Harajuku, Meiji Shrine

Harajuku is a trendy neighborhood not too far away.  One one side of the road is Meiji Shrine, a beautiful, quiet, traditional shrine.  One the other side of the road is Takashita street--quirky, packed, delicious treats, shopping.  I've written about it lots of times because I've visited multiple times.  We took Jess and Jen and visited a capsule store, Daiso, ate some crepes, and visited a Otter petting zoo.  We've done lots of animal cafes but never an otter one and Mike really wanted to go.  I was skeptical but it ended up being a great choice.  So bizarre and cool.  They were way more soft and friendly than I expected and also equally intimidating.  They would literally climb all over us and loved to try and climb up Jen's pants.

When my friend Bre came ten days later I gave her a list of things to do and when she heard about the Otter zoo and Takashita street she voted for this outing.  I let her and her daughter do the otter zoo by themselves this time and walked around the neighborhood while they were inside.  It was so cold and rainy by the end and hard to navigate Takashita street with so many umbrellas but I was happy to go there on a rainy day.  I added photos from both of those outings in this post.