About Harajuku

Admin Joined : 21 Aug 2007 Posts : 17 Location : Harajuku

Harajuku ( "meadow lodging") is the common name for the area around Harajuku Station on the Yamanote Line in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, Japan. Harajuku is an area between Shinjuku and Shibuya. Local landmarks include the headquarters of NHK, Meiji Shrine, and Yoyogi Park.
The area has two main shopping streets, Omotesand? and Takeshita-d?ri. The latter caters to youth fashions and has many small stores selling Gothic Lolita, visual kei, rockabilly, hip-hop, and punk outfits,in addition to fast food outlets and so forth.
In recent years Omotesand? has seen a rise in branches of expensive fashion stores such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Prada. The avenue is sometimes referred to as "Tokyo's Champs-Élysées". Until 2004, one side of the avenue was occupied by the D?junkai Aoyama ap?to, Bauhaus-inspired apartments built in 1927 after the 1923 Kant? earthquake. In 2006 the buildings were controversially destroyed by Mori Building and replaced with the "Omotesando Hills" shopping mall, designed by Tadao Ando. The area known as "Ura-Hara" (back streets of Harajuku) is a center of Japanese fashion for younger people ? brands such as A Bathing Ape and Undercover have shops in the area.Harajuku street style is promoted in Japanese and international publications such as Fruits.

In the 1980s large numbers of street performers and wildly dressed teens including takenoko-zoku ( "bamboo-shoot kids") gathered on Omotesand? and the street that passes through Yoyogi Park on Sundays when the steets were closed to traffic. The streets were reopened to traffic in the 90s. Small groups of rockabillies and gosurori still gather on Sundays.