Unborn Children Garden at Zojoji Temple

As you can imagine, with so much time on my hands, I have visited many of the Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Tokyo. While the shrines and temples are amazing and I definitely recommend visiting a few, it is hard not to get a bit blasé after awhile.  It is a similar feeling to traveling through Italy and coming to the point where you can't possibly imagine wanting to see even one more church. Especially if you have been to Rome, the home of over 900 churches. 

However, after saying that, I was particularly touched by the Zojoji Temple near Tokyo Tower. The temple area itself is quite extensive and has many interesting features (the Main Hall and Main Gate were used in the movie 'The Wolverine'  and the temple contains the tombs of 6 Tokugawa shoguns) but the area I felt most affected by was the Unborn Children's Garden. 

The garden is filled with rows and rows of tiny statues of children to represent the unborn babies of Japan. Parents who have lost an unborn baby can choose a statue to decorate with clothing and toys. The garden is believed to be protected by jizo bosatsu, who guards the souls of unborn children. He hides them from demons in his robes and brings them safely to the afterlife because they have not had the chance to do the good deeds in this life necessary to get to the afterlife themselves. Jizo is also the protector of all children, expectant mothers, firemen and travelers.

People also leave small gifts for jizo to ensure their children are carried to the afterlife. Some people also leave piles of stones next to the statues to shorten the amount of suffering their child has to undertake on their way to the afterlife.

Considering how many people still consider miscarriages, still births and abortions to be taboo subjects around the world, I was happy to see that places like this exist for parents in Japan. I do not have children nor have I experienced the loss of an unborn child. However, I have seen the emotional devastation it has caused people around me. I can only imagine how difficult it would be going through these experiences and not feeling like you can talk openly about it. I hope this garden does bring parents a sense of release and a place to grieve.

My 2 minutes on Japanese TV

One day you are a  lady of leisure, the next day you are a TV star. That's just the way it rolls in Tokyo. Ha ha, I wish!

I was on TV very briefly when a report was done on Second Harvest Japan and I happened to be volunteering that day. The TV crew from TBS Channel 6 filmed us for their program 'Ippuku!' and were we on from 8:20am in the morning for about 20 minutes on Monday 19th May.

Some of the other volunteers getting interviewed.

Here are some dodgy screenshots I took while watching the report from home. I assume this was part of the explanation of how Second Harvest Japan works.

This part of the report cracked me up. They mentioned something about having lots of gaijin (foreign) volunteers and showed a shot of me packing some boxes.

And they say gaijin again and zoom in on me!

And this is me trying hard to listen to the questions in Japanese, understanding very little and then waiting for the 2nd presenter to translate the question into English. I then reply in English which was later dubbed over in Japanese and subtitled as a bonus measure.

I managed to get two whole sentences out in Japanese before I had to switch to English. My Japanese teachers at home would have been so proud. Ha ha. 

The little guys in boxes on the bottom right are the presenters back in the studio. They like to show the expressions of the main presenters while they are watching the pee-recorded reports.

I told them about volunteering in Australia and how I used to pick up donated food for a similar organisation back in Melbourne. They seemed interested in hearing that food is also wasted in Australia but we try and collect it and re-distribute it too.

They seemed to get some good publicity from the report and a small increase in donations. They also had a few more people arrive to collect food because they saw the story as well!

The volunteer co-coordinator was keen to point out to me that the program was shown nationally from Hokkaido to Okinawa.  Watch out Japan, I'm taking over!

Don Quijote - the store that has it all!

A trip to a Don Quijote store is always entertaining. There are 160 'Donki' stores in Japan and 3 in Hawaii. My local Donki store is the one in Roppongi. It still has some remnants of a half built roller coaster on the roof. They started building the roller coaster back in 2005 but the locals weren't happy about it so it didn't go ahead. Donki's is also known for its theme song written by a former employee and released as a single in 1999. The song is called 'Miracle Shopping'. I thinks it is a miracle if you get out of Donki's without buying something bizarre.

Donki's stocks absolutely everything you can think of. The one in Roppongi has 8 floors and is open 24 hours. I often buy groceries and beers from Basement Level 1 but head up to to the higher levels and things get a bit more interesting.....

 They have plenty of character costumes, yes these are all adult size.

Or how about a school uniform? They come in many different colours.

Or I'm sure you could find a use for this style of head-wear or how about this unique face washer?!
These items are located between the Lego and the kid's puzzles in case you go looking for them at a later date.  The stores are known for packing their shelves from floor to ceiling in a completely random manner.

It is a discount store so you can get some real bargains alongside the weird stuff. We have bought a range of kitchen stuff from here as well as a shoe rack, birthday cards, souvenirs and toiletries. Definitely worth checking out, nearly as fun as Kiddyland in Harajuku.

What's on your mind, Mr Workman?

Oh Mr Workman, as you guard your pillar and post
What is it that your are thinking about most?

Are you wondering why you have to guard traffic cones?
Or why you need to stand beside a bicycle, all on its own?

Or maybe you are just trying to stay awake?
Are you reading up on where to take your next holiday break?

Are you sick of counting people as they walk by?
And stopping them from getting hit in a drive-by?

Don't you wish they could cross the road on their own?
And look up as they walk instead of at their phone?

Do you sometimes wish a hot lady would fall down the roadworks?
Then you could rescue her, there must be some perks!

 I'm sorry for stalking you, from now on I'll leave you alone to muse
About how you all look better than Arnie and Bruce

Tsukada Nojo - delicious!

We have been to 3 different branches of this awesome izakaya chain. There are about 20 Tsukada Nojo restaurants around Tokyo serving up delicious, organic delights. They have photos of the farmers and the areas from which they have sourced their ingredients. The main focus is on dishes using chickens from the Miyazaki region in southern Japan. You can get fried chicken, grilled chicken, chicken knuckles, chicken sashimi, chicken hearts....(They also have raw horse meat which I avoided).

The service is fantastic and has all the super cute touches we love about Japan. While you peruse the menu they bring out cucumber & cabbage to dip in some moromi-miso spread for your otoshi (snacks with your drinks).

The drinks arrive with smiley faces and love hearts.

The rice and sauces come out with welcome messages and cute little chickens.

And the food is so delicious! These were some of the dishes we tried: cheese covered bacon wrapped pan fried onigiri and cucumber salad

 This was some kind of tasty fish cake concoction.

And this was a light, fluffy, cheesy, omelety explosion of amazingness. (We ordered a second one).

 These foil wrapped mushrooms got eaten before I could get a picture, so this is the photo from the menu. The sauce on these suckers were to die for.

We also tried a few of the chicken dishes but again, they were eaten before I could take any photos.

These were our awesome waitresses on two of our visits. 

And another round of cuteness before you pay your bill.

And to encourage you to come back again they give you a 'business card' to use each time you visit. After you visit a few times you get upgraded to a 'manager' and then a 'director' etc and you score some more gifts and discounts and the like.

That's my name in Japanese (or so they said...) They also gave us a little tub of the tasty moromi-miso spread to take home with us. Yep their tactics definitely worked on me. I'm drooling just looking at these pictures again.....

Yokohama - oodles of noodles

Yokohama is around 35 minutes on train from Tokyo. It is Japan's second largest city but does not have a whole heap of tourist attractions. We hit up two of the goodies - the Cup Noodle Museum and Chinatown.

Museum entry is 500 yen. The museum is not all the exciting, only took us about 10 minutes to walk our way through.The museum is mainly a homage to the creator Momofuku Ando and a way to squeeze some more coin out of your pocket with the add on attractions:

Making your own cup noodles - 300 yen
Chicken ramen factory - 300 to 500 yen
Kids playground area - 300 yen
World noodles bazaar - price of your lunch choice

The wall of cup noodle varieties. 

 Noodle sculpture.

And onto the best part, making our very own cup noodles!
First get your cup from the vending machine. Have fun having childhood flashbacks with the colouring pens. 

Next join the queue to pick your ingredients. Mine is on the left. I think I ended up with curry flavour noodles, chicken bits, corn, cheese and onions.

Then your choice gets wrapped and sealed. 

And then you pump your carry bag full of air so its nice and snug for your journey home.

We were pretty hungry after our cup noodle experience so we walked along the promenades to Chinatown.

In Chinatown, I picked up a steamer basket to take home (for a rip off price compared to good 'ol Footscray) and we snacked on some mini dim sims and giant pork buns. We wandered through a few of the super touristy shops and avoided the many, many palm readers around the place.

We also stopped for some chill out time in one of the parks along the waterfront. And had a look through some of the boutique shops and restaurants in the red brick warehouse buildings 'Akarengo Soko'.

Last stop before home was a couple of quick rollercoaster rides at the fun park next to the train station. As you do.

Sanja Matsuri Festival - Asakusa

If you ever get the chance to check out a shrine festival in Japan, get on board the fun train. Its crowded, crazy, noisy and amazing. The Sanja Matsuri festival is a 3 day party at Senso-ji shrine in Asakusa. It is held on the third weekend of May every year.

There are different events on each of the 3 days. We went on the Saturday where around 100 mini-shrines from the 44 Asakusa districts gather at the shrine. The mini shrines are paraded around the area and the Shinto priests bless and purify them for the following year. When the ceremony is completed they are paraded back through the respective neighbourhoods.

There are even smaller shrines carried by groups of kids. Super cute.

Pants seems to be optional for the guys.

This little guy was awesome, mohawk and all. His fan work was impressive.

The drummers were really cool too.

Everyone was having a ball. Lots of chanting, singing & laughing. The old guys were partying the hardest.

Lots of posing for photos.

And the food was fabulous. Street food everywhere. We stuffed ourselves with some takoyaki.Check out the ice cream flavours below. I tried the white peach sherbet. Epic. I'm not quite brave enough to try Sake or Tofu Milk. My friend had the horseradish flavour.I wasn't a fan.

I really enjoyed the community spirit and watching everyone having so much fun. Would definitely go again if I get the chance.