The Wander Approach to Tourism: Walking Around Tokyo, Japan

I’m not much of a sight-seeing gal in the sense of “ROBOTICALLY MUST SEE ALL FAMOUS PLACES IN MY GUIDEBOOK!” Rather, I dig the approach of wandering til your butt is near ready to fall off from the miles accrued, and seeing what happens along the way.

Today, after maybe or maybe not getting locked inside Shinjuku Park, I escaped (or maybe was free the whole time) and briskly meandered 5 miles more.

Here’s the beauty of Tokyo: with 2 ENORMOUS Subway and Train systems, nearly every few blocks are served by one stop or another. This means that if you clutch the two Tokyo train maps in your musty little hand, you will never, ever be lost, as long as you can calculate direction with a map, and as long as you don’t get too lightheaded from being starving cause you’re too scared to order food since all the signs are in Japanese (again, which may or may not have happened). Moreover, should you ever get fatigued, you can always just hop on the train for beddy-bye.

Another nice feature of Tokyo is, in the words of Mike, “Japanese folks think all foreigners are poor.” This means that when I stop to whip out my camera, no one tries to smack me in the face and steal my hip electronics, since they likely have better ones themselves. And also, that would be oh so uncouth, and (unless the businessmen have been drinking) this seems a HIGHLY couth society.

Anyhoo, I found Harajuku! Ring a bell? Here’s a hint: Gwen Stefani has a huge Harajuku fetish, and those cute Japanese girls rock out in the background of such Stefani music vids. In short: a Harajuku girl is a trendy, punky, sexy young Japanese teen. And I found their lair! A pic of the PACKED street is in the photo below. I mean PACKED to the gills with hip young girls. There was even a Claire’s cheap jewelry store!!!

I also passed a myriad of *bing, bop, bing!* video game/ slot machine arcade halls stuffed silly with businessmen letting loose. Rumor on the street is some Japanese folks have let their electronic life utterly take over their existence. Thank heaven that never happens in the U.S. ;)

Bottom line: Rainbow glorious photo ops all around. Woo hoo!