Asakusa

ON Sunday We met with a friend at Asakusa for Sanja Matsuri *literally "Three Shrine Festival")

It is one of the three great Shinto festivals in Tokyo, it is considered one of the wildest and largest. The festival is held in honor of the three men who established and founded Sensō-ji.

It is believed that two fishermen—brothers named Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari—found a statuette of the Bodhisattva Kannon caught in a fishing net in the Sumida River in May. The third man, a wealthy landlord named Hajino Nakatomo, heard about the discovery, approached the brothers and converted them to Buddhism. The three men then devoted their lives to the Buddhist faith and consecrated the statue in a small temple. This temple, now known as the Sensō-ji, currently houses the Kannon statue and is the oldest temple in Tokyo.

Sanja Matsuri is held on the third weekend of every May at Asakusa Shrine. To celebrate people play music and carry on their backs huge portable versions of shrines while shaking them up and down. These shrines weigh about a ton each and it takes a big group of people to carry them. Anyone can participate in carrying them. However you have to wear the right clothes. It's basically a white and blue shirt, with sumo wrestler bottoms.

The procession of the three Asakusa Shrine-owned mikoshi begin their march early Sunday morning. These three elaborate shrines honor and represent the three men responsible for founding the Sensō-ji. These important mikoshi are split up in order to visit and bestow blessing to all 44 districts of downtown and residential Asakusa. When evening falls, the three shrines slowly weave their way back to Asakusa Shrine in another grand procession that lasts late into the night.

We watched many parts of the festival and were within touching distance of all three mikoshi (three portable shrines referenced in the festival's name). It was really interesting and we really enjoyed the atmosphere or festivity which was everywhere. The streets were crowded with people and to get through intersections we had to slowly shove our way through.

We ate lots of festival food, and while we were sitting, a photographer thought the foreigners sitting in front of a Japanese temple, eating traditional Japanese food with chopsticks was too incredible a sight to pass, so he came and took a set of pictures of us. He gave me his card and he said he'd email me the pictures later.

Hokkaido trip

HOKKAIDO was really great. We left early on Thursday morning. Our flight was set to leave at 6:30 am. We got to the airport in time and met up with others who were coming along. It was really early and we hadn't slept well or much the night before, but we were excited to go!

As we got closer to the boarding zone we realized the plane we were going to take to Hokkaido was one of the specially painted ones. We were flying in a Pikachu painted 747... Even the inside had Pokemon and Pikachu pictures everywhere.

The flight was short, only 1 1/2h, and uneventful. It was quite a shock to see all the snow everywhere as we landed though, it looked like we had flown back to Canada!

We all took the train from the airport to the main station in downtown Sapporo. We split up because different groups went to different hotels. Finally at around 9 am we dropped off our bags at our hotel.

It was about -10 to -15 on average during our stay. We really felt like we were back in Canada!

We then walked around towards the Snow festival. We saw many ice sculptures and snow sculptures. It was really busy! There were many food vendors selling lots of different foods things which we had never seen before.

Lunch consisted of Sapporo fries, hotdogs on sticks, a chicken/fish burger and drinks.

After wandering around until late afternoon we went back to the hotel at 3pm and checked in. It was nice to be in a warm room after the many hours we had just spent walking around. We all took naps for a few hours.

That night we went to the famous ramen street and had amazing ramen! I tried miso-ramen, it was the best I've had so far.

After dinner we went back to the snow festival and saw the great light shows and music shows which were played onto the big snow sculptures. We stayed until 10pm at which time they shut all the shows and lights down.

We went to the hotel and slept well.

The next morning we ate breakfast (sweet breads, water and coffee) and then took the train to Otaru. It was a great little town about 30 minutes train ride from Sapporo. They have a few canals in the town which are famous, it is called the Venice of Japan. There is a lot of seafood in this town and many places to have sushi, but the prices were ridiculous ($30-$40 for 8-10 pieces of sushi).

We looked around at many glass blowing workshops and looked at many great glass works. We also saw many fish mongers, crab is also a big delicacy from here.

Lunch was chicken stir fry for Jen and I had salmon and seafood tempura. It was amazing! So good!

We went back later that night. I decided to have fresh Sapporo sushi and sashimi (much cheaper!) and it was good too.

The next morning we went to another part of Sapporo and visited the Chocolate Factory. We walked around the museum part and then looked at the manufacturing section. Finally we went and did some souvenir and gift shopping.

That night we went to a "beer factory" and had Genghis Khan. It was decent but not great. It was a big plate of rather fatty thin slices of lamb and some vegetable which you cook yourself on an inverted skillet.

The next morning we packed our stuff, did some shopping around and then went back to the airport to go home!

Japanese festival

ANOTHER Festival! My girlfriend and I went to this festival and really enjoyed the demonstrations. This time we went with her non-Japanese co-workers.

There was a mix of new and old. There were many younger kids who did dances or skits, some high schools were represented, other schools such as the dance school did demonstrations and older woman's groups. Some of these included belly dancing, break dancing, Hawaiian dancing, the Daikon Radish dance, and I especially liked the "flag dance".

Posted here under for your enjoyment!