Harajuku

What to see

Meiji Shrine is the anchor, and the walk matters as much as the buildings. From the great torii beside Harajuku station, the gravel path curves through the forest for ten minutes before the inner gate appears, and on a weekday before nine the loudest sound is your own footsteps. The grounds are free. The inner garden costs 500 yen and earns it in June, when the irises flower. Yoyogi Park shares a fence with the shrine forest and it's the opposite in mood, a wide open lawn where Tokyo comes to play. The rockabilly dancers at the entrance on Sunday afternoons are the longest-running show in the area. Back across the tracks, Takeshita Street is the sight everyone photographs, 350 metres of crepe stands and maximalist fashion. It counts as seeing even if you don't buy anything.

Two small museums are worth the detour. Ota Memorial Museum of Art, behind Laforet, rotates monthly shows from a 14,000-print ukiyo-e collection that includes Hokusai and Hiroshige, and it's the calmest room within a minute of Takeshita. Design Festa Gallery, in the backstreets toward Cat Street, is a graffiti-covered warren of rentable walls. The show changes every visit and it's free to get in. Between them, Omotesando's zelkova avenue and the lanes of Ura-Harajuku supply the architecture and the window displays.

Where to eat and drink

Harajuku isn't a place to settle in for a long meal. You eat on the move, and the food follows the crowd. Takeshita Street sets the tone with its crepe stands, the rainbow-wrapped cones of cream and fruit that have been the street's signature snack for decades. Buy one, eat it standing to the side, and treat it as the admission price for the spectacle. The serious value is a few minutes south near Cat Street at Harajuku Gyoza Lou, which has done exactly two things, fried and steamed gyoza, for over twenty years at around 300 yen for six. Order both with garlic and chives, add a beer, and go mid-afternoon if you don't want to queue. Sakuratei, the okonomiyaki restaurant attached to Design Festa Gallery, is the other institution, a cook-it-yourself hot plate place that fits the gallery's do-it-yourself spirit.

For coffee and somewhere calmer, the backstreets of Ura-Harajuku between Omotesando and Cat Street hold the neighbourhood's cafes, and Omotesando's avenue has the terrace tables. Harajuku doesn't have much nightlife of its own. When the shops close, either walk down Cat Street to Shibuya's bars or north past the park toward Tomigaya and Yoyogi-Uehara, both around fifteen minutes on foot.

Where to stay

Harajuku itself doesn't have many hotels. The neighbourhood is shops and shrine, with almost no beds in the middle of it, so the practical choices sit on its edges. The Omotesando end, toward Aoyama, has the design-led boutique hotels and serviced apartments, priced accordingly and well placed for the Ginza and Chiyoda lines. The Yoyogi side, north of the park around Sangubashi and Yoyogi stations, is residential and quieter, with mid-range hotels and rental apartments a short walk from the shrine's north entrance. Budget travellers usually stay one stop away in Shibuya or Shinjuku and ride the Yamanote in. Harajuku suits you if you want to be at Meiji Shrine before the crowds and in the backstreet boutiques when they open, and you don't mind going elsewhere for dinner.

How to do it in a day

Enter Meiji Shrine through the great torii at Harajuku station by eight, walk the forest path to the main hall while the gravel is still being raked, and if the irises are out, pay for the inner garden. Leave by the north side into Yoyogi Park and cross the lawn, or if it's a Sunday, hang around the entrance for the rockabilly dancers. Back at the station around eleven, Takeshita Street will be waking up. Walk it top to bottom with a crepe in hand, then duck behind Laforet into Ota Memorial Museum of Art for the ukiyo-e and a break from the noise. Lunch is Harajuku Gyoza Lou near Cat Street, mid-afternoon if the queue is long. Spend the afternoon in the lanes of Ura-Harajuku and at Design Festa Gallery, then Kiddy Land Harajuku on Omotesando for the character floors before it gets shoulder-to-shoulder. As the shops shutter in the early evening, walk Cat Street downhill to Shibuya for dinner and the night.