Nerdy Travels: Harajuku

Harajuku was the other area of Tokyo I was probably most excited about as well as Akihabara. It’s most famous for it being a central hub for fashion and youth culture.

I was very excited to visit some of the stores along Takeshita Street. The main stores I wanted to visit were Listen Flavor, B-Side Label and the Shining Store which is the Utapri pop up shop. Listen Flavor is one of my favourite fashion brands as they sell both really cute and creepy clothing and accessories. Although their store is super tiny it’s worth a visit. The staff in there were also very sweet and welcoming which is always appreciated. B-Side Label is an incredible sticker store which I spent an obscene amount of money in because all of the art on the stickers was too amazing not to buy. We found the Shining Store by accident which was a blessing really because we would have never found it otherwise. I was extremely excited to visit this store as I really wanted to visit an anime pop up shop on the trip and I’m a huge fan of the Uta Pri series. The pop up store had music from the anime playing as well as a TV with clips of all the characters on. I made sure to buy merchandise for best boy Natsuki.

A side by side comparison of the real thing VS the anime, not my images

I also found an amazing otaku fashioned themed store called Park Harajuku. For those of you who have seen Urahara it’s basically a real life version of the store they work in. I regret not buying anything from there but I certainly will next time.

Fashion forward or not I highly recommend visiting Harajuku. Although it can get very busy and some of the best stores are often the tiniest and most cramped it’s still a treasure trove of items you’d struggle to find anywhere else. Many of the stores in this area also seem to be on the pricey side so I recommend saving up before you visit in case you find any gems you cannot live without. Trust me it’ll happen.

We also found the famous Moshi Moshi Box by Sebastian Matsuda which was amazing to see in person

Although I had seen so many videos and pictures of the place it could have never readied me for the actual thing. What I found strange is in my head I had this image built from fragments I had seen of the area in my head and when I got there it was similar but also very different to what I had picture in my mind. I’m not sure that made any sense. I will say however that if you go expecting to see tons of quirky and fashion forward youths you might be disappointed as it’s become a very tourist based area over the past few years. I also recommend not just staying on the main street, branch off onto the backstreets as it seems to be where most of the best stores lie. All that being said Harajuku was as fabulous as I expected it to be.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!

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All images are sourced my own unless stated otherwise