Sunday, January 9, 2011

Peaceful start to another busy day in Tokyo

On the way to breakfast we passed this entrance way, sandwiched between two tall buildings. The sun was illuminating the courtyard and chair and it looked so calm and inviting, the perfect place to contemplate the coming day.
After breakfast we headed south to the Zojo-ji temple. I hadn't expected to find such an imposing entrance right on a busy junction.
I now begin to understand what they mean when they say 'Temple complex' on Time Team. There is a main temple building but there are also lots of smaller sub-temples and shrines within the boundary walls. I assume that the main bell is only rung on major ceremonial occasions, hopefully one day I shall hear one of these amazing features in action.
Having enjoyed the peace and tranquility of the minor shrines I was rather taken aback by how ornate the central area of the main temple was, very beautiful but I simply hadn't expected all of the gold and ornate decorations.
One of the surprises for me in Tokyo has been the amount of greenery, mature Ginko trees lining so many of the roads were not what I had expected. Many of them are relatively old and some were dropping huge leaves. This multi-trunked one in the temple grounds was especially beautiful with the sun on its canopy.
Today I finally got the hang of the subway system. Alternate track side signs have the station names in English. We were starting from Daimon and the arrow meant that the next stop on this track would be Shimbashi so you could tell that you were heading in the right direction.

No comments: