Sensoji | G. S. Kenney Author

We didn’t discover the interesting area around the temple until the second time we went there, and had more time to wander.

There were, to begin with, several statues of Buddha (or perhaps of Bodhisattvas).

A short digression is perhaps in order here. Dan and I are illiterate in Japanese, and we have gained a whole new–and sympathetic–understanding of the dilemmas that must face functionally illiterate people in our own country. We were certainly able to get around fine in Japan. Most public transportation have signs in English as well as Japanese; and people were also wonderfully friendly and willing to help. We also understood where we were and what we were seeing, at least in broad terms. But the details on explanatory signs (and most menus!) were too much for us. So I present here the beauty, or cuteness, of what we saw–and the Japanese are very, very good at both beauty and cuteness–but no details. Just as we experienced it.

And now on to the Buddhas. Or Bodhisattvas.

Finally, my favorite. I actually don’t know who this little guy is, or anything about him. I just know: you gotta love him!

There was a small but lovely landscaped area, with a stream running through it.

The stream had myriads of red-and-white fish in it.

And the fish were hungry.

There were also numerous other objects of mystery.

One small shrine I do know about (because they were kind enough to post its story in English as well as Japanese). Once upon a time, it seems, in the early eighteenth century, a housewife, digging in her garden, discovered buried there a jar full of gold coins. She worried that she and her husband would rely too heavily on those coins and become lazy and lose what they had. So she buried the coins again, and with this mindset, she and her husband worked hard and became very wealthy. They placed a statue of the Bodhisattva Jizo on the spot where they buried the coins. Today, this shrine is built over those coins.

It contains the statue of the Bodhisattva (and several other statues of him, too). People come here to pray for success in their business enterprises.

Asakusa is considered an important “shitamachi” (that’s “low city” to you!) district of Tokyo. It does have its few high-rise and modern buildings, but many older streets and structures survive.

But more of that later.

First, an important lesson in pronouncing Japanese. This will be helpful to anyone (well, any American English speaker, anyway) contemplating a trip to Japan. An American acquaintance of mine who spent a lot of time in Japan explained Japanese pronunciation this way: “They speak really fast and run all their syllables together.” I did not find this to be true, though I did find myself nearly choking on my tongue when trying to repeat the names of places the way they were announced in trains and subways.

Those of you who, like me, speak American English as a native language probably imagine that the name of this district would be pronounced “AH-suh-KOO-sah.” But this would be terribly wrong. The closest I was able to get is “Ah-SOCK-sah.” (I think the “u” is just there to space out the “k” and the “s” a little.) In general, I found I could get closer to correct by placing a strong emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first and third. Thus, for example, “Ka-NAH-z-wah” is better than “KA-na-ZA-wah.” Just so you know.

We visited Asakusa twice–once early in our trip, late in the morning; and then again on our very last day, when we spent an evening there and then got an early start in the morning. The early start turns out to be important, as the district can be crowded with tourists.

The biggest tourist draw in Asakusa is the Buddhist Sensoji Temple. This temple is the oldest in Tokyo–originally built when Asakusa was just a fishing village in the seventh century–occupies a complex of numerous buildings, artifacts, and landscape features. The temple building and its ancillary structures are remarkable. I loved the large lanterns in the doorways.