Ellen Isaacs: Travel journal: Senso-ji temple, Kappabashi, Roppongi Hills

Even though we'd gone to bed at a normal hour, we both woke up early, around 5:30 or so and tried to doze off until around 7am, normally an early hour for us. Walendo and his colleagues went off to their first day of meetings with the Japanese company, and I had the whole day to play on my own.

My first destination was Asakusa (pronounced a-SOCK-sa, again that silent vowel between an s and k), which is where the Senso-ji temple is. The guide books all listed this as a must-see. This time I had to change trains on the metro, from the Hibiya to the Ginza line, which was pretty straightforward. The lines have colors and there are signs all over the place pointing you in the direction of the connecting lines. The Ginza line is orange, so the signs had a G inside an orange circle. The Hibiya line has an H inside a gray circle.

It was a beautiful warm day, so I could get around with jeans and a short sleeved shirt with comfort (and I get cold easily). The whole week the temperature stayed in the mid-70s, which was perfect, although it got a little humid at times. I was surprised to realize that Tokyo is south of San Francisco, so it's warmer than I'd imagined.

Kaminarimon Gate
A block from the Asakusa station (exit #1) is the Kaminarimon Gate, a giant gate with a huge red lantern hanging inside it, the entry to the walkway to the temple. This is clearly a tourist destination because it was full of people all taking photos of each other standing under the gate.
Nakamise Dori leading
to Senso-ji temple
To get a photo without other tourists taking photos in it you'd probably have to get there at 5am, so I gave up and just took a snapshot. The guide book said there was a street with little booths selling goods on the way to the temple, called Nakamise Dori (dori is street), and I had imagined a nice little street with small shops. It turned out it was a sort of pedestrian mall that goes from the entry gate to the temple and it is indeed lined with booths selling touristy souvenirs and food. This surprised me a bit since I thought a temple would be quiet and reflective. Having adjusted my expectations, I noticed that the shops weren't as tacky as you might see in the States in this situation. Some of the purses were quite pricy, for example, and they had some nice kimonos, or at least kimono-like wraps. I thought I might come back and get one. But for now, my goal was to get pictures to capture the flavor of the place, so I made my way down the row snapping away. The good thing about Tokyo is that everyone is taking photos all the time, so I hardly stand out, and people are accustomed to avoiding you or getting in your path. If anything, I often had to tell people to please keep walking and not wait for me to take my photo.

Looking through Hozomon
gate to Nakamise St.
At the end of the road is another even bigger gate, behind which is the temple, which is bigger than all of them. To the left is a five-level pagoda. What interested me most, though, was between the gate and the temple. There's a sort of booth that has rows and columns of small wood drawers. I saw people tying slips of paper onto a free-standing rack and remembered that this was some sort of tradition having to do with luck. I tried to capture some people tying the paper, and as I did so, an older Japanese man walked up to me and asked me in English if I knew what the paper was about. I wanted him to explain it, so I said no, and he told me that people pay Y100 to get their fortune. You shake a tall metal tube filled with sticks and pick one out of the canister. That stick has a number on it, and you open the drawer with that number. Inside is a piece of paper with your fortune. The fortune can be a regular fortune, a good fortune, very good fortune, or bad fortune. If you get a bad fortune, you tie the piece of paper on the rack to release it (see photos below).

Choose a stick and
read the number Open the drawer
with that number

Read the fortune inside If it's a bad one
tie it on the rack

After explaining all this to me, the man asked me where I was from and why I was here and I told him I'm a photographer. Once he understood his eyes lit up and he wanted to tell me about some places he thought I might like to see. He wound up spending about 20 minutes with me, writing things down and even giving me a map he had with him to show me where to go. It was extremely generous of him, and I was grateful. I wasn't that surprised, though, since the people have been so helpful and kind. I regret that I didn't ask to take a picture of him.

Senso-ji
temple roof
Flush with information, I continued on to the shrine. Just before it is a giant incense pot, and people walk up to it and pass their hands from the smoke over their heads, once again to bring good luck. I had associated the Chinese culture with having lots of luck superstitions, but apparently the Japanese do too. When I was looking at some kimono-wraps, I overheard a salesperson tell a customer that a certain pattern brought good luck and happiness. Later one of them told me that the cranes represent good luck. (Or was it long life?)

Once I climbed the stairs to the temple I found that most of it was gated off. There was an elaborate display behind the gate but I was more interested in seeing the people walking up to it, tossing some coins into a bin, and making a wish or a prayer. I was glad I'd taken my time getting up to the temple, since that was clearly as much a part of it as seeing the temple itself.

Asakusa Jinja shinto shrine
Just beyond the temple to the right was a Shinto shrine, Askaska-Jinja. This was a much simpler affair and there were only a few people checking it out. I took a couple of shots and continued on, first making a toilet stop at a public toilet that had nice looking stalls, but all of them had floor pits where you squat down to pee. Later I'd find that many bathrooms have some floor pits and some "western style," so I guess some people prefer the floor pits. The only reasons I can imagine for that are familiarity and perhaps sanitary — maybe people don't like to sit on something that others have sat on with their bare behind.

Fake food display
Kappabashi Dori
One of the things that the Japanese man had mentioned to me was a street (Kappabashi Dori) where they sell restaurant supplies, including the plastic food displays we'd seen in front of many restaurants. I remembered hearing about this, and it was walking distance from there, so I decided to check it out. He'd given me excellent directions so I found it without any trouble. I found two stores with food displays, both small shops, and both were okay with my taking photos inside the store. So far I've had little trouble being told I can't take photos, which is so nice. Also along that street were some terrific pottery shops, which I noted for later. Mike had expressed an interesting in getting some, and I thought Walendo and I might want to as well. Other shops sold cooking utensils, cookware, plates, and all the things we'd seen in restaurants, including the cloth banners for the entry, paper lanterns, dishes for soy sauce, and little stands to rest your chopsticks on. It was good browsing.

Teacups for sale
at pottery shop
After I'd had my fill, I decided to head back to the street with all the vendors (Nakamise Dori) and get one of those kimonos as a bathrobe. I was going to head back to the hotel after this, so now I could carry something. First, though, I had to get something to eat since I was suddenly quite hungry. After passing a bunch of sit-down restaurants that served bigger meals than I wanted, I finally grabbed a frozen fruit popsicle at a stand just to curb the hunger pangs. When I'd finished, I looked for a garbage but found only a recycle bin. Finally I went back to the stand where I'd bought it to ask, and when I held up the wrapper the woman took it from me. I'm not sure what the garbage pails look like, but I can't seem to find one. This continued to be a problem throughout the trip. Strange because the streets are for the most part free of garbage.

I went back to one of the kimono stands and got some very good help from the saleswoman. She spoke English fairly well and explained about the sizes and helped me try one on. I finally found one I liked, and snatched it up. It was Y3,000, about $24, which is probably a lot but I didn't care since this was so easy. As I headed out, I finally saw a sushi place where you sit at a counter and the sushi comes by on a conveyer, which is something I know how to do. When I walked in the door several people shouted something as a welcome, which also seems to be a custom in a sushi place. They gave me a seat and I fed myself, again relieved to have managed another meal. They had hot water dispensers right at the counter with cups for tea and green tea powder, so it was easy to serve myself a drink as well. Once again, the sushi was delicious. When I left, saying my standard "arigato" (thank you), I got what was becoming a familiar and confusing response of a whole bunch of words, none of which sounded like arigato and often ended in ashimas or really ashimaaaaas in a high-pitched sing-songy way. Or sometimes animaaaaas. Walendo said he'd noticed the same thing, and we never really figured out what they were saying. (Walendo thinks maybe, "Arigato gozaimasu," but that's not long enough. Maybe that's part of it.)

After my meal, I took the metro back to the room. The metro cars are laid out with six or seven seats along each wall, with the middle area used as standing room. At one point, all the seats along one wall were taken, but there was a little gap because some of the people didn't take up the whole seat. At the next stop, a thin man walked on and seeing the gap, he went to sit in it. Everyone in the row immediately shifted down to make room for him, with no one showing any signs of annoyance at being squished together. You have to appreciate that kind of consideration among strangers.

Spiral staircase at
Roppongi Hills
After a short rest in the room, I headed back out toward Roppongi Hills, which is just down the street from where we're staying.
Spider statue at
Roppongi Hills
It's a giant round office tower made of glass with a bunch of shops around the plaza at the bottom, offices, an art gallery, and a 360-degree observation deck at the top. A lot of the shops at the bottom were American brands (Banana Republic, Tully's) and I noticed there was a Cold Stone Creamery as well. I knew I'd be back here, since the Japanese don't seem to appreciate chocolate, let alone chocolate ice cream. In the plaza in front of the tower is a giant statue of a spider that's probably around 25 feet high with the legs coming down in a circle about 30-40 feet in diameter. While I was taking photos of it, my cell phone rang — it was Walendo telling me I had to be back in the room in 2 hours to be picked up for dinner. I was glad that the cell phones worked and that I happened to be in a place where I could hear it ring. Lots of Tokyo is so noisy that the ring would be drowned out.

I paid my hefty Y1500 fee ($12) and took the elevator up to the top to see the observation deck. (I'd thought I might check out the art gallery as well, but now I didn't have the time.) I took a few boring shots of the city from high above and then had fun getting silhouette shots of people looking out the windows taking their own photos with cell phones or small cameras or just sitting together and looking. I think those will be pretty interesting.

Scenes from Tokyo City View

After checking it out for about an hour, I walked back to the room and got ready for dinner. The Japanese group had invited Walendo's group out to dinner and they had generously invited me to come along. When he got back, he told me they this afternoon they'd all gone out in the afternoon to Shibuya, supposedly the busiest intersection in the world, to test out some stuff they were working on. He said while standing on one corner, they realized it was so packed with people that the 12 or so of them were bound to get absorbed into the flow of people and be deposited in different places on the other side of the street. So they arranged a meeting place on the other side, a big green pole. It sounded like a great place to check out.

U.S. and Japanese
team working on project
The restaurant was on a narrow street, barely marked, a place we'd never find on our own. We got our own room on the third floor with a giant table made of an impressive slab of wood. They made a point of interspersing the people from the Japanese and U.S. contingents, so I was sitting across from a Japanese man named Hondo-san, and Walendo, next to me, was next to the one woman on the project, Mizuni-san. At the end of the table was the Ueno-san, one of the senior people on the project. The first two spoke English with some proficiency, so we did our best to hold a conversation, which was a bit of a struggle but doable. The group seemed to have a good sense of humor and there was a lot of laughing as we attempted to translate each other's words and gestures. (When they're at work, they have a translator to help them communicate more effectively.) I don't have a photo from dinner, but to the right is a picture the whole group after their meetings today.

Soon after we settled in, they started bringing us one course after another, family style with a large platter for every 3 people. This time I really enjoyed almost all the food. They started with a plate with edemame, slices of duck meat, and some sort of squash dish that was delicious. Then there was a salad plate with ham slices and a nice dressing. Then came a platter with a variety of sashimi. We noticed that the Japanese people were not eating that much. We kept trying to pace myself to match their pace, but they just didn't seem to want to eat, so we gradually indulged. After the food had been sitting for a while, they started to eat more, and then eventually I remembered reading something about how the host is supposed to wait for the guests to eat and then eat whatever is left over. I felt bad because after not eating for a while, I'd grab a slice of salmon or tuna, probably resetting the clock for poor Hondo-san across from me, doh! Eventually, a bowl of rice came for each of us. Based on this and the last meal, I'm guessing they have a separate rice course after all the meat courses. By this time everyone was full, but we noticed that Hondo-san dug into the rice, eating three bowls of it! So either he much prefers rice to fish, or he was starving by then. I asked Hondo-san if they always ate so many courses of food when he was at home and he said yes. I asked him who prepared it all and he said, "Not me!"

At the end of the evening, people made some nice toasts thanking each other for the work they had done so far and appreciating how well they had been working together. One person on the American team was leaving the company, and they made a point of saying goodbye to him and showing appreciation for his contribution. I know there's a politeness aspect to it, but it seemed heart-felt so it was a touching moment. The leader of the group made a point of welcoming me and engaging me in conversation about my photography. They seem like truly good people.

After the meal, a group of us decided to walk back to the hotel, since we weren't that far. There was a friendly bet between Ed, one of the Americans, and one of the Japanese about how long it would take us to walk home, with the former saying 15 minutes and the latter 25 or longer. As it turned out, we missed a turn right at the beginning, so we walked an extra half hour out of our way. By then the shoes I'd worn (not meant for walking) were starting to rub and since I had plenty more walking to do in the days ahead, I didn't want any blisters. I took off the shoes and walked in my socks for a while until we realized just how much further we had to go, so Walendo and I took a taxi that last bit. Apparently, the rest of them walked another 20 minutes after that, so I think Ed clearly lost that bet.

Once again, by the time we got back to the hotel, we were bushed. At some point I want to go out and take some night shots with my tripod, but so far the opportunity hasn't arisen.

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