Tokyo's Sensoji Temple

We arrived in Tokyo at around 7:30 pm. We nearly missed the flight from Bejing because I was wandering around the airport loss track of time. We got on the plane with just a few minutes to spare before takeoff. Thankfully the staff held the plane for us. It was close. (Okay, Scott is underestimating here. Actually, I had been having him paged for 45 minutes. We're lucky the ground staff was nice enough to hold the flight for us! -Anna)

We took a train for about an hour and a half to reach our hotel in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. It is a good location, with lots of shopping, restaurants and access to Shinjuku station, one of the major train stations in Tokyo.
Our hotel occupied floors 19-35 of Century Southern tower. The rest of the building was offices for Microsoft and Verozon. The view from our room was spectacular. The city is a forest of skyscrapers, and you can see city lights all the way to the horizon.



The following morning, I wasn't feeling well (China's airplane food got a parting shot at me) so we had an easy day and just did some shopping at the local shopping mall, of which there are plenty.



The following morning, I was feeling better and we stuck out and took the train to the Asakusa district to see the Sensoji temple (above). The pedestrian street leading up to the temple is lined by small shops and eateries. It was a great spot to look for souvenirs. There were alot of Japanese people there and very few western tourists. In fact, we were quite surprised in that we didn't really see any other white people our entire stay in Tokyo. We like to distance ourselves from the typical tourist, so this was just fine by us.


We were slightly confused when a crowd gathered around one small shop and people started snapping pictures. Then we could see a man and an older woman standing at a food shop with a guy with a large video camera following them. We figured it must have been some kind of celebrity. The school kids there were all giggling and trying to get into the camera's view. At one point we were standing behind the couple, and I think we may have ended up on Japanese TV.



We shopped around to a bit, and then visited the temple. It is very well preserved and the interior was very ornate. There was an incense stand out front where you could buy a stick of incense and place it in a ash pile to burn infront of the temple. People would also walk up to the temple, toss a few coins in a box and pray to the golden Buddha.

After visiting the temple and shopping around some more, we had a traditional lunch at a local Tempura restarant. It was very good. The restaurant had tatami rice mats as flooring, and we had to take our shoes off before entering. It was an interesting and fun experience. After lunch we took the train back. For it's size, Tokyo is a very easy city to get around in. There are train stations all over, and if you get lost, all you need to do is ask any person on the street and they will help you find your way. The people here are very nice, and seem to believe in the concept of "pay it forward", luckily for us. -Scott.