Asakusa, Tokyo

This really is a must see for anyone with a puerile sense of humour. The Asahi beer building is designed to look like a giant beer, the golden beverage with white foam on top. Next to it, the company planned to erect a giant flame sculpture to symbolise their employees' passion to deliver high-quality beer to the Japanese nation. Unfortunately, the architects got the logistics wrong and found that having got the flame up there, they were completely unable to erect it upwards. My Japanese uncle Yasu took one look at it and said (in Japanese), "it looks like a giant turd".

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You know you've gotten to the temple complex when you see the so-called Thunder Gate (Kaminarimon), which is the icon of Asakusa with its massive red lantern. Once past the gate, you're on a shopping street called Nakamise, which leads to the temple's second gate, the Hozomon. I can't imagine how crowded it must be on a sunny day. With all the rain, the several blocks leading to the shrine were crammed with people wielding a dangerous assortment of umbrellas. There is a narrow walkway running between booth after booth of mostly tourist junk, although here and there was a purveyor of slightly better quality goods -- a parasol maker, a sword shop, an emporium where you could spent hundreds of dollars on chopsticks! There are also booths with traditional Japanese snacks (rice crackers, bean-paste cakes). Once on the temple precincts, the commerce doesn't stop; it just changes character. There were seven or eight different vendors of the charms. None of the booths had English explanations (and each of the salespeople whom I asked merely shook their heads), so I just randomly pointed out things that looked interesting. I continue to believe that charms from the individual temples and shrines make much more original (and welcome) mementos for the folks back home.

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In stark contrast to the massive temple and all the vendors on Nakamise, there were some adjacent buildings which I took to be monks' quarters, very simple, with plain raked gardens and a few sakura -- with the rain, petals had indeed begun to fall.

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This immense structure includes a very large hall in which one can find temple workers selling charms and the fortunes I mentioned in another tip. What interested me were the stations where calligraphers sat. The price list suggested that you could have something written for sums running from Y3000 to Y10000. Jay later told me that pilgrims come and have the name and seal of the temple inscribed to verify that the pilgrimage has taken place.

Senso-ji iwas originally built in 645 (no, I didn't omit the "1"), though it has often succumbed to fire and the most recent reincarnation was in 1958. Another reconstruction has just, or is about to, take place. The temple is sacred to Kannon, whose story I shall have to look up -- I think s/he was a human being who attained nirvana but declined godhead and elected to remain a bodhisattva. There are Kannon statues all over the place.

Behind the main hall is the shrine proper. I'm afraid my photograph isn't especially good, and after the fact I learned that I wasn't supposed to have taken it at all. So I won't make it the main photo for this tip.

The fortune-selling arrangement at Asakusa was more elaborate than at the Shinto shrines: a six-sided metal box containing long sticks was shaken, and eventually one of the sticks, bearing a kanji character, would fall out. Then the fortune-seeker would find a tiny drawer marked with that character and remove from it a piece of paper bearing the fortune -- though like the Shinto shrines, if you didn't like what you got, you could leave it behind on wires strategically placed for the purpose. Unfortunately, my kanji-fluent guides were staying home sick the day of my visit, so I never found out what was supposed to happen to me!

In the photo, you can see the metal box in the background as the fortune-seeker looks for the proper drawer.

The main attraction here is the Senso-ji Temple that is presently being renovated, there is no admission price and there is a series of shops that line the pedestrian street leading up to the main temple. The shops itself are one of the few places where you can buy souvenirs to take back home...The best part of Tokyo is that the shop keepers don't hound you like they do in China. The prices are fair, not cheap and not expensive. Also bargainning isn't done in Japan, so the price is the price on it. As for the temple there is a series of building around the main one. As much as it seemed that it's crowded the place is sooo big that you can walk around exploring the other building almost alone, or at least it seemed that way. Highly recommend it... It's one of the top tourist attraction in Tokyo.

Ok so here you will find some genuine temples....but you will also find about a zillion tourists and for some reason loved up couples!

I don't know but it seemed a bit tacky to me and some folk didn't seem too respectful of these places which are still used. There are lots of stalls nearby selling plenty of tourist type gifts but I personally didn't think they fit with the area.

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the pagoda is an East Asian Style of Buddhist wordhip and is known for a tiered tower with multiple eaves common in Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. The modern pagoda is an evolution of the Ancient Indian stupa, a tomb-like structure where sacred relics could be kept safe and venerated. The architectural structure of the stupa has spread across Asia, taking on many diverse forms as details specific to different regions are incorporated into the overall design. here in asakusa, the five story pagoda symbolizes the worship of budhhism and they say that some remnants of the buddha are found inside but unfortuately it was closed when we vivited it.