After spending time enjoying the peace and tranquility of Meiji Shrine, we headed to Harajuku, and it is hard to imagine a bigger contrast in atmosphere. The Harajuku neighborhood is known as the center of Tokyo’s youth culture. Filled with trendy clothing boutiques, animal cafes, and crepe stands, the change in vibe is a bit of a shock to the system.
We walked down Takeshita Street and were immediately met with sensory overload. The narrow 350 meter long pedestrian street is packed with people and loud, trendy shops. Japan’s kawaii (“cute”) culture is on full display here. We saw young people dressed in cosplay and in whimsical, childlike outfits. Kawaii is essentially the fashion personification of cute, youthful innocence. It was fascinating and overwhelming all at once.
While my boys weren’t into the fashion statements being made on Takeshita Street, they were into another common sight on the street… Capsule Stores! Gachapon are small toys enclosed in a capsule that are dispensed from a small vending machine. The toys can be anything from figurines to key chains to tiny stuffed animals. Capsule stores have stacked rows of the coin-operated toy dispensers, and each machine’s toys have a different pop culture theme. We saw everything from Hello Kitty to the Duolingo owl, and my youngest was on a mission to find a One Piece gachapon. (He was successful!) It was fascinating to see customers young and old come in to check out the available options, some even using flashlights to try to see what treasures were hidden within the machines and capsules. This is definitely a whole subculture in Japan and we saw the capsule machines not just in dedicated stores but in train stations and on random sidewalks throughout the city. And they always had people looking to see if they could find that special gachapon that was missing from their collection.
While there is more to Harajuku than just Takeshita Street, that was about all we could take of it. It was so interesting to experience but definitely not something we could handle for too long. We walked the length of the street and then headed a few blocks over to get lunch. After that we headed to another famously crowded part of Japan… Shibuya!
