First stop was Harajuku Station and the start of the famous Takeshita-Dori Street, site of every tween age dream of all that is cute and whacky .......
Although these crepes looked nightmarish to us ......
As did Tokyo's first and only micro pig cafe "Mipig Cafe". And there was a queue of people waiting to enter!!
We did take the time to admire its beautiful bronze doors however!
From here we made our way to Omote-sando, a long, beautiful, tree lined avenue of glossy luxury brand flagship stores, wealthy looking shoppers (under umbrellas today) and cars to match ............
We were intrigued by this "Gentle Monster" store next to Prada Tower.
We read later that Gentle Monster started in South Korea (selling luxury sunglasses - now a multibillion dollar business) and this store, its first in Tokyo, only opened last month. There was a queue about 500mts long (in the RAIN) all along the avenue waiting to be allowed into the shop.
Rob had a good look at the Fender (made in Japan) store - celebrating the 70th birthday of Fender guitar making!
Our destination was the exquisite Nezu Museum in Minamiaoyama. The museum is home to the private collection of pre-modern Japanese and East Asian Art assembled by the wealthy industrialist Nezu Kaichiro (who died in 1940).
But we were just passing through Takeshita-Dori .... on our way to the oh so sedate and classy Ota Memorial Museum of Art. This museum presents rotating exhibitions of woodblock prints, displayed in small themed exhibitions changing every month. We were looking forward to seeing more Hokusai prints and sitting in the "serene rock garden" inside the museum - but unfortunately it was CLOSED today (with no apparent explanation)!
Everything about this small museum was exquisite - the minimalist architecture, the small but high quality collections, the landscaped garden, the focus on perfect design - just beautiful!
Although one particular collection did leave us wondering just how Nezu got his Chinese Shang dynasty bronzes (17th - 11th century BC) out of China in the 1930s - and how China must feel about that right now?
No photography was allowed inside the building - but the museum gardens got everyone clicking......
We spent quite a while at this beautiful museum, and with rain still falling we decided to walk back to Shibuya - site of that very famous Shibuya Scramble Crossing in Tokyo's version of Times Square. Along the way I was struck by the sight of this stylish young couple, both doing the art museum trek today - like we were (except we were doing it a lot less stylishly).
But this photo shows as close as we got to the Shibuyu Scramble Crossing today. By this stage we were cold, hungry and very damp and had no wish to join the other thousands of people wrangling umbrellas down on the square below (and we had done all that on our last trip to Tokyo, anyway!).
Instead we found a small scale restaurant and settled in for a warming bowl of dumpling soup and a jug of Asahi beer and dried out for a while.
But it's challenging doing the electronic orders for food when it’s all in Japanese!!!
But with a little assistance we ended up with a delicious, warming meal.
We bought a few snacks at the Shibuyu Station afterwards - but didn't get any strawberries (15 for $21AUD).
Nor any figs - $25 AUD for three.
On the train back to Hamamatsucho I took a quick (sneaky) photo of 3 striking looking fellow passengers. None of them were looking at their phones either, which is remarkable!
We got back to the hotel early today, a bit after 3 - in now heavy rain! We did some laundry and enjoyed our last excellent flat white coffee at our local Byron Bay Cafe. We have an early start in the morning ready for our 8.50am departure for Dublin (via London). We've loved our Tokyo stay and hope we'll be back some day. There's so much more to see and do in this wonderful city!
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