Summer 2: Tokyo National Museum, Shibuya, Harajuku

On Lauren's first full day in Japan we first headed to the Tokyo National Museum. Here we are in Ikebukuro Station that morning.

 

I had to have my picture taken with Pikachu of course! Haha.

 Tokyo National Museum is in Ueno Park.

We bought our museum tickets from a vending machine.

Here's the outside of the museum. 

Now here's the inside.

We saw a lot of cool old stuff.

There was some crazy story about killing the giant ground spiders. I thought this monster was very interesting. I call him Suitcase Head.

Oh, and in case you were wondering... the ground spiders were defeated!!!! It was filled with skulls... eww.

After going through the museum I bought some mochi ice cream from a vending machine. It was awesome! I loved it so much and kept wanting more but didn't see any more. When we went to Kyoto I found a bunch of vending machines with this same ice cream. :)

We headed to Shibuya and ate lunch at Freshness Burger. Lauren had the bean veggie burger and fries. The veggie burger is yummy!

Colonel Sanders was dressed up in Japanese clothing so I couldn't resist this picture.

 We wandered around Shibuya for a while and visited Loft and a music store.

Next, we headed to Harajuku. 

We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant. The mozarella tomato pasta was really good! :)

We went into a cute store called Body Line.

I love this store. It has a bunch of Lolita Fashion. Here's how wikipedia explains it:


Lolita fashion (ロリータ・ファッション, Rorīta fasshon^?) is a fashion subculture originating in Japan that is primarily influenced by Victorian clothing as well as costumes from the Rococo period.^[1] Lolita has made this into a unique fashion by adding gothic and original design elements to the look. From this, Lolita fashion has evolved into several different sub styles and has created a devoted subculture in Japan. The Lolita look consists primarily of a knee length skirt or dress, headdress, blouse, petticoat, knee high socks or stockings and rocking horse or high heel/platform shoes.

The store was playing techno versions of Disney songs. At one point they played a techno version of Ave Maria... soooooooo random.

I bought a dress there that will be used as a costume at some point. I don't know when, but it was cute and fairly cheap... I couldn't resist!

We went to a store that sells all sorts of pictures of boy bands and pop idols. It's hilarious. We had a lot of fun in there and bought keychains of boy bands from the capsule gashapon machines.  Hahahahaha...

Crepes are popular in Japan, especially on Takeshita Street in Harajuku. It seems like there is always a crepe stand in sight! I got a Double Chocolate Banana crepe. It had chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, bananas, and cream inside. Yum!