Watch The Sunday Gang In Harajuku, There's Something Wrong With Me, I'm A Cuckoo

When lost in a maze of concrete, inundated by logos as far as the eye can see and blinded by flashing neon, it becomes easy to think that there isn’t any space left in Tokyo for creative expression. You would be wrong however, as the city actually has a long history of street performance. Sure, the paint-huffing hippies and subversive happenings are nowhere to be found in Shinjuku these days, replaced by skyscrapers and shopping malls some thirty odd years ago. If you visit Harajuku on a Sunday, however, you’ll see that the spirit of public performance is still very much alive, albeit in a different form.

Harajuku, located in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward, first rose to prominence in the 1980s as street performers began to gather on Omotesando (the main drag in front of Harajuku station) when it would close to traffic on Sundays. Today, Harajuku is also known as a hub for fashion and large department stores like La Foret, which cater to current trends, have earned the area a reputation as the center of youth style. Just across from the station is Takeshita Street, which is packed to the gills with tiny boutiques catering to all the various colors of the teen fashion spectrum. You might recall that things were a bit more muted during my last trip to Harajuku due to inclement weather but this time, it was absolutely bustling. As anthropologist Joseph J. Tobin notes, “shopping on a Sunday on a pedestrians-only street in Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Harajuku feels like the Japanese equivalent of Mardi Gras in New Orleans or carnival in Rio, with money and packages taking the place of music and dance”.

That’s not to say, however, that real music and dance can’t also be found in Harajuku. Making our way from the station to the Meiji Shrine, we pass over this footbridge, which Greg affectionately refers to as “The Goth Bridge”. You’ll soon see why.

On Sundays, the bridge is crowded with various teens sporting the latest in fringe fashions (such as “Gothic Lolita”) and cosplay (an abbreviation for “costume play”) outfits. They meet up with friends, pose for photographers and generally just loiter around like all good teenagers do.

This is what it looks like when cultures collide, in this case, Gothic Lolita and plain old goth, or “Goth Classic,” as I like to call it.

This man takes cosplay very seriously. Yes, those are live goldfish on his traffic cone helmet. Here’s hoping he has better luck with those than old Disco Stu did.

Harajuku was so happening that even Rivers Cuomo decided to stop by! Sure, he ditched his trademark horn-rimmed specs so as not to be mobbed by fans but the “now recruiting Japanese girlfriends” sign was a dead giveaway.

Of course, with all those scantily-clad, leather-sporting young girls around, Harajuku is bound to attract a certain breed of pervert…

Oh, wait. That’s just Ryan.

There we go, a prime example of a creepy ojisan! Armed with an expensive digital SLR camera and accompanying telephoto zoom lens, the prototypical creepy ojisan darts around Harajuku on Sundays, competing with foreigners for that perfect shot of the girl in a tank top and gas mask. Who knows what nefarious purposes he'll use those photos for? Wait, scratch that, I’m pretty sure that everyone knows the answer to that question.

Walk a bit farther past the shrine and you’ll enter Yoyogi park. This is where most of the performers gather in Harajuku and where you can see everything from martial artists to skateboarders.

“Everything” unfortunately includes this guy who was doing boring stuff with some balls on a string. Yawn.
Past the boring guy you’ll find the Tokyo Rockabilly Club, a Harajuku institution, if there ever was one. Although there were once hundreds of members, today only nine remain, faithfully meeting in Yoyogi Park every Sunday as they always have. So what exactly is it that they do?
Well, to put it quite simply, they play rockabilly music on a boom box and rock the fuck out.
Outside the park is an area where various musicians perform along either side of a major street. Across from this street is another park that surrounds Tokyo Olympic Stadium. Considered the masterwork of architect Kenzo Tange, the stadium hosted the 1964 Olympic Games and was considered to be a symbol of the radical transformation that Tokyo’s landscape underwent in the mid to late 1960s-a period that some scholars describe using the term “Olympic modernity”. Here we see a god-awful boy band performing in front of that distinctive stadium. Seriously, these guys couldn’t even carry a tune.
As mentioned on Matt’s blog, the hard rock band Samurai. I stood and watched them for a few minutes but only out of sympathy for the fact that no one else would.
Past the stadium was an area where a number of companies were advertising various products, just outside of NHK studios. Greg and I took this opportunity to show the dinosaur some love.

Most terrifying mascot ever? I do believe so. If this is really what angels look like, I’ll be quite happy to join old Virgil in the depths of inferno.

I’ve decided to save the best for last: this awesome band that was performing just outside of Yoyogi park. They all wore matching yellow suits and dresses and led the assembled (and enthusiastic) crowd in a series of jumps, hand claps and dance maneuvers. Despite what old Stuart Murdoch might say, I really think that you would have to be cuckoo not to enjoy a Sunday in Harajuku.