Shinjuku and Harajuku

On Saturday, I went to Shinjuku (新宿) with Ad—, one of the other JSPS fellows. Shinjuku is supposedly the world's busiest train station, with about 1.2 million people passing through it each day. It's also the location of the Park Hyatt featured in "Lost in Translation." There was enough to do to fill an entire day; we stayed from 11 in the morning until almost midnight. We saw a park and a museum, and we poked our heads into several department stores and smaller shops. I bought a compass that will hopefully prevent me from getting completely lost again. The Tokyo city government has a building in the area with a free 45th floor observation lounge, so we went up and took some pictures. The pictures turned out well since it was daytime, but supposedly the best time to visit the deck is at dusk, when all the bright neon lights start to turn on and the entire area makes its transformation from a business/retail district to a nightlife district. Ad— had been suggesting all day that we walk through the red-light district at night, and furthermore suggested that she didn't think she'd feel comfortable going alone. I was curious too, so we went to take a look. There was a street filled entirely with the famous "love hotels" that offer a choice of a two-hour "rest" for 5,300 yen or an overnight "stay" for 9,400 yen. There were also several establishments that had posters filled with pictures of women (and a few with men!) The pricing scheme (also posted outside) seemed very complicated, and I never really did figure out exactly what services were being offered. My general impression of the district is that it is clean, safe, and not remotely seedy. Near the love hotel street there was a store that sold pretty much everything. I normally object to American culture as being overly prudish, but even I was shocked in this store to see that children's toys (with children in the aisles! at 10:00 at night!) were being sold about 4 feet away from sex toys and pornography. I was so intrigued by this cultural difference that I took a movie with my camera of the short walk between the two merchandise sections. On Sunday I went to Harajuku (原宿) with Ad— and C—. Harajuku is directly south of Shinjuku, but has a completely different character. It's frequented by the teenage punk crowd, and has an assortment of small shops that sell goth clothing and other garments that are difficult to pull off after the age of 16. There is also a bridge in the area where on Sundays teenagers in outrageous costumes pose for pictures taken by a mass of tourists. Not wanting to miss out on the action, I took some pictures of my own :-) Some of the stores actually had some nice looking clothing, and there was one shirt that I really wanted to buy. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it in my size! When I tried on the large, it was obvious that it was cut for somebody with shoulders about two inches less broad. I think it was just this one particular label, since other shirts in the store were much larger, but it was disconcerting to be unable to buy clothing I wanted on account of being too large. I've had the opposite happen many times though, due to the paucity of size 30 pants in America.