Our first stop in Tokyo was the Asakusa district.  It had started as a fishing village the Suida River.  The legend is that some fishermen in the 7^th century, caught a small statue in their nets.  They built a temple to house the statue.   Approaching Asakusa on the bus, it looked like another urban center of high-rise buildings, but in the middle was area of green grass (that turned out to be astro turf) narrow streets, ornamented gates, low rise buildings, temples and a five-story pagoda.   The Sensō-Ji temple, with its giant paper lanterns is the centerpiece.  The Shoguns, during the Edo period favored the area and built a bigger temple.  The temple is northeast of the palace.  Since northeast winds bring bad spirits, or at least bad luck, the shoguns beefed up the temple to intercept such bad omens.  This iteration of the temple was built in the 1950s replacing the one that burned in the U.S. incendiary bomb attacks on Tokyo in 1945.

The original plan was that we would have time to wander the area, visit temples, have lunch and use the restroom, but given the delay we had less than an hour and we could only do two of those things.  So we opted for the rewarding options of restroom and wandering with a lot of people watching thrown in.

This was Saturday, start of a three-day weekend, the fall equinox, when people visited graves and each other.  Outside the temple there is an incense cauldron, and several places where people were shaking cylinders of Omikuji, (sacred lot) fortune telling sticks.  A stick falls out with a number and that corresponds to a piece of paper with your fortune.  Some sticks have the fortune etched into them.  Some portend good luck, some bad.

On this day there were a lot of people wearing kimonos.  According to our guide there are kimono rental shops nearby and people like to approach the temple area dressed for the occasion.  We saw sever blond haired, blue eyed, and a few black women wearing them.  The guide says they are popular among tourists for pictures at the temple, but there were a lot of Japanese people dressed in kimonos.  They added a splash of color and atmosphere. 

There are narrow shopping streets, with gates at their entrance, radiating from the temple.  They were packed and we chose not to try to negotiate them.