Day 17 - Tokyo - Shibuya

This post will mainly be pictures, didn't really do much on this day in Tokyo. As I said in the last post, we spent quite a bit of time in fishing stores in the Shibuya area. We went to Johshuya, which is above a 100 yen store (yes I love those stores) and another, Sansui. Hubby was interested in purchasing a telescopic rod, but all the made in Japan ones were over the $400 price range. The reasonably priced ones were all made in China. Johshuya has a nice selection of items but Sansui felt to be more geared towards fly/freshwater fishing. Anyway, what do I know.

Another thing in Shibuya is Tokyu Hands, a one stop shop for any home things that you want and plenty of craft items. This is a shop I recommend going to! The above pic is something you can buy from Tokyu Hands, a fish skeleton? For about $40 you can own one.

Or you can buy a crab as a pet. A live one of course.

I just ended up buying some cosmetics and a bento box. Have to admit though, I went to the Shinjuku Tokyu Hands store, not the Shibuya one. Nightmare getting out of Shinjuku station, they were doing upgrades to the station for the Olympic games. Anyway, I head that the Shinjuku store was the biggest (I could be wrong) but it is set out over several floors next to a Takashimaya department store.

Back to Shibuya. The first thing you see stepping out of the station: Hachiko!

Those of you who don't know the story of Hachiko, it is about a dog that would walk to the station to greet his owner every day. Unfortunately, his owner died one day, but Hachiko would loyally still go to the station and wait every day for several years until his own death. A statue was made in remembrance of his loyalty.

The Hachiko statue is a popular meeting spot.

The famous Shibuya crossing. So we spent a few hours here looking at fishing shops. By then it was lunch time! We just picked a random shop that had a menu out front. I will never, ever be able to find that place again, but Shibuya is full of eateries.

They were serving only lunch specials, so chicken karaage for me.

And a Japanese hamburger for hubby, which came on a sizzle plate. Of course everything comes with rice, miso soup, salad and tofu, with the usual pickles on the side.

The burger was quite nice actually, it was just a patty, but light in texture. It had potatoes underneath it. The chicken was pretty good too. Have to say, very filling. Whoever said that Japanese portions are small were wrong. Either that, or we eat small portions ourselves.

We took a quick trip to Harajuku. We felt we should go there, since it is so famous, but we didn't have any particular plans for that area.

Harajuku station had a old European theme to it. There was a photo shoot occurring outside, with that girl as a model. But what was more interesting was the guy in black and white on the right. He was dancing away like mad and no one paid any attention to him.

Still dancing...

In the above picture, if you walk up straight to the street and then turn right, it will take you to a bridge where apparently all the cos players like to hang out. I didn't see any that day. Probably at the wrong time of the day. We went left down the main street.

Which was crowded and full of brand name shops that you can get anywhere around the world, so not that interested. Went into a few, but clothes don't really interest me that much any longer, plus they seemed really expensive!

The crowds led us to turn back quickly, have to admit, I saw a Barbie fashion store. Umm...I didn't go in, so not sure what it was actually selling...

We should have researched the Harajuku area more, we should have gone down Takashita-dori, which is to the North of the station, instead we went South. Takashita-dori is more a market type street for cheaper clothes and other stuff. Oh well, there is next time? ;)

Japanese really like their cream cakes...I like their cakes too :P

Feeling that we didn't want any more rice for dinner, we headed back to Shibuya and found MOS Burger! I had to try their rice burger (all right, so we did have rice after all!). It was OK, nothing that great.

We tried some of their other burgers too

 This was interesting, a whole coiled sausage.

Have to say, this was a much lighter dinner than a typical rice dish at a restaurant.

So that was the end of the day. Just leave you with the Shibuya crossing at night. See ya next time.