Awesome Asakusa!

So for the past couple of weeks I had been meaning to visit Asakusa, the site of Senso-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple (side note, in Japan temples = Buddhism, shrines = Shinto). I had been putting it off mainly due to laziness and stinginess. I really hate spending money, but I am willing to let some of it go for stuff that's worth seeing or doing, and Senso-ji is one of the most flocked to places by tourists, so I figured it must be good. On Tuesday I finally dragged myself out there because I really did want to see what all the fuss was about. I am SOOO GLAD I waited!! I'm not sure exactly why this happened, but about a half an hour after I arrived I heard drums and gongs sounding from the front of the temple. I wandered over and discovered a parade of children dressed in robes and headbands carrying sticks with bells on them, behind the children were about 15 men carrying a giant golden dragon on poles, and behind them was a cart with about 5 geisha playing instruments like wooden flutes and shamisen (a stringed instrument). Everyone made a giant circle around the performers. First one of the geisha sang a traditional song and played her flute, then the dragon men made the dragon dance. I got some of this on video, but since I had no idea this was going to happen I hadn't left a lot of room on my memory card and ran out of space kind of quickly. The temple itself was also amazing. It was freakin' HUGE and it had a massive lantern that hung in the front entry way. Some of you may have seen pictures of this giant red lantern because it's "one of Tokyo's most distinctive sights" as my guidebook, Time Out: Tokyo, explains. After I looked around Senso-ji and watched the demonstration I walked down the main street in front of the temple. This was by far the most touristy place I've been to so far since coming to Tokyo. It had all the tacky souvenir shops that sold stuff like cheap unauthentic kimonos and those paper sun umbrellas that kids love (I know I loved the one someone brought back for me when I was 8 or so, I think I still have it somewhere!).

Tomorrow I have the day off because in Japan the vernal equinox is a national holiday. Yay Spring!!! I spoke to Jenn on the phone because we plan to do something together then and it turned out that she was actually in Asakusa at Senso-ji at the exact same time I was. We both watched the show and went up and touched the dragon afterwards (all the Japanese people were touching the dragon, so I guess it must have been for luck or something), but we must have been standing on opposite sides because we never saw each other once! I'm glad she was there though because it was a really cool performance and prior to discovering she'd attended I'd felt kind of badly that the rest of my friends had missed it.

Okay, enjoy the videos and check out my webshots http://community.webshots.com/album/562001252ChqhIm?start=120 because I added a BUNCH of new photos from Asakusa and Tokyo Daibutsu (Big Buddha from last post). Enjoy!