Shakey's and shakers

Saturday was a busy day. It all started with a very good lunch at Shakey's Pizza in Shibuya. It was all you can eat and boy did it hit the spot. From there I went to a place called Asakusa, which is the souvenier capital of Tokyo. There was a ton of shops here. Anything and everything you would ever want dealing with Japan is sold along a very long corridor as seen below.

At the end of this corridor was a huge shrine. Definitely the largest shrine I've seen so far.

Right on the other side of this shrine a mother and her young son stopped me and asked where I was from. I told them I was from the United States. The boy asked if I he could take a picture with me. His mother took the picture and as a thankyou he gave me a folded origami bird. It was kind of neat. If I was thinking, I would have asked his mom to take a picture with my camera too. This is another shrine next to the one above which is a famous one. I've seen this in pictures in books before.

The icing on the cake was a huge festival that was going on at the same time I was there. The parade reminded me of the dancers I saw at Carnival in Sao Paulo. Not as many scantily clad women, but there were some. The band seen in the picture marched right by me. They were "shaking" and grooving to the drum rhythm.

Something else that I found strange was this interesting fountain also near the shrines in the pictures above. People came up to the fountain, picked up one of the ladles and would either pour the water into their hand and drink it or they would actually sip right from the ladle itself. Some after they drank the water would immediately spit it out too, but most swallowed. Not very sanitary if you ask me, but I think it has some sort of ritual significance.


I also happened to see these two little boys playing with pidgeons and snapped a quick picture. It made me miss Brooklyn and Isaac. They would have loved playing with the pidgeons.