Photo Highlight: Portable Shrine at Jingumae Crossing

In this photo, a team carries a golden mikoshi through Jingumae Crossing, the intersection between the avenues of Omotesando and Meiji-dori in Shibuya, Tokyo. Such portable shrines toured the neighborhood as part of the autumn festival down the street at Aoyama Kumano Shrine, on Sunday, October 1, 2023. This was the first time for the festival to take place since 2019, though not because of the pandemic. It’s usually held once every four years.

In the background, you can see Tokyu Plaza’s new Harajuku Harakado shopping complex, which is set to open in the spring of 2024. It sits on the same corner the Condomania store used to occupy, directly opposite Tokyu Plaza’s existing Omotesando Harajuku complex. To differentiate it from the new building with the similar name, the original complex  — famous for the kaleidoscope of mirrors over its escalator — will now be renamed “Omotesando Omokodo.” This will leave the intersection supporting twin malls, each with a rooftop garden, one on the Harajuku side, the other on the Omotesando side, both branches of Tokyu Plaza.

Photo Highlight: The Shibuya Nebuta Festival

Furusato Matsuri (The Hometown Festival) isn’t the only place where you could see an Aomori Nebuta float in Tokyo this year. On Saturday, for the first time since 2014, Shibuya held its own Nebuta Festival, with a team parading a small float across the Scramble and up and down Center Gai after a dedication ceremony in Hachiko Square. The special one-sided float was designed to fit the narrow street by Rika Tsukamoto, only the second female Nebuta master in history. It was accompanied by traditional haneto dancers, non-traditional gymnasts doing flips, and a Nebuta bayashi, or music band, playing taiko drums, hand cymbals, and flutes.

For two days before the parade, the float was on display in a tent near IKEA. Last summer, there was also a Nebuta decoration up on the entrance gate to Center Gai, but having the full parade this year made things livelier. It brought a taste of the festival atmosphere from the Aomori Nebuta Matsuri to Shibuya. Today was a public holiday in Japan — Keiro no Hi, or Respect for the Aged Day — so this was a good way to kick off the three-day weekend.

Photo Highlight: Warner Bros. Sunset

2023 should have been a celebratory year for Warner Bros. It’s the studio’s 100th anniversary, but since it merged with Discovery in 2022, started canning finished films like Batgirl as tax write-offs, and became embroiled in the ongoing strikes in Hollywood, the mood hasn’t been one of celebration. When CEO David Zaslav gave a Boston University commencement speech this May, graduates booed him and chanted, “Pay your writers!” A month later, there were reports that Warner Bros. was negotiating to sell off half its movie and TV assets.

One asset it holds is Harry Potter, now the subject of the Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo - The Making of Harry Potter. The sprawling four-hour tour opened on June 16, 2023, on the site of the former Toshimaen amusement park in Nerima. Tickets continue to sell out online weeks in advance, so Japanese fans seem undeterred by all the bad press for the studio or creator J. K. Rowling, whose comments on transgender issues in recent years have also courted controversy. I did take the tour on September 7, but the biggest highlight was when it was all over, and I stepped outside to see this gorgeous pink sunset. Life after movies.

Photo Highlight: Koenji Awa Odori Returns

This weekend, the Koenji Awa Odori Festival and its parade of dance troupes finally took to the streets again in Tokyo for the first time since 2019. The two-night annual event, rooted in an Obon tradition from Tokushima Prefecture, usually draws around a million visitors to Koenji, a district of Suginami Ward, located between Shinjuku and Mitaka on the Chuo-Sobu Line. However, it was canceled for three straight summers due to the pandemic.

The crowds came flocking back tonight to see women in amigasa hats and other dancers and musicians perform around the train station. One taiko drummer was pounding away so hard that I saw him break his stick, then grab a spare that he had tucked into his back belt, almost without missing a beat. That was just one moment in the three-hour parade, which begins at 5 p.m. and disperses promptly at 8 p.m., with a ten-second countdown each time. Pro tip: if you stake out a spot in the first standing row on the sidelines, people sitting in front will often leave before the parade is over, and then you can slide in and have the dancers looming right over you, as seen in this picture.

Photo Highlight: Climbing Mount Fuji

The Fujinomiya Trail, on the Shizuoka side of Mount Fuji, is the shortest of the four trails leading up the mountain. More climbers take the Yoshida Trail, which is said to be the easiest, but the Fujinomiya Trail starts at a higher altitude (2,400 meters, about a mile and a half up). It’s also unique among the four trails in that you ascend and descend the same rocky route. On other trails, you’ll go up the mountain one way and come down another way.

This picture was taken just as we were beginning our climb—on Yama no hi, or Mountain Day, weekend, appropriately enough. It’s probably the best view we had looking straight up the mountain, not far from the bus stop at the 5th station. I’ve seen Mt. Fuji veiled in clouds often enough, but on the Fujinomiya Trail, we walked through some of those clouds. I may share some pics of misty Mt. Fuji in a future post, but for now, just imagine looking at blue skies one minute, then thick fog.