Temples, rain, and meatballs

This morning we managed to sleep until 6am, so we are improving! We had breakfast from the konbini, but they were out of shrimp onigiri, so we had salmon and a spicy pollock roe onigiri instead. Then, it was on to the subway and off to Senso-ji Temple. We have managed to avoid a lot of tourist spots so far, but not today. The temple grounds were very busy with foreigners and lots of people dressed up for photo shoots.

We braved the crowd and checked out the gates and then got our fortunes. Mine was very ambiguous, but Brad’s was a good one! If you get a bad one, you are supposed to tie it up and so you leave your bad luck behind. So, if I have bad luck, blame Brad because he said I should keep my ambiguous fortune.

We then “bathed” ourselves in incense smoke to purify ourselves and heal any ailments before entering the temple. The most important statue in the Buddhist temple has been hidden from view since 630, so we did see where she is kept, but we did not see her. We checked out the rest of the grounds before traveling through a small souvenir street. One of my favourite moments from this morning was a mom yelling at her teenage sons that they needed to smile for a picture because the memories were for her and her husband as well! It was hilarious. I was happy to get out of the over-touristed area!

We then made our way to a matcha place for a quick drink. We stumbled across a ninja sneaker store where they make split toe “ninja” style runners out of discarded kimonos. They were gorgeous shoes! The young man who helped us studied at UBC for three years, so we chatted a bit about his experiences. He said there was another store that sold upcycled kimono products nearby, so we went over to it and I bought a lovely clutch bag.

The skies were getting quite dark, so we hurried over to the Asahi beer building and went to the sky bar on the 22nd floor to catch an overcast view of Tokyo while having an Asahi. A pretty nice way to wait out the rain!

After the downpour, it stopped, we headed towards the street of kitchenware. The street reminded us a lot of being in Vietnam, where streets would have to be dedicated to particular product. You would know this street was dedicated to kitchen items because of the big chef’s head and the tower of cups that appear at the start of the street. We’ve spent a bit time looking at Japanese knives, which, of course there are many to be seen! You didn’t make a purchase yet, but I think we’ll be back.

We need to grab a quick lunch on our way back to our hotel, so we decided to have some cold soba and udon noodles to tie us over until dinner.

After relaxing for a bit, we decided to go over to the Shibuya area of Tokyo. When you think of Tokyo, you think of Shibuya - crowded, bright lights, the iconic pedestrian crosswalk, tons of shopping, supped up cars. It had started to rain again, so everyone had their umbrellas out which made navigating the streets interesting. We looked in a few shops before heading to dinner. Brad had made us a reservation at a restaurant that only serves wagyu meatballs done on a charcoal grill. You get three meatballs, miso soup, unlimited rice, all sorts of fun sauces and spices, and a raw egg (you can dip your beef in raw yolk or mix your raw egg into your rice!). And that’s it. And it was outstanding! The wagyu just melted and all the drippings ran into the rice, which made it something special. It was a blink and you’ll miss it place, but we were so glad to have gone!

We were quite full after dinner, so we decided to go cross the Shibuya crossing on our way back to the train station. Up to 3000 people can be crossing it in all directions during a light change! It was organized chaos!

We leave Tokyo tomorrow and are taking the bullet train to the coastal city of Kanazawa. We have enjoyed our time in this enormous city, but are also looking forward to something a bit smaller!Read more