Queue of the Day

Should you ever be kidnapped by aliens and returned to Earth at a random location, one way of finding out whether you're in Japan or not is by looking out for disconnected queues of people with no obvious destination. Such as this one here in Harajuku, which at first sight appeared to be a line of people standing under the pedestrian bridge by the station for no apparent reason, but it turned out the queue was merely interrupted to avoid blocking the steps, and continued with renewed vigour on the other side.

Just by following the queue to its head, you'd be none wiser as to where it was headed, as there was no visible attraction that looked like it would be worth waiting in line for. As it happened I was going down the alley towards which the head of the queue was facing - it's a great shortcut from the Omotesando side of the station diagonally towards Takeshita-dori and Tôgô Jinja (but on your first time try it in clear weather conditions with a long piece of string attached to the main road - it gets very wiggly and windy in places and there are some steps which come up on you rather unexpectedly) - but 20 metres or so further in, the appeal became obvious: the Harajuku branch of Johnny's (ジャニーズ), one of Japan's best-known "talent agencies" with a large stable of stars, and this branch with its souvenir shop is a popular destination for the starstruck. A member of staff was standing outside in the alley waving queue members in as space became available.