Day 2 - Ogikubo and Shimo Kitazawa

Still waking up early, 5 or 6am
No good breakfast place open til 8am

All supermarkets are there to help, grab a sandwich and onigiri. Wash the salty onigiri with some hot tea, also from supermarket, and feel fresh but not full.

Try to devise a plan to head towards Shibuya and then another photographer meetup. Get another breakfast on the way.

Pass by Omote Sando, with all the fancy shops and interesting contrast between the newest architecture, and some type of what we would call social housing.

All the shiny architecture of malls looks alien, where one floor merges into the next, like some flamboyant mutant, part of a continuous chain-link that links one shop, to another, to another without you realising which brand they are selling until you reach the specific floor.

Find an omelette place, decide to try it, wait a good 40 or so minutes for a good omelette, strangely enough with potatoes, and decide to continue exploring the tiny streets and window shopping.

Omote sando has too many "hype sneakers" brand shops, and people queuing on every corner for the newest sneaker release, maybe as its Saturday.

Getting closer to Shibuya, there's a street farmers market, selling mostly food, some crafts and jewellery. Someone even brought a tiny goat, to be the most interesting thing in the crowd.

It smells like a typical bazaar with a mix of full food stalls and the slightly floral scent of a floral stall.

Mostly tourists around as you get closer to Shibuya, everyone crossing the big scramble and filming themselves, you still have some time to explore at least one or another shop, and then its time to catch a train towards Ogikubo.

Arriving at 2pm on the dot, you do see two familiar faces from the meetup yesterday, but you see that most of the people are also foreigners so it's easy to get the conversation flowing.

Everyone either holding a Sony camera or a canon, some a fuji and carrying massive backpacks full of gear.

The area seems much more remote from the main touristy trails, as we head along some random roads, the sun does come out and finally warms up the day, after a few random street shots, someone shows us the way to a nice park nearby, and it surprises me with a great definition of a zen garden, full of tall bamboo, a small pond with Koi carps, a few stones around and a temple that sells mochi wrapped in sakura leaf with some bean paste.

The meetup goes on for a while longer, and people do think its time for a drink or maybe even a meal.

The suggested area, Shimo Kitazawa, by everyone's description sounds to me like shoreditch, every single shop sells vintage clothing, and even the modern restaurants have a more relaxed hipster look.

We find a small izakaya to pass by some time waiting for other people to join us so we can head to another restaurant for a meal.

Some more people come and join, every language gets spoken, from Hebrew to French, with of course a lot of Japanese knowledge being shared. I take my best notes from some experienced people who traveled this country up and down, as we go along taking more photos around, even though it's a photographer themed meetup, friends invite friends, even a carpenter who works on real life models for Demon Slayer, and other anime/shows joins us.

Everyone has a story to share, and I guess, them being Japanese, they are happy to practice their English, make people feel welcome and learn more from foreigners about anything, or at least it seems the interest in whatever stories we tell is genuine.

The restaurant is a small basement, -2 floor, with a huge lizard on the ceiling, the menu is handwritten, and the food is fine, I don't go crazy on the alcohol but instead order a curry, which was hard to describe as a Japanese person suggested, saying it was the most unique one on the menu.

It's getting late, some people even suggest heading to Karaoke, but I prefer to catch a few trains back and sleep, as it was almost 1Am, and maybe my schedule would finally be in sync with Japanese time.