Asakusa all by ourselves!

Monday was our first day in Tokyo without Marc and Billy to show us around. I think Jake and I were both a little nervous about navigating the city by ourselves. We weren't totally sure what we were going to do with our day, so we decided to grab our guidebooks, grab some breakfast at a coffee shop down the road, and come up with a plan for the day. The coffee shop was called sega fredo, and it was pretty good. The only downside is that Jake is quickly learning the hard way that in Japan, they put mayo on EVERYTHING! So while he ordered what he thought was an breakfast egg sandwich, what he got was an egg salad sandwich. Being the nice girlfriend that I am, I traded him my tomato and cheese panini, then we got down to business deciding where to go. Eventually we chose Asakusa, home to Senso-Ji (Temple), Asakusa Jinja (shrine) and Takoyaki (fried octopus balls). We studied our subway map book for a while, and were pretty sure that we'd figured out the best way to get there. The hardest part was actually finding where to get on the train at the Shinjuku station. Up to this point, all of the trains that we'd taken had been accessible right from the south entrance of the station, which is the one right near our hotel. However after wandering around for about 10 minutes, we still couldn't find the one that we needed. Jake's japanese skills came in handy again, when he was able to ask for directions, and we were told that we needed to walk over to the west side of the station. Once we did that, we saw right where to go, and we were on our way.


We made it to Asakusa with no further issues. Our first stop in Asakusa was Senso-Ji. To get to Senso-Ji, you have to first cross through Kaminari-mon, or the Thunder Gate. The thunder gate is a huge gate with a red paper lantern hanging in the middle, and a statue on each side. The statues represent the god of thunder, and the god of wind, and they are meant to guard the temple. Once through the gate, you can see the main temple hall, as well as the five story pagoda, which is really a beautiful sight.

After investigating the temple, we walked down the main shopping street of Asakusa, which is filled with stalls selling various kitchy souvenirs and lots of delicious food. The first food we tried were the Takoyaki, which were little fried balls filled with pieces of octopus. They were different than I expected them to be (soft on the inside, instead of fried all the way through), but still tasty.

Next we decided to go find Asakusa Jinja. We found a tourist map at the end of the shopping street that indicated that the shrine was to the north east of Senso-ji, so we took off walking. About 45 minutes later, we still had not found the shrine. We tried to ask for directions, but couldn't really communicate what we were looking for. The man we talked to gave us directions back to Senso-ji. So we continued to wander around for a while, and eventually came to what looked like a tiny shrine...or possibly an elementary school. It had a tori gate, and one of the ritual hand washing stations, but there were no tourists in sight. The only people at the temple were a handful of little kids looking at us and whispering "America jin!" or "american tourists!" Finally we stopped a woman on the street, and she was able to explain to us that the shrine was not Asakusa Jinja, and that the shrine we were looking for was actually on the Senso-ji complex, right next to the main temple. OH!! So we walked the 45 minutes back to where we came from, and sure enough, just to the right of Senso-ji we found Asakusa Jinja! I actually really enjoyed the walk around Asakusa. I felt like I got to see a part of "real Tokyo" that not all tourists get to see.

Next we took another pass down the shopping street, and Jake got to try some of his favorite japanese food so far - tiny fried pastries filled with sweet red bean paste. They were pretty delicious, I have to say.

The bad news of the day is that while I was trying to take a picture of one of the Tori gates around Senso-ji, I might have dropped Jake's brand new camera right onto the street. Ouch. And, of course, it landed right on the lens. We weren't able to fix it, and Jake only bought it about two weeks before our trip. Fortunately, we have my camera here as well, so we can still take pictures for the rest of our trip. Even more fortunately, Jake was smart enough to buy the Best Buy extra warranty for the camera, so he should be able to get a brand new camera when we get home. He's thinking about getting one that has a "shock proof" feature this time, so that if it's dropped it won't break :-)