Day 3: Temples and Shrines




Zojo-ji Temple & Tokyo Tower
It was a public holiday on Monday but commerce didn’t stop.  Bev had booked a tour of some temples and shrines, with a guide through AirBnB. 

A peaceful place
The tour started at a station called  Hamamatsucho which conveniently was on a JR line.  Navigating the Japanese public transport system is a nightmare.  There are several companies that run the public transport system.  Japan Railways is but one of the players with what seems to be mostly overground rail whereas there are other companies that run the metro/underground system.  Our JR pass is only good for the JR lines so we are using those as much as possible.  We have also had to get a Pasmo pass which allows us to use the other systems.

The deities for little people- keeping their head warm
After some wonderful tempura for lunch we met Torai, (a young law student from a country area), for our guided tour.  The first stop was a Buddhist temple in the Hamamatsucho area called Zojo-ji which is a large temple rebuilt on this site after WW2. Like most of Tokyo it had been bombed out of existence.  It was on land gifted by a Shogun to the Buddhists a couple of centuries ago and after Japan had been united.  The  Tokyo Tower which is very close looms over it.  We spent a nice hour or so visiting the temple and then visiting a  small Shinto shrine on the property.  This whole area is a   Around the temple there were many little statues with hats and bibs on. They are deities to protect the children.  Our guide also talked about the way in which Shintoism and Buddhism coexists which was really nice to hear and see it demonstrated in the temples.  
Shinto shrine
quiet refuge away from the noise of the city.

After the Zojo-ji temple we decamped to the Fukugawa area where we went to the Fudō-dō Temple. It is not a pretty temple but it is renowned for its fire ceremony where sticks are purchased with words of redemption written on them.  These are burnt to enable purification.   The believers bring a bag with them which contains an object  symbolic of an issue for which they wish to receive purification. The  bag is passed over the fire and smoke to achieve this end.  The ceremony lasts half an hour with  ongoing chanting   The muscles of the monks doing it must be really well developed. 
Street leading to Fudo-do Temple
accompanied at various stages by Taiko drums, a couple of which are huge and hit with incredible force.

The combination of the chanting, the drumming and the fire was as far removed from the contemplative version of Buddhism that I am familiar with.  

Because of its fame, the temple is lined with many shops on the streets leading to it.  

A pet owl
Further down the road was a Shinto shrine which was a complete contrast. There was minimal noise, crowds and commercialism compared to the temple.  It was very peaceful.  There was even a little  pile of volcanic rocks representative of Mt   it is a place to go for those who cannot visit the mountain.
Fuji, which has a strong spiritual meaning for the Japanese -

At times the commercialism of the Buddhist temples seemed incongruent with the belief in getting rid of “desires”.  No doubt someone will be able to explain it to me one day.
Boules on concrete

Entry to Shinto shrine
We wandered the streets for a bit once the tour finished.  I wasn’t sure where we should go.  We were very close to Tokyo Bay but there were lots of very wide roads to cross so we opted for a cup of tea instead while we girded ourselves for the nightmare of working out the rail system to get back to our apartment near the Nishi-Shinjuku station.  With a bit of help from some non-English speaking Japanese we were able to figure out the route.  It was dinner time when we got back to Nishi-Shinjuku. 

We took pot-luck and went to a restaurant nearby which turned out to be a gem with some superb  food that we had not tried before. The favourite was braised pork belly.  It was a wonderful way to end an interesting day.




The monk who mapped all of Japan

Washing hands

Little Mt Fuji. Torai our guide (right)

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