Day 4 - Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya (on our own)

Today the guided tour ended and we bade farewell to our guide Xiao-chuan at Narita Airport. We then took a shuttle to Prince Hotel in Sunshine City, Ikebukuro, where we left our bags. We proceeded to explore Tokyo by ourselves armed with what turned out to be an extremely useful Lonely Planet guide I had borrowed from the library before coming.

First stop: 福助 ramen restaurant. It's an eatery version of the ubiquitous $10, 10min haircut shops that have sprouted all across Singapore. Here, we select what dish you want on a vending machine, pop in money and get issued a ticket which you then hand to the restaurant hands who proceed to serve the dish up in less than a minute. No fuss, no frills. I loved it! The dishes were priced around 600-800 yen (1000yen = S$15).

Lunch at 福助 ramen restaurant

After lunch, we took the subway to Shinjuku, where we visited a few of the huge department stores like Takashimaya, as well as a quaint sidestreet near the redlight district called Piss Alley lined by yakitori shops and watering holes.

Me and sis at Piss Alley in Shinjuku

Next stop: Harajuku, Tokyo's heart of art and fashion. This is where strangely clothed youth hang out from Goths to ganguro girls (excessively tanned, bleached hair look) to girls in little bo-peep getups. Also saw quite a number of black hiphopsters with hiphop clothing stores. We also walked along Omotesando, Tokyo's answer to Paris' Champs Elyses, where grand facades of haute couture labels line the entire street.



Mum, me and sis along Takeshita St, Harajuku

Dinner at the Curry 研究所 at Shibuya which served curries from around the world. I had some non-descript English vegetable curry which tasted suspiciously like Jap curry. Wasn't cheap, but food and ambience were pretty good.


After dinner, I unilaterally (and characteristically whimsically) decided that we were going on a quest for statue of Achiko the dog. Apparently a professor that lived in Shibuya during the 1920s kept a Akita dog which waited for him to return everyday without fail at the station, even after its owner died in 1925. We had quite a bit of trouble finding Achiko, but finally caught sight of it hidden amidst a sea of umbrella-wielding people waiting fof their friends. I gather from that it's a popular meeting spot.


Woof!


Me and umbrella in Shibuya