Asakusa & Odaiba

After the hotel breakfast this morning we headed out to Asakusa to the Senso-ji temple. The neighborhood is older and very quaint, and the approach to the shrine is full of touristy shops with lots of trinkets and street food. We had mochi balls, even though we’d just had breakfast.

The Buddhist shrine is beautiful. It's a very old shrine, but was demolished in WWII and so needed a lot of repair. It's interesting that all these shrines (we’ve been to around 10) are all active places of worship even when they are swarming with tourists. Many of the tourists come and genuflect and pray, clearly moved by the experience of being there.

The boys got their fortunes - you shake a box of sticks & pull one out, then take a fortune from the drawer with the number that corresponds with the stick. We needed some help there from a friendly Japanese girl, the numbers were in kanji and we were having some fun trying to match the figures up. They are close to the ones Alex learned in Mandarin class, but I think he only got to 20 this year. Alex’s fortune was unhappy so he tied it to the string so it would be changed.

On to Odaiba and the science museum, which was big and beautiful and full of interesting exhibits. We spent about 90 minutes there and moved on to Joypolis, a video game/amusement park mashup that looked amazing, but was so crowded that they boys got one ride and one game in 90 minutes. Everything here is just mobbed all the time...Read more