The day after Harajuku

We made it to Harajuku and back in one piece. The crowds in the train on the way back were truly impressive. I'd intended to take lots of pictures of the people walking around the street but ended up having to curtail that. EVERYWHERE on the Takeshita Dorii at nearly every shop was a sign that said "no photos Fuck OFF!!!" We were of course all curious about this so I made the wife ask onn of the shop keepers who was dressed like a Victorian maiden why. The answer was that apparently many many foreigners show up to Harajuku and would take pictures of people while they were shopping in these shop's. Customers had started to complain and so the shop owner's responded in that manner. In fact when my sister asked one garishly dressed girl if she could take her picture, she declined. So we only got two impressively dressed girls to agree to pictures with the sis. The rest of our time was spent simply wandering and allowing my sister to do shopping. She is a fan of punk culture and was very impressed by what she saw and has stated her intention of sewing some of the things she saw as it's just available in the states.

Notice the girl in the background of the picture above. red tutu thingie on. strutting like a peacock on parade and you DONT want people to take your picture? Come on!! This picture is of Takeshita street as walk back toward the train station. Family is directly in front of me. My girls got lots of attention from the japanese girls if i do say so myself and i heard alot of people exclaiming "kawaiiiiiiii" which means "cute" in Japanese. I may not be the best looking guy in the world, but apparently i've got pretty genes.....
This was taken from the doorway of one of the shops. This is the clothes worn by the girls trying to be "living angel" or "lolita" style. That's what the signs said anyway. It was so pink it was painful to the eyes. I wish I'd been able to get the proprietor to agree to let us take her picture she was something to see. And now for the bad news. The only picture we got of my sister with some really impressive looking Lolita girls is on the camera she borrowed from my dad. Who met her at the airport with it, the charger and no connection cord for hooking it up to the computer. The camera is a bit old and so the memory card on the dang thing is a huge compactflash card. Compact my ass. It's almost as big as my palm!!! So, I'm going to post some pictures downloaded from the internet. They are very similar to what we saw though.

and this one, i think we saw her sister.

these girls are just out there. Several of them walked by us.

All in All a very fun day. We'd intended to go to a shrine as well and let the sister see that but after 6 hours in Harajuku we were all just beat. On top of that S and I had to go and see the brand new baby of her best friend who was still in the hospital. The baby is fine, nearly 4 days old but in Japan even if you had an uncomplicated birth you stay in the hospital for about a week. The kids got back to house and Y ate and crawled into the bed while we weren't looking. One minute she was there, the next grandpa was pointing her out curled up in the bed refusing to get out and take a shower. Very cute. So today, I'll be driving in Japan for the first time in several years. We're heading over to see 2 of S's other very good friends who've not seen us in years. A is doing good and enjoying herself. Currently sitting next to me reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which is a hell of a book and was recommended to me by a friend. The kids are sitting at the table eating breakfast and S is having fish eggs and rice. Ughh. Today is not likely to be a big day for blogging but if anything interesting comes up I'll post it.