Of weird theories and musings: Day 2: 6 Dec - Meiji-Jingu shrine/ Harajuku/ Shibuya/ Shinjuku

Day 2, rise and shine! It was a good weather day. We made our way to the Meiji-Jingumae station bright and early and grabbed breakfast from starbucks.

We got the Christmas drinks. one is a caramel something latte and the other is a berry something latte, plus a strawberry scone. The drinks taste kind of similar to me though.. Auntie me did check in Sg, the packaging is the same but the drinks are indeed unique to each country.

Essentially i'm a sucker for anything labelled with dong1 ji4 xian4 ding. I ate winter edition calbee chips, drank some winter edition sparkling juice thing .. the list goes on.. Heng i stay right smack on the equator, else i'll be going around eating seasonal 'limited edition' junk food all year round.

Entrance to the Shrine, look at the crowds.. Guess its a hot spot for both locals and tourists.

Its quite a long walk into the main shrine area but the greenery and the cool weather makes it a breeze. Most of the time you'll be walking on little pebbles so wear sensible shoes.

Changing leaves..

The little pebbles that line the path.

Eventually you'll reach the main shrine area which is quite a large compound. Its 'fenced' by structures like this.

There were 2 traditional wedding ceremonies going on. Everything looked almost the same. cos of the identical attire and make-up. Only the relatives changed.. must be a standard package thing..

You can purchase a small wooden board and write your wishes on it. Spotted quite a number of very singaporean sounding wishes...

So cute!

After the traditional experience, we went in search of the famous Harajuku cosplay. Unforunately we didn't really catch any except for a few 'drifting' through the Sunday harajuku shopping crowd. We walked as far as Yoyogi park but also didn't catch much action except some lacklustre street performances.

Check out the oversized Heidi queuing for lunch.

A very cute and hardworking salesgirl. We walked up and down the alley twice and she was still going on chirpily.

Crepes..they are everywhere.. I had a banana choc and vanilla ice cream crepe too.

We decided to just explore the area on foot. Spotted some really quaint buildings and shops along the way.

The one on the right is a tiny teppanyaki shop. You walk down a little flight of stairs to the basement.

This one only sells chopsticks. Those in the discount section outside starts at about $8.

Many garages look like this. Save space.

More people queuing up for snacks. In fact you don't really see much finger food around. Harajuku is an exception.

Eventually we found ourselves at Omotesando station. We took the subway to Shibuya in search of dinner.

This is one of my favorite pics.. like the overexposed feel.

Walking Coronas...

Taste test: Mos Milk tea. 270 yen. I prefer the Sg version. After some 'investigation', i concluded the difference is largely due the sweetener used. Gum sugar gives it a different taste.

Eventually we settled dinner at another coupon machine shop. and had krispy kreme for dessert. Yes .. 'winter edition' doughnuts. But the doughnuts were a let-down. They're not even warm. not fluffy either.

We continued to explore Shibuya...

Pachinko.. I saw a lady feed a 10,000 yen note into the machine.. just like that. That's almost 160 sgd... faint..

They have boxes of little ball bearings like this all over the shop. Imagine what would happen if you tripped over one...

We decided to visit one more place before calling it a night. Took the subway to Shinjuku with the sole purpose of exploring the red light district. It was a complete let-down. It was so discreet there was hardly any action except a few pimps trying to hand leftlets to my friend. There were some free magazines with advertisements for various services. They even use cute comic characters to illustrate their services.. Quirky..