Japan - Day 3 (Meiji Shrine, Harajuku, Shibuya)

Today we had a very full day! First we got up and went to go meet a couple of new friends: Robert and Rafael.

They are from Germany and they are visiting Japan for 10 days. They were a lot of fun and surprisingly full of energy for having just arrived the night before.

Rafael is a YouTube star! He has over 100,000 subscribers and makes workout videos. I totally would love to start using them when I work out, but unfortunately they’re in German. So if any of my old friends from Bosch want to get in shape, they should check out his videos.

https://www.youtube.com/user/infitnesstv

After meeting up with them it was time for brunch! Trevor brought us to the best udon place you can find. They have massive bowls of udon and will give you up to 1.5 or even double portion all for the same price! Naturally I had to go for the double portion and I’m happy to say that I finished it. It was delicious and kept me going for almost the whole rest of the day.

After udon we headed over to Nogi’s shrine. He was the general for the emperor Meiji and as soon as Meiji died he slit his wife’s throat and committed suicide himself.

Anna contemplating her life

It’s actually a really popular place for people to get married…I don’t really understand the logic behind that, but I also don’t understand why he had to commit suicide so I guess it’s just a really different way of thinking about things.

We had fun though! Next we went to Yoyogi park and the Meiji shrine. We had a nice stroll through the wide, gravel road under the shade of massive trees. The actual shrine wasn’t the most impressive to me, but it was fun to chat and see people along the way.

Speaking of people watching, we got a really great taste of it next in Harajuku. Harajuku is where all the young people in Tokyo hang out and where you can really see all their fashion. It’s so fun! We split off from Trevor, Robert, and Rafael so they could go to Senso-ji and we could head to Shibuya.

When we walked back through Takeshita Dori we tried some of the crepes they were known for and did a little shopping. Although none of us bought anything, I think we were all pretty tempted to. They had suits in every color of the rainbow! I love that. I’ll have to come back again someday when I have some money.

Shibuya! We went to the Shibuya crossing, and saw Hachiko's statue. Hachiko is a famous dog because he would go to the station to meet his owner every day after work. After his owner passed away he kept going back to the station every day to wait for him for many years. 

That’s it. We went home and went to bed.