Harajuku Christmas Pictures 2009 – Part 1

The end of 2009 is getting really close now, so it’s time for us to post more Tokyo holiday pictures. For this edition of our ongoing Holiday 2009 Photo Walk series, we’ll take a cruise around Harajuku. Harajuku isn’t huge, but it’s insanely dense, so we’re breaking this down into two parts – or maybe even three or four if you include Takeshita Dori and Omotesando. Because this is a fashion website, we’ll continue to focus our pictures mainly on stores and shops that sell clothing and accessories. That said, we can’t avoid taking pictures of random cool things we find along the way, regardless of their relation to fashion.

So, here goes Harajuku Christmas 2009, Part One!
(You can view a high quality version of any photo by clicking on it.)

We’re starting this walk off where the Takeshita Dori photo walk ended – at the intersection of Takeshita Dori and Meiji Dori. We’ve turned right onto Meiji Dori and are walking toward Shibuya. The first shop that we stumble upon is…Forever 21. This store is still pretty new in Harajuku, so the crowds are brutal on weekend. Not too bad tonight, and they do have holiday decorations in the front windows.

Another Forever 21 Harajuku window – with the message “City of Wishes Holiday 2009”.

Shooting across Meiji Dori, you can see the lights on the YM Square building – home to one of the big Adidas shops in Harajuku and the extremely popular Hanjiro resale shop.

The popular Crepes shop between H&M and LaForet Harajuku. No one is eating crepes?

Topshop at LaForet. Not really in the holiday spirit, are they?

Yay, it’s LaForet Harajuku – the department store that defines this area. They’re having a sale. The tree is lit with holiday lights. We’ll get back to more LaForet pictures on our way back down the street later in the night. It’s hard to take good photos of LaForet from this side of the street.

Looking across the other side of Meiji Dori, it’s the Gap Harajuku. They are Ready for Holiday Cheer!

Stopping for a quick picture of the Omotesando Dori illumination. This picture was taken by walking out in the street during a red light for cars. Watch out – if you stop too long in the crosswalk, the Japanese police officer will blow his whistle at you!

Now we’ve turned right onto Omotesando Dori and we’re heading up the hill toward Harajuku Station. That’s Zara on the other side of the street.

Softbank Harajuku behind Christmas lights on one of the trees lining Omotesando Dori.

The Amos Style Harajuku shop always puts effort into their window displays, and this Christmas is no exception. The cafe next door always frames their window display nicely, too.

Now passing by the brand new Nike Flagship Store in Harajuku. We’ll get a better picture of this one from the other side of the street later. Too close here!

A Christmas tree and lighted angel out in front of Quest Harajuku.

Almost to the top of the hill as we pass the Accessorize shop. The huge “A” on the top of their building can be seen easily when walking to Harajuku from Yoyogi Park.

We’ve reached the top of Omotesando Dori where Harajuku Station and Meiji Jingumae Station are located. Nothing very exciting going on up here. We’ll cross over the street to the other side, hen head back down the hill to where the action is! This picture is taken from the bridge, looking down the hill.

Now on the other side of Omotesando Dori and passing the Zoff shop, which is decorated inside for the holidays.

As promised, a picture of the new Nike Harajuku store from a good enough distance that you can see the whole building.

We continue down the hill and turn right, back onto Meiji Dori – once again heading toward Shibuya. The first shop we stop to check out is the tiny Kayenta Harajuku. This shop is like something you would see in Arizona or Nevada – carrying only Native American jewelry and accessories. If you’re into turquoise, don’t miss it!

The MILK Harajuku shop. The only sign of Christmas is a lone poinsettia flower in the door.

The Override hat shop is promoting the Kids Earth Fund for the 2009 holidays. A nice gesture!

Now passing the super-popular Tokyo hat shop CA4LA. This is the old Harajuku location. The new and bigger shop is located on Omotesando Dori. We’ll try to get a shot of that on another walk.

Levi’s Harajuku has a Christmas tree made of denim in their front window. Pretty cool.

In case you didn’t find what you were looking for at Kayenta, here is another tiny Harajuku shop carrying eclectic silver and bead jewelry and accessories. This shop is called “The Bingo Brothers”.

Black Fly’s Harajuku with a Christmas tree in the front window, and a bicycle parked outside.

It’s the Harajuku B6 building! This place has quite a few cool shops – including Lush, Sunao Kuwahara, and a new Hawaiian burger cafe!

B6 Christmas decorations theme this year seems to be “pigs seen from behind”. Cute!

As we continue down Meiji Dori, here are holiday lights outside of the Gas brand shop in Harajuku.

Looking across to the other side of the street, the massive glass Audi building is always amazing.

The Hiromichi store has a Christmas tree inside.

The SpinBox Harajuku shop window is sporting the very holiday-ish message “My Beach, My Waves, My Chicks!” If you blow this one up, you can also see a cute staff member inside helping a customer.

The Aigle shop shows you how to decorate your tent for Christmas. This is for those unfortunate people who lost their jobs in 2009 and are now living in their parent’s backyard. Of course, in Tokyo there are no backyards, so maybe it’s just trying to evoke a little nostalgia for the millions of Fuji Rockers who shop at Aigle each year. Who knows?

Laundry loves Christmas. Peach on Earth. Buy cute Japanese underwear and pajamas. Etc.

Hysteric Glamour Harajuku isn’t too into the holiday spirit, but they have a string of little guitar Christmas lights along the front window.

Abahouse’s window display features gold and red bears. Not sure what they’re promoting, but it looks cool.

We’ve now reached the edge of Shibuya. We already covered the shops past this point on our Shibuya Photo Walk, so it’s time to cross the street and head back toward Omotesando Dori. After crossing the street, the first shop we notice with any holiday cheer is Le Coq Sportif. They’ve got snow painted all over the front windows. The weather has been so warm in Tokyo this winter, that might be the only snow we see.

TK by Takeo Kikuchi has a Christmas tree and a Merry Christmas message on the windows. They also have their logo projected onto the ceiling of the shop and it keeps changing colors and moving – hard to realize that in a photo, but hardly worth shooting a movie of a moving logo.

The Guild Prime shop in Harajuku always look awesome in photos – even more so with a Christmas tree below the chandelier inside the door. This is the other shop run by the same company as Loveless (one of our staff favorites). Loveless will make an appearance in a later photo walk.

One of the three main t-shirt shops in Harajuku, Graniph didn’t go all out decorating for the holidays. However, they do have a sign on the window saying “We Wish You a Merry XMas”.

The recently opened (sometime this year at least) Jins glasses shop. Unrelated note: As with about 50% of the brands in Tokyo right now, Jins currently has a promotional campaign featuring Super-Gal Tsubasa Masuwaka.

Moving further back the way we came, but on the other side of the street, we find the best pink Christmas tree of the night at Ash & Diamonds Harajuku.

MNG Harajuku has decorated a couple of Christmas trees for their front window.

You know we are very very close to the intersection of Omotesando Dori and Meiji Dori now because we’ve found WEGO Harajuku. Their sign is just too cool not to take a picture of.

A close up picture of the WEGO Harajuku sign. You can see a Christmas tree in the upstairs window and a cute panda head character from the WEGO-related brand WC by Chinatsu Wakatsuki. Unrelated fact: According to the WEGO website, they import about 200 tons of clothing from Europe and the US each year.

Before crossing Omotesando Dori, we stop on the corner for a picture of THE Harajuku landmark – LaForet Harajuku.

We’re now on the other side of Omotesando Dori. People are waiting to take pictures in front of the Gap Harajuku Christmas tree. It’s the biggest tree we’ve seen tonight.

Taking a slight detour, we climb the stairs up to the third floor of the building with Plaza and Pizza Express to get a better picture of the LaForet Christmas tree. From up here, you can clearly see the Kitson shop and Topman by Topshop too.

Now back at ground level, we stop for a quick picture of the Lure Conscious window featuring Christmas Minnie Mouse.

Walking back toward Takeshita Dori, but on the other side of Meiji Dori, we pass the Jayro White store. They don’t have too many holiday decorations, but those long green jackets with the fur lined hood are EVERYWHERE this season.

We’ve past Takeshita now and we’re continuing on toward Killer Dori. Now passing all of the Beams Harajuku shops. The Beams 2009 Holiday campaign is “Meeting of the Trees”, so all of the shop windows are covered in – you guessed it – trees! The Trees promotion is a collaboration with Japanese photographer Tsuda Nao.

We’ve reached Killer Dori and the famous Diesel Harajuku store. Diesel’s windows are in full holiday mode, featuring some kind of blue futuristic Disco Christmas theme – or something.

Having walked all the way from Takeshita to Shibuya and back, and with many of the stores just about to hit closing time, we’ve decided to end this first Harajuku photo walk. There are a lot more places in Harajuku that we need to photograph (Cat Street, anyone?), but that will have to wait for another night. Besides the 50 pictures posted above, we’ve uploaded a few more from this walk to our Tokyo Christmas 2009 set on Flickr.

Don’t forget to click the pictures to see better quality versions of them. Also, leave a comment to let us know what you’d like to see more or less of. Thanks for walking with us and check back for Harajuku Part Two very very soon!