Susan's Shanghai Blog - Tokyo Part 2

Day 3

We started day 3 with a walk through the Hamarikyu Gardens. This is a public park located at the mouth of the Smida river, and it was opened in 1946. It was the site of a villa of the Shogun Tokugawa family in the 17th century that was turned into a park. As you come in, there are these really old pine trees, but they are a little odd, since the branches tend to grow more horizontally than vertically, and then they can't hold themselves up and they get wooden supports put under them.

There is a nice set of wildflowers, with orange on one side (Tom's favorite) and purple and pink on the other (Susan's favorite). The garden is an "oasis" in the middle of the city, which you can tell from the 3rd picture here, where you see the flowers, the trees, and then the skyscrapers.

There are a couple little buildings in the park, with traditional japanese architecture.

And you can see the Rainbow Bridge in the distance.

This is also the start of the river cruise that we took up from the gardens to Asakusa. When the boat docked, there were all these little japanese (we assumed japanese) kids that all were dressed alike, coming off the boat. They looked SOOO cute, that we just had to take some pictures.

This is a unique building, or set of buildings, that is the headquarters (if I remember right) for a beer manufacturer.

So we get to Asakusa and there is a store that is known for their Japanese confectionerys. So we're looking around and we see this ... Sushi Candy ... okay ... so ... fish-flavored??? We don't know, as we weren't THAT adventurous!

Next stop was the Senso-ji Temple. We walked a couple blocks from the cruise dock and we got to the outer entrance. They have this huge gate named the Kaminarimon Gate. You can't miss this one, with bright red colors and 220-pound lantern hanging in the middle. On the right and left sides are statues of the god of wind (right) and the god of thunder (left).

Once you get through the gate, you are on the Nakamise Dori, which leads straight to the temple. The name means "street of inside shops" and has been where vendors have sold things since the late 17th centruy. It is lined on both sides with tiny stall after tiny stall, many owned by the same family for generations.

While we were walking down the street, we saw these two adorable puppies! Susan stopped and started petting the puppies (she has puppy-envy, obviously) along with a couple japanese schoolgirls. So she's petting away and the japanese schoolgirls look at her, point to the puppies and say "Dog!". Yep, sure enough, the passed their English exam for the day!

Then we stopped for lunch at a little ramen place. This isn't the best picture, but the way this restaurant worked was, inside the front door, there was this machine that had things in Japanese listed. You pick what you want from the 6 options on the menu and decide the size, large, medium, or small. You insert your money, make your selection, and out pops a colored plastic token. You give this to the lady working there, and she brings your selected ramen noodle bowl to you. We didn't get to actually experience this 1st hand because we had no clue when we walked in. She seated us, provided us the English menu, and brought the noodles. But then we started watching all of the locals and figured out what they were doing. Kinda interesting .. vending machine payment for the noodles.

Next is the 5-story pagoda...

And then the main temple. Sensoji is Tokyo's oldest temple, dating from the 7th century. It is dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, and is therefore popularly called the Asakusa Kannon Temple. According to legend, the temple was founded after two fishermen pulled a golden statue of Kannon from the sea. The sacred statue is still housed in the temple, carefully preserved inside three boxes. Like with many temples, before you enter there is a place to wash your hands (2nd picture). There are no pictures of this part, but at the temple, there are omikuji stalls. For a suggested donation of 100 yen, visitors may consult the oracle and divine answers to their questions. After paying your yen, you shake labelled sticks from enclosed metal containers and this will have a number on it, and you then go to the numbered drawer and pull out the "fortune". If you don't like the fortune, you can leave it on one of the many metal wires next to the drawers.

Then we ventured to Akihibara, which is the electronics district. There were tons and tons of shops selling high-tech electronics of all kinds, shapes, and sizes. There were also all these girls dressed up in these little costumes. Some of them were dressed like specific cartoon characters, and these (we think) were there to advertise a specific cafe that has these dressed-up girls in their ads.

This was an interesting building .. .reminded us of the "pickle" building that is in London.

We don't remember the name of this temple, but it had a place outside where you could buy a piece of wood and write something on it (like your wish maybe) and put it on the board outside.

Now for dinner. This one was definitely an experience. The restaurant has a u-shaped "pit" where the diners are seated around the outside. In the middle, you see all of the food options for dinner (no prices) just laying out. There are also 2 guys seated on cushions in front of this long grill. The wooden plate that you see left-side we think has the name of the cook on it.

And then the fun begins! You tell the server what you want out of the options laid out in front of you. He yells it out (in japanese, of course) and the cooks yell it back. Then they lean over and pick up what you ordered off the baskets and then cooks it. The otpions are pretty extensive ... lots of different vegetables as well as whole fish, which you see in the next couple pictures. There are also these really huge prawns, and we kept watching because as they would put new ones out, they were still alive (of course) and would kinda wiggle around, falling out of the basket. We joked that they were "trying to get away!"

This is just a picture of the diners as well as some of the veggies. The 2nd pictures shows the cook giving the food out to the person who ordered it, using this long wooden paddle and the last picture shows the grill with the prawns cooking (foreground) and whole fish in the background.