Tokyo - Asakusa

The first time I came to Tokyo I commented on how quiet it was. It goes to show how your experience of a trip can be dictated by the choices you make at the time. On my first visit to Tokyo I stayed in Asakusa, an older and more peaceful area of the city. I visited shrines and went out for meals and wandered through picturesque streets. 

This time around I had the opposite impression. We stayed in Ginza (quite central), caught a lot more trains, and went to a number of video game places. This time around I found Tokyo to be a whirlwind of sound; our passage through the city was annotated by birdcalls at the traffic lights, talkative voices in the lifts, alarms and announcements and bells and the taka-taka-taka of Shinkansen. It’s momentarily overwhelming until you are swept up in it and you forget to notice. Some of this noise serves to remind people to be quiet: “Please do not make calls on your mobile phones.” And therein lies one of Tokyo’s charming oddities and perhaps the crux of my two opposing impressions - while the city and the streets are loud, the people are so quiet. Groups of Australian, American and German tourists stand out significantly as they banter on the train platforms and in the restaurants. 

On our first day in Tokyo we retraced my steps from a decade ago and visited the Senso-ji Shrine in Askakusa. Asakusa is a quieter, more traditional feeling part of the city and the shrine is quite picturesque with its own aura somehow different from the others we visited. Something about its location surrounded by the city perhaps, and at the end of a famous souvenir shopping street. It’s a Shinto shrine and has a large vestibule containing incense near the entrance - the idea is to waft the incense smoke over yourself, thus purifying yourself. 

Sterling decided to purchase a fortune at the Shrine. You pay your money, take up a hexagonal container full of long sticks and shake it around until one of the sticks falls out of the small hole in one end. On the stick you will find a symbol corresponding to a small drawer which, when opened, will dispense your multi-lingual fortune. The whole process is actually quite fun though can sometimes denigrate quite quickly into a game of pick-up-sticks if you shake too exuberantly.

Sterling’s fortune was highly positive; his projects will succeed, those he loves will remain in good health, his career will be rewarding and his finances will be stable and secure. Of course, a bad fortune is easily dealt with. You simply tie the piece of paper in a knot around one of the strings sitting outside the temple for that purpose. The wind will then blow your bad fortune away. There were elaborate drawings on small boards also blowing in the breeze, I assume there’s a similar function to those (alternatively, they could be prayers).

Keen to disprove the veracity of the fortune regarding his finances, Sterling then made his way to the are where “offerings” are made; you throw your money at some kind of deity and it falls between the cracks of the floor, the deity then grants you a wish. Not sure what sort of wishes can be bought with 1 yen (about 1 cent) but I asked Sterling if he had wished for his money back and apparently he didn’t. It also didn’t come back, so I guess the whole thing obviously works.

Next there was a clever man performing tricks with his monkey. Japanese monkeys, unlike the Balinese we so regularly encounter, don’t openly steal your money. Instead they do tricks so that you - or your formerly cashed up children - will give it to them. (Both monkey and man were actually quite entertaining and earnt their few yen.)

Most amusing of all however were the tourists in a small rickshaw who were being personally escorted around the grounds by an (incidentally) quite good looking Japanese guide. He wheeled them over to look at the prayer boards, then to watch the monkey for a bit, then a few meters to the left to pose for a photo, then a few metres the other way for something else. I would have felt absolutely mortified but they seemed to be having a great time playing prince and princess in their little carriage. 

After leaving the Shrine - our last religious visit of the trip - we went down the souvenir street and bought, of course, some chopsticks. We actually use chopsticks quite a lot and these ones were quite cheap and quite good. I had a fun time checking out the many little shops selling small attractive squares of fabric which allegedly have multiple uses in Japan, but in my opinion are primarily useful for selling to tourists.  After that we made our way back to the station and the boys went to play in some video game hellhole while I wandered through the shops of Ginza.