On Sunday morning we woke up to some soft drum songs and melancholic flute music. As we were heading out for downtown Tokyo we saw that a group of people wearing traditional Japanese clothes were slowing walking down the streets, carrying a small Mikoshi (portable temple) with children beating the drum. It seemed like a procession. How ever, as we walked further in the neighborhood we saw other groups each wearing their own colors and chanting, dancing and drumming happily. We then understood we were staying at a hostel were there was a festival right beside. We did arrive at the right moment. It was very impressive to see the massive mikoshi being transported by a few people, it seemed like a daring stunt in the summer heat. We also found the central place for the festival and this was quite nice too. We had the impression that were walking through a carnival maze with concessions of all kinds. There was also a Taiko group scheduled to play but we decided to head out for Harajuku to see the Harajuku girls.
It was difficult to find the Harajuku girls. We thought we would simply find them by going to the harajuku station of the Yamanote line, but when we got there we did not see any group of girls wearing outlandish outfits. We asked a few locals and they were all saying contradictory directions. We finally found them near the Yoyogi park where there is some sort of square near a pedestrian overpass. This was also quite interesting, but I was disappointed because I was expecting to see hoards of Japanese girls wearing gaudy outfits. There were a few, some cute, some scary!
That same day we visited the very nice national gardens and the Meiji shrine where we had the chance to witness a traditional Japanese wedding.
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