Today I visited Kawagoe, a city to the northwest. It’s famous for an old town featuring preserved buildings dating from the 19th century that look like this:
But I’m getting ahead of myself!
I woke early today and bounced around in my room for a bit (breakfast was a pork katsu sandwich, pineapple pieces and a salted rice ball) before heading to the station. It took about 70 minutes on two trains to get to Kawagoe, and even though breakfast was only a few hours prior I was famished when I got there. Haven’t I been eating enough?
The old town is north of the station at the end of a long shopping street. It took maybe 15 or so minutes of my speedy walking (yes, yes I am ‘taking it easy’) to get to the first famous tourist attraction, the Kumano-Jinja shrine, at which Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow god is worshipped:
It’s a somewhat smallish but beautiful shrine, and I was quite taken by the Yatagarasu images and charms. He is the god of guidance, so I hope he’s watching over me 🙂
A bit further on I reached Ichibangai, the street full of old clay warehouse buildings from the 19th century (as pictured at the start of this blog). Almost all of them now are souvenir shops or eateries, and as it was a rain-free day the place was mobbed today by almost exclusively Japanese tourists. I got the distinct impression this is not a location frequent by foreigners, since English signage was few and far between even at the famous tourist sites.
The above shows a famous Starbucks built to resemble a period building. It’s just as fancy inside as well, and blends in so well that I suspect many passers-by don’t even notice it at first. This is on another famous street that includes a famous tower called Toki no Kane:
The tower rings a bell four times every day, and while the current version is about 120 years old, a tower has stood at that location for over 400 years (and yes I added a ‘ye olde’ filter to the pic to give us an idea of what it looked like long ago)! The tower was by far the most popular subject of tourist photos I saw today, and I had to wait quite a while to get the above pic!
A bit further to the east from the above got me to Hikawa Shrine, where I went fishing:
At this shrine you could ‘fish’ for a sea bream which contained a fortune in it’s belly. There were three tubs of fish to choose from, and since my translator failed to identify the difference I went with the traditional red. It was simple – but fun – to catch my fortune fish:
You can see the fortune sticking out of his tail! What did mine say? Here’s what the translator told me:
At this point I’d been walking for a few hours. It was hot (about 85F) and very humid, and me and everyone else were sweating like dogs. There were food and snack vendors everywhere, and ice creams and cold cucumbers-on-a-stick seemed to be the refreshing snack of choice but I’m partial to neither. Imagine my joy therefore when I found a shaved ice stand:
Like an old bloke I sat on a bench and ate it all in no time flat. It was wonderfully cooling but even then the relief was short-lived. By the end of my 4.5 odd hours in Kawagoe today I drunk three 500 ml bottles of water and ate this shaved ice and even then I’m not sure I hydrated enough! I was telling some of you about Japan’s summer humidity when I was in Oz, and today was a perfect example of how sweaty it can get.
My last stop was a quick visit to ‘candy alley’, a shortish street featuring shops selling cheap or traditional candy and snacks. This was particularly mobbed with people, and while I was fascinated by the array of stuff for sale but in the end only bought one tiny item for a mere ¥8 (about 5 cents):
There were other sites to see but at this point the heat had started to wear me out and it was time to return. I meandered back to the station (stopping at a game center, a retro game store and an anime goods shop) and returned to Tokyo. I was knackered with a capital ‘n’, and planned to simply eat dinner in my room and rest, but madness took me out again for a bit of shopping. There’s a reason I booked a hotel right in the middle of Akiba!
But I’ll save Akihabara stuff for another day 🙂
You will be doing well to top this post, mate. Kawagoe! Where the typical foreign tourist doesn’t goe. What a fantastic idea!