Kawagoe

We spent Saturday in Kawagoe. I was pretty miserable with a cold but the trip was great. It is about 2 hours from here by train and called Little Edo. There are many shrines, a castle and lots of historical buildings. Kawagoe really works for the tourism dollars. Right now it the YOKOSO! Japan campaign and as a part of that the 500Y bus pass is 300Y for the day. There is a tourism desk at the exit to the Kawagoe train station where an English speaking agent gave us an English guidebook, map and directed us to the bus stand. We hopped on the bus and got off on the first stop. It was Kitain Temple. Kitain Temple was built in 830 but burned in 1638, only the gate survived. When it was rebuilt parts of the original Edo castle were brought in and are the only remaining pieces.


At the temple we saw the Gohyaku-Raken which are 538 stone statues of Buddhas disciples and each one is different. They say if you walk through at night and touch each one you will find one warm one, if you come back during the day, that will be the one that most resembles you. I thought that on a day like that, your hand would go numb and they would all start feeling warm.





The temple was interesting, the views of the garden were gorgeous, sorry no pictures were allowed. There were many neat things in there but living in a world where we can barely speak the language and cannot read it makes museums interesting and dull at the same time.

After that we wandered on. We found Kawagoe castle it was built in 1457 and did allow pictures so here are some of the ones we took. Actually it is Honmru Goten which is the home of the Lord of the castle and all that remains of the castle and was built in 1848.




Then it was on to Kurazukuri, which is a street lined with fireproof storehouses that are now shops. They are beautiful and black, lining both sides of the street.


In an alley just past this store we found a little Udon restaurant. It was very good and they gave us a bottle of Soy Sauce, or it may be soup base I have not tasted it yet. This was one of the places we saw that was not geared toward Western tourists, there were pictures on the menu but even the numbers for the prices were in Kanji. I had to ask the waitress how much something was and she got this confused look, I think she was thinking that if I could not read it how could I know it if she said it. But she said it slowly so I counted it out and made sure we weren't ordering a $20 bowl of Udon. It was very good.



We also saw a museum of their major festival and I want to go back for that it looks like fun. Besides who wouldn't want to go to a Festival where 2 story tall floats pulled by huge ropes have dance off competitions



See all the photos at my Picasa album

Kawagoe

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