DAY 3
Long day today. After getting lost on the 10 minute walk to the station yesterday, I thought today I'd do it properly and walk to a temple about 2 miles away. It took about 20 mins to walk (via a couple of little shrines hiding in the backstreets) and would've taken about 30mins by train as I would've had to go in to Tokyo then back again. I went to Senso-Ji (Ji means Temple) in Asakusa. Its a recreation as the original was blown to pieces by carpet bombing Americans during WWII. There are two gates with loads of shops between them, selling all kinds of Japanese wares from kimonoes to rice sweets to lamps.
There was also a 5 storey pagoda and a memorial garden complete with garden force water feature.
Could someone do me a favour and rotate this the right way up and send it back to me? Nice one.
After that, I wondered around Asakusa for a bit and found the infamous Asahi Beer building's 'Giant Golden Poo'
Having had enough of exploring the city, I thought Id head to Ueno Park. I jumped on a train to Ueno and started wondering again. It was a nice enough park in the middle but the rest of it had a real clostrophobic feel as the city felt so omnipresent.
One thing I had noticed about Tokyo was the the amount of old, scuffy, homeless looking people in the quieter parts of town. I couldn't see anyone sleeping rough so I just assumed they were all just old and scruffy looking.
Walking along the river to Asakusa and then all through Ueno park I realised where they all go. There were literally hundreds of tents and tarpaulins littered with cardboard and cans. They wern't begging (it would be very un-Japanese) just homeless. Id heard the recent resession had hit a lot of people hard (in fact the bestselling book during and after the recession was one on how to commit suicide most cleanly and effectivly for those left behind) I just didn't think the problem would be so visible.
