Sunday 17/01//10 - Harajuku and Karaoke

Yay!

Today we had breakfast at a cool cafe underground. Unfortunately Chrissy's "Cafe au lait" was a bit heavy on the lait. Live and learn! Even though it was Sunday there was a big group of business people being busy together in the cafe.


We walked to Shinjuku station and took the train to Harajuku. We walked through the park to Meiji Jingu shrine which was packed with families and tourists. Our next goal was to find the (mysteious) Monocle shop in omote sando. We walked through Teramachi street with only a brief Lolita stop at Body Line, through some back streets on the lookout for 6% Doki Doki and finally arrived at Omote Sando Hills, the rumoured location of Monocle.

Chrissy Interjects: Bodyline is fantastic. Everything was on special and really cheap. I was thinking of buying a skirt for 1990 Yen (about $25). It was nice except that the bow on the front isn't detachable and it's shirred rather than laced. I didn't end up buying anything but I do love visiting Bodyline. The music is always remix'd Disney songs! We couldn't find 6% Doki Doki :-(

Charles Continues: I finally asked someone where the shop was and they eventually said that it was closed (HOW MYSTERIOUS). So we went to Kiddy Land instead. This year's fad is toy film cameras and I picked up some brochures.

Chrissy Interjects: I bought some BB Cream in KiddyLand. I was interested because it was reviewed recently on Lolita Charm. Apparently it's what makes korean celebrities sparkle. I don't know why they had it in a toy shop. Only thing I bought all day :-)

Charles Continues: We walked back to the station, eating lunch at Yoshinoyas on the way. Yoshinoyas sells bowls of rice with strips of beef on top... and condiments. It's cheap and reasonably delicious.

We got on the train to Shibuya (only one stop) to see Yuka and Mari (Chrissy's friends from school who live in Canberra). We met them at the "Hachiko Statue" a famous landmark at Shibuya station. Heaps of other people had the same idea as us, waiting for their friends at Hachiko, taking pictures etc.

Chrissy Interjects: Hachiko statue is a statue of a dog. It's pretty much the exact same story as the Dog on the Tuckerbox. The dog continued to meet its master at Shibuya station 5 years after the master stopped coming.

We found Mari and Yuka who were going to take us to Karaoke, so we wandered around until we saw カラオケ　on a building. Mari put her name down for a spot and we waited for about 20 minutes. Karaoke was a lot of fun, they had thousands of songs, both japanese and western and we all had a go to the best of our ability. The japanese were good practice for reading japanese. We got about 5%.... (;_;) Too fast!

After Karaoke we went to have dinner and ate at a Korean restaurant in a department store it was delicious! We said goodbye to Mari and Yuka at the station as they were going back to their place in Yokohama. We took the train back to Shinjuku and promptly got lost in the depths of Shinjuku station. Bad! We ended up in mystery streets and wandered for ages. We found a Tokyu hands and took a cute picture booth picture (PIKURA). Eventually we relented to a map and plotted a route back to the hotel. All is well! Chrissy will update with Desserts Post tomorrow!