Asakusa Street Market - Nov 16th

Tomorrow Hans and I join the Hoshien trip to Shirawaka, in Fukushima prefecture up north. We looked at the list of names when we found out we were amongst the twenty foreign students chosen for the trip, and didn't recognize a single name. Oh well, an opportunity to meet new people and make friends from all over the world (or somesuch similar candy-coated nonsense). We have to be at Hoshien by 6:45 tomorrow morning, ready to go. But tonight, his Temple family (the priestess and her husband) have invited us to go to the Asakusa Street Market, a biannual event similar to a festival, where food stands are set up alongside stands that sell "kumade," a good luck charm based on the shape of traditional bamboo rakes. The kumade are covered in good luck symbols, and are meant to help the owner "rake in the good luck." Ranging from simple and palm-sized to 5 feet wide, there's quite a range available, depending on how much luck you can afford.

We went to the temple family's apartment on the first floor, a strikingly modern building with an interior reminiscent of a Kohler commercial. We had tacos and I played with their two small dogs, admittedly the first animals I had actually touched since arriving in Japan. We jumped in a cab, and went to the location of the street market. The crowd was thicker than anticipated; Billy had gone the night before, and said that it wasn't nearly this packed. Tonight was the last night for the market, so perhaps everyone was here for their last shot at good luck for the year. XX said that the economy wasn't doing so well, so people were resorting to the traditional superstitions to try and change their luck. We went to the main entrance and rang the shrine's bell, and started wandering around. We hit up all sorts of food stands and watched the kumade workers chant and clap their hands when someone bought one of the more expensive charms.

At one point, Billy nodded towards a group of men in black suits and casually said "look, it's a herd of yak," before finding a suitable shop to buy a kumade of his own (pretty much all of these stands, regardless of what they sell, are somehow tied to organized crime. Of course, this doesn't seem to bother anyone, and I didn't see any trouble arising from this fact. After buying one of the cheaper kumade, the guys at the stand offered Billy and I a chair and a cup of tea. Billy enjoyed a smoke and we chatted with the older gentlemen running the stand, who reiterated to us the significance of the kumade. Perhaps out of a sense of gratitude or obligation, or annoyance with myself for not buying enough mementos of my adventures here, I also got a kumade of my own.

Moving on, Billy picked up a gourd of shichimi (seven spices blended together, a common seasoning here), and I got a cup of tea made from REAL cinnamon. Most cinnamon sold in markets in the US isn't actually cinnamon, but a cheap relative called cassia. To see such a bounty of real cinnamon and be able to taste some of it was a real treat. Aside from the tea, everything was ridiculously expensive.

We finally grabbed a few seats nearby a food stand, somewhere between a restaurant and a row of park benches. The temple family ordered some stuff for us, and Hans disappeared to find some taiyaki. We sat and chatted for a while, and Billy flirted with the adorable child sitting next to us. Hans finally returned, taiyaki in hand, and we had a few styrofoam cups of sake. We made one more loop around the temple, admiring the wall of lanterns above the main gate, and smirking at the youngsters in white robes, flailing ceremonial paper flogs over the heads of passers-by. We headed back to the temple where Hans and Billy live, and they gave me a quick tour of their apartments, which are large for Japanese college students (about the size of a studio apartment). I made my way back home and crashed in preparation for the early rise tomorrow; fortunately, I thought to pack beforehand.