Across the tracks at Harajuku station is what appears to be the heart of the teenage fashion district. Again I made it there kinda early in the day so, while this picture shows what it was like before noon, it got busier enough that I heard mutterings of こんでいるね by some of the locals. There are a really wide variety of clothing and accessory stores there and once you get off the main roads and wander the side streets it was actually a quiet and nice area. The only weird thing that felt a little out of place was a few foreign run businesses where the guys would heckle passerbys to try and entice them in. It was more aggressive than the Japanese with signs yelling at you to come check out their stores. As for American type stores, Claire's was there, CK had guy ads, and Forever 21 was ridiculously popular.
After finishing up there I headed back to the station, noticed both trains stopped for longer than normal. They kept repeating something over the PA and I caught parts of it like the times but a nice guy next to me who was herding his 3 boys was fluent in English and explained that there was some sort of accident so it would be at least 30 minutes before the trains moved again...There have been wind and track problems in the last day or so due to some pretty strong winds.
I would LOVE to go to Harajuku, and i'm not a big fashionista, i've just read a lot about this district. It seems like you are having an amazing time, nice blog by the way!
ReplyDeleteI definitely didn't shop around though I did stop by a well known caramel/ice cream shop there. If you *are* into shopping you could easily spend the entire day (and more) in the area. There was definitely more fashion win than fail there. It looked like the street level shops weren't that pricey but the hidden boutiques that catered to very specific things probably got pricier.
ReplyDeleteWhy do the locals mutter "It is of elaborate"...
ReplyDeleteClearly google translate is failing me.
Hmm google translate's done a decent job of things for me, but it's probably not handling casual stuff well. It's a casual way of saying, "It is crowded (right now)".
ReplyDelete