The Earth Day 2009, Japan....

Sunday 19th April 2009.

Tokyo celebrated the Earth Day 2009 on Sunday, the last of pakdokter's day in Japan for this year's RSGC tour of Japan. We took the train to Harajuku where we planned to see the "Muscle Musical" - a broadway type of show performed by gymnasts who probably represented Japan in the Olympics. It was a magnificent show of energetic acrobatic movements mixed with high-energy dance in amazing technicolor!

Harajuku was jam-packed with millions of commuters caught in long queues to get out of the train station. It was not only the usual weekend Japanese teenagers who crowded Harajuku that weekend. There was a show by the Japanese teenager who is the world champion in figure-skating at a nearby stadium which also drew a huge crowd to the area.

As we walked to the Harajuku Park, we found out that Tokyo was celebrating the 'Earth Day 2009' that weekend. It was a colourful fun-fair of everything there was to celebrate the good earth. Booths promoting green environment, healthy living, souvenier items and crafts made from natural materials with beautiful tee-shirts and apparels coloured with natural dyes made the festival a colourful panorama...

And true to the free-spirit and style of the Japanese , the participants came in costumes of all style and colour and with high energy dance and music booming from some quarters of the festival, it was like mini-Woodstock festival...

Lectures promoting 'green earth' and 'healthy living' drew serious attention from a concerned audience.

Home-made traditional cookies were promoted - not the junk food of America's fast-food era.

And after two hours of scouting through the booths and the crowd of colourful people, we were very delighted to have decided to also book to see the show " the Muscle Musical" which is currently only performed in Tokyo.

We walked out of Harajuku after the show towards Shibuya, another chic shopping and dining district and pakdokter decided to have dinner at a Spanish restaurant. The set of several tapas before the main dish of a beef steak almost made pakdokter forget that he was in Tokyo...