After getting off our feet for a while, we jumped on the hotel shuttle to the Meguro JR Rail station and headed north to Shibuya (渋谷区). If you have a JR pass, you can use that on the Yamanote Line, a popular rail route that runs in a loop around Tokyo. It hits many of the major sites including Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Ueno Park and Akihabara.
We exited the station and, for some reason, decided to head south. Turns out everything is north of the station. Despite that we did see a beautiful street before turning around.
We wandered north and walked through the busy Shibuya crossing intersection. Past that we walked through one of the 7 story malls in the area before realizing the target was a much younger audience. We stumbled into a hole-in-the-wall ramen shop for some more Hokkaido-style ramen and beer. After eating, we went back to the Starbucks at the crossing in order to get a good viewing spot. To our surprise, we spotted Julius from Droolius two spots in front of us in line! Running into someone we knew from Orlando in the busiest intersection in the world was pretty amazing.
After touching base and making some plans, we grabbed a green tea and a cherry blossom donut from Krispy Kreme and headed north to Harajuku. The shopping side of that district was closing as we were getting there, limiting our options for the night.
We wouldn’t have normally been drawn into a Dunkin’ Donuts, but there was something fun about trying a season Cherry Blossom donut that hit the spot. I could have spent hours in the Starbucks overlooking Shibuya crossing just people watching.
The next day we planned to go a little farther north and explore Harajuku. We ate a bunch of tasty meals during our 5 nights in Tokyo too – enough that they deserve their own post just on eating and drinking in Tokyo.
