The brightly pastel colored Takeshite street is home to dozens of “kawaiI” style cafes, little crepe shops, and cute boutiques on every corner. We took a long walk and a small side street to get onto the main street. I immediately spotted a crepe shop with what looked to be over 100 flavors of crepes. I ordered one and it was a delicious mess of hot, gooey, and strawberry goodness. We entered a couple of shops and I bought a few items in the “Harajuku” style. Harajuku, specifically this street, is a center of fashion and style. College students can be spotted in elaborate costumes walking down the streets sometimes.
When I went into one of the clothing stores to try on some clothes, I found they were extremely clean. As I entered the dressing room, an attendant took my shoes, my jacket, and took the clothes off of the hangers. Talk about good service! I tried on a few clothes and ended up buying a hoodie. We saw a few cosplayers wandering the streets of Harajuku in “Lolita” style, with ruffles and lace and dozens of pink fluffy layers of dresses.
Once we reached the end of the street, we spotted a LINE store. LINE is a brand and the name of a messaging app, and the store contained dozens of products related to the popular emoji characters in the app. They had a huge giant brown bear in the front and tons of cute little trinkets related to the characters. Everything from coffee mugs, pajamas, balloons, kids clothes, and hairpins. All the characters were so cute, and many human-sized figures of them were placed around the store so you could take pictures. My favorite Korean pop boy band, BTS, had produced a set of special characters in collaboration with LINE. Sadly, they had closed off the section due to all the products being sold out. We left Harajuku after walking around the area a bit more and traveling once again through Takeshite Street.