Since I had a day off from gym today, my teammates and I decided that it would be fun to visit the city of Tokyo.  Luckily one of my friends had a car so he drove us there (about an hour from the university).  We started the day off by visiting the Meiji Shrine.  The cool thing about these places is that it’s very historical and the architectures are so intricate.  For those of you who have never been, we usually cleanse our hands with purified water before entering.  It’s also custom to throw in a 5-yen coin (equivalent to about 5 cents) into a large box in front of the shrine before we put our hands together to make a wish.   This custom is also thought to bring good luck and to ward off evil spirits.

One of the Torii (gates) to the Shrine

Meiji Shrine

Unfortunately, it seemed as though I didn’t pray hard enough as I was met with an evil spirit at my next stop.  Ok, I’m kidding but this girl we saw in the city definitely looked like she came straight out of a comic book.  Who knows, maybe she got mixed up and forgot that Halloween was the day before…

She might need a haircut soon...

But no, one will see many people in costumes on the streets of Tokyo even on normal days.  Don’t know where this ‘culture’ started but it’ll be interesting to learn about the origin.  A quick research on the internet may help solve the puzzle.

Anyway we used the rest of the day to walk around and look around in a lot of shops.  Too bad for me, everything was super expensive and the exchange rate from dollars to yen is no good.  Either way, it was fun to have had the opportunity to hang out with my friends and to window shop.  Plus, whenever you go to Tokyo it always feels like you step into a different universe.  The place is always crowded with tons of interesting people like the one mentioned above.  Regardless, today was an adventure-filled day and I had a lot of fun playing tourist in the capital of Japan!

Busy street of Harajuku