Asakusa and American Football…

Shotas Uncle, Takashi and Cousin, Jyun, very kindly offered to take us into Tokyo to the busy Town called Asakusa. Monday was a public Holiday in Japan so it was extremely busy and also quite warm which I loved… a good change to cold Melbourne. At the beginning of the Nakamise Dori, shopping arcade, there is a large red gateway and a very large red lantern, according to Uncle Takashi, the lantern was donated to the town by the Founder of Panasonic.

Walking through the arcade was amazing, over one hundred shops selling many interesting gifts and food on offer. Being a high touristy area the prices were also quite high, so I only bought some traditional style postcards.

 The Sensi Ji, is the main temple in Asakusa, and is famous for its gold plated alter. At the front of the alter were hoards of people milling around, throwing coins and making wishes. Although it takes a while to make it to the front of the alter, its worth it to make a wish…    

 

 Next was lunch time. I had mentioned the day before that I was interested in tasting Tempura… So Uncle Takashi and Jyun found us a very beautiful Japanese Tempura Restaurant. It was also very busy and we had to wait thirty minutes to get in! Whilst waiting for our luch, we went for a little walk. Along the way we saw someone who’d obviously been busy doing some washing, as the mattresses were hanging out over the balcony… I found it funny.

So the pressure was on for it to be good after waiting that long for it…. and it was. After a quick lesson in holding chopsticks, yes there is a correct way, I was too scared to loosen my grip on the sticks, so just held them for fifteen minutes whilst we waited for our food.

The Tempura was lovely, its not my favourite of dishes, I think Salmon Sushi is still up there, but I did enjoy it. Too accompany our dish was a clear seafood soup, also quite tasty, yet at this stage I prefer Miso soup.

After our delicious lunch, that was paid for by Shotas Uncle, we headed off for Coffee. I ordered a Matcha and dumplings. Matcha is what is used for the Japanese Tea ceremony, and takes great skill to make. It is green creamy looking drink, that tastes of green tea. I actually don’t mind the taste, but it is a little different in texture to green tea. The Dumplings were yummy too, They’re made from rice and have no flavor so its easy for them to become a sweet or savoury dish. These ones I had were sweet, one set had a sweet soy sauce syrup and the other set had a sweet sauce made from beans.

Shota and Jyun had iced coffee. However Shota couldn’t handle the ‘strongness’ like his fellow cousin, so after adding a few creams and sugar syrup he was able to drink it…

After lunch and Coffee, it was time to head back out away from Tokyo, to watch Shota’s other cousin, Kevin play American Football, Japanese style. Kevin’s Mother married a British man, hence the non Japanese name. Having never watched a game of Amercian Football, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was, in fact quite entertaining and Kevins team won, so that was exciting and it was a very close game….Except have a look at the amount of people of Kevins team (burgundy) …millions! Okay so they don’t all play at the same time, but gee it seemed a little unfair when you look at the white team.

I was informed by Michael, Kevins Father, that they haven’t lost a game in TWO years! How good is that? I was impressed J

Had my first Jidouhanbaiki experience today too, a can of hot coffee! Awesomeness!! And at only 120 YEN it’s a bargain.

All in all we had a wonderful day and we were all exhausted. After having to catch three trains home…all the train lines interconnect in Tokyo, so although it seems like a horrible idea to have to catch so many trains…it’s not that bad. And the wait it nowhere near as long as Melbourne, maybe five minutes was the longest we had to wait for a train, great right? Anyway it was nearly 8pm and Shota and I were borderline starving! Yet there was announced over the trains PA system alerting us to the fact that there had been an accident, involving a person and that we could not go any further! Being only two stops away from home we were all so frustrated L But earlier that day we had been discussing the amount of suicides committed in Japan, in front of trains. So perhaps we jinxed ourselves!