Cliff’s 2008 Japan Trip — Day 3

Posted by cliff on November 25th, 2008 filed in Dreamer, Techie, Thrillseeker, Wanderer

The saga of my 2008 Japan trip continues with Day 3!

Hibiya Park

Since Maoi and I woke up earlier than everyone else, we decided to hang out in Hibiya Park, which was directly in front of the hotel. A crowd of schoolgirls had gathered at the entrance of the park for some sort of field trip. My chromosomes tingled.

We discovered that there was a flower show of some sort in the park itself, which explained the schoolgirl thing. There was also little exhibits by landscapers. These were lovely, but would probably drive non-Japanese insane, or at least people who don’t understand the Japanese aesthetic. Most of them looked like tiny, vaguely overrun stretches of Japanese forest, which is the whole point — the care put into the landscaping was invisible, making it seem like it naturally occurred. Which of course, it didn’t, since very few things in urban Tokyo occur naturally.

There were also a lot of people in wheelchairs riding around shouting into megaphones. Not sure what was going on there but it seemed very important.

We also saw some people running around in band uniforms. Apparently, in anticipation of the long weekend, there was a free classical music concert at the park. Awesome.

Maoi finished off her cig, we met up with her mom and brother, and headed off to– SHIBUYA!

More after the break.

Shibuya

I wasn’t too sure about bringing Maoi’s mom to Shibuya, this being the trendy center of Japanese youth fashion, and what she actually wanted was to find a 100 yen store to buy knick-knacks. But since we had to pickup our rental cellphones at the Softbank, it couldn’t be helped.

The taxi picked us up at the hotel and dumped us at the Scramble Crossing.

It was at this point that I realized that ‘World’s Busiest Crossing’ was no exaggeration. Pressed up against a funky-smelling ganguro girl, I waited for the light to turn green.

And then all hell broke loose.

Somehow we made it all the way to the Softbank, obtained phones, and then with the lines of communication finally established, Maoi and I detached ourselves from the mothership and explored on our own.

For some reason, we decided to check out an electronics and appliance store first. In Shibuya. 8 floors of gadgets can’t be wrong! Or so we thought. Actually the prices weren’t all that different from what they would be in, say, Greenhills, although there was a lot of neat stuff that we couldn’t understand.

We were going about this all wrong. So we entered the most obvious landmark in the area, the Shibuya 109.

Shibuya 109

Now this is what I was talking about! 8 floors of trendy, hip fashion for young women. Wait, young women?

Granted, this meant I had no shortage of snappily-dressed Japanese cuties to behold. And this also meant that Maoi saw a few items that she thought would look good on her. But I felt like a fish out of water. Where were the hip men’s clothes? And why was it getting so hard to think?

Answer: 2pm and we hadn’t had lunch. So we wandered down Dogenzaka until we stumbled upon the venerable Freshness Burger.

Freshness Burger

The sign doesn’t lie. I had the Classic Freshness Burger and it was the freshest-tasting burger I have ever had. I’ve been to the US and I’m a big fan of the In-and-Out Burger, animal style. This blew it away. And our combined orders set me back 1000 yen, a tenth of that bloody cafeteria meal in Ginza.

The condiment rack at Freshness Burger is stocked with things you probably would never expect at a burger joint. Two kinds of mustard, catsup, olive oil, chili oil, a few kinds of pepper, some Japanese spices, and my favorite: curry powder.

Curry powder on a Freshness Burger is one of life’s true joys.

Don Quixote

We noticed a lot of school kids milling in and out of this intimidating-looking bargain center with tight aisles. They were snapping up costumes for the Halloween parties that night, and they weren’t messing around with the costumes either, this being Tokyo, and Shibuya besides. Rejuvenated by Freshness, we plunged into the Don Quixote and discovered a wonderland.

Five floors (and a basement) full of anything you could possibly want as an end-consumer. It started innocuously enough — cool hats (including one that commemorated Black Monday — the 1984 Wall Street crash), intriguing and incomprehensible bathroom supplies, konbini food.

Neon-colored signs on the stairs beckoned us onward.

Suddenly: cool pointy rocker boots. Awesome silver jewelry. Nerv and Gundam-themed Zippo lighters. Authentic Omega and Cartier watches. Electronics of every sort. Colored disposable contact lenses.

This was the mother of all bargain stores.

Gundam overruns. Portable yakitori grills. Japanese-dubbed Disney DVDs. Those silly extending boxing-glove guns kids love.  Flatscreen TVs and UMPCs.

I was beginning to think this place had everything — but at this point I hadn’t wandered through the black curtain. The significance of the back curtain in Japanese shops would become clear to me on a later date. But not today.

Wandering the Side Streets

We stumbled out dazed but with our wallets slightly dented. I was here for fashion, damn it, and I wasn’t going to get it from the department stores. No, having played The World Ends With You I was convinced that the really good finds were in the boutiques along the streets. So we wandered for a bit.

We passed a Tokyu full of western designer brands and I commented, “I’ll bet your mom and brother are here.”

For TWEWY fans, a short cheat sheet:

Shibuya 109 = Shibuya 104

Tokyu = Shibukyu

Tokyu Hands = Shibu-Q Heads

HMV = AMV

Tower Records = Towa Records

We eventually emerged from the sidestreets (filled with awesome graffiti that was being painted over for new construction, boo) and found ourselves in front of Flash Report, which was filled with urban fashion that, as Maoi put it, “I would actually wear.”

A short explanation. Urban hip fashion is usually too tame (and therefore lame) or too far out (and therefore requires a higher Brave rating than most Filipinos can muster). This somehow hit a sweet spot between those two extremes, causing my fiancee to sink a sizeable investment into this particular label. I was personally seduced by a faux-leather jacket that I ended up wearing for the rest of the trip.

Then we received a call from Maoi’s mom. She was getting tired and bored with Shibuya and wanted to find a 100 yen store. In Harajuku. So we were to hightail it to Tokyu. The trouble is, we didn’t know which Tokyu they meant. So we braved the Scramble Crossing again to get to the Tokyu Shibuya Station.

Hachiko