly at the crossing to music blasting from his radio but when we
stopped to get our bearings, a policeman approached him and wrote him up.
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