First Visit to 東京 (Tokyo!)

Even though it is only a short train ride away, it took us a while to visit the largest city in the world (mostly because it was off limits to us until recently). Kyoto was the capital of Japan until 1868 when the emperor moved his seat east to what was then Edo, and renamed the city to Tokyo, literally Eastern Capital (東=east and 京=capital) (if you haven’t noticed yet…Taylor has been super into his Kanji learning). With a population of 38 million people, the greater Tokyo area is the largest metropolitan area in the world, and about 1/4th of the population of Japan lives there (we technically live in this area!)

Our first stop was the Senso-ji temple, the largest and oldest temple in Tokyo. The first temple was founded in 645 AD, and Senso-ji has become a symbol of rebirth for Japan, having been almost completely rebuilt after being destroyed during the air raids in WWII. We entered the temple via its main entrance, the Kaminarimon Gate, or Thunder Gate. It features a lantern that weighs about 1500 lbs.

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Just inside the Thunder Gate is the famous shopping street, Nakamise Dori. It is one of Japan’s oldest shopping districts and has innumerable things to buy and taste. We got there at around 0900 which is pretty early in Japan, so many of the stores were still closed, but this let us see some of the cool art they had on their store shutters.

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There were so many things to see once we got to the temple proper. There was the main temple, a five-tiered pagoda, another gate, a garden, some smaller temples, snacks, shopping, and a monkey! We wandered around here for a few hours taking in all the sights.

Jeffrey especially liked the garden and its koi. Jackie liked all the flowers that were blooming there. It seems that no matter where you are in Japan, there is a immaculately manicured garden nearby. (Spring is so awesome here!)

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The temple itself was awesome, and they even had an elevator so we could take the stroller up. The temple itself is the most visited spiritual site in the world with 30 million visitors annually, and it hosts numerous festivals and celebrations throughout the year. Sadly, we were not able to visit at night, but the temple and nearby pagoda are supposed to be beautifully lit up.

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To the east of the temple grounds were various street food vendors and a covered mall with all sorts of cool shops. We tried lots of street food and got a melonpan from one of the mall shops (it was soooo good!) The melonpan shop had a weird photo op spot outside with fake buns to use as a prop. The boys especially loved the food we got. I picked out some fish tempura, and discovered afterwards that it was just a whole fried fish, but the boys didn’t care. They were super into the chocolate-covered banana too. (I was weirded out by the fish, we also got some fried chicken and yakisoba, all so yum!) They also made some friends! some very nice ladies with dogs let the boys play with them for a while and let us take a photo.

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We spent several hours at Senso-ji and, even though we probably didn’t see everything, we found so many interesting things in the area. There was a memorial to the fire bombings in Tokyo, which were almost as destructive as the atomic bombs were. We also stumbled upon a performing monkey! It was super random and we have no idea of its significance or meaning, but he was still pretty cool.

Finally, here’s a teaser of our next destination in Tokyo! To be continued…

BRB, out to Japan – Taylor