Back in Tokyo

Nothing much planned today except to get back to Tokyo. Two trains journeys to get there so we though we better stock up on some snacks. Luckily there is a supermarket just around the corner from our Ryokan so after packing up we left our bags with Ma and went to have a look.

The choice of food in this place is amazing. Rows and rows of possibilities. We eventually picked a selection and some sushi for breakfast. So much packaging here though, for example, we wanted to buy a banana but you had to buy three and they were wrapped. Had our sushi, said goodbye to Ma and Pa drove us to the station. Neither of our hosts speak any English but she’s pretty good on the google translate on her phone, so we’ve all managed to communicate.

Four hours later and we are in Tokyo. Now to find our hotel. I’d managed to lose my IC card somewhere on the trip so we sorted that and bought another one, changed onto the subway and found Asakusa.

Everyone we’d talked to on this trip, tells us how busy Tokyo is and as we came out of that subway, Holy Moly so many people. Became obvious very quickly we’d arrived on a special day. Sanja Matsuri as it turns out, is an annual event held over three days and finishing in Asakusa. Three large mikoshi shrines are paraded around the streets all day and then head back to Asakusa Shrine at sunset.

After checking in we watched them go past the hotel two or three times and then we couldn’t resist, had to go see what it was all about. Still don’t know really, and didn’t seem like many of the people we asked did either but it was all very exciting. Chanting, dancing, parading, street food. Huge crowd, we lasted about an hour and then had to go find a quite bar for a drink!Read more