Tokyo: Old crosses new

Althea and I headed over to Asakusa, most famous for its temple Senso-ji with its distinctive red lantern at its gates. We were told that it was a very busy tourist area and this was confirmed by the fact that most of the people there were either speaking english or chinese. I have been noticing a lot of chinese tourists on this trip and I keep pointing it out because it feels like I'm back in T.O.

Kaminarimon gate with long corridor of shops

Happy tourists!

Later we headed over to Shibuya which for those who have not been there, is usually the clips or photos you see when people are trying to describe the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. As soon as we stepped out of the subway, we were left momentarily breathless with the sheer amount of people! Turns out, we had just exited right at the corner of the famous Shibuya crossing. This crossing has a special light that is only for pedestrians so that every few minutes, the cars stop and a rush of people is released from all four corners of the intersection. Althea and I just watched in awe for a few minutes before actually crossing ourselves. This proved to be harder than it seemed mostly because the people walking are looking at each other, at their cellphone or at the big television screens on the buildings but definitely not at the road in front of them. We were told later that Shibuya wasn't even considered crowded that day so we plan on going back on a weekend.

Throngs of people at Shibuya

We walked around the shops of Shibuya for the rest of the evening. Shibuya is very popular with young people because of their cool, hip clothes. What we discovered though is that this is also the place where Japanese girls with nasally, faux-cutesy voices congregate. Once I pointed it out to Althea that this kind of cute personality is very popular in Japan and Taiwan and all girls try to talk like they have a perennial cold, she couldn't stop noticing it. It was kind of amusing to look over at her and see her physically cringe when she heard the girls working at the shops shout out the latest deals in that voice.