Our next stop in Tokyo was Sensō-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple. Here Buddhist and Shinto imagery and devotion mingle side by side. The temple was built in 645 CE (AD but for non-christians?).
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| Adorable little kids on the drums |
By some bit of serendipity we arrived on the exact day and time of the celebration of Sanja Matsuri. We had no clue what was going on at the time, but we looked it up later. It is Tokyo's largest, most popular festival, and it is known for being quite rowdy. David described it as the politest mosh pit he has ever been in. The streets leading up to the shrines were packed wall to wall with people, and the only way to get anywhere was to go with the flow of the people moving around you. We were there on Saturday where groups from each district parade portable Mikoshi through the streets.
This site has great information about the festival including:
The local mikoshi parade features around 100 mikoshi from the 44 districts of Asakusa. The mikoshi gather at the Kaminarimon Gate of Sensoji Temple and are paraded through Nakamise-dori to Asakusa Shrine.
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| Geishas |
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| There were even teams of adorable little kids |
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| We had to salmon our way across this street through all these people. |
Here are some videos of what we found ourselves in the middle of:
We then made our way over to the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace and finally to view the Imperial Palace itself. It is a massive compound, and we were really impressed that there was so much reserved green space in such a busy city. Other than that, it was a little lower on our list of favorite Tokyo sites simply because it wasn't as engaging or kinetic as the other things we saw. You can't get very close to the imperial palace, so you have to just take a few quick pictures around all the security guards and barriers. It would be a perfect place to spend a relaxing day just walking around, but if you are on a whirlwind schedule to see the city you might want to skip the whole garden compound and just skip to the outside, across the moat, view of the Palace since you can't see it from the inside.
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| The moat |
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| Part of the east gardens |
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| One of the Guardhouses |
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| As far as seeing the Imperial Palace, this is the closest you could get. |
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| Statue of the great samurai Kusunoki Masashige, he fought for the Japanese emperor in the early 14th century. |
Map Links:
Senso-ji
East Garden
Imperial Palace
Kusunoki Masashige Monument
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You have perfect timing for adventure; what a rich cultural experience seen in your beautiful pictures and videos.
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