tokyo + narita-san

So the next in my series of catch-up posts is my weekend in Tokyo/Narita with my friend Dylan from middle school! We hadn't seen each other since high school but he was in Japan for a few days (after a year spent traveling around the world for research, what) and knew I was there so we met up! We spent Saturday in Tokyo and on Sunday we visited Narita-san Shinshoji Temple (as per my suggestion, like a good Chiba-kun Ambassador).

So on Saturday we met up and had lunch in Asakusa before seeing the famous Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate) and walking down the big street toward Sensoji Temple, where we got omikuji fortunes (mine was just regular luck but Dylan's was the best luck) and had a good look around, before heading toward the riverside for a short boat ride! We took a 'water bus' down the river and admired the sights (though I have no pictures since I'd done it before), before heading to Harajuku. When we got there we went to a really cool place called the Design Festa Gallery, which was a free exhibit space with lots of artists displaying and selling their stuff - there was a lot of cool works so I would definitely go there again! We finished up the day by stopping by Akihabara for (more) shopping and wandering around (and almost went to a maid cafe but didn't).

The next day, we headed off to Narita-san before Dylan's flight home in the afternoon! I've been to Narita before but only just around the station (and technically Narita-san but only as far as the gate), so I was looking forward to seeing the temple for the first time. I had heard that it was a really beautiful place, and I was not disappointed!

The road leading to the temple was very picturesque and interesting, with lots of little shops and stone statues of the zodiac animals all along the way. There was even a store for the Narita Yume Bokujo farm that I went to on the unofficial store, and hearing me talk about their soft serve, Dylan had some and said it was possibly the best he'd ever had (yeahh).

Anyway, then we entered Narita-san Temple, which was huge and very interesting. My main impression was of lots of clusters of things: lots of stone figurines placed among rocks, lots of turtles and koi in a pond, lots of what looked kind of like gravestones (? though I'm pretty sure they weren't) on the hills, lots of buildings! We just wandered around slowly around and even came across a waterfall that really felt like it could have been back in the mountains of Georgia. Weird. We also came across the Great Peace Pagoda, that included a time capsule put in a few decades ago to be opened in about 400 years (I think), including a message from President Reagan! Pretty cool.


I'm sure we only saw a tiny fraction of the giant area that makes up the temple grounds, and I would love to go back to see the rest. Maybe in the fall, once the leaves have changed color? Something tells me it would be breathtaking (and probably crowded). Anyway, I'm glad to have been able to take a friend to a famous place in Chiba during his short Japan experience! :)