St. Patricks' Day in Tokyo!

Yesterday was Sunday and I spent a lovely day with my boyfriend and two buddies of mine from my training group. For brunch we ate at this organic restaurant about an 8 minute walk from my guest house called Broom & Bloom. It was unbelievably cute. The table was an old door and all the furniture was tastefully mismatched. There was bossanova music playing in the background and everything tasted wonderful. They only serve four different things, today’s special meal, today’s vegetarian special meal, a really good Japanese chicken curry, and the quiche of the day. All fantastic.

Next, we went to Harajuku, the area famous for youths wearing ridiculous clothing, often in the syle of Victorian Goth (ever heard of Harajuku Dolls?). We watched the St. Patrick’s Day parade nearby. It was the best parade I’ve ever been to for many reasons: 1.) We had an incredibly good view. 2.) I was incredibly happy in general to be spending a lovely day outside with some good friends on a beautiful early Spring day 3.) There were Japanese men wearing kilts and playing bagpipes. This one was especially interesting looking:

Enough said (And yet, I will go on...). It was really strange to see an Irish parade in Tokyo. There were lots of adorable little female Japanese baton twirlers, Japanese marching bands, Japanese fiddle players, Japanese Riverdancers. There was a fair amount of foreigners (i'm assuing Irishmen) in the parade, too, but it was surely a very strange mix of cultures. There was even a troop of American girl scout brownies. They had their little brown vests on that said, “Girl Scouts USA.” One little blue-eyed-brownie caught my eye and she could tell by the excited glint in my eye that I had once been one of their kind and so she waved to me with a matching gleeful expression. ALSO, there was a plethora of CUTE dogs in the parade. One type of dog in particular makes me squeal every time, and they are ALL over Tokyo:

Dachshunds! Sooooo cute. This one's pretty cute, though a lot of them in Tokyo have longer hair and are a little fluffier which I enjoy even more. I just can’t get enough of these little dudes and they are everywhere.

Following the parade we went to Yoyogi park, which is right near Harajuku, where there are often lots of people dressed up, doing odd things on Sunday afternoons. For example, this time there was a large group of Japanese men and women dressed up in 50s clothing inspired by the clothing worn in the movie Grease. Poodle skirts, saddle shoes, leather jackets, leather pants, crazy greasy hair in a weird doo. And they were dancing to old 50s music. They weren’t particularly good at dancing, or staying synchronized for that matter, but no one seemed to care. They had a very large audience surrounding them, which I should add was made up largely of foreigners and tourists. It was a sight, I do say.

There was also a group of about 10-15 people playing African drums in a circle. There was one black guy with long dreads surrounded by a group of Japanese guys, all playing drums. They, too, had quite a large audience. Not too much earlier, something possessed my friend Chani and I to purchase animal costumes from a 100 yen store. She was a little monkey, with monkey ears, nose and tail. I was a little pig- with yes, ears and a nose. And so, as little animal friends, we danced to the drumbeats. All the Japanese girls that passed us squealed and cooed the word “kawaiiiii”at us, which basically means, “Cuuuuuuute!” A lot of them asked to take a picture with us. What could be better than two blond-type-blue-eyed pale foreign girls dressed as a little piggy and monkey? Then we played some frisbee in the park with frisbees that had also been recently purchased at the 100 yen store. 100 yen is equivalent--very roughly--to one American dollar. Then we went to an Izakaya and ate tons of meat. It was an extremely weird, and totally amazing day.