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A Night In Shibuya (Day 6)

The last of the 5 Part posts on Day 6 are finally here. Thank goodness! There's more in store for Day 7 and I am still juggling upon the idea to split to a few more parts on Day 7 itself. I'll leave that decision once I start blogging on Day 7. Now to finally finish things off...

After we dropped our shopping items from Ueno to the hotel room and had our evening drinks back at the hotel, the clock was showing 7pm, it's time for us to head out again. Passing through the Yebisu Garden Place, the scenery of the lights being turned on with little rays of the remaining sunlight is great sight not to be missed.

Even the flowers looked great in the evenings.

It's the rush hour in Tokyo! The train are jammed packed with people. My first experience being in the sardine environment on board a train. I thought Hong Kong rush hour was bad, this is worse. Lucky for us that our new destination doesn't require for us to be in the train for a long period of time. From Ebisu to Shibuya on the Yamanote Line, it's just one station from each other. Haha!

Shibuya (渋谷区) is one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo. The name are often refering to the central business district which surrounds the Shibuya Station (渋谷駅), one of Tokyo's busiest railway stations apart from Tokyo station.

Shibuya Station hauls at least 2.4 million passengers on an average weekday, I wonder who could beat that kind of passenger load? I almost got lost in the Shibuya station itself as it connects to many rail lines. There's the Yamanote Line, the Saikyō Line / Shōnan-Shinjuku Line, the Keiō Inokashira Line, the Tōkyū Den-en-toshi Line, the Tōkyū Tōyoko Line, the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, the Tokyo Metro Hanzōmon Line, and the Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line. Now which country could beat this? Getting out of the station is difficult too. Unless you are familiar with this place, I wouldn't recommend you to go to Shibuya during the evening.

What is so special in Shibuya in the first place?

Well, Shibuya is famous for its scramble crossing. It is located in front of the Shibuya Station Hachikō exit and stops vehicles in all directions to allow pedestrians to inundate the entire intersection. Three large TV screens mounted on nearby buildings overlook the crossing. The Starbucks store overlooking the crossing is also one of the busiest in the world. If you could remember the Fast and Furious : Tokyo Drift where the drivers drifted through the streets of people, this is it!

This place are constantly known for its leadership in fashion. Why so? It's because Shibuya is the top shopping place in Tokyo. The place is so popular among the youths that almost every youths in Tokyo knows that the next best place to shop for clothes is in Shibuya. Along with many food chain stores and departments for the young generation, there are also plenty of karaoke bars and game centers.

You can also get concert tickets for the hippest Japanese pop/rock groups here in Shibuya.

There are serveral famous only dedicated fashion department stores in this area. The Shibuya 109 or called as "Ichi-Maru-Kyu", the name is actually a pun on that of the corporation that owns it. It is a major shopping center near Shibuya Station, particularly famous as the origin of the kogal subculture. If you were to ask where is the best place to shop in Tokyo for women's fashion? You will definitely get the answer from most of the locals... Shibuya's 109. Although I didn't manage to visit that place but it certainly attracts a large crowd at the entrance to the place.

We've decided to stop by a small Ramen stall on that night. The problem with this place is it doesn't write any English. The goodside of it, the employees can speak broken English. Sounds crazy? Not until you see what's in store. They don't take the orders...

This machine does! Punch in the Ramen that you want, make your final payment to the machine, pass them the ticket and they will serve you the food. Fast food? Doesn't really looks like it. In Shibuya, you will see people shouting at the streets promoting their restaurants and some of these people are so into it that you could feel that they are selling more of themselves rather than the restaurant that they were suppose to promote.

Myself and mom ordered a Cha-Shu ramen which was my favourite while dad ordered his favourite Pork Ribs ramen. We also got the Gyoza as our sides. For drinks, nothing fancy, just good old Japanese Green Tea.

A pose with mom in the little Ramen stall.

I did managed to get myself a few CD's from HMV and a few hairbands for my dear, while for mom she got a few BB Creams for her friends. Didn't shop much from Shibuya mainly because of the crowd.

Now I happen to stumble upon a Kogal (コギャル) as I was heading back to the train station to call it a night. Kogals are famously known for wearing platform boots, a miniskirt, copious amounts of makeup, hair coloring (usually blonde or brown), artificial suntans, and designer accessories. The one in the picture above, I wonder if she's a real Kogal or just a local who is active in the pornography industry. Hmm...

One of Dad's many cravings... and we happened to see it just before we reach the train station. For desserts on that night, we had crepe's. These little crepe stall grows like mushrooms all over Japan as every corner you go, you will definitely see crepe's (as long as the streets are busy enough, there's surely one there). I ordered a banana with caramel while dad wants his with vanilla ice cream in it. Didn't cost that much, around a few hundred yen for a crepe.

Now I managed to make a 5 minute friend with the counter person as I found out that she was from Beijing and she can speak mandarin. So we were engaged into conversation while she was preparing the crepes. Being extremely nice towards her own kind, she put in half a scoop more of ice cream for dad. Haha! I did ask her how often she manage to see chinese people appearing in front of crepes stall, she told me about 1 in half a year time. Hmm... is business this bad or Chinese people don't go to Shibuya at all? The crepes tastes nice though.

A few final shots of Shibuya area to end the Day 6 posts. Time for me to hit the books, exams are getting close. **Groans**

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