Japan's Newbury Street: Harajuku

As Harajuku is Japan's youth fashion capital, Andrew and I were hoping to get some good people watching time in. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me, as I don't think I had been here in over ten years since high school:

Alas, we didn't see a lot of strange fashions on the street, primarily since it was a weekday afternoon. In fact, we probably saw as many foreign tourists as we did Japanese people.

But we did get to see the some stores selling some outlandish outfits:

So, we comforted ourselves with delicious crepes - oddly enough, another Japanese tradition for me even though they're obviously a French-based dessert!

Andrew and I got the same crepe - strawberries, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream - but his had chocolate syrup and mine had strawberry - yum!

As you can see from the outside display, there were dozens of sweet and savory choices and everyone in line seemed to have a hard time deciding:

Afterwards, we strolled around the different streets in Harajuku, as it's similar to Newbury Street here in Boston with different designer stores. I have to add that on the weekends, it's more like Harvard Square with the different types of people that hang out in the area! Here's a view from one of the pedestrian bridges showing the fall foliage and the traffic on the left side of the road:


Finally, as we headed back to the train station to catch a train back to Zama via the Shinjuku station, Andrew posed on another pedestrian foot bridge with Harajuku train station in the background: