The day Buddy Love was attacked by zombies and a ballerina

I promise, that title will make sense by the end of this (or at least as much sense as it made when we saw it happen). But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

We left off at an obscene hour on Friday evening, the 30th of March. We got up around 8:30 on Saturday the 31st, checked out of our hotel while leaving our bags in storage, and hopped on the subway at Okachimachi Station headed down south. Intended target: the Hamagin Science Center, where we were scheduled to meet up with Debbie's family friend Nan and her three daughters. We reached Yokodai Station outside of Yokohama around 11:05, well behind the intended 10:30 meeting time. With no cell phone, it's difficult to communicate when such things go awry. Fortunately for all involved, Nan and co. were behind schedule too, so the wait was short. The six of us eventually made it into the Science Center. The Center itself was outstanding, with a ton of exhibits mostly geared toward the younger crowd. We went in a 'Gravity Room' that was tilted, played with a frictionless surface, entered a 'Relativity' room with spinning lights, saw a meteorite, and generally just had fun with it. The girls were the energy of the group, while us old folks tried to keep up with them. For the most part, we succeeded. After a few hours at the museum, we went to a nearby grocery store and picked up dinner supplies. Then we all went back to Nan's house, where we enjoyed some down time and cooked up delicious marinated beef with rice and onions. We went back to the train station around 6:15 for the trip back, grabbed our bags from our hotel in Akihabara, and caught the subway down to our new hotel in Akasaka. Akasaka is in the southern section of Tokyo, in between Shibuya and Ginza. We took a little time to catch up on the internet and plan out our Sunday, and then we got to sleep.

Our yummy yaki-niku style dinner at Nan's!

Debbie, Nan, and her adorable girls!

Sunday (today) was an action-packed day, with West Tokyo the general area of attack. Today was definitely the most diverse day we've had; as in, we experienced huge swings between old and new Japanese culture. We caught the subway at 9:00 en route to the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. After maybe 20-25 mins in transit, we exited and headed toward Shinjuku Gyoen Gardens. The Gardens are a noted area for cherry blossom viewing, and we hoped that the cherry blossoms would finally arrive. Fortunately for us, several of the trees had opened up, although it's still far from a full bloom. The grounds were glorious, crawling with photographers and citizens looking to enjoy the fine weather (around 60 degrees and sunny). We spent just shy of two hours in the gardens, which contained a traditional Japanese garden, a French garden, and an English garden. There are plenty of pictures to show for it. We blundered our way south on foot in search of a lunch restaurant. (The areas of Japan we have been in have a general lack of road signs, and rarely list more than a few roads, if any, on maps. This makes finding destinations or addresses quite challenging.) Failing at that, we instead found our next destination: Meiji-Jingu and the central Meiji Shrine. The gardens (Meiji-Jingu) were built 90 years ago, to honor the recently deceased Emperor Meiji and his wife. Over 100,000 trees were planted, all of which were donated by people in Japan or from foreign countries (in honor of the Emperor). There was an interesting display teaching about all of the good the Emperor was able to accomplish during the Meiji Reconstruction. Outside of the lush green surroundings of the gardens and shrine, our favorite part of this stop was witnessing a Japanese wedding procession. We continued on our quest for lunch, eventually settling on a Hawaiian burger joint along Meiji-Dori (Dori means street) in Harajuku. It exceeded our expectations. We wandered around Harajuku for a bit, and saw some... interesting people (see the pictures for more). We followed that up with the most entertaining portion of the day: a trip to Yoyogi Park. Yoyogi Park is home to two of the stadiums used in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics--we saw the buildings from a nearby bridge. Corey's mom gave us an invaluable tour guide book on Japan, which we have referenced frequently. It had mentioned that Sundays, in particular, were a great time for visiting Yoyogi Park. Despite the advanced notice, we weren't remotely prepared for what we saw. The best way we can describe it: a mix of a college game-day tailgate, a Golden Gate Park hippie convention, and 4th of July cheeriness. The entire park was coated with people picnicking, playing games, and drinking heavily. Additionally, there were several performers lining the park with various acts. There was a drum circle, a hip-hop dancing jump-rope group, a hilarious pantomime comedian, a duo of acrobats, a bagpipe band, a group playing 'Dodge-Bee' (Dodgeball using Frisbees), a man and his dog playing catch with a big red ball, trick Frisbee players, and more. Unlike most street performers in LA, these people seemingly were just out for the fun of it - we only saw one donation box for any of them. The park is also filled with people dressed in costumes--not anything special, but seemingly their daily attire. We saw a few groups of greasers that looked like they were right out of a 1950s ad for motorcycles and hair grease. The most interesting costumed group was a horde of zombies (does anyone know the collective noun for this? gaggle? school? murder? Yep--we'll go with a 'murder' of zombies). The 8-or-so zombies were gathered around a disco-garb-clad man and a less-than-heavily-clad ballerina. A group of photographers were gathered around them, directing the disco dude and the ballerina into different poses. The photographers were a group of guys called the Bang Bang Club (paying homage to a mid-90s South African group of the same name), whose sole purpose was to "film weird shit." Of course, this involved bringing their friend, Buddy Love (of a local 70s cover band), down to Yoyogi Park, and taking pictures of him holding a ballerina while pretending to be attacked by zombies. Weird, indeed.
Debbie grabbed some freshly made yakisoba from a street vender for an afternoon snack and some people watching. We thought our Yoyogi Park time was finished, and headed up a bridge to leave the park. However, on the other side of the bridge, there was a flea market featuring even more crowds. A lot of tie-dye, hemp products, and other hippie-ish crafts were up for sale. Eventually we transitioned into the Shibuya area, marked by tall buildings and designer stores. We saw the infamous intersection where the foot traffic is unimaginable. There were at least 2000 people in the intersection at one time, if not more. We suffered a minor setback when we were overcharged for appetizers and drinks at a local Happy Hour, but rebounded with a tasty Ramen dinner. Eventually, we came back to the hotel for some well-deserved relaxation. As a side note, we felt an earthquake tonight! Japan is still feeling aftershocks from the March 11, 2011 9.0 earthquake, and we figured we would feel some shaking while here. This was our only earthquake so far, and will hopefully be the only one we feel. (It was a 5.8 about 200 km, or 120 mi, NE of Tokyo.) We felt a gentle swaying for 7-10 seconds, and are completely fine!

In front of a cherry blossom tree in Shinjuku Gyoen Gardens.

Some creative color focused photography.

This photo sums up Tokyo and Japan pretty well: Gorgeous and serene nature, with non-stop commerce happening all around.

Many of the temples we visited had similar walls to this one, where visitors can write their wishes or prayers on small wooden boards. This particular wall surrounds a tree on the grounds of Meiji Shrine.

Wedding processional at Meiji Shrine.

The crowded streets of Harajuku.

Harajuku is known as a haven for young girls who try to dress as cartoon characters. This Harajuku girl (as they're known) was really a boy! :)

We visited a candy artistry shop. We watched the 'artists' create this small "I <3 Harajuku" candy out of rolled sugar, that started out about 20x this size!

Buddy Love, a ballerina, and his harem of zombies.

Just a few of the throngs of people we saw in Yoyogi Park. Most were hanging out (drinking, eating, and playing games) waiting for the cherry tree blossoms to open!

The flea market just outside of Yoyogi Park.

Thousands of people crossing a multi-way intersection in Shibuya.

We're not entirely sure what we'll do with our time tomorrow, but we'll have to start the trek to Narita Airport in the early afternoon in order to take our 7:15 PM flight back to LA. While we have both enjoyed this travel immensely, it will be nice to get back to our apartment and the familiar faces that surround it!