Sorry for the lapse in posting. As you can imagine, I’ve been busy with getting out of vacation mode and back into normal daily living/working/etc. mode. Of course this transition is complicated by Tracie’s mother’s hospitalization, but we’re making do.
I wasn’t able to post photos until we reached Kyoto. Here are photos from our day in Tokyo with Tamae, our guide. I described this day in greater detail previously so I’m just going to put in photos and very brief descriptions here. (Incidentally, I just noticed that some of these photo-heavy pages load kind of slowly. Sorry about that; I don’t know of an easy way to tell my blogging software to insert page breaks in a more intelligent manner.)
Here’s the sumo stable. As I mentioned previously photos are not allowed inside, so this is all I have.
Here is the location of the memorial shrines for Lord Kira:
If I remember correctly, this is the first well in which Lord Kira’s head was washed (after it was removed from his body, that is):
Here are a few photos from the neighborhood. Tamae explained that chanko restaurants cater to the huge appetites of the sumo wrestlers.
That last one must be the sign of a fugu restaurant. Here’s a photo of Tokyo Tower and several taken from the tower:
Moving on to the Sengaku-ji temple, this is the main gate as seen from the courtyard (i.e. after you go through the gate), followed by photos of the incense vending machine, the temple itself, and a statue of the founder:
It’s a nice place. The courtyard is very peaceful. I might well zen there if I lived in the area. Here are photos of the memorial markers for the 47 ronin and the shrine for their leader:
There is a nice garden area between the main temple and the cemetery:
Visible at the lower center of that last photo is the other well in which Kira’s head was washed. As we left the cemetery, we spotted a senbazuru, a skein of 1000 origami cranes, hanging on the back of the gate. Despite having sold numerous kits for senbazuru through Paper Jade, I’ve never seen one in person. This one was made from unusually small cranes.
