This morning started like the others with a stop at 7-Eleven for breakfast before heading out. We got all sorts of breakfast treats. Then to the subway to Asakusa to see visit the Samurai museum, see the Senso-ji Buddhist Temple and finally arts and crafts.
Starting at the samurai experience, we got to don samurai robes, select a sword and learn a form, which included defending, performing a neck stab, doing a body slash and cleaning the sword. After performing the form, we returned the real swords and got to practice on each other this time with foam swords.
Then we joined a history tour about Japan and how the samurai fit into history. It was a really great history lesson, just the right amount of facts to remember some of it when you were done. Including that the samurai were of the same blood of the Emperor and passed from son to son (only 3% of Japanese today are descended from samurai), the Shogun was the real ruler and the Emperor a figure head until the Americans showed up and convinced the Emperor he doesn’t need Samurai he needs technology (cue the very loose accounting of this story in the movie “The Last Samurai”), and that ninjas were farmers and fisherman employed by the Samurai as assassins.
Our final activity in the museum was to test our ninja abilities by throwing shuriken. There was a competition at the end, and Matt and Jo got close to being in the final round but not close enough.
We were only about a 10 min walk away from one of the most visited sights in Tokyo, the Senso-ji Temple. On the walk to the temple the pedestrian street was lined with small shops selling everything you can think of. Lily bought sake glasses and a fan, Matt a new t-shirt, and Charles got a frozen Fanta. The temple was beautiful and very busy. After we went inside we stopped to get our fortunes. Mel and Lily’s were bad fortunes and were subsequently tied to a rack which would be burned, Belinda and Charles’s were “regular” and Matt decided not to get one. MoJo’s were also both bad.
After we finished at the temple we had an hour to kill before making chop sticks, so we went shopped more and went on a “Let’s Go to Japan” card mission. This mission was to find a fish biscuit vendor, which were really delicious waffles stuffed with fruit or custard. We had joked earlier that today was our Amazing Race day, and it definitely felt like it when we were wandering in the sea of hundreds of vendors. We then stumbled upon the craft store where we were to make chopsticks (cue the Amazing Race music). This activity was a bargin at only $3/pair of chopsticks and in a beautiful studio called Japanese Zen Craft Studio. It was a blast and we saw that they also had another class to make repaired ceramics (or Kintsugi), so we decided to ask if we could do that as well. We had to wait an hour for the next class, but we were in!
After spending extra time at the craft studio we needed to rush back to Minuto City to make it to our reservation for Shabu Shabu (Japanese hotpot), which was subsequently pretty close to our hotel. Amazingly this was also the first time we got sushi in Japan. A tuna tower and a mixed sashimi platter for our appetizer- it was all delicious.
It was a great way to end our time in Tokyo. Mt Fuji and Hakone here we come!
Amazing experiences!