Autumn Holiday in Japan (10-24th Nov): Meiji Jingu (明治神宮）

Torii(鳥居)

Meiji jingu (明治神宮), I really don't remember I EVER went there either. I quite often (3-4 times a week at least one point) went to Harajuku(原宿), Aoyama(青山), Azabu(麻布) and Shibuya(渋谷) for shopping, drinking and eating. This massive shrine was located just behind Harajuku station, and when I was younger, it didn't even occur to me to visit for any reasons.

On 15th Nov, we packed our snack (this time I made rice balls!) to Meiji Jingu! Harajuku station wasn't too bad, it was refurbished and I didn't recognize it was same old station. I hadn't been there since I left Japan, so, loooooong time ago....

Harajuku station on the left

In front of the station, there was a huge Gap, Ishii sports, sweets shop, restaurant etc, cor, blimey, changed a bit. Later my friend Naomi told me Ishii sports was there for looooong time. I never noticed. We wanted to go in, but it wasn't open till 11am, it was still early, so decided to walk up Aoyama avenue to the shop called Natural House.

Natural House was one of the leading whole food shops in Tokyo, I used to buy dried apple crisps for my snack when I was a school girl. When we got there, it didn't look like that anymore, they had more organic vegetables and some teas, deli foods. Price wise? They were expensive. Tell you more in my other blog!

We bought some tofu (and vegan) products called "Ganmodoki" It's tofu with some veggie inside and deep fried. And they were yummy. Since then, we were hooked on Ganmodoki till we flew back to U.K.

Anyway, we walked back to Harajuku, by then, Ishii sports was open, so, quickly popped in, had look round. Here's Marcus enjoying himself.

Konnichiwa(こんにちは)

After spending good an hour or so (we enjoyed the shop very much!), we were finally off to the shrine. When we got there, started raining a little bit. We saw some kids dressed in traditional out fit, obviously, they were cerebrating "she-chi-go-san(七五三)". I didn't know till later, 15th Nov was the day of the cerebration. When girls become 3years and 7years, for boys, 5years, we report to the god to thank their health and get blessed for their future. We saw some cute kids!

 They were donated from all sorts of people, if I remember right, they never drunk sake inside these tanks. 

チーズ！

Biggest Torii in Japan

We just walked round inside the shrine, it was really nice and peaceful. lots of trees and greens, sometimes I couldn't believe it was right center of Tokyo. There was public toilet, and they were clean and very nice. I was impressed. 

Toilet

Here's photos from the shrine. Inside the main shrine, taking photos are not allowed, shame, inside, it was very impressive. They were doing middle of blessing ceremony, one of the monks(? not sure if they're called monks...) was gently drumming a taiko drum, cor blimey, that was really good sound. Felt it in my core. 

I felt I was lucky to witness the cerebration that day. Took me back when I was that age. 

After that, we went to Shin-Kouenji (新高円寺) to have a look a temple called "Saihou-ji (西方寺)" where Mr. Usui's memorial was. Basically, Mr.Usui was the guy who developed Reiki(霊気; using energy to treat illness, emotional stress etc). We managed to find the temple, took us a while, but got there. Unfortunately, it was getting dark and raining more, so we decided to leave to the next day for exploring and chilling out there. Before got on the underground Marunouchi line (丸の内線), we popped into the convenience store next to the tube station for toilet. If you ask, these shops freely let you use their toilet facility.

Got off at Shin-otsuka (新大塚) and walked back home.