Once landed in Tokyo it was the morning of Tuesday 3rd, we were collected from the airport by a representative and taken by coach to Asakusa. Unfortunately we were unable to check in, so our luggage was placed into storage at the Sakura Hostel. So we visited the Sensoji Buddhist temple that was a short walk from the hostel. We were asked by two japaneese students who were learning English if they could take us on a tour of the street. This was an opportunity we could not turn down. They taught us about the legend of the temple, how two brothers fished a statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, out if the river and even though they put it back, it always returned to them. That is consequently why the Sensoji temple was built, for the goddess of Kannon. They told us that this is the oldest temple in Tokyo; however it has had a fair amount of restoration. The students took us under a number of gates and up the Nakamise, which is a 200m shopping street full of stalls.
We then went for food, with the number of vegetarians in the group it was quite hard to find somewhere that would cater for them. I ordered a shabu-shabu which was very different to anything I had eaten before; essentially it was very thin strips of beef and pork that were boiled in soup. After checking in, some of us washed and went out to explore the area. We went into a half tented bar and ordered drinks that didn’t taste particularly alcoholic so we moved on. A door was found that lead down to a basement bar, where we tried Sake and had our first round of Karaoke. With the Jet lag kicking in we made our way back to the hostel and to bed.
bethanyadams34 