Tokyo – Pop Culture, Shrines, and Kabuki Theater

Monday, October 2, 2017

This morning, we took Japan Rail to Akihabara, the city’s center of all things electronic, and a riot of signage, game rooms, mega retail outlets and multi-story buildings devoted to computers, games, audiovisual equipment, anime, and those who build, buy, and love them.  It was like Times Square, but wholly focused on one subject.  The area had its origin in the early 20^th century when the only way to get a radio in Japan was to build it yourself.  For a variety of reasons that our guide Paul described in some detail, this area around a major rail station became the hub of electronic
parts dealers and their customers, forerunners of modern geeks and nerds.

Waiting for the Pachinko parlor to open

A short stroll from the sights and sounds of this capital of electronica we visited Shinto and Confucian shrines of  varying styles, size, and origin. 

A small Shinto shrine along a canal was a quiet, below street level sanctuary composed of several small buildings and altars.  The large main building of a Confucian shrine was closed, but we were able to enter the courtyard and see the collections of ema that flank the entrance.  Traditionally, followers brought offerings of horses to this shrine.  Now, in lieu of horses, they leave ema, wooden plaques with depictions of horses on one side and written inscriptions on the reverse. 

The busiest and brightest of the shrines was the Kanda shrine complex, which we reached after passing through a large torii and an ornate gate.  Near the entrance of the shrine is a dragon fountain used for the ritual purification we saw several visitors perform, pouring water from wooden ladles in a prescribed form and sequence. 

 

The ema on display were unique, with one side containing a traditional inscription and the other bearing an illustration of various anime characters, a nod to the shrine’s proximity to Akihabara.  Many of the visitors to the shrine appeared to be business people, perhaps due to the shrine’s dedication to the gods of prosperity.  

 As we wandered around the grounds of the shrine, we noticed statues of foxes, the Shinto inari, wearing what looked like orange bibs, which Paul explained were to protect deceased children from evil spirits.

We returned to Akihabara, where we had time to have lunch and wander around a huge, eight-story building with each floor devoted to a certain genre of (mostly) electronics retail vendors.

Kabuki theater

We rode the Metro back to the Ginza to attend a lecture on kabuki before going to the theater for an evening performance.  The kabuki presentation consists of three distinct presentations, two dramas and one dance, and is scheduled for FOUR HOURS, broken up by several intermissions of varying lengths. Everyone brings food and drink to consume during the breaks, and our dinner was an artistic-looking Bento box.  Using personal simultaneous electronic subtitles, we made it through about an hour and a half before calling it a day and walking the short distance back to the hotel.  We’re glad to have had some exposure to the important cultural experience that kabuki represents in Japan, but didn’t feel the need to see it through to the end.  Our stamina ran out before the curtain rang down on this day in Tokyo!