Gone Shopping

This week is Golden Week in Japan, a lot of companies close for the whole week (hence Andrew being on holiday) as the week contains three or four individual holiday days. Today is Greenery Day, and entry to all Tokyo Zoos and the Sea Life Centre is free. So you'd think we should have known better than to go somewhere so poplar, no!

The park around the centre is huge and was very crowded with picnickers; the queue to get into the centre was massive, our fault I guess, we should have arrived there a lot earlier. So we had a nice time having a look around and taking photos from the large observation building. Then it started raining during lunch.

We decided to give up on the aquarium and took the train to Harajuku, area of the expressively dressed and the Meiji Shrine. The two cannot be so different. The area around Harajuku Station is absolutely packed with people, shops, cafes and beauty saloons. The photo I have chosen as today's blip captures this to a certain respect, it is the entrance to a shopping complex (completely genuine all done with mirrors, not Photoshop). The shrine on the other hand is a peaceful haven, set in the middle of a large wood, its like moving immediately from cosmopolitan Tokyo into a distant forest.