Dax in Tokyo Episode II: Harajuku Girls, Outback, and DDR

Those of you familiar with Gwen Stefani's Harajuku girls, might be surprised to find that these girls really exist. Harajuku is a long street hosting shop after shop of trendy, bizarre, and otherwise unique clothing at affordable prices. This is the edgy teenage shopping district where knee high stockings and short skirts reign supreme. Shopping at these stores can outfit you in any style you could dream up from grunge, to punk, to hippie, to cutsie, to Little Bo Peep. What was that? Little Bo Peep?! Yes, that is a current fashion down at Harajuku. Get dressed up in a puffy little dress with platform Mary Jane's and a bonnet, and you are the it-girl at Harajuku. The phenomenon is called “cosplay,” short for costume play. On the weekend hundreds of girls and some boys dress up as anime characters, Little Bo-Peep, or whatever other character strikes their fancy and congregate at a park at one end of Harajuku street. We went to check it out.

Aside from the fun of dressing up, it was apparent that the only other reason for wearing these clothes and congregating at a park was to pose for thousands of pictures taken by foreigners’ cameras. Although there were a few who acted shy to the camera, it was obvious that having their picture taken was the ultimate in the “cosplay” game. Aside from the Harajuku girls, there were also several other interesting acts. A two person rock band was also performing, as well has a man who danced passionately to U2. The strangest part of the day was seeing two grown man prancing through the park as Little Bo Peeps. It was obvious that they had spent quite a bit of time on their costumes and took themselves very seriously. Very strange.

Japan's greatest U2 fan dancing his heart out at the park.

Rock stars trying to perform next to the U2 dancer and his blaring ghetto blaster.

No it's not Halloween. Just an average day at the park.

The weird thing about Harajuku and the characters that show up there is that a lot of them look really scary like this. If you run into people like this in America their dress would most likely come with a matching dark attitude. In Japan, this is not the case. These are just normal kids. They were really nice and cute. They are just playing dress up. There's nothing disturbed about them.







Dax posing with some of the "cosplay" girls.

Every time I tried to snap of picture of these two, the Red One would put his umbrella in front of his face. These were very large Little Bo Peeps.

Also during our visit to Harajuku, we got a glance and an earful of some nationalist party propaganda. These are the people who still believe that the Emperor is deity and should be reinstated as the head of government. They are, of course, anti-foreigners and have strong ties with the Japanese mafia. They came rolling-in in black buses flying the Japanese flag with the most angry voices coming over the intercom that I have ever hear. All the Japanese people I have met, even on announcements on the train, use quiet, softly-spoken, and pleasant voices. The voices exploding from the loudspeakers on the buses were angry, loud, and harsh. The words ripped through the air, causing me to cringe under their volume and pitch. Although we had no idea what they were saying, the tone and purpose was obvious. The Nationalist Party is very strong in Japan both in numbers and in political influence.


This was also Peter’s last night in Japan. He was fed up with the country, the people, and the food. In fact, he was so done with Japan that he would sit outside of every store we entered and wait for us as he listened to music on his iPod. I could sense him counting down the hours for his trip to end. So, for his last dinner in Japan we asked him to pick the restaurant. He chose... Outback Steakhouse. We all consented with a few laughs and quickly found ourselves in the ever familiar American setting. The prices were more expensive and the steaks were smaller, but we had a terrific meal, and Peter picked up the check.

Peter is obviously really happy to be putting some familiar food into his stomach.

We ended the night with Jillian’s dream of playing DDR in Japan. DDR stands for "Dance, Dance Revolution" and is a video game in which you use your feet to step on a button when the game tells you to. If you do it right, you will be dancing and winning the game. If you do it wrong, you look like and idiot and you lose. In the late 90’s, DDR was all the craze in Japan. You can still search on youtube.com and find videos of highly skilled Japanese kids performing some amazing and impossible feats on these dance machines. Jillian couldn’t wait to see these kids break it down. Unfortunately, fads die quickly here in Japan. The only DDR machine we could find in the arcade was in the very back of the room tucked away behind some other out of date video games. No one was playing, so we tried our hand or rather feet at it. We weren’t so bad. Jonathan was actually quite good at getting his hips involved. After a while, a Japanese kid came to play, so we watched him go at it. Although he was playing two games at once, we expected more at of this young Japanese video-gamer.

As you can see, Jonathan got really into the game. I have a video, but he won't let me put it on the Internet. If we get enough pleading comments, maybe he will consent.

Jonathan finally consented, but only after Alden's request. Here is the short but sweet video:

Jillian modeling a pair of her new glasses. Dax fell over several times as he tried to negotiate the machine. Poor Dax.