Our second day in Japan, we were “on your own,” which meant we had no tour schedule, no set place to be at any particular time, and no worries about catching a plane or train or other mode of transportation. In other words, we could go and do totally at our own pace. Stress-free Heaven!

After perusing a book for tourists delineating the “Top 10” things to see here (I brought it from home), and carefully consulting the map, we managed to figure out which subway lines we’d need to navigate to go to the Sensoji Shrine in northeast Tokyo.

Happily, we arrived in one piece, unscathed from our journey, and emerged from the underground just one block from our destination!

Okay… Can everybody say “tourist trap?” As “spiritual” as I felt at Meiji, I feel almost “violated” here. Only that’s not the right word… Let’s just say capitalism is alive and well in Japan, and highly concentrated along the walkways INSIDE the shrine archways!

Spanning the distance from the entrance to the main shrine, there are vendor booths and tents of happy crap everywhere! And while I do enjoy browsing the souvenir shops, this felt somehow irreverent and out of place. There are no photo restrictions at all here, so I didn’t break any rules to post these photos of the shrine itself (no deity, remember?), or of the offering box.

We encountered hordes of Japanese schoolchildren, very anxious to speak with us. As Miriam and I are both retired teachers, we instantly recognized the assignment.

These students were practicing their English by asking “foreigners” a few easy questions, then recording the answers and having the tourists sign their papers. for verification. (We’d given similar exercises ourselves on field trips to keep our kids on task.)

We used the opportunity with the uniform-wearing students to ask a lot of questions ourselves, and it was fun to add this “educational” aspect to our day. But word got around, and eventually we had to turn down the students who approached us, or we’d probably still be there!