Full Bloom

Day 86
I grabbed my phone and looked up the nearby attractions for today, Starting out with the small shrine, five minutes away from the hostel named "Taisoji Temple". The contrast between new and old is very cool at this location, the buddha statue is right next to a pair of cherry blossoms and a skyscraper. I only spent about 15 minutes here because although it looks cool, there is a lot more to be seen elsewhere.

Next stop was Shinjuku Gyoen, An enormous park located five

minutes away from Taisoji. I finally saw the full bloom that I was looking for. Thousand of people where gathered to watch the flower petals fall. I was walking around in here several hours, met up with Malthe and took another lap around the park. Next stop was Yoyogi park and the Meiji Jingu shrine.

In the middle of Tokyo there is an enormous forest with tall and dense greenery. It's so dense in fact, that in the middle of it I forgot I was in a city. This forest houses the Legendary Meiji shrine. A place which, in my opinion was not as interesting as the forest itself. It may also have been because there where more people here than any other shrine so far... We walked out of the forest and walked towards Harajuku, Takeshita street. This place is a central part of Japanese youth culture. There is the weirdest fashion, tons of crepes and candy, way to many starbucks and more people than you would be able to count. The famous clothing style "Harajuku fashion" originated from here, and although the trend is mostly over, you can still see some people hinting that they used to wear it.

Malthe had class mate who just arrived in Tokyo with her boyfriend. We decided to meet up for coffee with them and head towards Akihabara for food and sightseeing. We where constantly laughing at my attempts to speak danish, I am happy that the train ride wasn't too long because it was hard not to make a lot of noise in the train. "Akiba" is the biggest Video game/Anime/Manga/Electronics/Geek-In-General district in all of Japan. The first thing that happens when the train doors open is that you get blasted in the face with anime music, go to the escalator that is covered in cartoons telling you to check out their restaurants and to follow the arrows for "Electric city". This area has the biggest camera stores and used game shops I've ever seen, there are screens and signs on every building with various anime characters talking to the masses on the street. We walked into a "Golden Kamuy" themed Izakaya and had a big meal before heading back for sleep with the last trains.