We’ve escaped the building ‘wet season’ of Cairns – the heat, humidity and increasingly heavy rain and headed to the frozen north (again). This time, a couple of weeks in Japan. One week in Tokyo, then a week via the Shinkansen up to freezing snowy Sapporo for the Ice Festival. More on that later. 

In Tokyo, our home away from home is in the bustling district of Asakusa, just around the corner from Tokyo’s oldest and most famous temple complex, Sensó-Ji. We can see the temple from our balcony (yes, a balcony – from our rather spacious hotel room, a rarity in Tokyo!) and, as a complete juxtaposition, looming behind, the ultra-modern Tokyo Skytree tower (again, more on that later). 

Sensó-Ji was originally built in 942, enshrining the Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, but like much of Tokyo’s old historic wooden buildings they have succumbed to many fires and earthquakes over the centuries and ultimately to complete destruction in WW2 air raids. The temple and most of the complex were rebuilt in 1958, but it’s still a magical spiritual place that evokes the majesty and grandeur of old Edo with wind chimes and gongs and swirling burning incense… And then after early morning serenity come the insane crowds, especially at weekends. 

Nakamise-dōri leads up to the temple that’s packed with local food stalls selling rice crackers, sweet sticky strawberry balls on sticks, weird chocolate covered bananas (anyone?), fried pastries stuffed with bean paste, touristy trinkets, temple offerings and, most of all, Omikuji, random fortunes written on strips of paper. You make a small offering of say 100 yen, whilst praying for your wish. Rattle the metal canister a few times and shake out a wooden stick. The stick contains a number which corresponds to a sheet of paper in a numbered drawer. When you draw a good fortune, you take it home. But should you draw a bad fortune, you need to tie it on a nearby rack to let the incense and monks’ chants do their work to release the bad fortune.

I happened to select ‘The Best Fortune’ (#86), which in parts reads: ‘Your wishes will be realised. The patient will get well. The lost article will be found. The person you are waiting for will come. You will become virtuous with learning and will be invited to the palace as well as your desire will be realised. It is good to make a trip. Both marriage and employment are good… while riding a horse on horseback, in high spirits, everybody will praise you.’ So far, so good… However, Ants selected a bad fortune not once, but three times. He wasn’t impressed. He tied all papers to the rack, so hoping to leave left whatever bad juju behind. 

All was forgotten by lunchtime when we stumbled upon a local Japanese BBQ joint, serving platters of cook-yourself Kobe Beef and Pork Belly with Rice, Edamame, Kimchi and a steaming bowl of Miso. It was so good we’ve been back twice. All around Sensó-Ji are streets and narrow passageways packed with restaurants serving everything imaginable, but top of our list for a dinner is a very unostentatious joint right opposite the hotel (we could almost go there in our pjs and slippers) serving steaming hot bowls of Ramen which we slurp down with the best of ‘em. 

Throughout Asakusa are wonderfully quirky and practical shops – Kitchenware (not including the kitchen sink, but everything else); a Brush Shop – with brushes for every conceivable occasion (Ants went mad for this place); Kimono Shops with both new and second-hand Kimonos for men and women, plus all the accoutrements; Knife Shops – where steel knives cost hundreds of dollars and with one seemingly ordinary Swiss-army knife-looking object in the front window which, as it turns out, is a unique ‘only one in the world fisherman’s knife’, made by a Japanese master, costing a whopping ¥3,300,000 (A$33,767). Yep, for a penknife. Then there’s even a shop for Geisha-ware such as elaborately carved hair combs, fans and hair adornments which again, cost hundreds of dollars. I mean, there are so many speciality ‘local’ shops here, it’d take years to discover them all.