Jason, Chris, and Jake finally returned back to the US, and after staying at Tsukuba with Beth for a few days, I’m finally back at home. Too much stuff happened over break to put in one entry, so I’m going to split everything up. Today I shall start with Nearly-Naked Harajuku Dancer Guy.

For one of the days Beth and I were showing the new folks around Tokyo we purchased a Tokunai Pass that in essence let us take unlimited trips on the Yamanote Line, among a few other limited places. The Yamanote Line is the line that circles the main section of Tokyo. If you can name one of the famous wards of Tokyo, it’s probably on the Yamanote. With this pass we hopped on at Shinjuku and made a big circle around the city, getting off at all of the big, famous wards that Tokyo is known for. This entry concerns only one of those stops: Harajuku.

Harajuku is known for its waves of teenagers dressed in… I dunno… lots of black and frilly clothing. If you think of weird clothing when you think of Tokyo, you’re probably thinking of Harajuku and it’s many shops there that cater to the goth teenagers with far too much money. Aside from all of that, it has Yoyogi Park, one of the city’s most famous parks, and the Harajuku Bridge area near the station, which is known for having a plethora of street performers.

We walked around, pushed through the crowds, popped in overly expensive shops carrying clothes I’d look terrible in, caught glimpses of plenty of awesomely dressed people, then made our way to the Harajuku Bridge area to see what kind of performers were out for the day.

We were met with hippies dancing, some guy in his own world who would write a poem about you for whatever donation you wished to give, guys playing guitars, and a creepy Santa giving out free hugs.

We wandered aroundsome more, watching. Then we saw him– the most interesting performer of all. Out of all of the people in their outlandish costumes and all of the performers doing their sanely-inspired routines, one man stood out. And he wasn’t wearing pants.

Yes, the man that drew everyone’s attention was the man who was dancing in only his boxers on that frigid winter day. It wasn’t that he was just dancing, for he had far more talents than that. He played a convoluted tune on a recorder. He strummed on his guitar (and by strummed I mean literally strummed, no music was involved), he danced to a song only he could hear, he ran around up into the crowd on all fours, he pulled out a toy gun and ’shot’ random people, and many, many other fantastical charades. Yet, despite all of this, he wasn’t alone.

The man on the right, in the trenchcoat, was actually wandering around to many of the different acts, joining in with them in one way or another. He danced with the hippies, he came over and talked with us and tried to hook Jason up with one of the cute hippie girls (it failed), and he went and joined in with the Nearly-Naked Dancer Guy, whether Nearly-Naked Dancer Guy wanted him to or not, though overall it was quite an enjoyable spectacle to watch.

In the end we had to go, Jason without a girl, random Japanese guy without his dignity, and Beth 1,000 yen short after paying it to Random Poem Guy.

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