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.

Kyoto

Today we woke up early, had breakfast and went to see many temples and shrines, Ninna-ji, Ryoanji, Shimogamo, Kamigamo and Kinkakuji. We bought day bus passes for 500yen each, a really good price. The most interesting was Kinkakuji, the golden temple. It was very nice, the temple has squares of gold leaf everywhere. A guide said each leaf is 2 inches by 2 inches and is worth 37$. He said the temple is covered with more than 200.000 of them! The most beautiful was Ryoanji, it has the world famous stone garden. We sat and looked at it for a while and enjoyed the gorgeous gardens and pond.
We walked a bit today, we did a good 4km trek between the temples. Got a bit of sunburn too.
However this morning I had a bad surprise, I had done a load of clothes washing in Osaka. Most were dry except my socks, so I rolled all those into a plastic bag and packed them, or so I thought... I discovered that I somehow didn't pack them! Now I only have two pairs of socks left... I'm going to have to go buy some! Some person right now is looking at a plastic bag with a dozen pairs of humid clean socks... And I'm going to be washing the same two pairs of socks and drying them everyday of this trip...