Askakusa Adventure

Although I am posting this from Shanghai, this post is about January 29 in Tokyo.

We are encouraged to engage in the lives of the people we meet in the countries we visit, but I found this was very hard to do while my language is limited to thank you and goodbye.  Although goodhearted people helped me with directions and subway machines, we accomplished this with pointing rather than words.  So, I am largely an observer here.

Although Yoshiko kindly made an itinerary for me again today, I spent almost the entire day in Asakusa.  Here I found shopping and shrines and shopping hard by shrines and where the rich people live hard by the people who sell napkins to restaurants.  I saw the best (and worst) of Japanese art.  I watched school children and gamblers and shopkeepers and tourists.  I reunited a baby with his shoe and directed an Indian to his native cuisine and got so lost I wandered right off the map onto another page.  That's when I decided to come home.

The Sensoji temple at Asakusa was very busy today.  It was closed to all but members, so I couldn't go inside.  Outside, there was a brisk business in fortunes.  You could buy a specific fortune (see Oh, man:  omen) or you could buy incense to burn and then waft the smoke towards you.  There were candles to buy for prayers, and there was the resounding clink of coins simply thrown into a large pit.  Several school groups were there and I really enjoyed watching the children zooming around.  Japanese children have the reputation of being very pressured from an early age by their rigorous education, but these kids were loosely organized, to put it generously.  The boys were roughhousing, the girls were straggling, and the teacher was not trying very hard to keep them together.  More party than field trip. One little girl was fascinated by me; I caught her eye several times. A little boy of about 8 tried out his best "Hallo" on me.  It occurred to me he probably knows more English than I will ever know of Japanese.

Each school group has a distinctive uniform, most noticeably the hats and backpacks.  Because they're all wearing winter coats, all you see here are the bright yellow hats.  Adorable!

Even in the most crowded place, you can find a little solitude if you head for the less famous spaces.  When you have a terrible sense of direction, you get lost a lot, but a bonus is that you find those quiet spaces.  At Sensoji, I found a little garden and also a shrine with a bench and table where I ate my lunch.  Then, off to the next adventure!