Pretty much straight after waking up I headed toward the Shoinjinjamae station. Before going there though I tried my luck finding shrine I had seen mentioned but no luck whatsoever. Pretty sure I was in right area though. 7eleven store plus traffic lights visible in map were located. I wonder in what side street of a side street the shrine is located at!
Btw I know Japanese are short but isn't this bit ridiculous? For one the apartment is for foreigners. For second I think the key is in too low of a position even for shortest Japanese adults! The keyhole is the lowest bulge in the door...Thing is below my knees! Who designed this door? A hobbit?
Haha. Anyway after spending time trying to find the invisible shrine I was starving so for breakfast/lunch I headed to first restaurant looking place I could find. After bit of oomphing over the Japanese written menu I settled for pasta set A for 900 yen(about 7.5 euros I think).
The ice tea actually tasted like a tea unlike the sugar things you find at food stores in Finland. Salad was good though had odd sharp taste from some sort of liquid? they added to it. Pasta itself was pretty good so I think for the price it was okay meal. Maybe tad smallish but hey I'm trying to lose some weight...
After this I headed toward yamashita called station and tried to find my way to park that was nearby but got completely lost. Bought myself tokyo map though so once I buy compass I should be better equipped! Did find playground for kids though. Nice change of pace from all the asphalt.
With 0 out of 2 I was starting to feel more than a bit annoyed at my success rate I was having at my search. Next stop would be Harajuku for shop I had been told about that would sell concert tickets. In route I had to experience invasion of a school kids when entire army of them swarmed the train. Are Japanese kids in school even on saturday or what on earth the army of school kids(easy to recognize from the school uniforms) was doing today? Or do schoolkids around here wear school uniforms even on weekends?
At Harajuku I got to experience the biggest crowds I had yet to see in Tokyo.
Unfortunately 2nd picture doesn't show quite as well as I had hoped. Had camera too low I suppose. But the road was full of people swarming all the way I could see. Unfortunately as was getting too familiar I didn't find the damn shop EITHER!
But at Harajuku I found yoyogi park which was used in 1964 Tokyo olympics.
Several kids were skateboarding and one was juggling with 5 balls(pretty nice look). I also spotted guy selling takoyaki's that are octopus dumplings. I have heard so many people try and fall in love with these so I had been dying to try them myself so obviously bought set for 500 yen.
Very good tasting indeed. After the snack I started to look around the park. Unfortunately spring hasn't fully started yet so the trees were quite bare and what looked like lake didn't have water. Guess they put in water later. Lots of people were running around the streets. Couple guys were playing drums. Looks like this might be very live place when spring comes properly. (btw weather here is pretty good. Sun, no rain so far except for light drizzle last night. But the place has even stronger winds than Huddersfield! I'm having feelings of dejavu here...) Unfortunately I didn't have time to visit Meiji shrine nearby as it was getting already late and dark and I still had place to search in Shibuya so I left that for some later day(I now have some more info on the location of that elusive store so I'll do another search later).
Last picture is the Harajuku station.
On the Shibuya order of day was to try to locate go salon google maps suggested but after I spent a while oomping and aamping over guidance map before realizing that the picture of google maps I had in my phone was NOT oriented same as the guidance map. I basically had to angle my head 90 degree to right to see map in phone from same direction. And when I found the place I found out there's hotel there and nobody I asked knew any go salon.
Drat.
After this I was feeling exhausted and somewhat pissed off at the low rate of success of locatin...well ANYTHING so I started to head toward home. Luckily that went at least better. I'm starting to figure out how the train system here works.
Tomorrow plan is to go see Hinamatsuri at Katsuura. First visit out of Tokyo. I'm somewhat scared about the prospects but maybe it's easier to find since the place is smaller than Tokyo(not hard to be smaller than Tokyo in Japan!) so I might have more success there.Katsuura Hinamatsuri Map at least looks fairly easy. I'll take that map to my phone and write down as much info from the page(I'm starting to think that printer would be convinient) and off I go. I just hope I don't get lost enough that I can't get back to Tokyo within same day ;)
So far this has been quite a difficult trip but I didn't expect first days to be easy so no big issue. So far my Japanese has been up to the task in most cases though it's been mainly route directions, shopping etc. Not much free talking so far. But now I'm starting to get some sense of the Tokyo rail system so hopefully I'll be having tad easier time in future.
Now I just need that compass...
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