Day 5 (Friday): Asakusa

I woke up at the usual early time and ventured out to my new morning hangout at Caffe Veloce. I hung out in my hotel room for a while, reading the English newspaper and watching Japanese television, waiting for the tail end of rush hour before leaving. I took a couple of connecting subways to get to the Edo Tokyo Museum. The architecture of the museum is a funky fusion of old and new. It's in the general shape of a sumo wrestling auditorium but built with a contemporary eye and modern materials. This museum was all about displaying the history of Tokyo. Upon entering the museum, I found signs offering tours in various languages. I decided to take them up on their offer and inquired about a tour in English and a nice older lady was available. Her English was good but she had trouble with certain vocabulary words. She was a sweet lady who had a funny laugh that was exactly the same every time. It was kind of like the tail end of Woody Woodpecker's laugh. We talked about many of things such as her family, her children and somehow ended up on dating services. I told her that dating services were quite common in Korea also. I think she was giving it her all because I noticed her brow was sweating during the tour. If you ever have the chance to get a guided tour, definitely go for it. The tour added so much more context to the pieces I saw. For instance, I learned that the tattoos that cover members of the Yakuza today were donned by ancient firemen of Edo Tokyo.

This museum had all facets of old life on display from art, clothes, everyday living items, weapons, uniforms, etc. They also had life-sized replicas of houses and living quarters. They did a good job in trying to convey what it was like to live in Tokyo many years ago. There was also a lot of information and history concerning the samurai and shoguns which was really cool. This museum was definitely one of my favourites.

Once the tour was over, I thanked the lady and took a walk outside where there is a real sumo stadium across the way. There were no matches going on that day unfortunately. Hanging around the entrance to the museum were classes of students. I'm guessing they were either junior high or high school. They were all dressed in very sharp looking school uniforms (not like the grey slacks/blue blazer combo you find in Canada). Both guys and girls wore a crisp white shirt and a black suit. There lies the future of Tokyo I thought. They looked so professional, like young businessmen and women rather than students. At the doors of the museum, there was a rack to hold your umbrellas. It had individual slots for you to stick your umbrella in and lock it by depositing a coin and turning the key. I guess they don't like people bringing wet umbrellas indoors. I began to wonder how many umbrellas in the rack were actually abandoned and how many belonged to owners inside the museum currently. It wasn't raining that day. I found this neighbouring restaurant right across from the museum. I forgot what it was called but it had a Charlie Chaplin/Marilyn Monroe classic US theme going on which served those classic Coke bottles. The place was quite empty for lunch time and wondered why it wasn't busier. I ordered a beef cutlet in gravy with rice. It was blah.

I hopped back on the subway and headed for Asakusa, home of the most well known and popular shrine in Tokyo, Senso-ji. Sitting across from me on the subway train was a mother and her little son. Her son wanted to look out the window while the subway was moving so he slipped off his shoes on to the floor so that he could turn around and kneel/stand on the seat. The mother took her son's randomly discarded shoes and placed them in a perfect and neat order together in front of her son's seat, toes pointing towards me. It was so Japanese I couldn't help but smile. That little moment told me more about Japanese culture than any museum I saw during the week. During my trip, I saw and visited so many historical landmarks but it was the little things like that that I really took attention to and kept with me. I came to have a real fondness for that seeded order, courtesy, respect and discipline I observed in everyday life in Japan. It's definitely an outsider's observation though. Perhaps living my whole with too much rule and order would drive me nuts where I would more than welcome a little anarchy every once in a while.

When I got off at Asakusa station, it wasn't hard to find my way to the Senso-ji Temple because it has a grand entrance called the Kaminarimon that you can't miss.

There is a massive lantern hanging from the center of the entrance. The entrance was crowded with locals and tourists alike snapping away with their cameras. I walked through the entrance underneath the lantern and was greeted by a long corridor filled with shops on both sides leading to the shrine.

The corridor was alive with people walking to and from the shrine, checking out the various stores along the way. There were all kinds of stores that sold your typical souvenirs, cosplay items, ice cream, food, you name it. It was such a different experience compared to the other shrines I visited which were far more quant and peaceful. The sheer number of people and the whole corridor of shops screamed of being a tourist trap but not in a bad way. If you visit Tokyo, you have to check this place out. It is the ultimate in spiritualism crossed with commercialism. You can't help but be caught up in just by being there. I stopped at the cleansing area first to cleanse my hands and mouth and then made my way to the pit of smoke/incense. People were standing around it wafting smoke all over their faces and heads.

I remember watching an episode of Pilot Guides where Ian Wright stated that doing this was for good luck and you wanted to waft the smoke over parts of your body that ailed you.
When you make your way up the stairs and into the shrine, you can toss a coin and make a wish and also pick up an omikuji (paper fortune). Inside the shrine, you will find these metal boxes containing long sticks (kind of like thin chopsticks) in front of a wall of drawers. The metal containers have a small hole at the top to allow a single stick to pass through so the idea is to shake one out. Each stick in the container has a unique Japanese character written on it that corresponds to a drawer on the wall holding leaflets of different fortunes. They are both in Japanese and in English. I shook the container and got my stick but it took me a while to find the corresponding drawer with my Japanese character. Persistence paid off though and I finally found it. I didn't realize it at the time but the one I picked up ended being the worse one you could get, or at least I think given the title.

Even though the fortune was label "Final, The Least Fortune", I didn't realize at the time that it was all that horrible because it told of both good and bad. It predicted that I was going to miss the boat on some things but that I would eventually find what I was looking for but perhaps too late. I am definitely not a superstitious person. I don't believe in horoscopes, palm readings, fortune tellers, spirits or any of that stuff but for some reason, this fortune kind of stuck with me for a while. It gave me one of those self-realization moments. I did feel like I had spent most of my life waiting for chances to appear rather than perhaps trying to make my own. I folded the fortune up and tied it to one of the racks leaving it behind. I walked down the stairs and out of the shrine towards some of the smaller altars and statues nearby. Someone had dressed the statues up in sweaters and toques and this wasn't the first time I had seen a statue dressed up like this.

I wasn't sure what it all meant and wished there was someone that I could ask. Close by was a funny vending machine sporting Tommy Lee Jones straight out of The Fugitive.

I walked back to Asakusa Station and was just about ready to go into the station when I remembered that I had planned to take a "cruise" ride most of the way back to my hotel down the Sumida-Gawa River. I figured it would be a nice alternate way to get back down to Ginza instead of taking the subway. The boat stops at a couple of places so you basically buy a ticket to where you want to get off. I purchased a ticket to the first stop, being the Hama Rikyu Onshi-teien Gardens which was located a distant south east of my hotel. I was one of the first on the boat and scored my seat at the back which was open so I could get a better look out the windows and breathe in some fresh air as we travelled down the river. The people who boarded afterwards were a combination of foreign tourists and Japanese. The foreign tourists were a group of about 15 and were accompanied by their Japanese tour guide who looked a little frazzled. It made me think about what a great experience it would be to be a travel guide. I don't know if I would want to do it forever but it would be a great getaway for a few years type of job. It would be so nice to communicate and connect with people in different languages and from all around the world. I was very envious of this tour girl and it made me wonder if she was at all envious of people like me who work a secure 9-5 desk job. When the boat started down the river, I took in the various buildings along both sides of the river, most notably the one called the Golden Shit, aka the Asahi building that has this little Gold turd on its roof.

I believe the building was designed by a French architect. The boat ride turned out to be a nice, quick way to take in Tokyo's architecture from a distance. The water in the river was green which made me think how nasty it would be to fall in there. I enjoyed watching people along the river shore sitting on park benches watching us go by from a distance. As we got closer to the Gardens, I was able to see the Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba (the man-made futuristic island) which I would visit later in my trip. I don't know what it is about boat tours but I always seem to enjoy them. Definitely beats taking the subway back.
The boat arrived at the Hama Rikyu Gardens and I got off along with the foreign tourist group. Right where you get off there's a sign prohibiting smoking. I noticed back in Ginza that no one smokes and walks at the same time. I don't know if it's prohibited but I didn't see people doing it. Instead, along the street, you will periodically find these ash trays poles where people would gather to have their smoke from start to finish. Anyways, back to the gardens, all the grass was dormant and rough and I could only imagine what this place would look like in about a month or two. The sakura was starting to bud on some of the trees just like other trees that I saw earlier in the week. The garden was very quiet and peaceful, perhaps due to its dormant state and it being February.

There were a few walkers here and there and those that got off the boat with me but within a matter of minutes they were gone. It felt like I was one of the only visitors left in the park. The trees at the park were all well cared for and groomed. Many of them were propped up by sticks like crutches to the trees.

I walked around the park while the sun started to set. It took me forever to find my way out as the gardens are in an enclosed area. I basically followed this other lady who looked like she was looking for a way out also and it proved to work. It was a long walk to the nearest subway station. Looking back I don't know why I didn't take the cab more often.
At night I decided to walk around Ginza. Along the main strip I saw one of my favourite silly things driving down the road. They have these trucks that drive around Tokyo that promote a newly release CD by blasting music over its loudspeaker. The one I caught this night was of BoA's latest album.

She's actually Korean but Kpop has a big crossover in Japan. I happened to see this bus a total of 3 times: in Ginza, Harajuku during the day and in Shibuya.
I headed towards the Tokyo International Forum because there were several stores near it I liked to frequent, namely Bic Camera. Even though it sounds like a camera shop, it's really like a super Bestbuy that sells all kinds of electronics. Right at the entrance were walls and walls of cellphones for sale.

The entrance to the store was very wide and open inviting lots of thorough traffic. Despite this, theft or security didn't seem to be a main concern. I saw a 110" plasma TV that was going for something like $50,000CAN. Before my trip, I needed to get a new camera and debated whether I should get one in Canada or wait till I got to Japan. I ended up buying one in Canada (the Canon SD850 which I used to take my pics and video...I love this camera!). I was curious to see how much it was in Japan so I searched for it and surprisingly found that it was quite comparable in price. Another store I frequented was HMV. I was tempted to pick up a Japanese CD that was just released by some female artist that week even though I would have not understood a word. Close to the Forum was an Italian restaurant that I took notice of earlier in the week when I checked out the Forum for the first time. Today I thought I would go in and have dinner. I ordered the carbonara and like To the Herbs, it was very similar to carbonara at home.