Asakusa

Last Sunday we took a day trip up to the Asakusa (pronounced ah-sock-sa) neighborhood in Tokyo. As you can see, it was a 'little' crowded. It's hard to tell from the picture, but Ryan and I were a head taller than most of the people there. Ian had a lot of attention, of course, including people asking to take his picture.

Here is the temple Senso-ji.

I paid 100 yen (about $1.00) to get a fortune at the temple. Apparently it's pretty rare to get a decent fortune. A friend told me she's only kept 1 fortune out of the many she has bought in past years. You have to shake a stick out of the silver box and then pull a fortune out of the corresponding numbered box.

Here is my fortune, which was labeled as a medium fortune. It's a bit hard to read, but it said, "Your request is not granted. The patient will not recover soon. The lost article will be hard to find. [more bad stuff that I'm too lazy to type]...Marriage and employment should be stopped."

Needless to say, not a great fortune. Not to worry, though...as long as I tied the fortune on the rack it won't come true. Although I suppose typing about it doesn't help. Here's hoping the rack took care of things! If this is a medium fortune, I'd hate to see what a bad fortune looks like.

Asakusa also has the 2nd largest pagoda in Japan. It's pretty crazy that this is located in the middle of the city.

As we walked through the neighborhood we spotted this guy biking while balancing a tray with a bowl on it. He turned from our street into this alley, all the while keeping the tray upright. Impressive!

Before we headed home, we stopped to get some gelato. It was the perfect end to our day!