Yoyogi park is awsome (First walking tour of Tokyo)

Okay, let's get one thing out of the way right now: Tokyo is big.

Right. Duh.

How-Evvuhr, it is BIG, 'mkay? Not just big like, "oh my this certainly is quite big". Not even "holy shit this thing is really big!". 

It is big like the Beatles. Like the moon. Like your mom.

"One of the most organized and orderly 
countriesin the world"

Big enought that I've been sorta terrified of it. I feel like I could start walking in one direction, and then keep walking until I'm dead, and still be surrounded by crazy tangled electrical lines and vending machines. 

This will be the last thing I see.

If I lose focus for one minute, I will be lost without any hope of return, doomed to wander the infinite spider web of tangled streets until the small pebbles that get stuck in my shoes have grown into great rocks and become covered in moss*.

*JFGI

So I've been a bit hesitant about going for walks, is all. Today I fixed it! Finally got a map, which also helped.

I knew that Harajuku should be within walking distance and that it is awsome on Sundays, so I set off to find it. After a small half-hour of wandering while forgetting to take photos, I arrived in the amazing awsomeness that is Yoyogi park.

I've been there before, but I never tire of it. It is a spectacle of picnics, parties and culture. In Yoyogi park, you can do pretty much whatever you damn well please. Like this guy:

Haters gonna hate

If bongos aren't quite your thing, how about the digeridoo?

It might also be a giant bong. Hard to tell without the audio.

Or the bagpipes:

Might also be a gigant bong. 

I think that since Japanese apartments are so tiny, poorly insulated and crammed together (especially here in Tokyo), people take to the park to practice any hobby that might otherwise disturb their neighbours, or require physical space in any way. The result is enormously entertaining, a tourist attraction entirely in its own right. 

I saw groups of yoga-people, ball gamers of every kind, practicing cheerleaders, good and bad dancers, and a group of teenagers working on their catwalk-strut. I'm sad to say that I didn't get a photo of the 30-ish jugglers, but I did ninja a photo of these guys:

It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but they are actually practising pizza-spinning.

Of course music is and will remain the thing that's closest to my own heart, and this park really delivered. I saw a guy sitting by the pond playing his guitar, and another playing and singing on a bench. A large group of people had an orchestra of sorts, with wooden flutes, guitars and violins. An ukulele-club. Jazz bands, complete with electric equipment. 

There was a group of people playing drums:

And a person playing a group of drums:

That. Right there. That is what awsome looks like.

Looking at the joy of sound present in this place makes me really wish I'd brought an instrument over with me, or that I could afford to by one here. 

Once I left the park behind to have a look at Harajuku proper, I ran into a gay pride parade.

I think this was just the end of a larger event, yet nevertheless seing these guys relegated to a single lane, "forced into a corner" so to speak, seemed kind of symbolic to me. It's not easy to be gay in Japan, so I really had to admire this crew for standing up for themselves. You go girls/guys/persons of unspecified gender!

I kept wandering.

A wild pikachu appeared.

Great to see Japan finally embracing some Norwegian slang terms:

Den plassen er "Lav Azza"

Kinda planned to take a look at the most famous street in Harajuku, but decided against it at the last moment. I dunno, maybe you can see why.

Nope.

I get enough of that shit on the subway, thankyouverymuch.

The only thing I ended up buying the whole day (apart from water because I like myself better alive), was coffee from an import-shop somwhere between Harajuku and Omotesando (yes, I was trying to get to Shibuya. I took a wrong turn. Whatever!)

Sweet mother of beans, no more shitty vending machine coffee for me!

So tomorrow I'll bring my Bodum french press cup to school and at long last all will be as should be. Praise the Bean!

Also of note was this random farmers market right next to a major road. Tokyo is not very polluted at all, yet still... Vegetable stands between a big fancy hotel and a large thoroughfare? Because why not, I suppose.

Also, this made me really wish I had a proper camera. My phone is cool and all, but there is a painful lack of wide angle to the shots I can get.

I did eventually manage to find the now increasingly familiar pseudao-chaos that is Shibuya station, and decided that I was tired so fuck walking,

I can see Shibuya station from here, but you can't. Because my camera is inadequate, and because you are a n00b.

I'm training home from here.

These shoes ain't made for walkin'

So I think my new off-day hobby is going to be just walking around. When you just take the trains everywhere the city never really gets less scary. I need to get a tanglible grasp on the distances involved; uncover the map like my life is a video game, get to know my surroundings. It's tricky when I'm so busy every day - maybe I should try to take school a little less seriously so I can better enjoy and experience this magnificent city while I'm here. Just a thought.