Sensoji Temple
This temple was the first one that the class went to, together. It’s located in Tokyo and is really popular. There were so many people in this one location that it blew my mind. One of the first instances where my Kill La Kill backpack was a shining star in an ocean of people. The class, as in the other students besides myself, could instantly see where I was in relation to the area. Besides the ass load of people everywhere, there was plenty of things to do and see!
There was a wonderful gate to walk through, a giant bell, and long lines of shops! We’re talking souvenir, food, drink, and anything in-between. The prices really varied as to what you could want. Ice cream could be a dollar, or a kimono dress could be 200, it was shockingly sporadic for the number of visitors around the merchandise at one time. You’d think a shop wouldn’t have such high dollar gear laying around with so many people, but they did! I felt the need to buy something as the atmosphere encouraged, but I stood my ground. However, we did go look for ice cream as the video clip will showcase.
This place was truly magical. This location was cozy in what I consider the palm of Tokyo and available for anyone to visit. I don’t believe there is anything like this in America. Even the trip to the statue of liberty will cost you some smackaroos. This temple was an actual temple too unlike something that has been crafted for entertainment in popular cities in the U.S. Really impressive!
As you go though all the shops and reach the end, you can then perform a fortune ceremony that is common to the Japanese. There are plenty of charms, good luck, medallions, and things of that nature. Once you walk up the…stairs…I think there were stairs… anyways, you wait to deposit a small amount of yen and ring the roped bell for good fortune! I think I gave a dollar or something. A lot of experiencing Japan was copy pasting actions. What I mean is looking around at how other people act and mimicking that. It works very well. I followed suit and rang the bell! Afterwards you can navigate to a fortune that you can read. A stick is pulled out of a little box with some little numbers on the sticks. The stick you get will tell you which drawer that you will pull out from that number on the stick. I followed mine and pulled a copy of the sheet out. Boy howdy! I got a shitty fortune. I don’t remember much in the moment, but it basically said my relationship life would suck and I’ll be in turmoil. Fun stuff!
After all this is said and done, you can keep a good (or bad) fortune or tie the bad fortune to a ‘cleansing’ area. I say cleansing in the sense that the bad mojo is deleted. I tied my fortune on the little rods and went on my way.
The area was something to behold! There were plenty of parts of Japan to witness all at once. School kids, teenagers, moms and dads, and so much more. This lead up to the meet up with one of our American university’s Japanese professors! In a nutshell, this professor taught along side our professor but then decided to go back home. I never had the opportunity to take his class but that’s fine by me. He caught wind of us being in Japan for a minute and decided to find our class. More specifically, find about 2-3 special people to him. This was a heartfelt moment and although I didn’t know the man very well, I was entertained to see him so happy with our class.
After not too long in this area, we all had to become aware of the schedule we had to follow for the rest of the day and head on to the next event! The Tokyo Sky Tree Tower!