Monday, 19 May: Arrive and explore

Mark’s journals are so detailed that he generally simply transcribes his journal into his web pages. Mine, by contrast, are sketchy and unreliable, and I usually fab­ri­cate a description of the day’s events from the pictures and cribbings off Mark’s pages, with only a glance at my journal pages. For this day, however, my journal starts out pretty well:

«The Narita airport NRT is much more modern than most in the US, how could it not be, but there was an in­ord­i­nate­ly long walk from our arrival gate to Immigration and Customs. That went smoothly, of course, and then there was a bit of confusion in finding the Japan Rail counter, where we had to get our JR Passes set up. Needless to say, we would have been totally at sea without Mike. From there, to the station of the local train that would take us into Tōkyō. These trains were not running all that often at that hour (4 p.m.), in fact we had to wait a half-hour. But we made the change successfully at Aoto, but on the new line there was no English announcement of next station, and without the help of a local, telling us to go three stops, we undoubtedly would have gone past our station of Asakusa.

«This {I was referring to Asakusa} is clearly the heart of old Tōkyō, we even saw men wearing kimono. With Mike’s help, we got to our little hotel, Ryokan Asakusa Shigetsu. We’re just on the second floor, in a room hardly bigger than the two comforters that make our bed. There’s a low table, no chairs. But the private bathroom is perfectly adequate, with a shower in tub that works very well.»

Over there to the right, Mark is looking at our sleeping quarters (fairly small image).

Once we were settled into our rooms, it was time to go out exploring. First, a bar in the neighborhood that Mike had heard about, the Kamiya Bar, supposedly the oldest in Japan. If you wanted a picturesque echt-Japanese place where you could sneak a snapshot that would give everybody the flavor of Nō, or koto-playing geisha, please forget about it. This place is a working-class hangout, too brightly lit, friendly, and fairly boisterous. And many of the denizens were oldsters, making Mike and me feel plenty well at home. One round of Asahi Premium, and we were off for more adventures.

Mike had also heard of a restaurant specializing in noodles,, neither Mark nor I have the name of it, but we got a filling meal there and went on for real sight-seeing.

Kaminarimon: Big image, small.

Right in the neighborhood of our restaurant is the Sensō-ji temple, a very old Buddhist es­tab­lish­ment, and you gain access to it via the Ka­mi­na­ri­mon gate, a huge and (of course) ornate structure with statues, frills, and furbelows galore.

But between the gate and the temple, there’s an extensive market set up. At the hour we visited this night, little was open, but we did visit it again several times while we were staying in Asakusa. In the lower picture to the left, you see Mike, Mason, and Cindy (Mark is there, too, but hiding behind his big sister) walking in the mostly-closed-up market (big image, small).

There’s a pagoda there, too, very big and impressive, es­pec­i­al­ly at night, as you see in the picture to the right (small image only). You see, dimly lit below, the other four mem­bers of our group, pretending to be tourists.