Day 6 in Japan: Adventures in (Goth) Loli Land

Today we visited Harajuku, a district really popular for its various fashions and stores. For instance, there’s a lot of Gothic Lolita clothing stores there. Lots of cute girls in Gothic Lolita outfits, too.

Got off the Yamanote line and was greeted again by the sight of lots of people.

Harajuku

No seriously, the street was basically packed with students making the most of the last days of their winter break. Pretty much anything that wasn’t a clothing store had a line, like the many crepe stands there.

Main goal was to visit Bodyline, a store specializing in Gothic Lolita clothes at reasonable prices.

Bodyline

Wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside, so this is the best I could do.

Interesting decor though, chandeliers and red curtains in what looks like a converted storeroom. Awesome music too, “The Best of Eurobeat Disney”, which was a huge medley of Disney songs set to pumping techno.

They also had an interesting system where they only have one of each article of clothing in the store. If you want it, you pick it up, and eventually, a clerk will pick it up and go get a new one in your size and put it on the holding rack. Then, whenever you get to the one cashier, you retrieve the items on the holding rack. Kinda inefficient, but I suppose it’s a good system when space is a premium.

After letting my sister shop around to her heart’s content, we went out in search of lunch. Eventually, we decided on this chain of tempura rice bowl (tendon) places called Tenya.

Food Report: Tendon

Short version: Fried goodness for cheap.

We hit up a department store called La Foret after lunch called La Foret. Specifically, there’s this one floor in La Foret devoted to gothic lolita fashions.

La Foret

We around the different stores like Metamorphosis, Putumayo, and Alice and the Pirates (best store name evar, btw).

La Foret - Goth Loli Level

Sharp-eyed viewers will notice the girls dressed up in goth loli outfits to the side advertising their store. Didn’t really have the courage to ask them for a direct picture.

We wandered around Harajuku for basically the rest of the day. At some point, I saw this awesome acrylic piano by Kawai.

Awesome Piano

We also went to Shibuya for a bit, mostly to check out the Oriental Bazaar. Unfortunately, the Bazaar was closed when we went there, though.

In the station, we went to this place called the “Tokyu Food Show” since… well… we couldn’t resist something called the “Tokyu Food Show”.

Tokyu Food Show

Inside, they had another stand selling lots of different kinds of honey. Tried the coffee honey again and it still doesn’t taste like coffee. Maybe it’s supposed to be mixed into coffee?

Inside the Food Show

My sister got some White Clover Honey there which is really creamy and sweet. I went to some other stand and got this strange mixture of matcha green tea, soda, mint, and lime.

Green Tea Thingy

Not bad, actually, surprisingly not very sweet. But it was really expensive (250yen, I think?) for such a small cup.

It was getting late, so we went back to the hostel and met back up with Lu. We decided then to go to Akihabara to find dinner.

We ended up at this place called Go Go Curry which my sister had tried a few times in New York City.

Go Go Curry

Food Report: Curry (Japan)

Short version: It’s good, but oh gawd, that was a hell of a lot of food.

Afterwards, we went to go visit Laox in Akihabara, but it was closed for the night. We also went to this other duty-free shop and looked around. Ended up accidentally staying way after closing and actually had to be escorted out the back door since they already blocked off the main entrance! Great fun.

We also went to visit Taito Station there, a giant game center with lots of UFO catchers. Since it’s Akihabara, all of the UFO catchers were filled with Anime-related goods like Little Busters pillow cases, Miku figures, and K-On! plushies. They even had these awesome Konata and Tsukasa figures in Taito Station costumes specific to this arcade. I must’ve spent like 1000yen trying to get this one Hatsune Miku figure. (That I wasn’t allowed to take a picture of!)

Taito Station

Those things are really damn hard, too! They intentionally place them to look possible, but it’s not really a matter of simply grabbing the thing. Oftentimes, you need to be really precise, like getting the claw to grab into slits into the box or grabbing a ring.

In short, they got a lot of my money.