Tokyo Again 01.05

We took the long train journey back to Tokyo, and arrived at about 6pm. We had considered booking a capsule hotel for our last night, because it's so Japanese, but we chickened out. Most capsule hotels have male and female floors, and we didn't want to be separated.

We ended up booking beds at a hostel with 28 beds to a room. We didn't realise until we got there that the way they fit 28 people to a room was to put them in capsules! The capsules were like big pigeon holes. Each had a mattress, pillows and blankets and a light, and a curtain for privacy. We weren't separated thankfully, and we got to try sleeping 'capsule style'! The Japanese are so efficient!
We headed out to Harajuku, because we missed seeing it last time, and it's such a fashion icon in Japan. We were expecting to see maybe a few people dressed strangely, so we had our eyes peeled. As soon as we got off the train, girls in frilly Victorian style dresses, with frilly bags and socks and parasols came streaming towards the platform. They had ringlets in their hair and little bonnets. Some girls were dressed in maids outfits with frilly short skirts and lots of layers of petticoats. We were in shock!



We figured out that seeing as the crowds of frills seemed to be coming from one direction, that maybe there was a special event on for girls of that persuasion. We were so lucky to be there at the station, right at that moment!

We headed off into the backstreets of Harajuku, looking for somewhere to have dinner. The streets themselves were so quaint, they were cobblestone and there were dress shops everywhere selling dresses like what we had seen, and all sorts of colourful costume-type clothes.We eventually found somewhere to eat, and it had several frilly girls in there too. After dinner we bought some Asahi beer and some sparkling Sake to celebrate our last night in Japan.

Loren was so thrilled to see all those girls in costume. She thought we'd miss out on seeing them altogether because we weren't in Tokyo on the weekend, when hundreds of people dress up as manga characters and in maid outfits and other costumes and parade themselves in a park in Harajuku. Apparently most of the people who do it are people who get bullied at school, so they dress up to pretend to be someone else on the weekends. They are surrounded by curious onlookers and photographers, and they can dream of a life other than the one they suffer at school.
One other thing we missed in Japan was seeing the sumo wresting. We left Japan on the 2nd May, just before a huge wrestling tournament started on the 9th May. We were so disappointed, but it gives us an excuse to return.