Tokyo Redux I: Asakusa

Wednesday I managed to wake up bright and early to a gorgeous, sunny day. I think I was the first to leave the guesthouse in the morning, but most everyone else was going to Tokyo DisneySea that day--which I would like to see sometime, but that day, I wanted to re-examine some of the places we'd been on my own. I was packed already, and I had the battle plan laid out.


1) Minami-senju-->Tokyo Station: put stuff in locker
2) Tokyo Station-->Asakusa
3) Asakusa-->Akihabara
4) Akihabara-->Kudanshita (near Kitanomaru-kouen)
5) Kudanshita-->Shibuya
6) Shibuya-->Harajuku on foot (and back again)
7) Shibuya-->Kamiyacho (to Tokyo Tower)
8) And back to Tokyo Station


Phase 1 and 2 passed without incident. Once I reached Kaminarimon Gate, I found a sign on the store I'd wanted to go back to which said "Closed on Mondays." (Which was strange, since it was a Wednesday, but it was still closed when I left, so...No second look for me.) In any case, I continued down Nakamise to visit Senjoji temple.

 

Hozomon Gate

Senso-ji is the oldest temple in Tokyo, built in 628 after two fisherman caught a statue of the bodhisattva Kannon in their nets. The founder of Sensoji, Shokai decided to hide the statue from public view in 645 after a mystical dream, but in the early 8th c., Ennin of Enryakuji temple came to Sensoji, created a replica statue, and called forth Kannon's spirit into the statue.

The top-most story of this pagoda contains a bone relic of the Buddha, a gift from Sri Lanka in 1973 from when the temple was rebuilt after WWII

 

The garden by Yogodo and Yakushido Halls

 

The Shintennou, I believe

 

An intriguing ad of some sort I caught leaving Nakamise

 

A rickshaw driver on the hunt

 

I feel silly now, because looking at the map on the pamphlet from Sensoji, I probably could have made a quick stop at Asakusa Jinja, no problem. It just looked a lot farther on the city maps...