Saturday, January 14, 2024

• Starting the day by catching up on some washing at a local laundromat, which was a nice little walk up a hill and around a few residential streets. Wonderful quiet neighbourhood first thing in the morning, and I made friends with a nice cat while I was waiting on our dryer cycle to complete.

• Today’s adventure is taking us to Harajuku, which has MBW very excited – it’s one of her favourite parts of Tokyo.
• On the way, we found the local Shibuya Hachibus and made a mental note to check out it’s route. We completely forgot. Super cute bus though!

• Arrived at Harajuku, started the journey at Takeshita Dori (after a brief coffee stop to start the adventure right).

• Finally won my first solo UFO catcher prize this trip – I’d helped MBW win a few of the ones she was attempting, but I hadn’t actually tried one myself yet.
• MBW stopped in for a long-awaited return at Richards, a clothing and accessories store who hand-makes some incredible pieces. People who have strolled Harajuku might remember it as the store with all the “Fuck off” signs written in English. When MBW was interested in a piece, but it was the wrong size, the owner cheerfully customised it on the spot to make sure it was absolutely perfect. Richards is amazing.
• For lunch, we did our traditional cook your own okonomiyaki experience at Sakuratei.

• Afternoon was exploring some more familiar Harajuku staples – Closet Child, B Side Designs, 6% Doki Doki. More than happy to hit up some of MBW’s favourite haunts, because…

• Next was something new to us – pro wrestling legend Minoru Suzuki runs a shop in Harajuku named Piledriver Harajuku. Before we’d travelled, we’d seen people reporting that the man himself is there at the store some days, whenever he’s not otherwise on tour. In the lead up to today, we had been stalking his Twitter account, but it looked like he was overseas on tour. Still, hopes were high we’d find some awesome merch to memorialise the experience…

• Murder Grandpa was not only there, he was super friendly, showed me around the store, encouraged me to buy a few specific items (including a fishing lure that I love), and was generously willing to pose for some photos. Excellent experience, spent way too much but love everything I bought, couldn’t recommend this experience more to anyone with a love for Japanese wrestling (or just any adrenaline junkies who want to pose for a photo with one of the most badass people on Earth).

• Eventually it was time to make tracks, we headed back to Shibuya, found some dinner in the Shibuya yokocho, then turned in for another night’s rest.