Japan Images: Shibuya Free Hugs
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
We were on our way back to the train station after a morning wandering (read: clothes shopping and visiting Loft for the 35th time) around Shibuya.
As we approached the main square outside the station there were about 10 girls/guys giving out free hugs and generally running around being very happy.
A rattled off a few shots but I like this one the best.
We spoke to them afterwards and my initial assumption about some type of substance abuse to be that happy, turned out to be incorrect. ^_^
That free hug thing started in Australia, I thing, and is spread across the world
It’s nice to see it in Japan
Any chance that they would be willing to give awkwardly long hugs?
Odd that they’d be using signs written in English to give hugs to Japanese people…. unless they just wanted to give hugs to western women… mmmmmm…
LOL tempting thought – were a couple of very tasty looking huggers of the female variety just out of frame but with the word ちかん ringing in my mind I decided it was best I moved on ^_^
Yep it did – great background story on it here – http://www.freehugscampaign.org
And I wasn’t there to hug ‘em!
Kanashiiii… 
Sugoi. I guess they do that pretty often. I ran into a group of free huggers myself at shibuya eki in July. I couldn’t keep myself from giving all of them a hug
.
Here’s some more of then huggers in Fukuoka. Not as much traffic as Shibuya so they had a bit more time to wait for the next huggee.
http://www.fukuokadreaming.com/?p=847
A couple of years ago at a U.S. sci-fi convention, some rather attractive, underaged, and somewhat provocatively dressed teen girls were giving out “free hugs.” A lot of us were uncomfortable with their approach, especially since it doesn’t take much these days to be perceived to be on the wrong side of the law or to have certain “tendencies” (if you catch my drift). _