(1.1.16-1.4.16) Day 9-13 - Asakusa, Sumida
Apologies for the late post; I had to work up the motivation to edit these pictures. Now that I have I’ve finished wondering what I was trying to do with this little travel diary in the first place. At first I thought it was therapy for me, but now I realize it’s much more than that. When I’m older and wondering where my life went I can hopefully come back here and remember just how lucky I was to travel the world, and to visit Japan. Even if I end up a poor man I’ll at least have a wealth of memories!
Our hostel is in Asakusa so we decide to walk the area because the place is packed. There must be a million people on the streets today, making their visits to the shrine for the year. It’s too crowded to visit the inner temple complex so we walk around the outer streets, taking in the sights and sounds. The Skytree in the background is a new addition from the last time I visited the city, taking up the western side of the sky. After eating our fill of food, Kevin and I walk towards Sumida and the Skytree, hoping to find a place with less people. Bad decision, because when we got there the ticketmaster told us we’d have to wait until 7:00PM to visit the top of the skytree. Families, small children, couples, and single looking men and women walk around the drone of thousands of people lining the inner tower complex and the shopping mall below.
Both Kevin and I are surprised to see an ice skating rink near the base of the Skytree, and so we both decide to stand near the barrier and watch people skate. I was expecting to see someone trying to show off but everyone there seemed to be a first time skater. With a sort of passive amusement I watched kids and adults alike tumble and fall, only to get up and do it again. I said something to Kevin, about how when we were young children we’d never be afraid of hurting ourselves, and I recalled the times my family would go climbing boulders in the desert, and I would fearlessly jump over rock crevices and swing off the tops of the mounds while my parents would move cautiously and slowly. Nowadays I’m scared of getting hurt, and I try to do everything a bit slower than I used to. It’s probably because I have that lingering fear of dying before I do something important, but that’s not even my biggest problem right now, so why am I worried about that?
With nothing left to do in Sumida, Kevin and I take the train to Shinjuku for the x-teenth time. I somehow decide that I want to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the second time, except in a Japanese movie theatre. We both buy tickets from an automated machine, except I somehow end up buying the student ticket, despite knowingly leaving my Cal 1 card at home. The kid at the entrance of the theater is exasperated when I can’t produce my card, but decides that negotiating with me in broken English is out of his pay range, and lets us in. I don’t really know what happened the rest of the night (I think we got udon at a stand in Memory Lane), but I did learn that Japanese people will always sit through the entire movie credits, as their way of acknowledging the efforts of the cast and crew. I made a mental note that I’d try to do that from now on, even though I know my limited patience won’t allow it.
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