Shopping in Harajuku

Yesterday I met up with Allison, the other Furman exchange student, and we decided to explore Harajuku together. This is the area of Tokyo known for their crazy styles and bizarre fashions. It is also the inspiration for Gwen Stefani's fashion lines and perfumes. The start of my day was a little rough as I got distracted on the subway line by a cute little kid that wanted to practice Japanese with me. I lost track of the stations and ended up riding the subway for an extra 5 stops! Oops. But that was only a 30 minute delay...

We started off by quickly walking through Meji Shrine, one of my favorite shrines that I have been to in Japan. Though it was my third time to visit it, I was still amazed by the massive tori gates that lead up to the main area.

A young girl running around the shrine.                    

My first visit in 2009.

We then strolled through Takeshita-dori, the street famous for the hottest trends in Tokyo along with multiple crepe restaurants.

While walking around Harajuku, I actually ran into another girl in our program that was wondering around on her own. It's amazing that in such as big city, I ran into one of the five people I knew. She joined us for the rest of the day. 

We spent an hour in Kiddy Land, a giant multistory shop devoted to cute things for kids. One whole floor was for Hello Kitty. Heaven. It was with great restraint that I did not buy the giant Hello Kitty that  was roughly the size of me. Mom and Dad, that's what I want for my birthday. 

That's basically what it looked like.

Lastly, we spent over an hour in a candy shop, fascinated at how they were able to get a small print of Hello Kitty into hard candy. 

They started with giant blocks of candy.

Layered it. 

Stretched it out. 

And cut them into tiny pieces. 

  Unfortunately they messed up a bit, because one of Hello Kitty's ears was too big, and therefore couldn't sell the candy. But they gave it out as free samples instead!