senso-ji shrining

Yesterday (Monday), after a very lazy morning (it was raining - typhoon season, remember - and we were pretty beat), we went to see Tokyo's most prominent temple, Senso-ji, which was conveniently located (in the Asakusa district) just a few subway stops from our hotel. After passing through a long gauntlet of trinket and snack stalls (hawking everything from replica samurai swords to ninja costumes to geisha girl figurines to bean buns), we finally made it to the main gate of the shrine. (Check out Maya in her plaid button-down.)



A sprawling complex, Senso-ji included a cool pagoda. (Check out me in my gray T-shirt.)



Maya wafting some sacred incense smoke into that preternatually sensitive nose of hers.



Maybe the most jarring and strange thing about Senso-ji was how many swastikas there were everywhere - on the incense (below), on the incense cauldron-thing (below that), on lanterns, on columns, on pretty much everything.





The symbol actually has its origin in Dharmic religions such as Buddhism, where it is a very common image (as the previous link explains), before it was horribly appropriated/stolen and its meaning and associations got all twisted around. Even knowing this backstory in advance, however, Maya and I couldn't help but feel a little taken aback seeing them all over the shrine...

Here am I washing my hands: You're supposed to do this before entering any shrine (we spent half our day at Kamakura washing our hands, I think). We spotted some older Japanese women drinking the water from this fountain, too.



We noticed this strange hanging-little-houses-carousel ride hovering above the shrine rooftops - turns out there's a weird little amusement park nearby.



The view back from inside Senso-ji.



Besides the handwashing and incense-smoke-inhaling outside the shrine, inside the shrine, we witnessed all sorts of rituals - young and old Japanese alike lit candles in some prescribed sequence, tied little strips of paper around special racks, tossed coins into strange slotted receptacles, and did some other stuff I'm not even sure I understood, following it all with lots of bowing and praying. And though neither Maya and I regularly practice any sort of meditative or religious rituals - in fact, we're generally opposed to organized worship of unprovable invisible forces - I think we both saw a certain poetry and poignance in these displays. Maybe what we need in our lives back at home (which we will return to at some point, we think and hope) is some ritual to counter all the routine.