Asakusa, Taito-ku
Our first visitor from New York! Joy, one of my very best friends since high school came to visit us in Tokyo. This was her first trip here and also her first time to meet Arisa. Although I selfishly wanted to just spend most of her time here sitting at some cafe/restuarant/bar to chat away (it has been 2 years!) I knew that this was not possible. Why? One, because Keiji and Arisa cannot be seated for longer than 30 minutes or the time it takes for them to finish their meal, and two, because it’s Joy’s first time here and we need to show her as much of Tokyo we possibly can (a bit limited when we must take along two little ones, but still very fun). After much consultation with Yuki, the original Tokyo resident, we decided it’d be best to start Joy’s first day around the more traditional sights of Japan. So our first stop on Joy’s one week tour was Asakusa, which is part of Taito-ku, Tokyo’s “downtown” known as shitamachi (translates to “under town”) and home to Tokyo’s oldest temple, Sensoji 浅草寺,.
At Sensoji, after passing the first gate, called Kaminarimon 雷門 (thunder gate), there is a long street full of souvenir shops and food stalls, called Nakamise. This was fun for both Joy and Keiji, but quite a drag for Arisa who had to stay stuck in her stroller since it was too crowded to let her walk around. At the end of Nakamise is another gate, called Hozomon 宝蔵門 (inner gate), which is the area right before the main hall, called Kannondo 観音堂 (Kannon Hall).
Once we went past Hozomon, Arisa and Keiji had a ball playing with the pebbles and walking around a small courtyard area. This area was relatively stress-free since they could remain in my view while they played and ran. And it also allowed Joy some time to look around on her own pace. Inside Kannondo you can get your fortune. This is one of the few temples in Tokyo that has fortunes with English translations, although they seemed to all sound the same and rather generic. You drop a 100 yen coin in the collection slot then shake a long cylindrical box until a stick comes out. Look at the kanji characters written on the stick and find the drawer with the corresponding character. This drawer contains your fortune. If you get a bad fortune (like we did!) you can change it ! I learned quickly that you can change a bad fortune by folding up that paper into a thin strip and tying it around one of the rungs the stand next to the fortune boxes. So don’t worry Joy, our no bad fortunes for us!
The area around Sensoji is fun to explore since you can find many little shops selling traditional goods, interesting trinkets and souvenirs, small stalls selling all sorts of Japanese snacks like senbe (rice crackers) and agemanju (deep fried mochi filled with red bean), and restaurants which have been around many years.
There were many areas which K & A found fun, but if children do get a bit bored there is a playground right next to Nakamise, in front of Sensoji temple near the large public restrooms.
To get to Asakusa by train you can take Asakusa line to Asakusa station. It’s a very long flight of stairs up, so do not attempt going up them if you are traveling with a with a stroller – definitely take the elevators to get to the street level.