Week 7: Harry Potter Town

I started this week off by visiting Akasaka Station, which has been transformed to a Harry Potter themed station. The staircase exiting the station, the Wizarding World Gate, is filled with many of the "moving" paintings seen in the movies. On the stairs, there was also a giant sculpture of the timeturner from the series as well. In Harry Potter Town, I visited the Mahou Dokoro store, which is a pop up featuring many goods from the series, such as wands, robes, and accessories. I also tried the Harry Potter Cafe, which had a delicious grilled sandwich with soup and many themed drinks.

The next destination this week was Meiji Jingu Shrine located near Shibuya and Harajuku. The shrine was established in 1920 and was built to honor Emperor Meiji, the first emperor of modern Japan, and his wife Empress Shōken. It was very cool to see the Sake Barrels along the path to the shrine. These barrels were donations from sake brewers across Japan and symbolize offerings to the deities of Meiji Shrine. The shrine was located in a forest with close to 100,000 trees from all over Japan.

I also did some studying this week to prepare for two presentations that I had this week. Cafe Secret Window had a cozy feel to it, which definitely made it easy to focus on my schoolwork. This cafe is located in Shin-Okubo, which is close to my apartment. Their menu items were a bit on the pricier side, but looked very aesthetic, so I would say that it was definitely worth the premium price tag. I got the matcha latte, but I saw online that they offer a glass art experience after 5 PM, so I will definitely need to try that in the future.