Sorry to keep you all waiting.

Much of day 5 was spent in exploration of the traditional market district of Tokyo: Asakusa. It was obvious that we were in a very different part of Tokyo, even from the enormous tile mural of an ancient festival positioned inside of the metro station. We climbed the stairs and into what seemed like another world.

The first sights that greeted us were buddhist monks in their traditional garb and rickshaw drivers in similarly old-school fashions. Between the size and sensibility of our group to not seek the assistance of a man in a diaper pulling a cart, we chose to walk the short distance to the main market street leading to Sennoji Temple.

We turned the corner onto the street and my jaw dropped to the floor. The gate to the market street must have been tall as a three or four story building made entirely of wood, housing enormous bronzed statues of a warrior and demon respectively. Fortunately the gate was just for show; anybody can come and go as they please to the truly unique part of this district of Tokyo; the market!

Passing through the gate and as far as the eye can see, the street was lined with small shops. Some generalized and others finely specialized in selling only a few particular crafts, but almost all focused on selling the sorts of goods that were reminiscient of Japanese history. Katanas, Kimonos and Karate outfits battled for shop space with paper fans and traditional “lucky cat” figurines. It was the first time since I was in Japan that I bought a souveneir for somebody in mind (specifically my father) and it was certainly not the last time I would visit this place; Even with an entire morning to explore, we later came to realize that we’d completely missed entire sidestreets full of even more exciting stores to explore.

After the morning and early afternoon spent in this market (and a delicious if expensive sushi lunch), the majority of our class left to go and watch the Sumo wrestling competition being held nearby. However, between the cost for the few hours of viewing (50 dollars a person) and my previous experiences watching sumo wrestling I decided I would rather save that money and take the opportunity to catch up on my blog and headed home with a few other similarly minded students. Catching up on my blog rapidly turned into catching up on my sleep as it turned out, and before I knew it I was out.

But I awoke refreshed and ready to go out with my group of friends, successfully leading us to a traditional Japanese restraunt and ordering a meal of Japanese fried chicken for us. Delicious, yet small in portion and again relatively expensive (I left my camera at the hotel room, not realizing where we would end up looking for our dinner). But we stopped at an AMPM convenience store on the way back, the Tokyo equivalent of a grocery store and bought snacks to tide us over for the rest of the night. We went to sleep ready for our last day in our first weeklong stay in Tokyo, and our first ride in a Japanese Bullet Train!