Enjoying Harajuku shopping paradise together

Today, Monday 27 July 2015 was my free day in Tokyo. I had a very great day. I got up around 9 AM and started my day in a relaxed pace. When I briefly checked my email, I saw that I had a reply from the contact person of the UN Subcommittee on Torture (SPT) who are undertaking an advisory visit to the Netherlands on human rights monitoring. I had provided input by email, since I cannot participate in the civil society meeting in the Netherlands tomorrow. The reply said that this information gave them a new perspective on issues related to the monitoring of health care, which the delegation will be interested to explore. That was a great start of my day.

Around 11 AM I left the hotel and went to Shinjuku district to see if I could buy some souvenirs. But I felt as if this wasn’t my place to be, so I decided to move on to Harajuku district again, and I went back to Shinjuku station. The station was very big, and I couldn’t find my way, so I decided to try walking to Harajuku. I oriented on the sun and walked south, but it appeared quite far, and it was again extremely hot and humid in Tokyo, so the sweat was dripping. So I only walked half the way, as far as Yoyogi station and then I took a train for the rest of the route. Then in Harajuku, I went to Laforet, which is a huge indoor bazaar. It was amazing to see that all shops have sales staff in front of their shops and walking around, shouting for the loudest to come to their shop and to enjoy the discounts of the summer sale. It was noisy, crowded and unique. The basement appeared to be a Walhalla for me. So many shops with exclusive and nice punky clothes. I walked around and bought some nice clothes. And then Yui, Kirihara and May also appeared to be there, and they walked into me. That was so great!! We shopped along together. Yui, Kirihara and May helped me to find the coolest clothes, and I bought a lot, mostly with a great discount. I lost count of the money that I spent, but I just couldn’t resist. It basically never happens that I can shop like this, since I have a quite exclusive taste which is hard to find in the Netherlands (mainly only on internet), but in Harajuku there was so much for me. Really a shopping paradise, and I enjoyed it with my new friends from Kyoto and Yokohama. I had an amazing day. Around 4 or 5 PM we left Harajuku, and May went back to Yokohama. Yui and Kirihara and me went to Shinjuku to the best sushi restaurant they knew. It was truly delicious. Then Ryugan met us outside, and then Yui and Kirihara left to go back to Kyoto (they had come to Tokyo especially to be present at the 2 lectures of the past days). These nice young people are really in my heart, and I sincerely hope we will meet many times more. Together with Ryugan I went to buy a very big bag to take the shoes and clothes home. It still feels a bit weird that I did this amount of shopping. It just never happened like this before. I went a bit over the top, but I felt like I was allowed to do that after so much work here. Today I was a money spending tourist for sure. And meeting Yui, Kirihara and May so spontaneously made my day really great (otherwise it would have been quite boring to just be shopping). Now it was great. And while I was telling Ryugan how miraculous it was that Yui, Kirihara, May and I met spontaneously in this big metropole city, of which the number of inhabitants (some 13,2 million) is close to the population of the Netherlands as a whole (close to 17 million), we walked into Nagase who had also been at the meetings (!), and whom I had also met in New York in 2013 at the Conference of State Parties to the UN CRPD. This was really incredible and oh so nice. It almost feels as if I live here. Yet I have only 2 days left in Tokyo, with 2 visits to psychiatric hospitals planned. That will be tough I suppose. But I really love Tokyo and the beautiful people that I got to know here in Japan. And I really hope that this won’t be my last visit to Japan. I really have friends and acquaintances here, and that makes this trip a wonderful experience. I am very happy. So I will go to bed with a smile on my face.
Good night!