Chrissy: Today we finally got to go to Harajuku and Shibuya! We took the train to Omote-Sando and walked down Omotesando street. We went into the Spiral builidng which is full of pretty yet expensive shops. It was beautifully decorated with lights and chandeliers and red carpet! Unfortunately, no photos were allowed.
Next we went to Kiddyland on Omotesando. It is 5 or 6 floors of toys! I mainly wanted to look at the Licca-Chan and Blythe dolls, but there was enough to keep me occupied for about an hour. I really like Blythe dolls.
Charles: They had some nice remote controlled helicopters and cute little robots! Perhaps I'll buy one later in our trip. One whole floor was Snoopy and on the other floors the space was neatly divided into areas corresponding to each franchise. Totoro, Disney, Hello Kitty and many others we didn't know.
Chrissy: We kept on walking and found Takeshi-dori, which is parallel to Omotesando. It's pedestrian only, and was jam-packed full of hip kids (some dragging their long-suffering parents) and fashion shops. The clothes in these shops were gorgeous! I saw a shop that had a really pretty little dress on the mannequin, and Iasked if they had any more. The lady took the dress off the mannequin and PUT ME IN IT. It was way too big, so she adjusted straps and things and then another assistant came and attacked it from the back with a big stretchy clasp to pull it in. They assured me that I looked "kawaii", but then I found out that it was 19,000 yen. Chucky and I skillfully extracted ourselves.
I looked at some Gothic and Lolita shops that were on a little guide I found on the internet. They were mostly punkish, which I found pretty surprising. It's probably more fashionable to be punk-gothic-lolita right now that just Lolita.
I found a shop called Body Line that sold really cheap Lolita clothes. I could get a whole outfit (skirt, shirt and bolero) for 10,000 yen. That's about 4 or 5 times cheaper than the famous shops like Baby, The Stars Shine Bright and Angelic Pretty! I thought it was a really good deal! I wasn't allowed to try on the clothes at the shop, so I was a bit worried that it wouldn't fit well. There were so many beautiful outfits I could have bought, but in the end I got an outfit the same as one on a mannequin: see below! I didn't get a petticoat because I thought the prices were exorbitant, and I think I can make one easily at home. So my skirt is not as full as it should be. I also need to figure out some shoes and socks!
We went to the Cosplay Bridge and saw a couple of kids posing for the cameras. It wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it would be! Then we walked to the Meiji shrine in Harajuku park. It was a really beautiful park, thick with huge trees. At the shrine, we were lucky enough to see a wedding procession! At first I didn't know what was going on, so I just took photos like all the other foreigners around. The bride was so beautiful!
It was so crazy to go from Takeshi-dori, with its super-modern cosplay boys and girls, to the Meiji shrine, which is peaceful and beautiful despite being full of people. Those two places are over the road from each other. Those cosplay kids may have a traditional wedding like the one I saw at the shrine!
We tried to find Metamorphose, which is a Gothic and Lolita shop I really wanted to see. It totally wasn't there! I used the address that was on their website from about 3 weeks ago. Bizarre.
We went to the Laforet building, which is a shopping plaza with about 6 floors of fashions. We went all the way up to the top floor and worked our way down, to find that the Lolita fashions were in the BASEMENT. Gosh we were tired by the time we got there. They had an Angelic Pretty store there, which sold some really cute clothes. I'm not into dresses with cakes and stuff on them, I like flowers and things more. The price for a dress was 26000 yen, and shirts were around 18000, as far as I can remember. There was also a small Metamorphose shop there! As expected, their clothes were amazingly beautiful and amazingly too expensive for me.
We went to Tokyo Tower next. It was quite a long trip on the train, as we had to stop over somewhere. We were SO tired and it was a long walk to the tower. It was worth it! Tokyo Tower is beautiful at night, it shines bright orange. Out the front there was a Christmas illumination complete with a miniature Tokyo Tower.
At the hotel I finally got to try on my clothes. Hooray!