Sensoji Shrine stands at the end of the long street. It's very common for the streets leading up to shrines to be lined with shops, creating a kind of festive, commercial atmosphere. Don't expect to see brand-name stores or a Starbucks on these streets - it's all smaller shops, and usually lots of snack stands and restaurants mixed in.
The shrine was impressive in scale, with beautiful architecture and a large incense burner in front.
There were plenty of locals visiting. It seems like religious life is integrated in to their day-to-day activities. People stop routinely to say a prayer at a shrine - I think they may go to a specific shrine depending on what they are praying for. At one point on the trip, we saw a group of teenage boys dressed in their baseball uniforms praying for success in the game.
At Sensoji, as at many shrines, you can also purchase a fortune for 100 yen. We both purchased fortunes. Robin's was terrible, but thankfully, you can conveniently negate it by tying the fortune to a metal rod nearby - and it doesn't even cost extra :-)
The large incense burner is also interesting. The smoke is supposed to be curative and ward off colds, so people step up to it and wave the smoke in to their face.
We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Edo Tokyo Museum. We were here for an hour-and-a-half and could easily have spent much more time here. It provides a very detailed look at the complete history of the city, and much of the interesting modern history is of course at the end. The link to the museum site gives you a sense of both the incredible architecture (long escalators take you up the equivalent of 7 stories!) and the exhibits.
We got back on the subway to head to the Roppongi neighborhood for dinner. Another interesting cultural observation - the Japanese routinely sleep on the subway at any time of day. If you look around the train, at least 10% of the people who are sitting down are dozing, and sometimes they look sound asleep.
We found a great yakatori restaurant in Roppongi, though we never did learn its name. We were looking for a specific restaurant in the guidebook, but couldn't locate it (directions are often vague - "go to the bottom of the hill and look for a red lantern"). We stepped in to a completely different restaurant to see if they could help. When we told the host at the door we were looking for a yakatori restaurant, he walked us half a block to point out a nondescript wooden door. Talk about service.
Yakatori is meat and veggies grilled on skewers. This place was small, with a traditional Japanese wooden bar and low seats. We took off our shoes at the door and were guided to seats right in front of the grill. They had an English menu, but we could just as easily have pointed to what was in the case. There were a number of ex-pats here for dinner, and the place was fairly buzzing with conversation, beer, sake and the aroma of grilled food.
One of our favorites - grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon. We also had sake with our meal - the first time on the trip we ordered it. The cold, crisp, dry sake went well with the food, though I'd say a light Japanese beer would have done nicely as well.
It had been a very full day for two completely jet-lagged travelers, so we just about crawled up the hill to the subway and rode one stop to our hotel.
* All photos here have been linked from Flickr. You can find the full set here.
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