5 November 2015
The dark temple
Exploring Asakusa at night
No sooner had I returned from Nikko and it was time to head out the door again.
I headed away from the local Ueno station, to see where I ended up. Asakusa as it turns out, where the main temple in Tokyo is.
I have been here before, during the day, a couple of times I think. I get the feeling the whole shopping and tourist experience in the streets surrounding the temple has expanded 10 fold in the last few years, with a lot more closed off and covered streets.
There are a whole heap of Korean and Chinese restaurants, but the food they had on offer looked really very poor, I quickly decided no to Bi Bim Bap Japan style.
There are also a lot of nice looking sit on the floor with your shoes off restaurants in the back streets, but the lack of prices on the menu and the fact they only seat about 4 people at a time tells me they cost $1000.
I dont know why, but there were a lot of people walking around with floral tributes on sticks, maybe this happens every night here, it seemed to be pretty casual, like, good evening, hi, yes this is my elaborate gold leaf covered flowers surrounded message on a stick, nice weather today.
You can wander all around the temple at night, if you wish, and plenty of people were. This may be the best time to visit, as all the souvenir shops were closing and the tour groups were long gone.
I did however get asked if I wanted to hear about the lord, by young Japanese people, actually in broken English they told me 'we are here tonight to spread good news' I just asked Jesus? and they said YES! like I was going to join in, to which I gave them some really bad news to counter their good news.
The infamous mega Don Quixote in Asakusa, their motto is 'the palace of real cheapness', the cause for excess luggage fees for flights leaving Japan to China. They now have aquariams and live shows.
Covered shopping streets are almost empty. Many of these specialise in knives and chef supplies if I remember correctly.
During the day you cannot move here, everyone is buying a mini eifel tower saying Japan on it.
This one had me puzzled. I tried to lean and get spotted to find out what they meant or why they meant it.
CLOSED
I was having flashbacks to earlier today.
The temple, in its night time glory, no one around to enforce the no photos rule.
An American gentlemen with his full on tripod and huge lense on the go saw me walk past and take my photo hand held with no flash.
He exclaimed with great confidence, 'Well thats not going to work out for you son' and so I showed him my perfectly exposed shot. This had him completely baffled and angry.
My now ancient Sony RX100 is still the greatest night photo camera of all time. I dont care that its 'cheating' I just leave it on intelligent auto+ and hold the button.
I desperately wanted omurice for dinner, but couldnt find it. Hunger got the better of me so I had ramen, making sure to get the egg. As soon as I finished and left I went around the corner and there was a specialist omurice place right in front of me.
I drowmed my lack of omurice sorrows with a delicious refreshing fermented carbonated soy milk drink.