Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Meiji Shrine near Harajuku Station

YOU GUYS, I WAS LITERALLY JUST HERE. (Well, I mean, at least virtually.)



I did the coolest thing just now. I joined a livestream on "Heygo" and walked around the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo with a woman named Eriko. She strapped her phone on a selfie stick and walked us around. What was amazing is that because it was live, we could chat with her and say things like, "Hey, what's to your left, Eriko?" and she would tell us. It was very literally like walking around Tokyo with a friend. 

I was not particularly interested at first in the idea of the 'cute culture" of Harajuku. But, it was decidedly delightful to walk down streets filled with small clothing shops, cosplay, etc.


A clothing shop.

Heygo allows you to "take postcards," but that also rather depends on Eriko's willingness to stand still. So I caught this one in motion. What is cool, of course, is that because this is live, we were seeing Japan as people were walking down the street going about their days. I asked her about the weather there and it was a balmy 11 C / 53 F there. No snow, bright blue sky. Other people also popped into chat, there was a long discussion about some punk band? Shounen Knife? Apparently someone wanted to know if they were still playing in Japan. Eriko was very confused (apparently not a punk fan) and wondered if this person was referring to Shounen Jump, which made me happy of course, as Jump is a major manga magazine.

Oh, speaking of, Eriko started us in the most adorable cat cafe that is just off Harajuku Station. We probably spent a good ten minutes of the walk just looking at the cats they had there. The connection is that apparently the cat cafe is like an internet cafe in that there is a library of manga for you to read, we saw that when Eriko went off to show us where the cats had their boxes (apparently, they have a private pass through to a special room for doing their business--but along that wall was the manga library.)

She ended the tour at Tokyo Plaza Omotesando (designed by Hiroshi Nakamura).


The center circle is the actual street view. Very confusing, but cool AF.

Anyway, I ADORED this. This is exactly what I wanted the future to be like when I thought about having to be stuck indoors with the pandemic. (Tagged this entry with "cyberpunk future is not as advertised,: but really, this is getting pretty darned close.)  If I had a better phone, I would totally see if Heygo would hire me to walk around Minneapolis/St. Paul with people. 

I'm so doing this again. On Christmas day, I'll be walking around Mount Fuji. See you later, friends! I'm on a real world tour now!!