Meiji shrine & super-cheap sushi

Another long weekend! Monday is Health and Sports Day (to commemorate the opening of the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964). I stayed over in Tokyo for a night before visiting my friend Con-chan who lives just 40 mins away from Tokyo in the Kanagawa Prefecture.

Today, my friend Iris and I set off to Harajuku to visit the Meiji Shrine. The Meiji Shrine was built in the early 1900s in memory of the late Emperor Meiji. It was destroyed during WWII but has been rebuilt and is very popular among tourists and locals. Its a really peaceful and serene place, completely opposite from the busy, trendy streets of Harajuku just at its doorstep.

The torii gates leading to the Meiji Shrine are HUGE (all Shinto shrines have torii gates)

It is a pleasant but long walk in on pebbled paths. Very rustic ambience.

Another set of torii just before the temple complex...not as big as the ones right in front

Japanese like to hold their wedding ceremonies at Meiji Shrine. We were lucky enough to meet one wedding procession. You can see the Shinto priests leading the procession, followed by the wedding couple (groom is blocked by the saluting guard), followed by parents and relatives.

Japanese dress very formally to weddings. The men wear tuxedos (with coat tails!) and the ladies wear their finest kimonos. It doesn't look very joyous though cos everyone's dressed in black. Close-up of the bridal couple dressed in traditional Shinto garb:

Oh, Iris and I found this superbly cheap sushi conveyor belt restaurant in Harajuku where almost every plate on the conveyor belt was only 100-yen (except chawan mushi, i.e. steamed egg custard, and desserts, but still, nothing more than 250-yen)! They had a really wide selection of sushi (even raw horse meat!) so it was great value for money! For the more expensive stuff like fatty tuna or big prawns, they will put only 1 piece of sushi on the plate instead of 2. Iris and I just kept taking whatever looked interesting cos there was no need to worry about how much it would cost. It was a great meal! We each paid about S$10 for around 8 plates of sushi (yes, we ate about 8 plates of sushi each...couldn't stop ourselves from taking anything that looked good because everything was so cheap).