Shibuya

was pretty disappointing... really. Consumerist to the brim... even the back-alley streets had designer-esque clothing stores about them. We passed by Prada, Gucci, Louis Vitton, etc etc. There were astounding amounts of white people (lots with small children) roaming around this area as well. Which makes one wonder why they left America for a highly westernized part of an otherwise quirky and uniquely beautiful country like Japan? Strange, silly people.

"Where are the cosplayers? ;-;" we thought. We'll probably go back later to Shibuya/Harajuku to find them.





There were two stores of interest- well.. Condomania wasn't that interesting. It was very very VERY small and gimmicky.



However Kiddie Land was a diamond in the rough. Japanese toys and knick-knacky wonders in the midst of boring designer-brand shit was refreshing.
and it was buzzing

Yes, they are tit-cookies.

In hindsight, I should've taken a video clip of a wall full of humping USB dogs. But you'll hafta take my word on it that they were humping USB dogs.


Arcade games aren't just for adults! They start em young in Japan. This beauty was the Pokemon arcade machine. Prepare yo ass for closeups.






Japanese kids are so damn lucky.



Which brings me to the goddamn coolest thing I've ever seen.
MARIO BOARD GAMES!

This one is sort of like Labyrinth, with a ball you control in a maze.


I would guess it's like Jenga, but the back of the box made it seem not-like-Jenga.


Oh, I forgot the other store of interest which we randomly stumbled into, and I had my hopes up that we'd find it at some point...
The T-Shirt in a Tube shop! :D (It's actually called UT)




I was very happy to get an authentic 1500yen (15 buck) t-shirt with something like a pile of cartoon pig zombie ghosts on it. (8D sweeeet) They have hundreds of different Tshirts all year, apparently, always 1500yen and usually pretty cool.



But then, Shibuya got really really cool. Yoyogi Park is beautiful. No park like that could exist in America.







why do I make so many fricken DERP faces? :B

Also Yoyogi Park is home to some crazy crap, aside from beautiful crap.
There's an entire walkway in the park where bands play, in a row, in one mess of sound. There's random musicians, dancers, artists and one guy practicing nunchaku all through the park as well.
I didn't get a good pic of these guys but they were all "american-style rock n' rollers," meaning they looked like Fonzie with huge pompadours.
And this was a girl band whom played steeldrums among the throngs of jrock on the music-block. Maybe videos later. There was also a crazy lady judo-dancing (?) in the park.

And we stopped at an extremely small and very crowded NewsDay (7-11) and found some real-live Calorie Mate (as made famous in Metal Gear 3: Snake Eater) but I thought the place was pic-worthy :x





In hindsight, not a bad day, just not what we were expecting at all. We didn't see any wacky cosplayers, and no streets and streets of awesome shops. But goddamnit, it was lovely in a different way.