Tsugi wa Asakusa, Asakusa desu.

If you ever take the metro to Asakusa, that's what you'll hear. For the curious, it means "next is Asakusa, Asakusa". Actually, there's a lot of announcements you're likely to hear when traveling in Tokyo. From information to hold on if there's any chance of a "jerky" behaviour of the train - I kid you not, to which side the platform will be or just thanks for using the train.

Asakusa became quite an adventure for me but I'll get to that in a moment. In Asakusa the one thing everyone wants to see is the Senso-ji temple. Other than, there's the Asahi HQ with it's famous "golden turd". Senso-ji was quite crowded, even though it was almost closing time ( when I was walking into the temple they were already closing the side doors ). Actually, there were people milling about till about one hour later. There's lots of tourists there but many Japanese come to pray, too. One other thing about the place is that you can buy a lot of things by the road leading to the temple.

Myself I went for some kind of snack cookie or something. I've probably grossly overpaid but whatever ;). Being a little undecided on which kind I wanted, the guy asked me if I'd like 2 of each ( 8 in total ). Goes without saying that I agreed :P. The temple complex itself is great, the most impressive I've seen here so far ( Kyoto will take care of that, I bet ). There was this Japanese guy who started talking with me near the main temple. Pretty cool older gentleman, name's Kazumi ( can't shake the feeling that it sounds female somehow ), even knew of Warsaw when I said I'm from Poland ( didn't mistake it for Holland, too! ). Here's a photo of yours truly thanks to him:

Coolest day of the summer! The only day my whole legs have been covered so far.

A few more shots of the place:

Entrance gate to the main area.

This was one tall building!

Inside of the main temple.

It just wouldn't do for there to be no garden ;)

Now, this here is where you burn special sticks and then move the smoke with your hands over whichever part of your body that isn't fine. It's supposed to heal you which I can't comment on as I haven't tried this myself :P.

One of the streets near the temple. They're also full of shops and restaurants.

Traditional wear is not so easy to come by but every now and again one can spot someone dressed.

Trying to not make this post overly long, here's a random trio:

Starbucks in Japan!

AKB48 advertising coffee. They're a girl's band that's become very popular in Japan in recent months.

Rikshas!

P.S.

A few photos of a very nice, serene temple near some park in Asakusa.