An Afternoon in Harajuku and Aoyama

On Saturday we headed out to Omotesando. Getting out at Omotesando station, our first mission was to go to the Adidas store near the Gap for a pair of sneakers for Yuko (they’d sold of her size for the sneakers she wanted at the Ikebukuro Adidas store, and other sports stores in Ikebukuro didn’t carry it). I thought we could go check out Wolfgang Buttress’ “Traces” photography exhibition at Wall on the way (Yuko is getting interested in photography), but the stupid map on their site is printed south-side up, which made us go in the complete opposite direction, and when we finally realized it, we just gave up and headed to the Adidas store. After she picked up her new pair of sneakers (don’t know what their called, but their black and pink, and it’s because she’s starting a bunch of sports classes from this week — she even bought an iPod nano with arm band), as we got back to street level, we noticed the MTV Cafe Studio, and being hungry, we headed inside for a bite. Honestly, I had one of the tastiest burgers I’ve ever eaten in Tokyo, and the nachos were pretty damn good as well. As for the cafe’s atmosphere, you’re pretty much a prisoner to whatever is airing on MTV Japan (which was a boring dance documentary while I was there). After lunch, we started heading up Omotesando, and stoppped at the Ars Gallery for Yuriko Takagi’s “Behind the Door” collection of nude photography. Can’t say that I was really taken by the work on display. Continuing on our journey, I was really excited about going to the La Une Galerie for Michiharu Baba’s “The View of the Seaside” show — I really liked the last photography exhibition I saw there — but although it’s listed on TAB as going from April 1 to June 17, the gallery was closed, and it didn’t look like there was any exhibition currently running. Weird. Our last stop for the day was to be the Yoshitomo Nara and graf-produced AtoZ Cafe (see yesterday’s post), and on our way we stopped at Spiral to see the “Takeo Paper Show 2006 Unbalance/Balance” exhibition, but it was so uncomfortably crowded — probably due to the fact that it was the last day of the show — that we quickly gave up and headed to the cafe.