Bedazzle, monks, Shibuya

Have you ever seen a procession down a busy street of singing monks followed by Japanese men in colourful animal suits? Cause we have. We were minding our own business toddling off down to the shops when we hear chanting just breaking through the blaring ads that continually plague ones space whilst walking down a Tokyo street. We just made out funny hats and lime green outfits so off we ran to check it out. The procession was lead by men wearing short kimono things and leggings singing this amazing music, which was sung with such care. Em was so pissed off that she didn’t have her mic with her. There were also these cute little kids dressed in really bright robes wearing funny gold head dresses, some of them were so eager to pose for the cameras. We followed them around the block until they ended up at a temple where they had some kind of coming of age service for the kids. We think it was part of the Sakura (cherry blossom) festival, which is soon ending. Alex ran around and took photos, while Em watched intently trying to make sense of it all. We will post photos as soon as we find out how to develop and scan the images.

All of this was just on the way to our original goal of the day…Shibuya. We got on the train and headed in, we finally made our way out of the station (we’re getting better) and wow. We both just stood there completely bedazzled for 5 mins. Jaws dropped, the ultimate culture shock. Noise everywhere, we could here at least 10 different musics, 3 people on mega phones, two TV screens right next to each other both blaring ads, on top of traffic and the sound of 100 people walking across an intersection at once. It was impossible to single out one sound. It was just so overwhelming. We pushed our way through the crowds for a block and came to the infamous ‘Lost in Translation’ intersection with the walking dinosaur, except the dinosaur wasn’t there but the bizillions of people were. We walked or, struggled though crowds around the block until we found ourselves completely bemused and decided we had done pretty well for our first expedition to Shibuya.

Peace out...