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We walked from Shinagawa Station to Odaiba and back last week. The clouds threatened rain the entire time, but we only had a few drops fall on us on the way back.
The top picture is similar to one I took at night back in January.
I have yet to get past part one in my Suwa Jinja Matsuri series. Someday I’ll return to those pics. Fast forward six months to a neat-sky Sunday in February. I was out for a walk with my camera and decided to visit this Shinto shrine again to see if there were any plum blossoms on the grounds. There weren’t, but the sky made for some good photos anyway.
Normally you approach a shrine from the front, passing under the torii. I came from a park in the back (which is the order of today’s pictures). The kids’ park has been overrun with homeless men. There wasn’t a kid in the place, but there were about a half dozen homeless men hanging out or sleeping in their makeshift, blue-tarp, tent homes.
Ironically, there were boy scouts putting away their own tents on the shrine grounds when I arrived. A chain-link fence was the only thing between the homeless campers and the boy scout campers who were about to head home. I thought it was a strange scene. I wonder if the boy scouts or the homeless dudes felt the same way.
At last I exited, through the normal entrance.
Resuming our fall hike, at the top of Mt. Mitake is Musashi Mitake Jinja.
After exploring the shrine and the views from it (below) we ate lunch in one of the several restaurants near the top (above).
Another shot from the Ebisu Garden Place Tower… I really love it when the sky does this.
After Phuket’s Big Buddha, our next stop on the way to the airport was a store called SuperCheap. It was a huge mistake to go here in the middle of the day as there is no air conditioning. The place felt like it was over 90 degrees and humid, not exactly a pleasurable shopping experience.
The inside was sort of like a Costco in the states…
…only it was much bigger…
…and the selection was different…
…and included a carcass of something which you could order a piece of if you like.
We didn’t actually buy a thing. Instead, we looked and looked. When we could stand the heat no longer we went to a nearby restaurant for smoothies and shakes to wait for our cab driver to come back.
Given the hustling and outright scams in Thailand, we couldn’t fully enjoy this day with our cab driver. Not only did he try to drive us to a bunch of places we didn’t want to go (so that he could get a commission if we purchased anything at these places), but he had all our luggage in the trunk of his car. Until we made it to the airport my heart couldn’t rest easy.
We did eventually make it to the airport, with luggage too, so we did finally relax. The sunset out the plane’s window was fantastic.
We pulled into Tokyo the next morning to a glorious sunrise. Even though we had some great times in Thailand, and Tokyo is far too cold at the end of December compared to Thailand, I was happy to be “home” in Tokyo. I like living somewhere with a decent infrastructure, where you aren’t asked every two seconds to buy something, and where you don’t have to worry about your safety and security as you walk the streets. The streets of Shinjuku, when we returned on December 29, were very peaceful compared to what we experienced the prior nine days. Actually, they were peaceful compared to most places in the world as most businesses were closed (for the New Year holiday which lasts about a week to 10 days beginning the 29th), many people had left town, and those Tokyoites that were still around stayed warm by staying inside.
The Big Buddha of Phuket is big, giant even. If you have seen the Daibutsu of Kamakura, imagine one more than three times as large on a hilltop. Personally, the Kamakura Daibutsu is more awe inspiring to me, but it had 750+ years to get that way. The scaffolding doesn’t help Phuket’s Big Buddha win this comparison at the moment either.
It’s a bit of a pilgramage to get to the Buddha’s base. The road leading to the parking lot includes at least a dozen speed bumps (and we scraped across each one in our driver’s Toyota loaded down with five people and luggage). Then there are the stairs up in the heat and humidity.
The views from the top, of the Buddha and of the surrounding area, are well worth the effort.