Sensoji Temple and Shibuya District

We went to Senso-ji temple this morning - one of Tokyo's oldest buddhist shrines. It was enormous and took up almost three city blocks including all of the smaller shrines, temples and tombs.

A small middle-aged fellow approached us and asked where we were from. We did not have to answer much after that. He was simply too happy to practise all of his english on us without asking so much as an occasional yes or no. He actively dicussed Japan's internationality, its problems with fraud, and the Nagano and Calgary Olympics. What else he talked about I'm not sure, he tended to mumble and his English wasn't perfect, and he punctuated every clause with "you know?".

We then moved on to the area directly south of the shrine, called Nakamise-Dori. It is a road which is covered in shops, some of the genuine Japanese culture sort, others of the somewhat 'tchachke' variety. We came across some beautiful fabrics for my mother! (You just wait to see them, mama.)

Next we visited the Shibuya distrcit, which we did in the evening - since Shibuya is a nightlife district. Imagine, if you will, the most pele-mele of shops, tiny noodle houses, restaurants, store complexes, and you'll have the main streets of Shibuya. It was amazing. You know Shibuya, by the way, if you have ever seen Lost in Translation. The great big pedestrian crossing in that movie is the crossing from the train station in Shibuya.

Exhausted after being lost three times on our way home, I fell asleep the minute we got to the hotel.


After only one full day, we can see how one can be Tokyo'd-out rather quickly. The city is interesting, and busy and vibrant; but difficult to navigate and rather bewildering. The metro system is so vast, complex and at times entirely redundant, that we have been lost three times on it already.















Today: The National Tokyo Museum!