Senso-ji Temple

Down the street and two train stops from Ueno park is the Senso-ji temple. It is the biggest, and perhaps the most sacred temple in Tokyo. More than just a temple, it is a huge complex with many different halls temples, and statues. At the front of complex is a large gate that is guarded by statues of the gods of thunder, and rock and roll, errr, lightning. In the middle of the gate, hanging from the top, is a giant traditional Japanese lantern. Once we walked through the gate, we are greeted by a one or two hundred meter path that has little shops on both sides, selling traditional Japanese wares, like dolls, kimonos, prints, and even giant robot Gundam models.

Once we got past all the shops, we saw another large gate that looked very much like the first. This was the beginning of the large temple complex. Off to the right there were two Buddha statues and a small little temple to pray at. Up more from there was a medium sized temple. Off to the left there was a tall five story Pagoda over the residence halls for the abbots.

The main temple in the middle, however, overwhelmed the whole complex. In front of the temple was another fountain that we had seen at other temples, sort of like holy water. It was much bigger than any of the other temples that we had come across. Like the gates, there was a large lantern hanging over the entrance of the temple. Further inside, one could see an beautiful interior that was closed off, but visible. It looked as thought it might be the Buddha’s living room. Many Japanese people walked up and dropped some change in the proper place, and bowed their heads in a silent and brief prayer.

I wandered off to the left of the complex, where there were a few other smaller temples. I came across a small garden with large stone plaques to some people (I don’t know who, or what they did to deserve a plaque in such an seemingly important place). So happened my second encounter with a Japanese man today. The man looked like an abbot or priest, as he was dressed up in important looking robes. He said something like “good pictures,” then a lot of Japanese that I didn’t understand. He then motioned for me to give him my camera. I thought he wanted to take a picture of me in front of one of these plaques. I hesitated, but then gave him my camera. He started walking away, and I was scared that I just gave away my camera. I caught up to him, and stopped him, and he wanted to take a picture of me with some random American girl. Perhaps he thought we were friends, or something. In any case, he did snap the picture, and he gave my camera back. I was relieved that nothing bad happened. I would have been upset had I lost my camera to such foolishness. However, perhaps I am overly cautious and distrusting. I haven’t really heard of such theft in Tokyo from any of my books, but I suppose I could never be too careful. (After all, even though he looked so old and frail, he could have been some crazy martial arts master or something, and beat me up bad for my camera. Luckily, he didn’t.)