Japan 2024 Day 2: Meiji Jingu, Shibuya, Shinjuku

The first thing that we did this morning after wake up was go via Akihabara to Meiji Jingu, in Harajuku. I was still a little bit overwhelmed with actually being back in Japan. We prayed at the main shrine in Meiji Jingu before going for a coffee. While at the café I checked my JLPT results. As sort of expected, I did not pass. I did well enough to pass with the listening but my reading comprehension and vocabulary will need a little bit of work. Fortunately, I am in the best possible place in the world to try and rectify this for next time around likely the start of June.

The barrels of 酒 sake at Meiji Jingu.

I decided that my next course of action would be to go to Yoyogi to the Kinokuniya bookshop. Though when I got there the building which houses the Kinokuniya bookshop was closed for the day for maintenance. I then walked back to Yoyogi station getting the station stamp there before getting a train back to meet mum in Harajuku looking at Ikea for a couple of minutes before our scheduled meeting time of 13:30.

The next thing that we did was go to Shibuya. The music that was playing in Shibuya this year was Taylor Swift which was really cool given her recent concerts in Melbourne & Tokyo. We had lunch at the Shibuya McDonalds and went to Loft, Ikea and a couple of the other shops in Shibuya.

At my favourite stationary store in the whole world “Shibuya” loft.

Later we made a trip to the 都庁 (Tokyo Metropolitan Government building), it was around the time that the sun was setting but on this particular day the observation deck was closed for the day for maintenance. We instead went to Shinjuku Central Park which was quite pretty. A bit later on we had a walk around some of the areas of Shinjuku like Kabukicho that have a lot of lights. I found it a bit much TBH. We got the Oedo Line from Shinjuku to Ueno-Okachimachi. Having Chicken Curry for dinner.

Waiting for the Oedo Line

After dinner I think we went back to the hotel room for half an hour or so. I then went to BookOff to look for around. I managed to get another Electronic Dictionary this time with slightly better ‘English – Japanese’ support. The shop closed at 10 and we saw the lights go off at Yodobashi Camera.

After a tiring day we went back to sleep.

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