Harajuku, Tokyo

Great Scott! It's Batgirl. Pic by Carol Clarke

Here's a bunch of pictures from the CCE tour of Japan. As usual we have ongoing critique's slide shows whenever suitable moment arises on tour. we have just visited Harajuku in Tokyo and came back with some interesting pictures of the people who turn up to perform for anyone watching. There were several groups of 'teddy boys' with more grease in the hair than in the road outside my house a bunch of girls who were obviously rehearsing some kind of balance routine for Halloween around the back of the park. It's a funny place because there are considerably more people watching than there are people performing but it still makes some great shots. Across the road is the Meiji Shrine, the very old traditional Japanese Temple which hosts weddings in religious ceremonies. The park is full of day trippers taking their kids to the Temple stop this also makes terrific opportunities for photography because the parents are quite happy to have the children photographed, something you could get arrested for in other countries.

Here's a young girl at the Meiji Shrine caught in camera by Graham Bass

Harajuku girl by Graham Bass

Pic by Norma Barne

Teddy boy, Harajuku: Carol Clarke

Harajuku girls by Leo Gaspare

Red eye by Norma Barne

'Ginger' by Sylvia Prescott

School girl? By Mary Barnes

This last picture is quite funny because we all talked that this was a Japanese schoolgirl acting out a fantasy (not quite sure what) among the rest of the Japanese schoolgirls hanging about in the street. But once we checked our LCD screens in the safety of a coffee shop, we all realized 'she' was a 'he'. Actually in hindsight this is all quite obvious but, with what seemed like 10,000 people milling around the area, was quite hard to see 'who was who' (OK,OK, I didn't realize 'who was who'. Everyone else did!).