Adventures and Semi-Adventures: Just a regular day in the neighborhood

When we were walking home from the subway, Naka Itabashi looked really nice in the sunset, very luminous and gold hued. We tried to capture the moment, but immediately after this picture our camera died. I'll try to recreate it later. ALSO in exciting walking home news, while I was approaching my front walkway, waiting for the motion sensor light to come on so I could see what I was doing, I saw something move underfoot. When the light came on I was delighted to see a big toad hiding in the grass! It was roughly the size of a baseball and had pretty black patterns on its brown skin. I hope Hop-san (the toad's new name) makes another appearance so I can get a picture!

Today was another great day in sunny Tokyo. It's not often that you can wear shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of October, but the weather here has been very warm and it hasn't rained in quite a while now. We went to Harajuku today with Holland so that Bret could further exlore a large park/shrine area that we had previously walked past. Most of the parks here are very nice, with lots of big gnarled trees and interesting plants. It was "sports day" here in Japan, so everyone got the day off. Most of them came to this park. It was a bit crowded but fun nonetheless. At the shrine Bret, Miyuki, Holland and I had visited about a week ago, Bret had aquired a bundle of incense that are meant for burning at shrines (in designated stone basins). He brought it along today wanting to use it at the shrine, but there was no incense area. At the end of the day he insisted we go to the fox shrine which is sort of close to our train station in Naka-Itabashi, but it didn't have an incense area as well. "What am I supposed to do with this now?" he said brandishing it about. "Take it with you the next time we go to a shrine" "How am I supposed to know when we're going to a shrine, you expect me to just walk around with incense in my pocket?" "Yes"

After the park we went to the shopping area of Harajuku. There were lots of people dressed up there. I haven't had much luck taking portraits of people dressed up (the last time I plucked up the nerve to ask a girl with long green hair in costume if I could take her picture it was at an video arcade and she waved me away with a nasally, "No picture on this floor" So sorry, I don't have many pictures of people in costume. It's a bit weird if you ask me. Most of the time girls pair up and dress the same, in petticoats or elaborite maid uniforms with frills and lots of skirts and head bands and parisoles. You've seen one maid girl you've seen them all, I say. And there are about a hundred in Harajuku at any given time :P

Here is a photo of a traditional wedding procession. There were a couple of brides dressed like this. The shrine square was very crowded with tourists and visitors.