Harajuku

Harajuku
5/31
I woke up very early, around 6.  Koitabashi-san offered to show me around Tokyo, and met me at 12:30 in Harajuku with Maho Iwaya, an urban planning student at Toshidai.  The rail map was entirely in kanji, but I found Harajuku with some difficulty (by way of recognizing the character for 'shin' in Shinjuku) and made it on time.  Koitabashi-san treated us to lunch and returned to work, leaving Maho and me to explore.
Harajuku on a Sunday is crowded!  And full of young Japanese and tourists.  Most of the stores sell fashion accessories, clothing, and the like, although I spotted the Condomania! store that I remember from my last visit to Harajuku.  I bought a jersey for the Yokohama F. Marinos, who are Maho's home soccer team and pretty competitive in the J-league.  Hopefully I will be able to watch a match before I leave!

My hotel room in Meguro.  It's just big enough for two beds, a desk and a bathroom, which is tiny by U.S. standards but about as big as it gets in Tokyo.  My hosts remarked on how spacious it was when we walked in, probably because I get two beds to myself.  The bath is very deep in the Japanese style and the toilet has too many buttons.

 Meiji Jingu
On the other side of Harajuku station is Meiji Jingu, a Shinto shrine built in 1920.  The forested park was a welcome respite from the sunny Harajuku shopping district.  It's also less crowded, although we spotted a French tourist attempting yoga underneath one of these torii:

The torii looks bigger in person.  This one is at the entrance to the forested park, and there are a few others at entrances to the shrine proper.  Photo cred to Maho Iwaya.

We stumbled upon a traditional Japanese wedding taking place at the main shrine.  Nobody seemed to mind all the tourists taking photos, so I snapped one too:

Traditional Japanese wedding procession.  I'll preface this description by noting that I know next to nothing about Japanese weddings, but the man in white on the far right is (I think) the head priest, followed by another priest.  The bride is just exiting the gate, flanked on either side by her relatives.  Behind her follow several dozen members of her extended family, wearing black tuxedos or traditional kimono.

Izakaya
In the evening, we met Nobu, a friend of Maho's, at an izakaya, or bar, for dinner.  In the Japanese business world, it is common to drink with colleagues after work as a way to socialize and unwind.  The food was good but expensive (as everything in Tokyo is), and I'm starting to realize that the food budget I set for myself will be woefully inadequate if I plan to eat more than once per day.  Conversation was fun and I'm delighted to find that my listening comprehension is developing quickly, and my vocabulary is slowly expanding.

Word of the day: 失礼 (shitsurei) - discourtesy.  I'm trying not to step on too many toes, and this word comes in handy when asking if something is socially permissible.