MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2023

A TOKYO VARIETY PACK: SUMO, HARAJUKU, MEIJI SHRINE, AND SHIBUYA

In Tokyo, our hotel was in the sumo district (full of sumo iconography and representation), and this morning’s activity had us going a short distance to check out a sumo wrestling demo for ourselves.

The tournament center across the street from our hotel

As seen on the way to the sumo center. Too cute not to photograph!

We drove a short way to the center, where we found our seats and were treated to a demo by two sumo wrestlers who explained the rules of the sport while Maho was the moderator. It was a cute show with lots of little groaner jokes scripted in – very entertaining.

After the demo, anyone who wanted to could put on a sumo costume, enter the ring, and have a go at the wrestlers. It was definitely funny.

Caitlyn, Shannyn, Natalie, 🇺🇸Emma, Maho, and Sharon take on the wrestlers

After the wrestling, we stayed at the center for a tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) lunch, with potato salad, cole slaw, and a changko soup which is the traditional soup the wrestlers eat. Still no forks – the pork was pre-cut into pieces so you could eat it with chopsticks. It was pretty good! Very crispy.

After lunch, we had a free day and plans to meet up as a group at night, and everyone really split off and did their own thing. I wanted to check out Harajuku (the neighborhood/style that Gwen Stefani made famous in the US in 2004) just to walk around the shops and take some photos of the colorful atmosphere. Maho and Mister were going to find some vintage handbags in a nearby neighborhood, so we shared a cab over there and I walked over to Harajuku.

My first stop was a store called Alice on Wednesday, a three-story store selling all Alice in Wonderland merchandise. You even entered through a little door. I fully expected to leave here with a shopping bag full of stuff, but it was all pretty trinkety. Definitely fun to walk around either way!

I next walked past Tokyu Plaza, a department store with a particularly photogenic entrance, so I had to stop and admire it.

As I was strolling, I was also on my way to a highly-rated cat cafe in the area. These animals cafes are all over the place in Japan and particularly in Tokyo; it started with cats but now there are puppy cafes, owl cafes, ferret, snake, otter, hamster, and penguin cafes, and, as it turns out, hedgehog cafes. I walked past the sign for one of them, and decided I needed to switch my plan from cat to hedgehog. Advertising works.

I walked in and put my name on a list, and they had me wait in the stairwell for about 30 minutes before calling me into the cafe.

They called me over, got me gloves and an apron, and introduced me to my hedgehog named Honey, teaching me how to safely pick up, hold, and feed her (I had gone with the package that included little dried work treats).

There was also a free drink included so I went and got a little cup of coffee. It was a cafe, after all.

Honey was so sweet and kept falling asleep in my hand. 🥹

Though at one point there was a little bit of musical chairs and they shifted me off of Honey and onto a different, grumpier hedgehog in the case next door. He didn’t seem to like being picked up, so I took my one photo and then just watched him contentedly eat and drink and nap.

This is one of those experiences that feels quintessentially Japan. And while the place was very clean and the people were friendly and all of the hedgehogs seemed to be treated well and were up for adoption… I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Even with the animals treated well, it didn’t feel the most ethical to have tourists picking them up and putting them down all day. I enjoyed my time, I don’t know that I would do it again.

Bidding farewell to the hedgehogs, I found my way to the nearby Takeshita Street, which is the heart of Harajuku. It’s such a fun street to walk down, full of kawaii, the spirit of cute things in Japan, from every type of rainbow food to frilly and sparkly clothes, giant babydoll platform shoes, games, candy, and all types of colorful stimulation.

One of the first things I stumbled on was a crepe shop with seemingly endless choices and a very long line, so I decided it must be good. They have every possible combination of ingredients –mostly sweet but a few savory– so you just order by number, and they whip it up so fast! I got a strawberry, chocolate, and custard one and while it was mostly whipped cream (tourists!) it definitely hit the spot for an afternoon snack.

Yes!

I then just took my time strolling down the street and taking it all in, sometimes wandering into stores for a closer look.

Leaving Takeshita Street, I walked about 10 minutes – simply to the other side of nearby train tracks – and found myself in a totally different world. Even though I had been to a lot of Shinto shrines by this point in the trip, the Meiji Shrine is one of Tokyo’s most famous, and the fact that it was right next to Harajuku made me pay it a visit.

This shrine is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken, and while much of it was destroyed by American air raids in WWII (😑), the Japanese rebuilt it at the site in 1958.

The biggest tori gate (of this style) in Japan

I took the opportunity while I was here on this beautiful day in this sacred Shinto space to have a moment of reflection and write down a prayer, which you put along with an offering of yen in an envelope, and drop it into the offertory box there. Then the written prayers are collected every day and offered up to the kami (see day 2!) at the next morning’s rite.

While at the shrine, I also decided to partake in the omikuji and get my fortune for the day – in this case an oracle poem composed by Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken whose spirits are said be enshrined at the site. The vertical boxes on the left and right are filled with little dowels, and you shake the box until one comes out of a small hole. The number on the dowel corresponds to which little drawer you open to collect your fortune. This one was less overtly “fortune” than the one I had gotten at Nonomiya Shrine in Kyoto, and more of a guided poem, but lovely and meaningful either way.

On my way out, I stopped to admire a beautiful display of ikebana, the art of Japanese floral arranging.

Leaving the shrine, I headed back to the hotel to clean up and meet the group in Shibuya where we had reservations at Shibuya Sky, a rooftop view of the city.

Shibuya is the famous busy intersection and crosswalks that you always see an aerial view of in Tokyo – kind of like the Times Square.

As a side note, before/during/after the trip I had been watching the Netflix show Alice in Borderland which takes place in Tokyo, largely in Shibuya, so it was fresh in my mind and kind of fun to find my bearings in that location. (Highly recommend the show, by the way, though fair warning it’s one of the most violent shows I’ve ever seen! It’s cut from the same cloth as Squid Game.)

At this point I was looking everywhere to try to find the building with the Shibuya Sky experience, but my Google Maps dot was not exact, there was a ton of construction, and the app was taking me a way that I couldn’t actually go. I definitely felt like an idiot that I couldn’t find this major tourist attraction, but eventually I got my bearings and found my way, and coincidentally ran into a bunch of the group who were getting there at the same time.

The one truly shitty thing about tonight is that we were looking around for American Emma who was set to join us but never showed, and found out the next day that she had tested positive for Covid. I was so crushed for her! She had been looking forward to Tokyo more than any part of the trip, and she had to spend the rest of it stuck in her hotel room. I think she was able to do the punk photo shoot she wanted and get the new tattoo she wanted on the very last day, which I’m sure she was excited about, but MAN what a bummer.

A wild elevator ride

Easily the cleanest bathroom I’ve ever seen at a major tourist attraction. And straight out of Severance.

After getting our fill of skyline, Shannon, Sharon, Caitlin and I stayed to have a drink at the Shibuya Sky bar before calling it a night.