We stayed at Anne hostel near Asakusabashi Station. The hostel is lovely and very conveniently located. Nearby you can walk to good placed for food or a nice cozy izakaya for a drink.
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| Izakaya in Asakusabashi, Tokyo |
It is walking distance to Asakusa where there is shopping and more
restaurants as well as the most famous and most visited temple in Tokyo.
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| Asakusa, Tokyo |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
Sensō-ji
(金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji)
is one of the oldest temples in Tokyo and is one of the most
spectacular in a city that doesn't have many decorated temples (at least
not compared to Kyoto). This temple was founded in 645AD and is
dedicated to the Bodhisattva of compassion. The temple was destroyed in the war and then rebuilt.
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| Kaminarimon, Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Kaminarimon, Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
The temple has a large gate that leads to a walking street with many souvenir stands full off foods and little souvenirs.The Kaminarimon or "Thunder Gate" is a large gate with a huge paper lantern.
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| Kaminarimon, Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
The Nakamise-dōri
(仲見世通り)
is said to have come
about in the early 18th century, and still sits in front of the temple.
It has been part of the tradition of selling to pilgrims that walk to
the temple.
This leads to an even bigger gate before more stands selling temple goods including fortunes, prayer beads, etc.
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| Nakamise-dōri (仲見世通り) |
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| Nakamise-dōri (仲見世通り) |
The gate stand beside a five story pagoda and in front of the main temple building. There is also a Shinto Shrine and the Asakusa Shrine on the temple grounds.
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
Despite
the fact it was night time when we visited it was still fairly crowded.
Apparently during the day it is much busier so I would recommend
visiting very early in the morning if you want to avoid the crowds!
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
The main temple building is just as beautifully decorated as the large gates.
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
We couldn't walk right up to the pagoda but it was lovely in the lights and with the moon shining behind it through little clouds.
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
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| Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺 Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji) |
A
kihabara is known as the electronics district and a famous shopping area with many themed restaurants including cafes themed with maids, ninjas, AKB48 (huge Japanese pop band), Gundam, Final Fantasy and more. Our aim of visiting Akihabara was to visit anime stores, the final fantasy cafe and the famous six story sex shop.
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| Akihabara, Japan |
The main street has huge stores with various themes Sega, Animate, etc as well as Taito Station or Pachinko if you're up for a game.
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| Akihabara, Japan |
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| Akihabara, Japan |
There are huge electronics stores such as the famous one depicted below or small little electronics shops on side streets that sell very cheap products. I don't know about the quality but they are very inexpensive and possibly from overstock in the larger stores since selection is limited.
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| Akihabara, Japan |
We visited a few anime stores and many of them sell mostly cards,books and less costumes or merchandise that we were looking for. The final fantasy cafe was also a bit of a fail since you needed to make a reservation and they were full for the day we tried to visit. The sex shop |(Pop Life Department M's) was six stories tall but each floor was so small and isles could barely fit one person making it so incredibly crowded. The sex shop itself was supposed to be massive but it's total size was actually smaller than ones in Canada despite sounding impressive with a description of 'six stories tall'. They had a diversity of stuff but actually was much less impressive than expected and lacked a lot of odd things I was expecting from Tokyo. The small shops selling electronics on the side streets had really great prices for what they were selling and I got a few small souvenirs for about 100 yen (a little over a dollar).
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| Akihabara, Japan |
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