Today we went to the big city! It was truly amazing and awe-inspiring, for both historical sights and incredible numbers of people. First up: Asakusa, where we visited the Senso-ji. Also known as the Asakusa Kannon Temple, it was completed in 645, making it seriously old. To the right is the main gate. There are two statues in built into the sides of the gate, if you look closely. One is a Thunder God, named Raijin, and one is a Wind God, named Fuujin. Those have been rebuilt time and again since the gate was first created, due to fires and other such disasters. I liked the bright color palette of this temple: everything is red, gold, and black.Matt and I decided to be super-touristy, since everyone was doing it. Why not? So we buckled in for a Buddhist experience.
First, the purification process:
1. Dip water with the ladle (you can see me doing that in the first picture)
2. Pour water over the left hand, then the right, pour out the extra water and turn the ladle vertically (you can see Matt doing that in the second picture)
3. Fill the ladle with some water from the fountain's spout (in this case the dragons), rinse the mouth with it and spit it into the trough around the fountain.Second, waft incense over the head. The large incense burners are used to call on and to honor the Gods, but in this case, it also makes people smell good before they go pray to the Gods. It is apparently a huge dishonor to be smelly in front of a God.
Newly purified and with our spruced-up scents, we approached the temple proper. To the left is a picture from a distance back. While it doesn't show the majestic stairs leading up to the main hall, it does show the incredible roof, a trail of incense smoke, and the beauty of the day's sky. It also shows how crowded the site was! We visited on 12.24, otherwise known as Christmas Eve in the States and nothin' special in Japan, a busy day for tourism. We saw so many American tourists, more in that day than I've seen since the states.
Inside, the majesty continued, as did the red- and gold-dominated color scheme. Above is a picture of one of the ceiling frescoes. There were three large panels, two of which were this woman on either side of a fierce dragon. I don't know who she depicts, but she is lovely, gentle, and spring-like, with her flowy gown and flowers. The woodwork around her demonstrates how detail-oriented the architects were who created these vast temples, and how devoted they were to the Gods, to produce something this delicate and lasting at the same time. People fawn over the ceiling Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel, and rightly so, but I don't think many realize works of art of a similar scale exist in places of worship in Japan.
After picking up a few gifts at a nearby shop, we headed back to the train to visit Akihabara, a famous part of Tokyo where you can get notorious nightlife (read: sex workers of all kinds) and cheap technology. First, though, I found a true gelato shop and made the boys stop for a tasty treat. To the left, Matt does his best Colbert impression with a cup of sweet potato, red currant, and sesame gelato. Perfection! Just the fuel we needed to get through being bombarded with street-side advertisements for all kinds of sexual exploits.Akihabara turned out to be, at least on the 24th, tamer than I thought it might be. There were many maids dressed up on the street corners, as advertised, but not much else (go here for an interesting article on the maids). We found a gaming arcade immediately across from the station, and when Matt found a Tekken 6 group of machines, he and Nik proceeded to play the pants off them.
Here we have the boys facing off. The machines are arranged in pairs of two, back-to-back, so you can't actually see your gaming partner. Anyone can come up and challenge you at any time, and you can play the computer when no one is there.Next we walked around and inquired after some electronics, although we opted not to purchase anything this time. We found another arcade, this one with a purikura machine. [ed. Purikura = PURInto KURAbu = Print club] These machines let you pick backgrounds, take pictures, draw funny things, and print them on stickers to decorate anything from rulers to notebooks (if you're in JHS). I did a devious thing and took pictures of the pictures in order to put them up here. This is what Japanese teenagers do all the time, and frankly, it's some of the best fun. The only thing that's a little strange for us Westerners? The eye-enlarging function. It's a big thing in Japanese culture to have big eyes. Many girls actually get eye-widening surgery. So when you go to the picture machine, it is impossible to get the eye-enlarging feature to disappear, and we all end up with caricature-like freak eyes, or if you're Matt, sunken holes where eyes should be. Check it!
Purikura One: off-off Broadway presents Matt doing a strange egyptian/maneki dance, Abby with a crazy hat, the cat-God ruler, and crown prince Nik trying to remove the hyper-sexual rabbit.
Purikura Two: self-explanatory, really. This one colored Nik blue right from the start, and I added the stars in post-production. This is possibly my favorite, as it is extraordinary in its simplicity.
Purikura Three: I picked this background because the Tartan print is very fashionable in Japan right now. I am seeing it everywhere. You can see how much we added to this one, too!
Purikura Four: I'd like to tell you the machine added those things on our heads, because that would mean we didn't choose them consciously. I'd like to tell you that.
Purikura Five: the Matrix meets Harry Potter meets... lightning cupcakes? This is another of our simple yet great ones.
Purikura Six: this is where things get really stupid. When the Peter Pan-esque London skyline came on the machine, it was vertical. Apparently we were supposed to stand normally, because post-photo it flipped to horizontal. We posed sideways, so now we look really stupid.
After Akihabara exhausted itself, we jumped back on the train and stopped at Ginza. This is an incredibly upscale shopping district currently decked in Christmas lights. To the left is a picture of where we came out of the metro (the "M" looking logo is the train). The large advertisement is for Sapporo beer. This photo doesn't show it, but just down the street are the Dior building and the Armani Tower. We walked down an outdoor market street very similar to one you might find in an affluent town in Colorado. Although we found some suspicious bars and overly pricey restaurants, we eventually discovered a lovely place to have dinner. We ate bibimbop, yakitori, grilled shiitake, fresh veggies, and drank plum wine.
On the way back to the station to go home, I found the world's most decorated Häagen-Dazs store, pictured to the right. We also saw a diamond boutique called "Africa," which prompted Nik to ask, "Is that legal?" There was also a shot bar called "Hold On Soul Power" with a horribly offensive black cartoon couple dressed in 70's fashions. Just so you know they don't know what they're doing (i.e. it's not personal, it's just ignorant), there was also a store called "Mariage Frère." There's three main ways to translate that: it can mean marrying your actual brother, a follower of Christ, or your bro. They're keeping it classy in Ginza.
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