Day 2: Harajuku and Nagomi visit

Harajuku and Yoyogi Park

Video of the rockabillies

Well this will be a much shorter blog, as it was a much shorter day than planned today due to hangovers! However, we walked from Shibuya Creston Hotel to Yoyogi park (which only took about 10mins) and managed to see the rockabillies there which I had been sooo excited about!

There seemed to be two groups, dressed differently (one in double denim and one in all black and leather jackets) and dancing to different music but at the same time! We did have a brief look at the Harajuku shopping area but it was a real flying visit. We decided to head back to Harajuku and Yoyogi another time as we didn't do it justice at all!

After grabbing some hangover curing food from McDonalds (the shame!) we went back to the hotel for an afternoon nap as we wanted to be fully recovered for our Nagomi visit in the evening!

Nagomi Visit

If you haven't heard of Nagomi Visit, you can arrange to have dinner with a Japanese host who has signed up to the scheme, they meet you from their local station and take you to their home where they cook you dinner! For more info see their website here: https://www.nagomivisit.com/

Our Nagomi visit host family and dinner

It was a little bit scary trying to navigate our way there as it was in a residential area and the trains we took rather unhelpfully didn't have the English displays announcing the stations (probably because they weren't touristy lines) which meant we had to rely on catching the announcements which is tricky in a foreign language! However we managed fine- our directions from our host were very good, and people were very helpful ('Sumimasen'... point at station name in instructions, point at platform I think it is, and look enquiring haha).

We were met by Satoru and the children with our names on a little white board, and they took us back to their apartment by bus (it was only a 10min walk though so we walked back to the station at the end). They had prepared a feast for us, the table was absolutely full of dishes and everything was delicious. They were all very friendly, we didn't always know what to say because it's quite an odd situation to put yourself in to turn up at a strangers house for dinner, but it was a really nice evening! Hana the little girl drew us pictures and played games which was fun, and they had bought us pretty chopsticks as a wedding present!!! Their apartment was very nice, and apparently has a view of Mt Fuji on a clear day. It's in a very quiet neighbourhood, very different to central districts- much more low rise and open spaces and at night very peaceful, I really liked where they lived and it was so interesting to see this different side to Tokyo.

Next post: Day 3: Shimo-Kitazawa, Koishikawa Korakuen, Tokyo Dome City